Between Geneva and Ottawa

The article is devoted to the analysis of the process of formation of the image of Palestine and the British Empire at the end of the First World War. On the basis of the materials of American cartoons and periodicals, the main points in the evolution of the attitude of American society to Palestine are considered, the complexities and contradictions in understanding the features of the British Empire are shown. The study of cartoons will help determine the nature of the interaction of textual and visual images in the US media during the discussion of the results of the First World War, the Treaty of Versailles, the League of Nations and the mandate system. Based on the study of cartoons, two stages in the perception of Palestine in the United States are distinguished: 1) “romantic” and 2) “critical”. New images of Palestine, the British colonial empire, and the Middle East first appeared in newspaper articles, and only later in cartoons. The debate between apologetic and critical strands of US public opinion regarding Palestine and the British model of internal security in the colonies became in 1919 one element of a more global debate between Democrats and Republicans about the role of the US in the League of Nations.

During the nineteen-tens and -twenties the British Empire was transformed into the British Commonwealth of Nations and the League of Nations was created and began its work. This thesis argues that from the perspective of a loosely defined group of public academics and politicians from the British Empire, here identified as imperialist-internationalists, these two events were dual processes, as they considered both the Commonwealth and the League natural steps of progression from the British Empire of the early twentieth century. By analysing selected perspectives on empires as peacemakers from antiquity to the late nineteenth century and the education of the imperialist-internationalists it is argued that they belonged to an established Western tradition of seeing empires as a positive form of peaceful international organisation. However, like many contemporaries, they were critical of the traditional model of empire where all power was centred in the imperial metropolis as a valid form of international governance. With a focus on their published contributions to the public debate, supported by selected archival material, it is demonstrated how the imperialist-internationalists promoted the existence of what they named the British Commonwealth of Nations before it was given any kind of legal recognition, attributing specific values of democracy and equality to its constituent parts. Likewise, it is demonstrated how they identified the outbreak of World War One as an opportunity to reorganise the world to promote international cooperation, and how they worked to use British imperial experience in the formation of the League and formulation of the Covenant. Finally, it is argued that E.H. Carr’s rejection of the interwar thinkers as utopians was unjust as they tried to use what they thought was an established model. As a consequence, applying Carr’s lens has limited the existing scholarship of several members of the imperialist-internationalists.

This article reviews the rich internationalist literature produced by a group of Cambridge Apostles in the interwar years, and evaluates it in the context of contemporary British idealist thought. John Maynard Keynes, Bertrand Russell, Ralph Hawtrey, Leonard Woolf, Gerald Shove, Hugh Meredith, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, Julian Bell, Dennis Robertson and Hugh Dalton not only wrote extensively on international relations, but were widely read and politically influential. Although they never constituted a formal advocacy group or organization, their views on the First World War, the League of Nations, the British Empire and international trade were significantly similar. They also unanimously opposed conscription when it was introduced in Britain in 1916. Their approach appears original especially as far as its ethical foundation, based on Moore’s Principia Ethica, is concerned. The central role played by economic arguments in their reflections is also pointed out.

The attitude of the British and German governments towards the work of the League of Nations, an organisation that was the very embodiment of the commitment of many of the world’s nations to the pursuit of peace at the end of the First World War, illustrates many of the differences between the two countries towards international diplomacy. To the British government, the League was a worthwhile cause but one which, potentially, threatened to embroil Britain in diplomatic conflicts where her interests were not at stake. This was the price of a permanent seat on the League’s governing body, the Council, but one that was thought to be worth paying in the same way that the burdensome task of administering the empire offered Britain enormous influence in international diplomacy. At the same time, a balance needed to be struck between the work of the League and the requirements of British foreign policy, particularly regarding European security. It was this debate that the British government was engaged in throughout D’Abernon’s embassy and for much of the remainder of the interwar period. In contrast, the German governments that held office between 1920 and 1926 viewed membership of the League as a means to an end as an opportunity to deal with the Allies on equal terms to secure concessions relating to the security of Germany’s frontiers and potential revisions of the Treaty of Versailles.

ABSTRACTThis article analyses the relationships between the colonial government in the Federated Malay States (FMS), international social movement organisations, the League of Nations and sex trafficking. While there is considerable scholarship on social movement organisations and the League of Nations, far less is known about the links between internationalism, colonialism and sex trafficking.After the First World War, trafficking became the focus of social movement organisations and the League of Nations, but colonial regulation of prostitution and tolerated brothels complicated international responses to trafficking. Colonial administrators saw prostitution as an essential service, whereas feminist and international social movement organisations saw prostitution as an impetus for trafficking. This article engages with newspaper reports, colonial correspondence and Chinese petitions, archival material from social movement organisations, and reports by the Association of Moral and Social Hygiene, the League of Nations and the Chinese Secretariat to extend the literature on the historiography of trafficking and the British Empire.

