Parliament and the Press: Forging the United Nations in Wartime Britain, 1939–45

During the Second World War, not only the United States but also Great Britain played a leading role in planning and establishing the United Nations (UN) as a new international organisation to replace the League of Nations. While scholarship on post-war planning is extensive, relatively little exists on how the planning process was discussed and depicted publicly in Britain. The purpose of this article is to fill such lacunae by examining the two most important domains for public discussion at the time, the press and parliament. It will argue, first, that the League of Nations’ experience – its inability to use collective force and its optimistically democratic structure – overwhelmingly shaped public discourse in reference to the UN. By referring to the past, the press and politicians alike in Britain were content to relinquish interwar ideas such as equal rights and equal representation for all nations. Second, apart from the lessons of history, the less democratic structure of the new world organisation was justified from the perspective of great power politics. The desire to make the grand alliance between Britain, the United States of America, and the USSR functional despite all mutual suspicions, directed the view of the UN, and typically overrode all other concerns relating to post-war planning. Finally, throughout the wartime planning of the UN, public opinion, in so far as press and parliament were concerned, held fast to the idea that the British empire was not to be touched by the UN. In public, the establishment of the UN was hardly considered as a starting point for decolonisation. Instead, the UN was designed to become the post-war embodiment of the grand alliance, a vehicle through which the victory over the Axis powers would be managed at the global level: such management did not envision the need to let empire go. Viewed this way, it also becomes clear that nationalism and internationalism were not mutually exclusive or binary visions, but coexisted and shifted in importance throughout the period examined.     

The United Nations at Niagara: Borderlands Collaboration and Emerging Globalism

In 1946 a group of Western New York and Southern Ontario business leaders proposed locating United Nations headquarters on Navy Island, Canadian territory in the Niagara River. One of the most visionary proposals ever to come from the region, it was a genuinely binational project, grounded in the symbolism of the peaceful relationship along the Niagara after the War of 1812. The proposal revealed a high level of cross-border economic and cultural integration in the Niagara region that had been strengthened by the shared experience of World War II. However, the region was increasingly marginalized from its national and state/provincial cores as it struggled to integrate itself into an ever more globalized economy.     

From Universalism to Nationalism: Italian Freemasonry and the Great War

Abstract

During the period from 1914 to 1915, prior to Italy’s entry into the First World War, Freemasonry was a powerful force in Italian public life with a strong presence in every part of the nation and in the most vital organs of the State (parliament, public administration, the armed forces). Between them, the Grand Orient and the Grand Lodge of Italy counted 25,000 members and more than 500 lodges. Freemasons played a critical role in the campaign to mobilize Italian public opinion and political parties in support of Italy’s intervention in the war as an ally of France and Great Britain. To do so, they abandoned the movement’s traditional cosmopolitan and pacifist stances and adopted instead the objectives of the nationalists, a shift that would be consolidated during the war. Nonetheless, from 1917 onwards Italian Freemasons joined their counterparts in other European countries to press for the creation of a League of Nations to promote a new post-war universal order premised on the peaceful coexistence of independent and democratic nations. In examining the initiatives taken by Italian Freemasons in this period, this article focuses on the principles that inspired them, the language they adopted and the forms of communication and mobilization they used.     

Beyond an Imperial Foreign Policy?: India at the League of Nations, 1919–1946

ABSTRACT

This article argues that India’s role as the only non-self-governing member of the League of Nations provides a largely unexamined entry point into understanding the nature of Indian nationalism and public discourse during the first half of the twentieth century. Using previously unexplored archival documentation of India’s relationship to the League of Nations throughout the duration of the League’s existence, this article exposes the varied and contradictory perspectives through which imperial officials and Indian political figures engaged with international society within the framework of the British Empire. Through the distribution of League publications and the circulation of petitions seeking redress for imperial abuses, a wide range of Indians actively sought to stage India as a clearly defined nation at the level of the international in a way that was not possible within the subcontinent itself.     

