BOOK: Aurora ALMADA DE SANTOS & Yvette SANTOS (eds.), "The League of Nations Experience: Overlapping Readings" (De Gruyter, 2025)

Source: De Gruyter

Description:

As an early experiment in the creation of multilateral institutions, the League of Nations was entrusted by its members to maintain peace but also to be a standard-maker and a manager of contemporary problems and challenges requiring a global response. Nevertheless, after a while it became clear that its performance in addressing major conflicts did not live up to the expectations of guarantying collective security. In the functional areas, although the organization created precedents, it also showed limitations. Due to its complexity, increasingly the League of Nations has been studied not only from an institutional perspective but also from a more multidimensional and comparative point of view that allows to consider the presence and role of the organization in various scales and spaces, besides its relationship with a diversity of actors and themes. The League of Nations Experience: Overlapping Readings offers a multitude of interpretations, evincing some of the promising avenues through which the League of Nations continues to inspire academic research.

Table of Contents:

Introduction – The League of Nations experience: Overlapping readings
Aurora Almada e Santos

A contentious idea

The Institut de Droit International’s response to the birth of the League of Nations
Philippe Rygiel
25

The League of Nations or European federation: The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom’s decade of debate over a “United States of Europe,” 1923–1933
Rebecca Shriver
43

Hopes and aspirations

Korea and the League of Nations: from Versailles to the Manchurian Crisis, 1919–1933
Dolf-Alexander Neuhaus
67

The accession of British colonies to the League of Nations and the “Third” British Empire
Thomas Gidney
95

The membership of the Executive Council: Portugal’s highest aspiration in the League of Nations
Jesús Bermejo Roldán and Quintino Lopes
123

Decentering the view

Plowshares into swords: The League of Nations as a weapon of internationalist war
David Ekbladh
145

Survived on sufferance: Social policy, the ILO and the new “World Organisation,” 1941–1945
Geert Van Goethem
171

A plethora of varied initiatives

The Information Section of the League of Nations: An experiment in organising communication in international relations
Arne L. Gellrich and Erik Koenen
199

The League and the world: how and why the League of Nations became the centre of world economic statistics
Martin Bemmann
223

The fight against the trafficking of women and minors before and within the League of Nations: A path to legitimacy for European voluntary associations
Sara Ercolani
249

Abstracts
275

List of contributors
279

Index
285

Source: De Gruyter

BOOK: Randall LESAFFER & Anne PETERS, "The Cambridge History of International Law" (Volume I, 2024, Cambridge University Press)

Source: CUP

Description:

Volume I of The Cambridge History of International Law introduces the historiography of international law as a field of scholarship. After a general introduction to the purposes and design of the series, Part 1 of this volume highlights the diversity of the field in terms of methodologies, disciplinary approaches, and perspectives that have informed both older and newer historiographies in the recent three decades of its rapid expansion. Part 2 surveys the history of international legal history writing from different regions of the world, spanning roughly the past two centuries. The book therefore offers the most complete treatment of the historical development and current state of international law history writing, using both a global and an interdisciplinary perspectives.

• Introduces The Cambridge History of International Law series
• Offers a wide ranging survey of the historiography of international law from a global perspective
• Addresses the contributions of various disciplines – law, history, political thought, economics – and regional traditions to the historiography of international law

Table of Contents:

1. Scope, scale and humility in the history of international law 

Randall Lesaffer
Part I. The Historiography of International Law: Methods and Approaches 

Randall Lesaffer and Anne Peters
2. A thousand flowers blooming, or the desert of the real? International Law and its many problems of history 

Nehal Bhuta
3. Political thought and the historiography of international law 

Mark Somos
4. The turn to the history of international law in the discipline of international relations 

Giovanni Mantilla and Carsten-Andreas Schulz
5. Economic history and international law: a peculiar absence 

Christopher Casey
Part II. The Historiography of International Law: Regional Traditions 

Randall Lesaffer and Anne Peters
6. The historiography of international law in East Asia 

Keun-Gwan Lee
7. The historiography of international law in sub-Saharan Africa

Inge Van Hulle
8. The historiography of international law on the European continent 

Frederik Dhondt
9. The historiography of international law in Russia and its successor states 

Lauri Mälksoo
10. 'The most neglected province': British historiography of international law 

David Armitage and Ignacio de la Rasilla
11. The view from the Leviathan: history of international law in the hegemon 

John Fabian Witt
12. Using history in Latin America 

Arnulf Becker Lorca

More info with CUP.

