Neuerscheinung über das Verhältnis der USA zum Völkerbund, 1914–1946

Tournès, Ludovic: Les états-unis et la Société des Nations (1914–1946). Le système international face à l’émergence d’une superpuissance
Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Oxford, Wien, 2016. X, 418 p.
ISBN 978-3-0343-2052-8

Bien qu’ils n’aient pas adhéré à la Société des Nations, les États-Unis ont largement participé à ses activités, jouant un rôle déterminant dans le développement des sections techniques, ancêtres des agences spécialisées de l’ONU (santé, travail, questions économiques, coopération intellectuelle). Les principaux acteurs de cette participation sont les fondations philanthropiques, notamment la Rockefeller foundation et la Carnegie endowment for international peace. Décidées à intégrer coûte que coûte les États-Unis dans le système sociétaire afin de pouvoir influer sur l’élaboration de normes internationales, les fondations sont tout au long de l’histoire de la SdN des soutiens financiers et des partenaires intellectuelles majeures. Le gouvernement américain n’est pas absent du processus : comprenant l’intérêt de ne pas rester aux portes de l’organisation internationale, il envoie des experts dans les multiples commissions créées par la SdN et soutient discrètement l’activité des fondations. La participation américaine, officieuse mais massive, contribue ainsi à remodeler dès l’entre-deux-guerres le système international.

Konferenz “ After Empire. The League of Nations and the Former Habsburg Lands“

Vom 10. bis 12.Dezember 2015 findet eine Konferenz über den Völkerbund und die früheren Staaten der Habsburger Monarchie in der Universität Wien, Campus Altes AKH, Aula im Hof 1, statt:

Veranstalter sind Peter Becker, Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, Wien und Natasha Wheatley, Laureate Research Program in International History,Sydney

If the Austro-Hungarian empire gave way to a new order of nation-states
at the end of the First World War, the birth of that order coincided
with a broader new international settlement with the League of Nations
at its heart. In light of new literature on the relationship between
empire and international order, as well as on the relationship between
regional and international orders, this workshop will examine the
interaction of the League of Nations and its sister organizations, like
the ILO, with the former Habsburg lands.Across a range of economic, social, political, and legal domains,
international institutions shaped and guaranteed the new order in
Central Europe. At the same time, statesmen, bureaucrats and experts
from the successor states embarked on influential careers in the new
organizations.

Considering the passive involvement of the monarchy with the new
internationalism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, as
well as the empire’s own legacies of supranational organization, we
intend to explore the networks of influence that bound the successor
states to the institutions of the interwar order.

To what extent were those interactions inflected by imperial pasts? Were
some successor states more active participants in those institutions
than others? In which ways and on which occasions did the League and the
successor states offer each other political opportunities?

————————————————————————
Day One: Thursday, 10 December

Registration: 08:30 a.m.
Welcome: 09:00 a.m.

Morning Session    PANEL ONE
Empires and States: Public Campaigns, New Claims, and Political
Legacies

09:15-10:00
Michael Dean (California): The Imperial Internationalism of Small
States: Czechoslovakia and the League of Nations, 1918-1938

10:00-10:45
Zoltan Peterecz (Eger, HU): Hungary and the League of Nations: A Forced
Marriage

10:45-11:15 Coffee break

11:15-12:00
Reinhard Blänkner (Frankfurt Oder): Peaceful Change? The Austrian
Memoranda-Group at the League of Nations‘ General Study Conference on
Peaceful Change, Paris, June 28 – July 3, 1937
12:00-14:00 Lunch break

Afternoon Session    PANEL TWO
Minorities and Nationalities between Empire and Internationalization

14:00-14:45
Stefan Dyroff (Bern): The Minority Protection System of the League of
Nations and the Legacy of the Habsburg Empire

14:45-15:30
Nathan Markus (St. Petersberg): The League of Nations and National
Minorities: The Case of South Tyrol

15:30-16:00 Coffee break

16:00-16:45
Börries Kuzmany (Vienna): National-Personal Autonomy. A Habsburg Concept
Transferred to Interwar Minority Protection Organizations

