No Enchanted Palace – The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations: 4 (The Lawrence Stone Lectures, 4) - Softcover

Mazower, Mark M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0691157952 ISBN 13: 9780691157955

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2013

Synopsis

No Enchanted Palace traces the origins and early development of the United Nations, one of the most influential yet perhaps least understood organizations active in the world today. Acclaimed historian Mark Mazower forces us to set aside the popular myth that the UN miraculously rose from the ashes of World War II as the guardian of a new and peaceful global order, offering instead a strikingly original interpretation of the UN's ideological roots, early history, and changing role in world affairs. Mazower brings the founding of the UN brilliantly to life. He shows how the UN's creators envisioned a world organization that would protect the interests of empire, yet how this imperial vision was decisively reshaped by the postwar reaffirmation of national sovereignty and the unanticipated rise of India and other former colonial powers. This is a story told through the clash of personalities, such as South African statesman Jan Smuts, who saw in the UN a means to protect the old imperial and racial order; Raphael Lemkin and Joseph Schechtman, Jewish intellectuals at odds over how the UN should combat genocide and other atrocities; and Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, who helped transform the UN from an instrument of empire into a forum for ending it. A much-needed historical reappraisal of the early development of this vital world institution, No Enchanted Palace reveals how the UN outgrew its origins and has exhibited an extraordinary flexibility that has enabled it to endure to the present day.

About this title

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No Enchanted Palace No Enchanted Palace traces the origins and early development of the United Nations, one of the most influential yet perhaps least understood organizations active in the world today. Acclaimed historian Mark Mazower forces us to set aside the popular myth that the UN miraculously rose from the ashes of World War II as the guardian of a new and peaceful global order, offering instead a strikingly or... Full description

Review:

"This is a sprawling tale told with great energy, verve, and insight. Mazower offers an original and disturbing picture of the ideological foundations of the great sacred cow of postwar international institutions. No Enchanted Palace will be a much discussed volume in what is likely to be a continuing debate over the future of the United Nations."--Sunil Khilnani, author of The Idea of India

"This is a superb, highly readable account of the ideas and some of the events that informed the creation and early history of the United Nations. No Enchanted Palace is an engaging and penetrating work, and a timely reminder of the need to think historically about the UN and its place in world affairs."--Peter Wilson, London School of Economics and Political Science

"[Mazower] has identified a gigantic contradiction in the United Nations' very DNA that may explain how the ambitious, well-intentioned body evolved into Mess-on-East River."---Marc Tracy, New York Times Book Review

"One of the most distinguished historians of his generation."--New York Review of Books

"In tracing the intellectual and ideological threads that went into the creation of both organizations, Mazower's main theme is the importance of British imperial tradition and policy."---Brian Urquhart, New York Review of Books

"The finest historian of twentieth-century Europe."---Jonathan Keates, Times Literary Supplement

"Mark Mazower sets out to challenge two notions: first, that the UN's creation in 1945 was uncontaminated by association with the League; and second, that it was above all an American affairs. . . . This book offers interesting glimpses of the UN's origins."---Adam Roberts, Times Literary Supplement

"Provocative. . . . Mazower argues that the United Nations, like the League of Nations before it, did not emerge from a pristine liberal vision of universal rights."---G. John Ikenberry, Foreign Affairs

"Mazower offers a scholarly review of the origins of the UN and a timely reminder that those origins need not shape its future. The UN should not be judged for what it is not."---Harvery Morris, Financial Times

"Mark Mazower warns in his elegantly written intellectual history of the organization, the U.N. is not--and has never been--quite what it seems. In their rush to portray liberal internationalism as the height of human achievement, too many historians have forgotten what Mazower regards as the real ideological impulse behind the U.N.'s creation: preservation of the British Empire and white rule over Europe's colonial possessions."---Sasha Polakow-Suransky, American Prospect

About this edition

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0691157952
• ISBN 13: 9780691157955
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 248