Guarantee of Peace

Abstract

The book reconsiders the role of the League of Nations as an idea and as an institution in the development of British policy, 1914–25. It challenges the view that London took up the league idea reluctantly in response to outside pressures, and shows how the British government used the idea to manage Anglo‐American relations in wartime and eventually to provide the basis of an enduring hegemonic partnership. While thinking about the league eventually developed in several new directions after American entry into the war, the idea of a guarantee retained its centrality in British thinking. American rejection of the Covenant meant that post‐war British governments had to look at the League in an Anglo‐French context instead. The book breaks new ground in examining how London tried to use the League in the series of crises of the early 1920s over Armenia, Persia, Vilna, Upper Silesia, Albania, and Corfu. It shows how in the negotiations leading to the abortive Draft Treaty of Mutual Assistance (1923) and Geneva Protocol (1924), and the successful Locarno accords (1925) British policy‐makers tried to resolve the Franco‐German security question through the League. This involves a reconsideration of how these leaders tried to use the League as an issue in British domestic politics, and why it emerged as central to British foreign policy, and therefore as a key element in European stability after 1925.