The Wilsonian Order Project

2020 ◽  
pp. 132-163
Author(s):  
Kyle M. Lascurettes
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
International Order ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
World War ◽  
Woodrow Wilson ◽  
Bolshevik Revolution ◽  
Paris Peace Conference ◽  
At Home

How do we account for the vision of international order the American delegation pursued at the Paris Peace Conference after World War I, manifested most concretely in the Covenant of the League of Nations that was written by avowed liberal internationalist Woodrow Wilson? The dominant inclusive narrative of order construction in 1919 emphasizes America’s liberal institutions at home coupled with its president’s progressive ideals and sense of ideological mission in world affairs. By contrast, chapter 6 (“The Wilsonian Order Project”) argues that the new ideological threat posed by radical socialism after the Bolshevik Revolution in late 1917 actually played the most critical role in shaping the order preferences of Wilson and his principal advisers both before and during the Paris Peace Conference.

The League of Nations and the United States

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlie Laderman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
International Peace ◽  
World War ◽  
Woodrow Wilson ◽  
New States ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Global Affairs

Although the League of Nations was the first permanent organization established with the purpose of maintaining international peace, it built on the work of a series of 19th-century intergovernmental institutions. The destructiveness of World War I led American and British statesmen to champion a league as a means of maintaining postwar global order. In the United States, Woodrow Wilson followed his predecessors, Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, in advocating American membership of an international peace league, although Wilson’s vision for reforming global affairs was more radical. In Britain, public opinion had begun to coalesce in favor of a league from the outset of the war, though David Lloyd George and many of his Cabinet colleagues were initially skeptical of its benefits. However, Lloyd George was determined to establish an alliance with the United States and warmed to the league idea when Jan Christian Smuts presented a blueprint for an organization that served that end. The creation of the League was a predominantly British and American affair. Yet Wilson was unable to convince Americans to commit themselves to membership in the new organization. The Franco-British-dominated League enjoyed some early successes. Its high point was reached when Europe was infused with the “Spirit of Locarno” in the mid-1920s and the United States played an economically crucial, if politically constrained, role in advancing Continental peace. This tenuous basis for international order collapsed as a result of the economic chaos of the early 1930s, as the League proved incapable of containing the ambitions of revisionist powers in Europe and Asia. Despite its ultimate limitations as a peacekeeping body, recent scholarship has emphasized the League’s relative successes in stabilizing new states, safeguarding minorities, managing the evolution of colonies into notionally sovereign states, and policing transnational trafficking; in doing so, it paved the way for the creation of the United Nations.

Leon Trotsky and the Prohibition against Secret Treaties

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 246-273
Author(s):  
John Quigley
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
International Order ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
World War ◽  
Russian Government ◽  
Woodrow Wilson ◽  
Public Sentiment ◽  
Leon Trotsky ◽  
The United Nations

A requirement was written into the Covenant of the League of Nations that treaties be communicated to the League for publication. This innovation is widely attributed to US President Woodrow Wilson, who drafted the language for the League Covenant on this issue. What is less remembered is that behind Wilson’s initiative lay an action by Leon Trotsky, Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the fledgling Soviet Russian government, who revealed treaties that had been concluded secretly on the Allied side during World War i in which various states were promised territorial gains upon the anticipated successful conclusion of the war. Trotsky’s revelation gained world attention and mobilized public sentiment against secret arrangements between governments. Wilson took his initiative in this context. The registration of treaties, which later was carried over into the Charter of the United Nations, has become one of the most important institutions of the modern international order.

Teaching “Americanism with a World Perspective”: The Junior Red Cross in the U.S. Schools from 1917 to the 1920s

2013 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia F. Irwin
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Red Cross ◽  
World Peace ◽  
World War ◽  
Woodrow Wilson ◽  
Immigration Restriction ◽  
Treaty Of Versailles ◽  
History Of

The involvement of the United States in World War I, from April 1917 to November 1918, marked a high point in the history of American internationalist thought and engagement. During those nineteen months, President Woodrow Wilson and his administration called on Americans to aid European civilians and to support Wilson's plans for a peacetime League of Nations, defining both as civic obligations; many responded positively. The postwar years, however, saw a significant popular backlash against such cosmopolitan expectations. In 1920, Congress failed to ratify the Treaty of Versailles and rejected U.S. participation in the League. A growing chorus for 100% Americanism and immigration restriction, meanwhile, offered evidence of a U.S. public that was becoming more insular, more withdrawn from the world. Yet such trends were never universal. As scholars have begun to acknowledge, many Americans remained outward looking in their worldviews throughout the period, seeing engagement with and compassion for the international community as vital to ensuring world peace.

