scholarly journals Japan, the League of Nations and the Permanent Court of International Justice on the Question of Upper Silesia, Vilnius and Memel

2019 ◽  
pp. 80-104
Author(s):  
R. Shindo

The First World War marked a turning point for civilization development in the 20th century. With the collapse of the Central Powers, a new international order arose. In the wake of the Paris PeaceConference, the founding of the League of Nations was above all due to the initiative of the victorious powers. Member states were expected to contribute to maintaining world peace. Japan was one of themajor Allied powers and a permanent member of the League Council. In this position, Japan was significantly involved in the post-war politics of Europe. To elucidate the nature and consequences of this involvement, the activities of Japanese diplomats in the League of Nations and in the Permanent Court of International Justice in the Hague during theperiod between the First and Second World Wars are examined. Particular attention is paid to Japan’s participation in the regulation of the demarcation and minority issues in Upper Silesia and in theVilnius and Memel districts.

Author(s):  
Igor Lyubchyk

The research issue peculiarities of wide Russian propaganda among the most Western ethnographic group – Lemkies is revealed in the article. The character and orientation of Russian and Soviet agitation through the social, religious and social movements aimed at supporting Russian identity in the region are traced. Tragic pages during the First World War were Thalrogian prisons for Lemkas, which actually swept Lemkivshchyna through Muscovophilian influences. Agitation for Russian Orthodoxy has provoked frequent cases of sharp conflicts between Lemkas. In general, attempts by moskvophile agitators to impose russian identity on the Orthodox rite were failed. Taking advantage of the complex socio-economic situation of Lemkos, Russian campaigners began to promote moving to the USSR. Another stage of Russian propaganda among Lemkos began with the onset of the Second World War. Throughout the territory of the Galician Lemkivshchyna, Soviet propaganda for resettlement to the USSR began rather quickly. During the dramatic events of the Second World War and the post-war period, despite the outbreaks of the liberation movement, among the Lemkoswere manifestations of political sympathies oriented toward the USSR. Keywords: borderlands, Lemkivshchyna, Lemky, Lemkivsky schism, Moskvophile, Orthodoxy, agitation, ethnopolitics


2020 ◽  
pp. 29-60
Author(s):  
Billie Melman

Chapter 1 examines the new definitions of antiquity that emerged after the First World War and relates them to the new post-war imperial order and international system. It tracks the shift from a perception of ancient objects and monuments as the loot of victors, through their handling within the framework, which had first emerged in the nineteenth century, of laws of war, to their treatment as a part of policies of an imperial peace in the Middle East—in peace treaties and the new mandates system. The chapter follows the internationalization of the discourse on antiquity and the formation of a new “regime of antiquities”, a term referring to international and local mandatory legislation on archaeology and to practices of its monitoring. It offers a view “from above” of the new regime and its formulation by internationalist experts, within the League of Nations and its organizations for intellectual cooperation, such as the International Institute for Intellectual Cooperation (IIIC) and International Museums Office (OIM), and of internationalist apparatuses, as well as considering the implementation of the regime “on the ground” by the antiquities’ administrations in mandate A territories, formerly under Ottoman rule (Palestine and Transjordan, and Iraq), and the nominally independent Egypt. The chapter demonstrates how the internationalist pull and discourse seeped to colonial rhetoric but conflicted with notions of imperial sovereignty and the power of the mandatories to implement policies on the ground. At the same time, visions of regional cooperation amongst archaeologists and national rights to patrimony were adopted by local archaeologists and nationalists.


Author(s):  
EDIAGBONYA MICHAEL

This paper discusses the power politics in the League of Nations. It examines the League of Nations as a formal international organisation whose purpose was the maintenance of world peace. It analyse the gross oppression of the major European powers over the smaller nations, as well as engaging in bitter rivalry yet the League of Nations could not take decisive actions. The inability of the League of Nations to prevent the occurrence of the Second World War also came to focus. Data for the study was obtained through oral interview as primary sources and secondary sources such as books, newspapers, articles, theses, dissertation journals etc. It was found that the establishment of the League of Nations became an acceptable concept because of casualties and devastation associated with the First World War. It was demonstrated that the League of Nations later became a toothless bull dog because it could not prevent the constant violations of its covenant by the major European powers. It was also found that the second world could have been avoided if the organisation was proactive in handling the issues that led to the war. It concluded that the League of Nations lacked the cohesive force to adequately intervene in conflict and crises.