16:45-17:30
Jana Osterkamp (Munich): Promoting Jews as a Nationality: The
Perspective of Viennese Chief Rabbi Chajes

19:30
Evening: Keynote Lecture
Glenda Sluga (Sydney): ‚Global Austria‘ and the League of Nations:
Reframing the history of empire and internationalism

Day Two: Friday, 11 December

Morning Session    PANEL THREE
National Delegates and International Work: Refashioning the League

09:00-09:45
Jíra Janác (Prague): Making Czechoslovakia a European Crossroad:
Czechoslovak Experts in the Advisory and Technical Committee on
Communications and Transit of the League of Nations

09:45-10:30
Madeleine Dungy (Cambridge, US): Defending the Rights of Austrian
„Foreigners“ in the League Economic Committee

10:30-11:00 Coffee break

11:00-11:45
Katja Naumann (Leipzig): Empowering the League of Nations: Polish,
Hungarian and Czechoslovakian Officers and Experts

11:45-12:30
Madeleine Herren (Basel): International Civil Servants

12:30-14:00 Lunch break

Afternoon Session    PANEL FOUR
Epistemic Communities and Networks of Experts: Refashioning the Region

14:00-14:45
Sara Silverstein (New Haven): Healthcare and Humanism: Imperial Legacies
in the League’s Social Programs

14:45-15:30: David Petruccelli (Vienna)
Fighting the Scourge of International Crime: Illiberal Internationalism
and the League of Nations

15:30-16:00 Coffee break

16:00-16:45
Michael Burri (Philadelphia): Clemens von Pirquet and Children as Object
of International Concern at the League of Nations

16:45-17:30
Johannes Feichtinger (Wien): Expectations, Visions, and Frustrations:
Alfons Dopsch and the League Intellectual Cooperation Program

Day Three: Saturday, 12 December

Morning Session    PANEL FIVE
Economic Reconstruction and Legacies of International Governance

09:30-10:15
Patricia Clavin and Mary Cox (Oxford): A Global Node, a Global Order:
Austria and the invention of ‚Positive Security‘

10:15-11:00
Jürgen Nautz (Warburg): „… insoweit es möglich und sobald es möglich
ist…“ Agency and Perception of economic experts – the Schüller case

11:00-11:30 Coffee break

11:30-12:15
Antonie Dolezalová (Prague): Financing the New Czechoslovakia

12:15-14:30 Lunch break

14:30
Final Debate
General Comments and Moderation by Natasha Wheatley and Peter Becker

Seminar “ Völkerrecht und Schiedsgerichtsbarkeit. Von den Haager Konferenzen bis zum Völkerbund. Globale und belgische Perspektiven“

Seminar “International Law and Arbitration. From the The Hague Conferences to the League of Nations: Global and Belgian Perspectives”, 2 June 2015, Antwerpen

The Centre for Political History at the University of Antwerp is organizing a seminar, on the 2nd of June, entitled “International Law and Arbitration. From the The Hague Conferences to the League of Nations: Global and Belgian Perspectives”. The opening lecture will be given by prof. Maartje Abbenhuis (University of Auckland). More details on the program can be found below. Participation is free, but registration is required.

Seminar organized by PoHis (UAntwerpen)
Veranstaltungsort:,University of Antwerp, Prinsstraat 10, 2000 Antwerp, room P.0029:45 Welcome

10:00 Maartje Abbenhuis (University of Auckland): A Global History of the Hague Peace Conferences, 1898-1914

The two The Hague conferences of 1899 and 1907 have a contested historiography. Depending on the historical tradition, the conferences are presented as either irrelevant, mere footnotes ‚en route to the First World War’, or as foundational moments shaping twentieth-century international law and order. Based on a variety of published and archival sources, this talk explains how contemporaries looked to The Hague conferences as golden opportunities to shape the international law and organisation and explains why these events are so important to understanding global realities of the time.