Branding the United Nations: The Adoption of the UN Insignia and Flag, 1941–1950

Abstract

This article contends that the symbols of the United Nations (UN) have played a vital role in establishing the organization’s identity and in protecting its personnel. The design and usage of these emblems developed in a number of steps in the 1940s and early 1950s, a process dominated mainly by Americans. Although private admirers of the UN originated a number of serviceable and aesthetically pleasing designs, products mainly of their own self-initiative, the emblems chosen by the UN were prepared by professional designers, starting with an Office of Strategic Services (OSS) team operating under the aegis of the U.S. State Department. The author compares this process to product ‘branding’, and he also sees it as reflecting a longstanding claim to predominance in the internationalist project by technical specialists. In the 1940s, this dynamic revealed itself in rivalry between an elite of liberal internationalist technocrats and ‘populist internationalists’, the former coming to determine the character and choice of UN emblems. Members of the OSS design team had backgrounds in advertising and – not surprisingly – produced a logo-like design. The ultimate product of this process, a UN flag, was adopted in 1947, but it was treated by early UN bureaucrats like a protected trademark of the UN, at least until popular pressure-driven by an outpouring of mass emotion at the time of the Korean War – forced its release for broader public use.     

‘An Alternative to Imperialism’: Leonard Woolf,The Labour Party and Imperial Internationalism, 1915–1922

This article examines writings by the British Labour Party theorist Leonard Woolf on international government, imperialism, and the League of Nations. Woolf was a leading member of a group of party officials who supported a deepening commitment to the League of Nations in the immediate post First World War period. Woolf, and his colleagues in the Labour Party, argued that transforming the practice of economic imperialism in European colonies would help to ease tensions between the European powers. The result of such arguments was to present empire as a canvas for displaying an improved sense of European virtue. In particular, abandoning the practice of economic imperialism could instead allow colonial powers to meet their responsibility to ready colonial peoples for self-government and full participation in the global economy. The reforms proposed by Woolf and his Labour Party colleagues could be considered a last gasp of early twentieth century British imperial internationalism.     

SCANDINAVIANS AND THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS SECRETARIAT, 1919–1946

This article reintroduces the Scandinavian perspective on interwar internationalism by mapping and analysing the Scandinavian staff in the League Secretariat. Combining quantitative and qualitative sources, the article explores how the Scandinavian members of staff were viewed by and situated in the institutional topography of the League Secretariat; how they were related to and positioned towards the national foreign policy establishment; and what the postwar trajectories of the Scandinavian League staff looked like. With these perspectives, the article offers three key insights: First, the interplay between the League Secretariat and the foreign policy strategies pursued by the Scandinavians, was highly productive, and the international issues that different Scandinavian countries engaged with through the League staff was substantially determined by the institutional set-up of the League. Second, we note clear differences in terms of strategy and commitment between the three countries’ Ministries of Foreign Affairs (MFAs). Third, the careers of the Scandinavians working in the Secretariat show a clear continuity of Scandinavian internationalism across the Second World War. The experience, prestige and networks gained from working in the League Secretariat often translated into key positions in postwar IOs or within the new multilateral parts of the MFAs.     

Breaking the Monopoly System: American Influence on the British Decision to Prohibit Opium Smoking and End its Asian Monopolies, 1939–1945

The colonial opium monopoly systems remained a major point of international contention in the decades prior to World War II, driving a major wedge between British and US drug diplomats in particular. The issue typified the deeper divide between Anglo-American drug diplomacy in Asia. The British approach stemmed from imperial realities and a self-perception of pragmatism aiming for gradual suppression of opium consumption via regulation. In contrast, the US approach remained grounded in a disdain for British (and broader European) imperialism in Asia and a moralistic, self-interested zeal driving towards absolute and immediate prohibition in the region. After decades of dispute, in 1942/1943, the US Federal Bureau of Narcotics initiated a campaign to force a change in British and Dutch colonial opium policies in Asia. The British were reluctant to pursue prohibitionist policies, which they feared would be politically destabilising, fiscally detrimental and difficult to implement. However, they eventually acquiesced. This paper systematically examines the US policy advocacy campaign, the British response and Britain's reasons for agreeing to a major shift in colonial opium policy in the region. In so doing, it aims to develop a new and deeper understanding of determinants of this policy change.     