In connection with the aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, an urgent problem is the search for the necessary changes in the legal sphere to ensure international peace and security both in international institutions and in the national legislation of individual states. This primarily concerns Ukraine as a state suffering from aggression. Therefore, it is appropriate to refer to historical analogies regarding the creation of organizations that were intended to oppose the outbreak of full-scale wars. The purpose of the work is to research on the example of historical analogies the factors of the activities of international organizations of collective security, first of all the League of Nations and the United Nations, which did not allow to prevent large-scale military conflicts – the Second World War and the aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, as well as ascertaining and proving the need for appropriate reform in the legal sphere in the direction of collective security, which requires persistent multifaceted law-making activity, including in Ukraine, which suffers from aggression. The following historical analogies are considered, related to the events that were the origins of significant changes in the legal sphere: the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which ended the Thirty Years’ War in Europe; the League of Nations is the first international organization created with the aim of achieving peace and security among nations, the impetus for its establishment was the consequences of the First World War; the UN is the legal successor of the League of Nations, formed in 1945 after the Second World War, which took into account the gains and miscalculations of the League of Nations. The founders of the UN are 51 states, including Ukraine. The example of historical analogies showed that international organizations of collective security, primarily the League of Nations and the UN, were unable to fulfill their main task – to prevent large-scale military conflicts – the Second World War and the aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine. The weakness of the League of Nations as a peacekeeping tool was determined to some extent by its Organization’s Charter, the need for the consent of all members of the organization to take measures against the aggressor. It is noted that the UN, although it took into account the achievements and miscalculations of its predecessor – the League of Nations, was unable to ensure international peace to the required extent. This was manifested, in particular, in the activities of the UN Security Council as a body that bears the main responsibility for maintaining international peace and security. The weakness of the Security Council is that each of its permanent members has the right of veto. This was especially shamefully manifested during Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. Issues of aggression, acts of genocide, and war crimes are constantly brought up for discussion by the Security Council, but this body cannot make a single decision due to the imposition of a veto by the aggressor country – Russia. It was concluded that after the victory of Ukraine, we can expect a significant improvement in the legal sphere in the direction of changes in the activity, representation and decision-making rules of the reformed collective security organizations. It was emphasized that, despite the state of war, Ukraine should pay attention to the law-making work to create conditions to prevent existing terrible events in the future. Key words: Aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, League of Nations, United Nations, reforming the collective security system, law-making activity.

The League of Nations - pre-cursor to the United Nations - was founded in 1919 as a response to the First World War to ensure collective security and prevent the outbreak of future wars. It was set up to facilitate diplomacy in the face of future international conflict, but also to work towards eradicating the very causes of war by promoting social and economic justice. The philosophy behind much of the League's fascinating and varied roles was to help create satisfied populations who would reject future threats to the peace of their world. In this new volume for Seminar Studies, Martyn Housden sets out to balance the League's work in settling disputes, international security and disarmament with an analysis of its achievements in social and economic fields. He explores the individual contributions of founding members of the League, such as Fridtjof Nansen, Ludwik Rajchman, Rachel Crowdy, Robert Cecil and Jan Smuts, whose humanitarian work laid the foundations for the later successes of the United Nations in such areas as: the welfare of vulnerable people, especially prisoners of war and refugees dealing with epidemic diseases and promoting good health anti-drugs campaigns Supported by previously unpublished documents and photographs, this book illustrates how an understanding of the League of Nations, its achievements and its ultimate failure to stop the Second World War, is central to our understanding of diplomacy and international relations in the Inter-War period.

Many historians have underestimated the significance of interwar internationalism, treating the League of Nations and the efforts of internationalists as idealistic failures in an age that was characterised by international tensions and aggressive nationalism. This edited volume challenges such narratives by assessing transnational projects that were launched or transformed after World War One. In the face of national antagonisms, it proved challenging to re-establish international norms or organisations. Yet the League of Nations offered a new framework for activists, experts and policymakers. Consequently, and in spite of the legacy of war and the emergence of new conflicts, the years between 1919 and 1939 saw a great variety of transnational endeavours, shaped by a belief in the feasibility of a new global order. The chapters in this book offer an in-depth discussion of specific transnational movements and organisations. They explore how the League of Nations system engaged with governments or non-state actors, and shed light on the contrasting rationales for transnational cooperation. As a whole, the volume highlights both the extent and the boundaries of interwar internationalism. It also reveals the contrasting motivations that informed internationalist action. With fresh research from several European countries, the book makes an original contribution to the transnational history of the interwar years.