10:40 Vincent Genin (Université de Liège): Juristes, parlementaires et diplomates en Belgique dans le processus menant aux Conférences de la Paix de La Haye de 1875 à 1899/1907

Il n’est pas inintéressant de souligner que la manière dont la Belgique a appréhendé les Conférences de la Paix de La Haye de 1899 et 1907 mérite encore une étude solide. Notre ambition, dans le cadre de ce séminaire, est d’analyser les circonstances qui ont entouré ce rapport entre un pays déterminé et un phénomène défini, à savoir un aboutissement du processus de diffusion de l’arbitrage obligatoire entre les États. Promu en Belgique par diverses institutions, depuis 1870, et défendu de manière plus ferme par le Parlement dès 1875, cet arbitrage ou la volonté, par extension, de mettre sur pied un tribunal arbitral international, sont l’objet de débats importants en Belgique, tant au Ministère des Affaires étrangères, qu’au Parlement ou dans les écrits et correspondances privées des juristes de droit international. L’étude de ce phénomène et de la manière dont il a été représenté et accueilli, est l’objet de notre contribution.

11:00 Maarten Van Alstein (Vlaams Vredesinstituut): A Realist View: The Belgian Diplomatic Elite and the League of Nations

After the First World War, principles such as collective security and arbitration were enhanced in international politics, not in the least because they formed the cornerstones of new international organizations such as the League of Nations. After nearly eighty decades of neutrality, Belgian policymakers and diplomats were determined to pursue a more activist foreign policy and engage in international organizations and alliances.  Although Belgium became a member of the new League of Nations and provided the first president of its general assembly, Belgian policymakers and diplomats’ attitudes towards principles such as collective security and arbitration ranged from cautiousness to clear skepticism. Although an evolution towards increased trust in collective security and arbitration can be observed between 1919 and 1929, Belgian policymakers‘ and diplomats‘ views during this period remained predominantly based on realist premises and beliefs.

BBC-Artikel über Seán Lester

BBC News erinnert an den letzten Generalsekretär des Völkerbunds, den irischen Diplomaten Seán Lester.

Sean Lester

The League of Nations Photo Archive

Lester verrat sein Land ab 1929 als Gesandter des irischen Freistaats in Genf. Er wurde 1933 zum Hohen Kommissar für die Freie Stadt Danzig ernannt. 1937 trat er von seinem Amt zurück. Nach dem Rücktritt des französischen Generalsekretärs Avenol übernahm Lester dessen Amt am 2. September 1940 bis zum Ende des Völkerbunds.

Workshop „Equal but Different? Interwar Internationalism and its Others“, Bern am 18. Oktober 2013

Am 18. Oktober 2013 organisiert das SNSF-Research Project “Human Rights, Women’s Movement and the League of Nations” einen Workshop an der Universität Bern, Schanzeneckstrasse 1, 3012 Bern.

Das Ziel des Workshops ist es, die theoretischen und methodologischen Forschungsansätze zu diskutieren, die mit dem Konzept des “Internationalismus” in sozialen Bewegungen und politischen Institutionen verbunden sind.Das Programm:
10.00-10.15 Introduction
10.15-10.45  Francisca de Haan: Dealing with Difference in the pre-1940 International Women’s Movement: Examples from the ICW and IWSA/IAW

10.45-11.00  Elife Biçer-Deveci: Turkish Women’s Organisations and Their Position within International Women’s Organisations in the First Half of the 20th Century

11.00-12.00 Discussion
12.00-14.00 Lunch BreakAfternoon
14.00-14.30 Daniel Laqua: Socialists, League Advocacy and Empire: The
Boundaries of Interwar Internationalism
14.30-14.45 Edith Siegenthaler: Differences in the League of Nations’ Advisory Committee on Traffic in Women and Children
14.45-15.45 Discussion
15.45-16.15 Final Discussion

Konferenz „Diplomacy and Global Governance“, Genf am 4. Oktober 2013

Die Edition „Diplomatische Dokumente der Schweiz“ hat ein Symposium zum Thema „Diplomacy and Global Governance“ angekündigt:

The international symposium «Diplomacy and Global Governance» aims to discuss the intersections between national and international interests in the process of negotiating international standards and rules. The primary focus of the symposium will be on the way international
organizations and conferences have defined these  standards, the role of governmental and non-governmental players in this process and the way different states have handled these globally defined rules. To approach these questions in an innovative way, a body comprising leading scholars from universities as well as researchers from participating editing projects of diplomatic documents will be convened. With 29 delegations from various countries all over the world and representing the main editing projects of diplomatic documents, participants will build a multifaceted and unique pool of historical and historiographical knowledge.

