International Studies in the Interwar Years
This study traces the development of the academic subject of international relations, or what was often referred to in the interwar years as international studies, within the framework of the Organisation of Intellectual Cooperation (OIC) of the League of Nations (LON). In this regard, its focus rests on an institution which came to be known as the International Studies Conference (ISC) and which commenced life at a meeting in Berlin in 1928. The determination to avert another European war and the zeal for international organisation engendered by the creation of the LON were key factors behind the formation of the ISC. Its founders hoped that through furthering the institutional development of the study of international relations, they would help foster mutual comprehension among peoples and help entrench the LON system. Indeed, the aforementioned Berlin meeting was itself intended to serve as an instrument of international rapprochement and as a means of reinforcing the LON. The choice of Berlin as the location for the meeting, which was initiated and organised by the OICâs Paris-based executive arm, namely, the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation (IIIC), must be viewed in light of Germanyâs entry into the LON in September 1926 and, more particularly, the desire to further harmonise Franco-German relations. The organisers of the Berlin meeting were acutely aware that in the absence of Franco-German rapprochement there could be no assurance of peace and security in Europe.
Fig. 1.1
International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation at the side of the Palais Royal in Paris. Source: Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication/MĂŠdiathèque de lâArchitecture et du Patrimoine
This study does not claim that the year 1919 marks the birth of international relations as an academic discipline. Courses in the field of international law and diplomatic history had long been offered in academic institutions in Europe and North America. Furthermore, generalist courses on international affairs under such rubrics as Contemporary Politics had been introduced into the curricula of American universities as early as 1900. Yet what needs to be underlined is the fact that almost all of those involved in promoting the study of international relations in the interwar years believed that they were engaged in a new intellectual enterprise. This partly explains why this study traces the development of international studies in the period after the end of the Great War or what later became known as the First World War.
The other main factor explaining my temporal starting point is the birth of the LON. For the purposes of this study, this organisation is significant in two mutually informing respects. First, the LON was deeply involved in the development of the study of international relations, above all, through its intellectual organs. Second, a prime motivation behind the promotion of such study was the desire to see a hardening of the norms enshrined in the LON Covenant. In this way, the development of the discipline of international relations can be seen as a component of a larger enterprise: it was a feature of the new world order which was proclaimed and which began to be instituted at the end of the First World War. Indeed, the cultivation of the study of international relations was viewed exactly in this light by many of its partisans.
It should be emphasised that the ISC was not the first attempt at organising the study of international relations on an international basis. That honour must go to the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR), a body that resulted from a meeting of representatives of nations bordering the Pacific in mid-1925 in Honolulu and whose membership soon came to include non-Pacific powers with imperial interests in the region. It is important to note that in the official literature produced by the IPRâs international secretariat (ISIPR) in the IPRâs early years, the IPR was far from being represented as a strictly regional organisation. To the contrary, the IPRâs secretariat stressed the point that the Pacific was a crucial arena of world politics and that the IPR was a body engaged in international relations research. In this connection, it is also noteworthy that from 1927 down to 1945, observers from the LON and the International Labour Organization (ILO) attended IPR conferences. This study discusses the IPR at length. A key reason for this concerns the fact that as an international organisation engaged in collaborative research on international problems, the IPR was the principal model for the ISC. Further to this, the IPR served as a yardstick against which the ISC would be measured on various occasions throughout its life. That these two bodies had overlapping memberships and that the IPR was a constant fixture at ISC conferences from 1929 to 1949 are of relevance in this context.
To the extent that the IPR might be viewed as a largely regional organisation, it cannot be seen as different in kind from the ISC: the members of the latter body were predominantly European, and their eyes were trained mainly on European affairs. In fact, American and Canadian members occasionally criticised the ISC because of its bias towards Europe. To its credit, the ISC sought to rectify this situation. For example, repeated approaches were made by the ISCâs secretariat to Chinese and Japanese institutions in the hope that they would join the conference. These approaches met with a degree of success.
Another reason for dwelling on the IPR is that its activities show that concentrated scholarly thinking about international relations both in abstract and in concrete terms was not confined to countries such as France, Great Britain and the United States in the years after 1918. It is true that the institutional development of the study of international relations was most advanced in these three countries at the time, above all, in the United States. Yet insights into the nature and conduct of international relations developed in the interwar period by individuals and groups located outside these centres of power and influence should not be overlooked. Such insights certainly were not overlooked at the time, as evidenced by the very positive international reputation enjoyed by the IPR and the ISCâs ongoing attempts to establish a membership that represented the greater part of the globe.
Both the IPR and the ISC served as forums in which the major political controversies of the interwar period were rehearsed. In the case of the IPR, this point largely relates to its conference discussions concerning Chinese efforts to re-establish Chinaâs autonomy and unfolding events in Manchuria. In the case of the ISC, this point largely relates to debates taking place in the years between 1934 and 1937 on the topics of collective security and peaceful change. These debates well demonstrate that the defence of the League system by interwar students of international affairs in the face of the challenges confronting it was generally based on hard-headed political calculations. Indeed, partisans of the LON often discussed the conditions giving rise to the political crises of the interwar years in terms âas frank as those of any blood-and-iron historian,â to borrow Frank M. Russellâs description of the analysis of the disarmament question issued by Salvador de Madariaga who headed the Disarmament Section of the LON Secretariat between 1922 and 1928.1
The ISCâs discussions of the topics of collective security and peaceful change are of historical interest because they overlap with the debate concerning appeasement and provide us with further insights into the conceptual environment in which that increasingly polarised debate occurred. What we also obtain from examining these discussions are instructive illustrations of the rhetorical manoeuvres performed on behalf of the Hitler regime with ...