2019 ◽  
Vol 92 (258) ◽  
pp. 790-813
Author(s):  
Samuel Tranter

Abstract Although the First World War did not fundamentally alter the British population, casualty figures were sufficiently large to engender post-war ideas about a lost generation. Closely linked to this popular myth was the commemorative ritual of Armistice Day. Using radio broadcasts, newsreels, Mass Observation reports and newspapers, this article provides a detailed examination of the language surrounding Armistice Day during the Second World War, revealing how it was used not only to frame loss but also to understand and explain the renewal of international conflict at a time when it is frequently assumed that commemoration ground to a halt.


2012 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 210-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Wertheim

AbstractDuring the First World War, civil society groups across the North Atlantic put forward an array of plans for recasting international society. The most prominent ones sought to build on the Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907 by developing international legal codes and, in a drastic innovation, obligating and militarily enforcing the judicial settlement of disputes. Their ideal was a world governed by law, which they opposed to politics. This idea was championed by the largest groups in the United States and France in favour of international organizations, and they had likeminded counterparts in Britain. The Anglo-American architects of the League of Nations, however, defined their vision against legalism. Their declaratory design sought to ensure that artificial machinery never stifled the growth of common consciousness. Paradoxically, the bold new experiment in international organization was forged from an anti-formalistic ethos – one that slowed the momentum of international law and portended the rise of global governance.


Balcanica ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 189-204
Author(s):  
Vlasis Vlasidis

During the First World War Serbian soldiers were encamped or fought in different parts of Greece. Many of them died there of diseases or exhaustion or were killed in battle. This paper looks at the issue of cemeteries of and memorials to the dead Serbian soldiers (primarily in the area of Corfu, Thessaloniki and Florina) in the context of post-war relations between Greece and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Yugoslavia), at the attitude of post-Second World War Yugoslavia towards them, and the Serbs? revived interest in their First World War history. It also takes a look at the image of Serbs in the memory of local people.


2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 204-216
Author(s):  
Stefano Evangelista

In 1921, the newly founded French-language periodical, La Revue de Genève, featured an exchange of letters between Daniel Halévy and Vernon Lee in which the two writers articulated contrasting visions of national identity and international literary relations. Reflecting on the traumatic experience of the First World War, Halévy called for literature and the role of the writer to be depoliticized. Lee, by contrast, put forward a politicized model of cosmopolitanism that challenged the renewed emphasis on national sovereignty in the post-war international order. Their exchange sheds light on the tense negotiation of literary cosmopolitanism that followed the Versailles settlement and the establishment of the League of Nations.


Author(s):  
Stefano Musso

The present contribution is divided into two parts: the first is the transformations of the world of labour between the two wars, tracing the context in which totalitarian impulses of a fascist nature were affirmed; the second, closely connected to the first, tries to outline the methods and contents with which counter-democracy tried to gain consensus, even in the world of labour. We will try to retrace, in broad terms, some trajectories of change induced by the First World War, their evolution in the inter-war period, the influence that these changes exerted on the Second World War and beyond, with some reference to the post-war period.


2021 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 208-246
Author(s):  
Graham Cross

Abstract The “crusading” imagery attached to American soldiers in the 1917–1945 period performed an important function in assigning meaning to the wars of the United States. This was the result of a complex interplay between “official” and “vernacular” culture. The doughboys of the First World War at times fought a romantic “crusade” to reform the nation, world and themselves from a morally privileged position. In the post-war era, the romantic “crusade” survived but was more in tune with the conservative corporatism of Republican administrations. By the Second World War, gi s had become the agents of a very different “crusade”. Americans now embraced statist common effort in a realist prospective vision for human rights. This fundamental change in the meaning of “crusade” attached to the experiences of American soldiers suggests a protean nature to the metaphor and problematises notions of an ideologically cohesive American “crusade” in the world during the 20th century.


Author(s):  
Mark Hussey

Hussey shows that Clive Bell was a lifelong rebel. His tireless championing of individual liberty as the paramount value of political and social organisation, and of subjective experience as the proper basis for aesthetics pervades his writings on art, society, history and politics. He proselytized for the radically new art of the early twentieth century and for pacifism before and during the First World War. He excoriated the puritanical strictures of post-war England and its appeasement and adherence to untenable ideals in the late 1930s and Second World War. In his close identification with the conscientious objector issue, Bell, though heterosexual, is representative of queer Bloomsbury’s challenge to heteronormativity and the patriarchal family. As nationalist and homophobic rhetoric converged at war’s end, Bell’s writings deplored the lasting effects on British society of the government’s suppression of thought and expression during the war, including queer thought and homosexual expression.


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