Das Symposium wird stattfinden am 4. Oktober 2013 im United Nations Office at Geneva, Palais desNations, 8-14 avenue de la Paix, Geneva

Siehe die Konferenzseite.

Das Programm:

10.00 – Symposium opening (Room XII)
Sacha Zala (Director, Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland)

Benedikt Hauser (Head, Education Strategy and Cooperation, State
Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation)

10.30 – The Development of Global Governance
Matthias Schulz (University of Geneva): Of Concerts, Transnational
Movements, and International Bureaus: Origins and Trajectories of
International Governance in the 19th Century

Madeleine Herren (University of Basle): The League of Nations or How to
Hide the Effects of Global Governance

Sacha Zala (Diplomatic Documents of Switzerland): Switzerland Facing
Global Governance

12.30 – Lunch break
With the opportunity to visit the League of Nations Museum

14.30 – Global Governance and the United Nations System
Sandrine Kott (Université de Genève): L’OIT: expertises nationales et
normes sociales internationales

Adam Howard (Foreign Relations of the United States): Diplomacy and
Discord: The United States, the United Nations, and the Arab-Israeli
Dispute, 1947-1976

Maurice Vai?sse (Documents Diplomatiques Franc?ais): La France et la
gouvernance globale: le rôle du représentant français au Conseil de
sécurité (1970-1972)

16.30 – End of the Symposium

Konferenz über die Mandate des Völkerbundes

CFP: The Mandate States in Global Perspective (Princeton, September 2013)

Princeton University, 20-22 September 2013

League of Nations Photo Collection: Die Mandatskommission des Völkerbundes

This conference sets out to examine new perspectives on the tangled histories of the Mandatory states that emerged in the mashriq in the wake of the Great War. Furthermore, it proposes situating them within a more extensive chronological and spatial framework, tracing the protracted and fraught transition from late Ottoman to Mandatory rule, and placing this within broader debates on political and cultural life in the world beyond Europe, the changing nature of imperialism, and the international system in the early twentieth century.

The three decades from the outbreak of World War I to the end of French and British Mandatory rule in the 1940s were a formative period for the new states that emerged from the embers of the Ottoman empire in the Arabic-speaking mashriq: in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria alike, populations moved – and were moved – about, constructing new collective identities and confronting new categorizations; borders were drawn and redrawn; and institutions formed and reformed, leaving a troublesome legacy which still endures, for better or worse, across the region. Despite its significance, the last large-scale collective work on this period – The British and French Mandates in Comparative Perspective, edited by Peter Sluglett and Nadine Méouchy – is now almost a decade old. Scholarship on the Mandatory states of the Middle East has flourished in the intervening years into an expanding and rapidly evolving field.

This conference seeks to take stock of these changes, and to stimulate further development. Furthermore, its organizers wish to foster dialogue between scholars of the mashriq and their peers by inviting scholars of other periods and parts of the world to serve as panel chairs and commentators. In doing so, we hope to provide new perspectives on the history of a region all too often considered in splendid isolation, and to emphasize its central importance to our understandings of late imperialism, the workings of the modern state in the world beyond Europe, and the creation and expansion in the early twentieth century of novel mechanisms of international governance. Our hope is that this gathering will enrich scholarly understanding both of the region itself, and of the world of which it became such an integral part.

Paper proposals on the following themes are elicited:

Transitions: from the dusk of the Ottoman Empire to the dawn of a new state system

The Mandates as a new form of international governance: the League of Nations, international law, and humanitarianism

Above and below the new ’nation-state‘: local and global perspectives on the Mandates

The everyday state and its challenges: law, bureaucracy and citizenship

Insurgency and counter-insurgency: the Mandatory state and its antagonists

Notables, merchants, effendis, and subalterns: new approaches to the social, economic, and political history of the Mandate states

Sectarian and secular institutions and identities: new approaches to social construction and political culture

Cultural production and the self: education and the arts in the Mandate States

The conference will be held on 20-22 September 2013 at Princeton
University. Participation costs (travel and hotel) will be fully covered.

