In London, which was the main asylum for political exiles, cosmopolitan organisations were created from the 1840s, with the Fraternal Democrats (1845-1848), the International Committee (1854-1856) and the International Association (1856-1859). The International Workingmen’s Association (IWMA, 1864-1876) inherited many of their features but also broke new ground. It was created in a period of expansion of the labour movement and of democratic groupings. It gathered workers’organizations – trade-unions, associations, friendly societies – as well as members who had joined on an individual basis. It was simultaneously an area for the confrontation of different political traditions, a union which organized practical solidarity, and an international political organization. It had branches in the whole of Western Europe, the United States and South America before it disappeared in the 1870s.