Laying it down in stone: delimiting and demarcating Iraq's boundaries by mixed international commission

Mixed international commissions have been centrally involved in shaping the outer margins of the state territory of Iraq over the last century and a half. Laborious Anglo-Russian efforts to narrow the traditional Perso-Ottoman frontier in the seventy-year period before the Great War contrasted with the League of Nations' ostensibly speedy treatment of Iraq's more arbitrary northern and north-western territorial limits in the early inter-war years. Most recently, a team appointed by the UN Secretary-General finalised definition of Iraq's international boundaries with Kuwait when the emirate was liberated from Iraqi occupation in the spring of 1991. This article scrutinises the role played by these bodies in the boundary evolutionary process from a review of their primary records. It highlights the fact that the evolution of Iraq's (and those of its Ottoman forbears) international boundaries to the east, north and west was rarely straightforward and reflected both regional considerations and imperial contexts. The problem of reconciling inadequate textual definitions with features on the ground has been a constant phenomenon. Deciding whether commissions actually delimited or demarcated territory was as valid a question following the UN's Iraq–Kuwait settlement as in the mid-nineteenth century. Whether many historical treaty delimitations were ever designed to be anything more than territorial allocations is another theme explored in this article.     

Peripheral Players? German Colonial Interests,The Press,and the Spirit of Locarno

The Locarno Conference, held on 5–16 October 1925, represented the culmination of nearly two years of diplomatic communication between the foreign offices of Germany, Britain, and France. The conference was an attempt to normalize relations between the former Allied powers and Germany's new Weimar Republic and more tightly bind Germany's politics and economy to Western Europe. Colonial German lobbies hoped that the Locarno talks heralded the return of empire and an end to Germany's banishment from the work of the ‘civilizing mission’ and the humiliating experience of being a ‘postcolonial state in a still colonial world’. Public scrutiny from false press reports about the restoration of the German colonies emanating from Germany, France, Britain and its colonies and dominions, and even the United States complicated matters for Locarno delegates by forcing discussion of off-agenda topics. This article interrogates how the Colonial German lobby influenced the Locarno Conference through activity in the international public sphere, how they managed a partial victory in the wake of Locarno, and more importantly, the Colonial German lobby learned new and better strategies for playing properly to public opinion and international bureaucracies.     

The 2004 Deepwrecks Project: Analysis of World War II Era Shipwrecks in the Gulf of Mexico

In July and August 2004, C & C Technologies, Inc. of Lafayette, LA, USA partnered with scientists and film makers from across the United States and Canada to assess and document archaeological and biological aspects of six World War II shipwrecks in the Gulf of Mexico. The depth of the shipwrecks ranged from 285–6,444 ft (87–1,964 m) below sea level. All six shipwrecks were found during oil and gas related surveys. The United States Department of the Interior, Mineral Management Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Ocean Exploration under the auspices of the National Oceanographic Partnership Program sponsored this multidisciplinary study.     