Please send abstracts in word or PDF format to the conference organizers,
Cyrus Schayegh (Princeton University) and Andrew Arsan (University of
Cambridge) at the following email address: mandateconference@gmail.com<mailto:mandateconference@gmail.com>

Abstracts should be 250-300 words; applicants should also provide name,
institutional affiliation, and contact details.

The deadline for submission of abstracts is 15 February 2013. Successful
applicants will be notified by 1 March 2013.

The deadline for submission of pre-circulated papers of no more than 8,000
words, including references, is 1 July 2013. The conference proceedings
will be published in an edited volume.

Konferenz über Friedensvorstellungen im Ersten Weltkrieg

Der Arbeitskreis Historische Friedensforschung, das  Centre for Peace History an der Universität Sheffield und das Erich Maria Remarque-Friedenszentrum in Osnabrück organisieren eine Konferenz über

Friedensvorstellungen im Ersten Weltkrieg: Repräsentationen, Medien, politische Visionen in einer vergleichenden Perspektive

Dies ist der Aufruf zum Einsenden von Vorschlägen:

Call for Papers: Imagining Peace in the First World War. Representations-Media-Political Visions in Comparative Perspective

International Conference, organised by the Association for Historical Peace Research, the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Centre in Osnabrück, and the Centre for Peace History at the University of Sheffield

Date: 4-6 July 2014 Place: Osnabrück

Agenda

The First World brought mass violence and killing on a scale and scope that was unprecedented at least in the modern era. Modern technology and the social and ideological mobilization of whole societies contributed to a protracted war that had corrosive effects on the social fabric of civil society and unleashed a wave of annexationist and militarized fantasies. Yet at the same time, the Great War also ushered in a new era of visions for a peaceful social and political order. As the rolling thunder of the cannon at the front continued, an increasing number of people – from avant-garde artists to first-wave feminists, labour movement activists and Christian priests and laity – thought and fantasized about a social order that would silence the weapons and would be able to protect the livelihood of the people. Some of these visions were a form of escapism, some were outright pacifist or socialist, others were just a brutal mockery of a seemingly apocalyptic present. If there was a unifying thread to these highly diverse imaginations, blueprints and political visions, it was a sense of hope that things could change to the better, and an anxious expectation that a core of human integrity could be salvaged from the disaster.

The international conference will investigate those representations, media and political visions which registered and articulated glimpses, anticipations and full-fledged projects for a world beyond the carnage of war. The immediate focus of the conference is on the war itself, the years from 1914 to 1918 – or in Eastern European regions rather 1914 to 1921 –, but papers on the immediate post-war period are welcome. The conference takes a comparative approach, covering a broad range of countries in Eastern and Western Europe and North America, and inviting both papers that are comparative, and those which cover one particular country, region or group.

Structure of the Conference

The organizers of the conference anticipate papers in three different fields or sections, although this structure is only tentative, and should certainly not limit the range of possible submissions.

I. Political Visions for a Peaceful World

This section is interested in those blueprints and programmes which outlined new social and political configurations for a peaceful post-war world. How did pacifists, feminists of different political orientations, and socialists envisage rebuilding society after the catastrophe of war? Which religious notions of peace and harmony were developed by bishops, priests, rabbis and members of the laity? Which visions and notions of peace did ordinary front-line soldiers develop? Where there repercussions and connections between high-level political programmes and the hopes of socialist or democratic grassroots activists? Papers in this section could also discuss how nationalist intellectuals and movements in East-Central and Eastern Europe combined blueprints for national renewal with visions for peace in the framework of a (re-)established nation-state.