The British parliament took a keen interest in the international protection of minorities during the interwar era. Minority treaties addressing the rights of minorities in east central Europe had been concluded and placed under the guarantee of the League of Nations after the First World War. The main focus here is not on the situation of individual minority groups but rather on the general operation of minority protection and the attempts to improve it during the late 1920s and early 1930s, when the principles and procedures of minority protection were widely discussed. As a key member of the League, Britain had a strong interest in the smooth functioning of the system. This article shows that parliamentary questions constituted an important form of parliamentary pressure on the government's conduct of foreign affairs during the interwar era, and that the questions were, in some instances, co‐ordinated with the efforts of voluntary associations and publicity in the media. In order to present the viewpoint of the government as well, the preparation of the answers and other responses to the questions by the foreign office is also examined. The source material reveals that there was complex interaction between parliament, the government, and voluntary associations in defining British policy vis‐à‐vis the League of Nations.

Reviewed by: Empire’s Children: Child emigration, welfare, and the decline of the British World, 1869–1967 by Ellen Boucher Kristine Alexander Empire’s Children: Child emigration, welfare, and the decline of the British World, 1869–1967 By Ellen Boucher. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. In Empire’s Children, Ellen Boucher examines a series of understudied connections between child migration and the end of the British Empire, by tracing the nineteenth-century rise and mid-twentieth-century fall of the British child emigration movement. The movement’s origins, she writes, lay in the Victorian belief that sending poor children out to the healthy, “empty” spaces of the settler empire would redeem individual young people while strengthening and unifying the British “race” and the global community of Greater Britain. The book’s most important contribution is its argument that this optimistic understanding of poor children’s potential and the strength of imperial ties was ultimately undone by a potent combination of factors, including dominion nationalism and the growing influence of child psychology after the Second World War. Looking at child emigration, Boucher argues, is a particularly useful way to trace “the rise, reconfiguration, and lasting effects of the concept of imperial Britishness” between the 1860s and the 1960s (21). Empire’s Children is a dense, nuanced and well-written study. It draws on an impressive array of sources including oral history interviews conducted by Boucher and others, as well as written evidence produced by reformers, voluntary organizations, politicians, medical and psychological experts, and former migrants in Canada, Australia, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and Britain. The book also includes nearly a dozen photographs (publicity images as well as snapshots of child migrants), but they are not analyzed with the same rigor that Boucher applies to her textual sources. The book begins by discussing the child emigration movement between the late nineteenth century and the 1920s, a period in which over a dozen British agencies sent some 80,000 children to live and work on family farms in Canada. This first stage of the movement combined Victorian child rescue discourse with the belief that every British youngster “contained the seeds of future greatness” (42). Late nineteenth and early twentieth-century migration schemes understood young people as particularly malleable, and assumed that moving poor children away from their families and into settler societies would improve individual life chances while strengthening White racial ties across the British World. While Barnardo’s and all other child migration charities suspended their efforts during the First World War, the aftermath of that conflict only heightened British support for the movement. By the interwar years, Boucher writes, child emigration had changed “from a philanthropic endeavor into an imperial social policy, one in which the twin aims of reinvigorating the empire and uplifting poor children were closely intertwined” (69). Yet despite increased British state support for child emigration, Boucher reveals that dominion responses to the practice were neither uniform nor wholly positive. In Canada, for example, eugenicists and doctors had been asking for screenings and inspections of child migrants since the late nineteenth century—a development that challenged the metropolitan assumption that “British blood” was the most important criterion for migrants. The bulk of the book discusses the still greater fissures in the child emigration movement and the ideal of a united British World that appeared between the 1930s and 1960s. Since child emigration to Canada ended during the interwar years (for reasons discussed in Chapter Two), Boucher focuses on Australia and Southern Rhodesia, two very different settler societies that she claims are especially revealing of mid-twentieth-century debates and disagreements about whiteness, dominion identity, and the potential of poor children. Boucher describes how Australian officials, reflecting a particular version of White racial nationalism, used IQ testing to screen migrants and regularly repatriated “problem” youngsters. In Southern Rhodesia, by contrast, government officials were unsure whether poor British children were fit to rule over that country’s Black majority population. In this context, poverty and family instability—the very factors that had inspired the first wave of child emigration charities—were recast as grounds to exclude young British migrants from the Rhodesian settler community. These developments, which undermined the ideal...

