The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire - Hardcover

Pedersen, Susan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199570485 ISBN 13: 9780199570485

Publisher: OUP Oxford, 2015

Synopsis

The First World War threw the imperial order into crisis. New states emerged from the great European land empires, while Germany's African and Pacific colonies, and the Ottoman provinces in the Middle East fell into allied hands. Britain, France, Belgium, Japan, and the British dominions wanted to keep the new states, but Woodrow Wilson and the millions converted to the ideal of self-determination thought otherwise. At the Paris Peace conference of 1919, the allies agreed reluctantly to govern their new conquests according to international and humanitarian norms and under 'mandate' from the League of Nations.

As The Guardians shows, this decision had enormous consequences. The allies sought to use the League to safeguard imperial authority, but that authority was undermined by the mechanisms for international oversight they had themselves created. Colonial nationalists and humanitarians exploited new rights of petition or opportunities for publicity to expose abuses or scandals; Germans resentful of the loss of their colonies and Italians eager to found a new empire arrived in Geneva to demand a repartition of the spoils. As imperial politicians wearied of continual scandals and crises - revolts in South West Africa, Syria, Samoa, and Palestine; famine in Rwanda; labour abuses in New Guinea; extortionate oil contracts in Iraq - they began to question whether independent states might be easier to deal with than territories subject to international scrutiny.

Drawing on research in four continents and dozens of archives, and bringing to life a global network of nationalists, humanitarians, international bureaucrats, and imperial statesmen, The Guardians offers an entirely new interpretation of the importance of international organizations in the emergence of the modern world order.

About this title

About the Author:

Susan Pedersen is Professor and James P. Shenton Professor of the Core Curriculum at Columbia University. She specializes in British history, the British Empire, comparative European history, and international history. She is the author of several books, including Eleanor Rathbone and the Politics of Conscience.

Review:

"Susan Pedersen's account of the PMC is replete with fascinating personalities as well as the turbulence of the interwar years....This book forms part of an important new wave of assessment of the League of Nations, based on exacting scholarship rather than post-Second World War disillusionment. The failings and inadequacies of the PMC are amply documented, but so too are the evolution of thinking on issues of global governance...Elegantly written, highly accessible, meticulously researched, this is a model of historical scholarship."--Journal of Modern History

"The first indispensable book written on a critical subject in 50 years! 'The Guardians' is a magnificent book. Telling a complex yet compelling story, it deserves to be read by anyone interested in the European overseas empires during a crucial epoch of world history."--Wall Street Journal

"A richly detailed study...[H]er book shows that the conventional wisdom about the League will not do."--Financial Times

"Impressive...Joining a global scope to deep archival research, Susan Pedersen reveals the process by which a group of supposedly apolitical technocrats at the League helped to create a new kind of international politics and to destroy the imperial order they had set out to protect."--Dissent

About this edition

• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0199570485
• ISBN 13: 9780199570485
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 592