Treaty of Versailles

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Ferreboeuf
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
International Labour Organization ◽  
World War ◽  
Treaty Of Versailles ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Paris Peace Conference ◽  
Peace Treaties

The Treaty of Versailles was one of the peace treaties signed on June 28, 1919, in the Palace of Versailles, by Germany and the Allied Powers at the end of World War I. It was signed exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (1863–1914), which was the event that had triggered the war. The signing of the treaty followed six months of negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference, which had opened on January 18, 1919. It also led to the creation of two major international organizations: the League of Nations (1919–1946) and the International Labour Organization (ILO).

League of Nations (1919–1946)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick V. Day ◽  
Vincent P. Pecora
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
World War I ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Collective Security ◽  
World War ◽  
Woodrow Wilson

The League of Nations (1919–1946) was an intergovernmental organisation formed after World War I to mediate disputes among its member nations through diplomacy and collective security. Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson (who coined the term) and Lord James Bryce first proposed the League in Great Britain on the eve of World War I, and the idea attracted a group of like-minded pacifist thinkers. In America, President William Howard Taft promoted the League and, after the war, President Woodrow Wilson embraced the cause. Wilson saw it as a way to ameliorate and resolve future national conflicts without war.

Sovereignty at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonard V. Smith
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International System ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Great Power ◽  
World War ◽  
Treaty Of Versailles ◽  
The World ◽  
Paris Peace Conference

We have long known that the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 “failed” in the sense that it did not prevent the outbreak of World War II. This book investigates not whether the conference succeeded or failed, but the historically specific international system it created. It explores the rules under which that system operated, and the kinds of states and empires that inhabited it. Deepening the dialogue between history and international relations theory makes it possible to think about sovereignty at the conference in new ways. Sovereignty in 1919 was about remaking “the world”—not just determining of answers demarcating the international system, but also the questions. Most histories of the Paris Peace Conference stop with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles with Germany on June 28, 1919. This book considers all five treaties produced by the conference as well as the Treaty of Lausanne with Turkey in 1923. It is organized not chronologically or geographically, but according to specific problems of sovereignty. A peace based on “justice” produced a criminalized Great Power in Germany, and a template problematically applied in the other treaties. The conference as sovereign sought to “unmix” lands and peoples in the defeated multinational empires by drawing boundaries and defining ethnicities. It sought less to oppose revolution than to instrumentalize it. The League of Nations, so often taken as the supreme symbol of the conference’s failure, is better considered as a continuation of the laboratory of sovereignty established in Paris.

scholarly journals The hierarchical society: the politics of self-determination and the constitution of new states after 1919

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 372-396
Author(s):  
Maja Spanu
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Society ◽  
International System ◽  
World Politics ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
World War ◽  
New States ◽  
History Of

International Relations scholarship disconnects the history of the so-called expansion of international society from the presence of hierarchies within it. In contrast, this article argues that these developments may in fact be premised on hierarchical arrangements whereby new states are subject to international tutelage as the price of acceptance to international society. It shows that hierarchies within international society are deeply entrenched with the politics of self-determination as international society expands. I substantiate this argument with primary and secondary material on the Minority Treaty provisions imposed on the new states in Central, Eastern and Southern Europe admitted to the League of Nations after World War I. The implications of this claim for International Relations scholarship are twofold. First, my argument contributes to debates on the making of the international system of states by showing that the process of expansion of international society is premised on hierarchy, among and within states. Second, it speaks to the growing body of scholarship on hierarchy in world politics by historicising where hierarchies come from, examining how diverse hierarchies are nested and intersect, and revealing how different actors navigate these hierarchies.

Woodrow Wilson and World War I, 1917-1921

1986 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 986
Author(s):  
William J. Breen ◽  
Robert H. Ferrell
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
World War ◽  
Woodrow Wilson
Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document