Neutrality went through a period of convulsion after the First World War. During the inter-war years a number of commentators argued that the League of Nations and the Kellogg–Briand Pact combined had fundamentally changed the law of the use of force to such a degree that neutrality was no longer viable as a doctrine. Ireland as a newly independent state during this period exemplified these debates and as such is a useful prism to aid in the understanding of how other states reacted to the new multilateralism established in the League of Nations. Ireland, similar to other states such as Switzerland, recognized this new multilateralism by joining the League and signing the Kellogg–Briand Pact; yet these states always strived to maintain the capability to declare neutrality. The Second World War brought neutrality to the fore as a core aspect of war-time law. It also required states such as Ireland and Switzerland to utilize neutrality to maintain their sovereignty. Ultimately this influenced how neutrality would be viewed under the UN Charter.

The author conducts a comparative analysis of international institutions that emerged as a result of two world wars in the twentieth century — the League of Nations and the United Nations, and shows their fundamental diff erence. The author rightly believes that the League of Nations was unable to prevent the Second World War due to the imperfection of its Charter and the lack of universal principles embodied in it. These shortcomings, according to the author, were due to the instability of the Versailles-Washington system, which failed to overcome the contradictions that later led to a new world war. Unlike the League of Nations, the United Nations, established after the Second World War, was able to take into account the systemic shortcomings that were originally embedded in the statutory principles of the former organization. The author focuses on the "veto" rule, which is the fundamental principle of the UN Charter, and shows its fundamental diff erence from the principle of "liberum veto" of the Statute of the League of Nations, which allowed any dissenting state to block a decision regarding the defi nition of a threat to peace and condone aggressor countries to freely exercise their expansionist plans. The author takes into account that the UN is an organization of the “nuclear age”, since the Yalta system determined the status of permanent members of the Security Council as victors in World War II and leading nuclear powers in the UN Charter. The author argues that complex international confl ict situations can only be resolved through the joint eff orts of the world community. With the help of various international mechanisms, regional confl icts must be resolved by political and diplomatic methods, and they must not be allowed to develop into a global confl ict, since a new world confl ict in the context of globalization can only be at the nuclear level. The UN Charter lays down the principles for resolving international regional problems and their settlement by political means. The author comes to the conclusion, that the United Nations is a stable international institution to prevent a new world war and maintain international security. Unlike the League of Nations, which failed to prevent the Second World War, the UN is an institution for actually preventing world crises and building a new post-war world order, which has been ensuring the sustainable development of mankind without global wars for more than 75 years.

The history of colonialism, decolonization, and postcolonial development is a global cross-cutting trend in world history, spanning several centuries. The research interest in the legacy of the League of Nations in the field of internationalization of mandate territories has been intensifing in recent years. In the last third of the 21st century, the term "imperialism" began to be applied to the active European colonization and division of the world. The First World War brought significant changes to the processes of colonialism and imperialism. The League of Nations, the first international organization, was shaped. The mandate system was developed in the League of Nations as a compromise option for transferring the former German colonies and possessions of the Ottoman Empire. However, the mandate system of the League of Nations was more than a cover for the colonial division of territories. The principle of international trusteeship and the internationalization of management has appeared in the mandate system. Open imperialism became a thing of the past. In the interwar period, the mandate system marked the beginning of the crisis of colonial empires. The Permanent Mandates Commission (PMC) the League of Nations created a new network of political influence for change in the mandate territories. The mother countries was subject to these rules under the threat of being accused of non-compliance with international law and the terms of their respective mandates. The completely new practice of petitioning Geneva provided some political opportunities for residents and various groups in mandate territories to change the practices of mandate governments. The internationalization of economic and cultural life was also fruitful. Education and health services were developed in the mandate territories due to the practice of discussing these issues in the Permanent Mandates Commission . Despite the fact that at the time of decolonization, the result of the development of mandate territories was not very different from that of colonial countries, the League of Nations managed to change a lot in the world over a short period of time.

