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

Product Description:

[ The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire By ( Author ) May-2015 Hardcover

Review:

Susan Pedersen's The Guardians is one of those history books that provide even the most avid reader with a new perspective and understanding of contemporary events. (Ralph Janik, Austrian Review of International and European Law)

Elegantly written, highly accessible, meticulously researched, this is a model of historical scholarship. (Journal of Modern History)

[A] path-breaking study (Tony Barber, Books of the Year 2015, Financial Times)

[An] original, stimulating and thoroughly researched examination of how the new League managed to sustain a façade of trusteeship in a world of selfish imperial interests... This is a fascinating examination of empire in its final death throes. (Literary Review, Richard Overy)

A richly detailed study of the League's Permanent Mandates Commission... Pedersen's book is genuinely revelatory a long disquisition on the politics of unintended consequences, as a bureaucratic system designed to uphold and legitimise imperial reconstruction provided the tools for its undoing. (Financial Times, Duncan Kelly)

The first indispensable book written on a critical subject in 50 years... fair-minded, hard-hitting and readable... The Guardians is a magnificent book. (Wall Street Journal (Europe), WM. Roger Louis)

A strikingly original book. (Mark Mazower, The Guardian)

The Guardians is not simply a brilliant, beautifully executed study of the League as a major actor in the interwar years. It is also a cautionary tale about international governance today. (Diplomatic History)

This outstanding work of scholarship, with its formidable apparatus, is also a work of high literary art. Without sacrifice of intellectual standards, it eschews the cant and jargon that disfigure so much current academic writing on imperialism. It throws fascinating sidelights on many aspects of international affairs in the interwar period as well as on the history of each of the mandated territories, especially Palestine. The author's declared aim to "anatomize ... a system in motion" has been magnificently achieved. (Journal of Israeli History)

The book is important and deals with an important, hitherto understudied, theme The Guardians is very well written, with clarity and precision, compelling themes and illuminating detail ... Dr Pedersen always knows where she is going, and she takes us there efficiently. Her research is exemplary. (Reviews in History)

About this edition

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