League of Nations

The League of Nations was the first attempt to assemble the nations of the world in a single body. In this respect it was the forerunner of the United Nations. It was created at the urging of the United States, tinged with idealism, and criticized by nationalists.

U.S. role

Following the entry of the United States into World War I, President Woodrow Wilson paid surprisingly little attention to military affairs, but dominated diplomacy and provided the funding and food supplies that helped to make Allied victory in 1918 possible. In the late stages of the war he took personal control of negotiations with Germany, especially with the Fourteen Points and the Armistice that amounted to a German surrender. The Fourteen Points was his program to permanently end conflicts that lead to wars, and he went to Paris in 1919 to implement them and especially to create the League of Nations. Wilson had to compromise with French leaders who wanted revenge against Germany, and deal with overlapping and conflicting claims of national self determination, He played the single most influential role in shaping the Treaty of Versailles, with special attention on creating new nations out of defunct empires. He succeeded in getting most of the treaty he wanted, but faced a severe battle regarding Senate ratification. Wilson collapsed with a debilitating stroke in 1919, as the home front saw massive strikes and race riots, and wartime prosperity turn into postwar depression. He refused to compromise with the Republicans who controlled Congress after 1918, effectively destroying any chance for ratification of the Treaty of Versailles. The League of Nations went into operation anyway, but the U.S. never joined.

Wilson's idealistic internationalism, whereby the U.S. enters the world arena to fight for democracy and liberalism, has been a highly controversial position in American foreign policy, serving as a model for "idealists" to emulate or "realists" to reject for the following century.

1920s

Most historians portray 1924-29 as no more than a temporary lull between the two storm periods of imposed "peace" settlements and bitter conflicts in 1919-23 and the Great Depression, destruction of Versailles, and rise of Hitler in 1929-33. However Cohrs (2006) argues that the Dawes Plan, London Conference, and Locarno treaties of 1924-25 constituted instead a new Euro-Atlantic peace settlement and international system and established a new European concert. This system was much more important than the League, Cohrs argues. Under combined British-American aegis, both France and Germany adopted the spirit and politics of productive mutual compromise. What stunted and finally undermined the system was above all the failure of both hegemons, especially the U.S., actively to support and develop it.

Bibliography

• The Essential Facts About the League of Nations, published in Geneva, with ten editions between 1933 and 1940
• Barros, James C. The Corfu Incident of 1921: Mussolini and the League of Nations (1965)
• Barros, James C. The League of Nations and the Great Powers: The Greek-Bulgaria Incident, 1925 (1970)
• Barros, James C. Betrayal from Within: Joseph Avenol, Secretary-General of the League of Nations, 1933–1940 (1969).
• Barros, James C. Office without Power: Secretary-General Sir Eric Drummond, 1919–1933 (1979)
• Bassett, John Spencer. The League of Nations: A Chapter in World Politics (1930)
• Bendiner, Elmer. A Time for Angels: The Tragicomic History of the League of Nations (1975), popular
• Cohrs, Patrick O. The Unfinished Peace after World War I: America, Britain and the Stabilisation of Europe, 1919–1932 (2006), 712pp; major interpretive study. excerpt and text search
• Egerton, George W. ; Great Britain and the Creation of the League of Nations: Strategy, Politics, and International Organization, 1914–1919 University of North Carolina Press, 1978
• Gill, George (1996) The League of Nations from 1929 to 1946: From 1929 to 1946 . Avery Publishing Group. ISBN 0-89529-637-3
• Kelly, Nigel and Lacey, Greg (2001) "Modern World History" Heinemann Educational Publishers, Oxford
• Kennedy, David "The Move to Institutions" 8 Cardozo Law Review, 841 (1987). Reprinted in Klabbers, J. (ed.) International Organization Ashgate Publishing Limited (2006). online
• Kennedy, Paul. The Parliament of Man: The Past, Present, and Future of the United Nations (2006)
• Kuehl, Warren F. and Lynne K. Dunn; Keeping the Covenant: American Internationalists and the League of Nations, 1920–1939 1997
• Malin, James C. The United States after the World War 1930. pp 5–82. online
• Marbeau, M. "La Société des Nations". Presses Universitaires de France. (2001). ISBN 2-13-051635-1
• Marks, Sally. The Illusion of Peace: International Relations in Europe, 1918–1933 (2nd ed., 2003).
• Mearsheimer, John. "The False Promise of International Institutions," International Security 19, no. 3 (Winter 1994/1995): 5–49, realist critique in JSTOR
• Northedge, F. S. . The League of Nations: Its Life and Times, 1920–1946 Holmes & Meier. 1986
• Pedersen, Susa,. "Back to the League of Nations," The American Historical Review Volume 112, no. 4 (October 2007), pp. 1091–1117, comprehensive historiographical review of all major topics and studies online edition
• Scott, George. The Rise and Fall of the League of Nations (1973), popular
• Walters, F. P. , A History of the League of Nations 2 vol (1952), the most comprehensive account
• Zimmern, Alfred ; The League of Nations and the Rule of Law, 1918–1935 1936
• [exhaustive bibliography

External links

• League of Nations chronology