Prostitution and the Ends of Empire: Scale, Governmentalities, and Interwar India, by Stephen Legg. Durham & London, Duke University Press, 2014. xi, 281 pp. $94.95 US (cloth), $25.95 US (paper). It is only fairly recently that the historiography of prostitution and the attempts at its control or eradication has moved into the interwar era, a period in which there was a distinctive shift away from regulation and segregation, largely due to the development of a wider discourse of hygiene and the role of the citizen in combating venereal diseases. Legg writes as an urban geographer with a particular interest in India, and while this work addresses theoretical debates particular to these fields, it is also extremely valuable to the historian, especially to historians of sexuality who are examining the varied roles of space. It provides useful ways of thinking about changing ideas of public space and civic life in the era of modernity and demonstrates the importance of bringing particular material sites of the urban environment into the picture. This study does not however take the very granular approach that we find in Julia Laite's Common Prostitutes and Ordinary Citizens: Commercial Sex in London, 1885-1960 (New York, 2012) or that of Catherine Lee's Policing Prostitution, 1856-1886: Deviance, Surveillance and Morality (London, 2013) on Kent. Legg is more interested in the ways in which the problem was being addressed at a variety of interconnecting levels, from the League of Nations' concern over the Traffic in Women and Children to what happened on specific streets, via a range of different government bodies, imperial, national and local, and civil organizations. While paying tribute to Philippa Levine's magisterial work, Prostitution, Race and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire (New York, 2003), Legg registers an important proviso that Levine, and other historians, have tended to present India as a more monolithic entity than in fact it was. In particular he points out the complex, even at times incoherent, interplay between different governmental levels--transnational, imperial, national, local--further complicated by the involvement of various voluntary organizations engaged in campaigning and activism, as well as particular factors that came into play at specific sites at particular times. Legg brings a particularly useful insight into the role of sexology (itself more strongly influenced than is sometimes credited by late nineteenth century movements of moral reform as well as movements for public health) as an influence upon policy toward prostitution. This builds upon scholarship that has already gained significant recognition, regarding the influence of campaigns of moral reform (emerging from the UK protests against the Contagious Diseases Acts of the 1860s) and a rising paradigm of preventive medicine and public and individual hygiene. …

Book reviewed in this article: New Fashions in Wage Theory. By Jurgen Kuczynski. Political Economy and Capitalism. By Maurice Dobb The Groundwork of Economic Theory. By J. Watson Introduction to the Theory of Employment. By Joan Robinson. Predecessors of Adam Smith. By E. A. J. Johnson Adam Smith as Student and Professor. By W. R. Scott. Economic Planning and International Order. By Lionel Robbins. The British Empire. A Report on its Structure and Problems by a study group of Members of the Royal Institute of International Affairs.The Northern Countries in World Economy. The Colonial Office: A History. By Henry Hall, Ph.D. The House that Hiller Built. By S. H. Roberts. Report on International Trade. A survey of problems affecting the expansion of international trade with proposals for the development of British commercial policy and export mechanism. P.E.P. (Political and Economic Planning). The Problem of International Investment: Report of Study Group of Members of the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Balances of Payments, 1936. (League of Nations). International Trade Statistics, 1936. (League of Nations). International Trade in Certain Raw Materials and Foodstuffs by Countries of Origin and Consumption, 1936. (League of Nations). The Problem of Peaceful Change in the Pacific Area. By Henry P. Angus Australia's National Interests and National Policy. By H. L. Harris. Immigration into Eastern Australia, 1788–1851. By R. B. Madgwiek, M.Ec. (Syd.), D.Phil. British Corporation Finance, 1775–1850. A Study of Preference Shares. By George Heberton Evans, Jr. The Labour Contract. By B. F. Shields. The Lessons of Monetary Experience: Essays in Honour of Irving Fisher. Edited by A. D. Gayer. Le Capital et la Valeur. By Antonio Graziadei. Money and Banking, 1936/7. (League of Nations). I.—Monetary Review. International Monetary Issues. By Charles R. Whittlesey Banks, Credit, and Money in Soviet Russia. By Arthur Z. Arnold. Witt Gold Depreciate? By Dr. Paul Einzig (Maemillan & Co.). Australian Marketing Problems. A Book of Documents 1932–1937, edited by Professor D. B. Copland Planned Society Yesterday, To‐day, To‐morrow. Edited by Findley Mackenzie. The Statistical Tear Book, 1936/37 (League of Nations). World Economic Survey, 1936/7 (League of Nations). The Development of the Business Corporation in England 1800–1867. By Bishop Carleton Hunt. Economics of Co‐operative Marketing. By H. H. Bakken and M. A. Shaars. The Chicago Credit Market. By Melchior Palyi.