II. Media and the Texture of Non-Violence

The papers in this section will investigate how different media of communication and artistic expression have shaped visions for a non-violence future. Among other media, they will look at poetry and narrative texts, explore postcards, photography and visual art. How did these media identify and portray the potential of peaceful regimes of life? How did the materiality of the respective media shape the texture of visions for non-violence, for instance: how was photography able to represent social or natural spaces which facilitated or equalled “peace”?

III. Social Configurations and the Gendering of Peace

During the Great War as in other conflicts, hopes for the rebuilding of a war-torn society often rested on small-scale configurations, on the family, neighbourhood or village community. The intimacy of face-to-face contacts was highlighted as a retreat from the brutal machinery of war. Many of these more intimate configurations were based on gendered notions of civility and peacefulness. The papers in this section will look at the intersections of gender and non-violent social configurations at different levels, and investigate the gendered attributes of a peaceful post-war world.

Practicalities

Papers at the conference will be oral presentations of no more than 25 minutes. Following a process of peer-review, the revised and expanded papers will be published in a volume in the series of the Association for Historical Peace Research (AkHF). We will seek funding to cover travel and accommodation costs for speakers, but cannot guarantee complete reimbursement at this stage.

If you are interested in presenting a paper, please send an abstract of your paper (no more than 200 words) and a one-page short CV as a Word-Document to both of the following: PD Dr Thomas Schneider, Erich Maria Remarque Peace Centre, email: remarque-zentrum@uos.de; Professor Benjamin Ziemann, University of Sheffield, Department of History, email: b.ziemann@sheffield.ac.uk

Informal enquiries can be directed to Thomas Schneider and Benjamin Ziemann.

The deadline for submission of abstracts is 10 January 2013

 

Konferenz „Towards a New History of the League of Nations“

Veranstalter:Patricia Clavin, Oxford; Susan Pedersen, Columbia; Corinne A. Pernet, University of St. Gallen; Davide Rodogno, GIIDS, Geneva

25.08.2011-26.08.2011, Geneva, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva

Deadline: 01.04.2011

The past decade has seen a flowering of new work on the history of the League of Nations. A group of research scholars at universities across four continents will convene on August 25-26, 2011 for a conference dedicated to presenting and discussing the findings of those scholars who have been re-examining the League’s history through the use of its archives in Geneva. This conference is being hosted by the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva and is made possible by the generous support of the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the Pierre Du Bois Foundation.

The conference features panels on the League and security; the role of experts and the practices of internationalism; competing visions of global order; popular internationalism and mobilization; and the role of the League in shaping understandings and regimes about rights.

There will be invited speakers for each of these sessions, but the conference organizers anticipate and welcome the participation by additional scholars from around the world interested in the history of the League of Nations. Scholars interested in attending the conference are invited to “table” additional papers relevant to specific panels, and while those papers will not be formally presented, they will become part of the collective discussion. Papers for the conference, and related “tabled” papers, will be available on a password-protected conference website.

Scholars interested in attending the conference and/or “tabling” papers should contact Davide Rodogno, at davide.rodogno@graduateinstitute.ch, no later than April 1, 2011. Information about the Graduate Institute and advice about local transportation and accommodation will be made available on the GIIDS website.

A workshop for doctoral students working on aspects of the history of the League will be held at the GIIDS on the afternoon of Wednesday August 24, the day before the conference.

Information about the graduate workshop will be available by April on the conference website.

Kontakt: Corinne A. Pernet, University of St. Gallen, corinne.pernet@unisg.ch

Die Relevanz des Versailler Vertrages

Alan Sharp schreibt in seinem Beitrag The Treaty of Versailles: 90 years old this weekend über den Völkerbund:

Tensions, crises and violence in the Middle East are rarely absent from the news. Many of their origins can be traced to the ambiguities caused by conflicting British wartime promises to Arabs, Jews and the French, and post-war mapping and manipulations of the region by the great powers and the diplomatic and military manoeuvrings of the local elites. China resented loss of territory to Japan. Japan resented Anglo-American resistance to a racial equality clause in the League Covenant. 1919 was the last great imperial settlement, disappointing nationalist hopes, with important implications for later African and Asian decolonisation.