The worlds of E.D. Morel, 1873-1924

Thesis

The campaigner and journalist Edmund Dene Morel (1873-1924) was one of the most fascinating and contradictory actors in Edwardian politics. This dissertation consists of four interlinked essays on the subject of this beguiling character, each taking as their focus a distinct period of Morel’s life and career. In every chapter I take up a different set of theoretical tools in order to investigate the relationship of his actions and experience to grander historical questions from as wide a variety of disciplinary perspectives as possible, before turning back to ask how those processes discovered at the macroscopic level gave distinct shape to an individual human and his sociopolitical subjectivity.

As well as being a study of E.D. Morel’s political career, this dissertation is also a self-consciously experimental work of speculative history – that is to say, of historical inquiry which grounds itself theoretically by reference to axioms distinct from the empiricism which still underpins the majority of Anglo-American scholarship. The fundamental assumptions and preoccupations of my investigation are instead drawn from so-called ‘continental philosophy’, in particular the traditions of phenomenology, existentialism, Western Marxism, and psychoanalysis.

Especially important to this project is the titular concept of a ‘World’: an internally coherent existential space of signification through which the subject is able to navigate its existence meaningfully. In terms of practical relevance to a work of history, the intent to map past Worlds leads us into an investigation of the precise conditions which made the actions of Morel’s actions thinkable, and the meanings which such interventions carried within their context.

Authors: Collett, MD

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-qrao2ybq4
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: E.D. Morel; political history; Congo; experimental history; Labour Party
• Subjects: History, Modern