Armed and unarmed: struggles without weapons in Europe and in Italy

Abstract

The starting point for this article is the concept of civil resistance formulated by the French historian Jacques Semelin to describe the forms of unarmed and often non-violent resistance adopted during the Nazi occupations. These included strikes, protests against high food prices, refusal to join Nazi professional associations, the moral isolation of the enemy, actions to rescue Jews, the organisation of clandestine schools (in Poland) as well as support for armed struggle. While historians have looked on these struggles merely as secondary to or supportive of armed restsitance, the concept of civil resistance shows instead how they were autonomous social responses to Nazi dominion. After showing how since the 1990s there has been much closer dialogue between these two apparoaches, the article examines the ways in which the forms of civil resistance in Italy differed from countries such as Denmark, with greater emphasis on private actions and indivdual intiatives and informal networks in which women were always especiallly active and influential. In Italy, civil resistance seems to have been less ‘political’ and more ‘female’ than in northern Europe. The article concludes by examining the realtionship between the struggles in which women were involved and the concept of civil resistance, which although extremely important is only one step towards a fuller evaluation of the role of women in civil resistance.     

Sex Trafficking to the Federated Malay States 1920–1940: From Migration for Prostitution to Victim or Criminal?

ABSTRACT

This 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.     

Between National Socialism and expert internationalism: Karl Strölin and transnationalism in urban planning, 1938–45

This essay examines the transnational activities of National Socialist experts, focusing on the endeavours of the burgomaster of Stuttgart, Karl Strölin. In 1938, Strölin became president of the International Federation for Housing and Town Planning (IFHTP), one of the most distinguished international expert institutions for European and North American urban planning. The article discusses his belief that promoting an international convention on the protection of urban populations would contribute to German diplomacy in the initial period of the Second World War. Then it investigates the IFHTP president’s efforts to transform his institution into an outlet for National Socialist ideas against the background of the German advance through Europe. A final section deals with Strölin’s attempts to transform the IFHTP into a forum for evaluating urban reconstruction policies in the last year of the war. This biographical study shows how it was possible to juggle the logics and expectations of seemingly contradictory spatial and political realms during and after World War II. National socialist politics and ideology exacerbated the tensions between local, national and international affiliations, but at the same time never fully permeated the mechanisms of expert internationalism. By revealing how Strölin navigated between local ambitions, the demands of domestic foreign policy and the ethics of expert internationalism in three markedly different projects, this essay contributes to a growing body of scholarship on the cross-border activities of National Socialist professionals in (occupied) Europe.     

日本退出国际联盟的“法理”思辨

1933年日本退出国际联盟,原因概在于西方列强于伪满洲国的承认问题上投了反对票。日本的这一举动,无疑是对国际组织的强有力冲击。简言之,在日本侵略野心急剧膨胀的时段,国际联盟约束力的缺失与公法强制力的丧失,使得日本巧妙利用公法为一己之私服务,给今天的学界留下了耐人寻味的思考。     

Statistical analysis of a geography examination

The development of North Sea oil and gas resources is related to technological problems, cost and government involvement. Most activity has centred on Norway and Scotland; nevertheless, countries such as France and West Germany, with a lack of indigenous offshore resources, have broken into the offshore supplies market in other sectors.     

Renzo De Felice,the resistance and the historian' task

Abstract

The Cesare Barbieri Endowment for Italian Culture sponsored a two‐day conference in April 1998: ‘Behind enemy lines in World War II, the Resistance and the OSS in Italy’. On this occasion William Corvo of Middletown, Connecticut, donated the wartime papers of his father, Max Corvo. Max Corvo played a principal role in Organization of Strategic Services operations in Sicily and Italy during the war, linking the OSS and the Italian Resistance. Veterans of both the OSS and the Italian Resistance attended the symposium. We present here some of the papers that focused on the principal theme of the meeting: ‘The Resistance, war of liberation or civil war?’. Authors are: Borden Painter, Department of History at Trinity College; Vittorio Gozzer, partisan veteran and liaison for the conference with Italian partisan organizations; James Miller, historian at the State Department; Roy Domenico, Department of History at the University of Scranton; David Ward, Department of Italian at Wellesley College; Steven White, Department of History at Mount St Mary's College (Maryland); Spencer Di Scala, Department of History at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Borden Painter and John Alcorn organized the conference for the Barbieri Endowment.