Japan's Struggle with Internationalism: Japan, China and the League of Nations, 1931-1933.Ian Nish

This is a biography of Ta’isi O. F. Nelson, the Sāmoan nationalist leader who fought New Zealand, the British Empire and the League of Nations between the world wars. It is a richly layered history that weaves a personal and Pacific history with one that illuminates the global crisis of empire after World War One. Ta’isi’s story weaves Sweden with deep histories of Sāmoa that in the late nineteenth century became deeply inflected with colonial machinations of Germany, Britain, New Zealand and the U. S.. After Sāmoa was made a mandate of the League of Nations in 1921, the workings and aspirations of that newly minted form of world government came to bear on the island nation and Ta’isi and his fellow Sāmoan tested the League’s powers through their relentless non-violent campaign for justice. Ta’isi was Sāmoa’s leading businessman who was blamed for the on-going agitation in Sāmoa; for his trouble he was subjected to two periods of exile, humiliation and a concerted campaign intent on his financial ruin. Using many new sources, this book tells Ta’isi’s untold story, providing fresh and intriguing new aspects to the global story of indigenous resistance in the twentieth century.

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Revenants of the German Empire

10.1093/oso/9780190907211.001.0001 ◽

2019 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Sean Andrew Wempe

Keyword(s):

South African ◽

League Of Nations ◽

International Governance ◽

German Empire ◽

Liberal Internationalism ◽

Treaty Of Versailles ◽

The First World War ◽

German Investment ◽

Nazi Era ◽

First World

This book addresses the various ways in which Colonial Germans attempted to cope with the loss of the German colonies after the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. The German colonial advocates who are the focus of this monograph comprised not only those individuals who had been allowed to remain in the mandates as new subjects of the Allies, but also former colonial officials, settlers, and missionaries who were forcibly repatriated by the mandatory powers after the First World War. These Kolonialdeutsche (Colonial Germans) had invested substantial time and money in German imperialism. This work places particular emphasis on how colonial officials, settlers, and colonial lobbies made use of the League of Nations framework, and investigates the involvement of former settlers and colonial officials in such diplomatic flashpoints as the Naturalization Controversy in South African-administered Southwest Africa, and German participation in the Permanent Mandates Commission (PMC) from 1927 to 1933. The period of analysis ends in 1933 with an investigation of the involvement of one of Germany’s former colonial governors in the League of Nations’ commission sent to assess the Manchurian Crisis between China and Japan. This study revises standard historical portrayals of the League of Nations’ form of international governance, German participation in the League, the role of interest groups in international organizations and diplomacy, and liberal imperialism. In analyzing colonial German investment and participation in interwar liberal internationalism, the project also challenges the idea of a direct continuity between Germany’s colonial period and the Nazi era.

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Forging a British World of Trade

10.1093/oso/9780198816713.001.0001 ◽

2019 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

David Thackeray

Keyword(s):

South Africa ◽

Twentieth Century ◽

New Zealand ◽

United Nations ◽

International Collaboration ◽

League Of Nations ◽

Business Leaders ◽

Trade Relations ◽

Historical Role ◽

The Eu

Brexit is likely to lead to the largest shift in Britain’s economic orientation in living memory. Some have argued that leaving the EU will enable Britain to revive markets in Commonwealth countries with which it has long-standing historical ties. Their opponents argue that such claims are based on forms of imperial nostalgia which ignore the often uncomfortable historical trade relations between Britain and these countries, as well as the UK’s historical role as a global, rather than chiefly imperial, economy. This book explores how efforts to promote a ‘British World’ system, centred on promoting trade between Britain and the Dominions, grew and declined in influence between the 1880s and 1970s. At the beginning of the twentieth century many people from London, to Sydney, Auckland, and Toronto considered themselves to belong to culturally British nations. British politicians and business leaders invested significant resources in promoting trade with Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa out of a perception that these were great markets of the future. However, ideas about promoting trade between ‘British’ peoples were racially exclusive. From the 1920s onwards colonized and decolonizing populations questioned and challenged the bases of British World networks, making use of alternative forms of international collaboration promoted firstly by the League of Nations and then by the United Nations. Schemes for imperial collaboration amongst ethnically ‘British’ peoples were hollowed out by the actions of a variety of political and business leaders across Asia and Africa who reshaped the functions and identity of the Commonwealth.

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Counterterrorism Between the Wars

10.1093/oso/9780198864042.001.0001 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Mary S. Barton

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Great Britain ◽

Domestic Politics ◽

The United States ◽

League Of Nations ◽

Great Powers ◽

Common Interests ◽

Independence Movements ◽

Second World ◽

The U.S

This is a book about terrorism, weapons, and diplomacy in the interwar years between the First and Second World Wars. It charts the convergence of the manufacture and trade of arms; diplomacy among the Great Powers and the domestic politics within them; the rise of national liberation and independence movements; and the burgeoning concept and early institutions of international counterterrorism. Key themes include: a transformation in meaning and practice of terrorism; the inability of Great Powers—namely, Great Britain, the United States, France—to harmonize perceptions of interest and the pursuit of common interests; the establishment of the tools and infrastructure of modern intelligence—including the U.S.-U.K. cooperation that would evolve into the Five Eyes intelligence alliance; and the nature of peacetime in the absence of major wars. Particular emphasis is given to British attempts to quell revolutionary nationalist movements in India and elsewhere in its empire, and to the Great Powers’ combined efforts to counter the activities of the Communist International. The facilitating roles of the Paris Peace Conference and League of Nations are explored here, in the context of the Arms Traffic Convention of 1919, the Arms Traffic Conference of 1925, and the 1937 Terrorism Convention.

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Sovereignty at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919

10.1093/oso/9780199677177.001.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

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.

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The Polish–Lithuanian Conflict

10.1093/oso/9780199668021.003.0008 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Tomas Balkelis

Keyword(s):

Interwar Period ◽

League Of Nations ◽

Neutral Zone ◽

Peace Agreement ◽

Demarcation Line

This chapter discusses the Polish–Lithuanian War of 1919–20. The war flared in May 1919 when the first open clash took place between Lithuanian and Polish troops. It gradually escalated and lasted until late November 1920 when, in Kaunas, both sides agreed to stop fighting along the demarcation line established by the League of Nations. Yet there was no final peace agreement signed, only a truce. And low-scale paramilitary violence continued unabated in the “neutral zone” along the demarcation line until as late as May 1923. The chapter argues that the war against Poland provided an opportunity for total mobilization of the whole of Lithuanian society. The fact that, during the entire interwar period, the conflict remained open-ended, ensured that the paramilitary structures and military laws that emerged during it would remain in place for much longer.

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