BOOK: Thomas BOTTELIER & Jan STÖCKMANN, "Instruments of international order: Internationalism and diplomacy, 1900–50" (Manchester University Press, 2024)

Description:

This book explores a set of diplomatic practices and principles that shaped international politics during the first half of the twentieth century. By considering these instruments as historical constructions serving various political ends, the chapters show how internationalists interacted with traditional diplomatic actors, thus blending new and old forms of diplomacy. To illustrate this process, the authors draw on a range of new archival evidence and consider understudied actors and venues, from Ethiopian diplomats to the League of Nations Assembly. What connects them is their attention to the ways in which internationalists sought to solve international problems at an international level by infiltrating established institutions at the highest level of political decision-making.

Table of Contents:

Introduction
By: Thomas W. Bottelier and Jan Stöckmann
Pages: 1–16

Chapter 1: Becoming national
Self-determination as a tool in international politics
By: Georgios Giannakopoulos
Pages: 17–34

Chapter 2: The League of Nations and the new uses of sovereignty
By: Lukas Schemper
Pages: 35–54

Chapter 3: Ascertaining the truth in Albania
Inquiry as a League of Nations instrument of international order
By: Quincy R. Cloet
Pages: 55–80

Chapter 4: The chemical weapons discourse as an instrument of international order
The Second Italo-Ethiopian War
By: Anneleen van der Meer
Pages: 81–103

Chapter 5: ‘Weapons misused by barbarous races'
Disarmament, imperialism and race in the interwar period
By: Daniel Stahl
Pages: 104–126

Chapter 6: Colonial policy and international control
The American Philippines and multilateral drug treaties, 1909–31
By: Eva Ward
Pages: 127–151

Chapter 7: In the eyes of the world
Media oversight and diplomatic practices at the League of Nations Assembly
By: Robert Laker
Pages: 152–176

Chapter 8: The League of Nations and the advisory opinion of the Permanent Court of International Justice as ‘preventive adjudication’?
By: Gabriela A. Frei
Pages: 177–197

Chapter 9: With or without the metropole
Deferred sovereignty as instrument of racial governance
By: Pablo de Orellana
Pages: 198–226

Index
Pages: 227–232

More info with manchesterhive.

BOOK: Stefanie GÄNGER & Jürgen OSTERHAMMEL (eds.), "Rethinking Global History" (CUP, 2024)

Source: CUP

Description:

Despite three decades of rapid expansion and public success, global history's theoretical and methodological foundations remain under-conceptualised, even to those using them. In this collection of essays, leading historians provide a reassessment of global history's most common analytical instruments, metaphors and conceptual foundations. Rethinking Global History prompts historians to pause and think about the methodology and premises underpinning their work. The volume reflects on the structure and direction of history, its relation to our present and the ways in which historians should best explain, contextualise and represent events and circumstances in the past. In chapters on fundamental concepts such as scale, comparison, temporality and teleology, this collection will guide readers to assess the extant literature critically and write theoretically informed global histories. Taken together, these essays provide a unique and much-needed assessment of the implications of history going global. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

Reviews

‘In this book a group of well-known practitioners provide a multifaceted analysis of the concepts, methods, and issues that will define future scholarship in Global History. If this branch of history is here to stay, then historians should embrace the full conceptual rearmament here discussed to write histories worthy of the problems affecting today's world.’Giorgio Riello, European University Institute and the University of Warwick

‘What a timely intervention! As global history is coming of age, and as the world around us changes, our methods and approaches will have to develop as well. As the talk of de-globalization proliferates, Jürgen Osterhammel and Stefanie Gänger have assembled a group of first-class historians to rethink global history for our times. Fresh, insightful, stimulating.’Sebastian Conrad, Professor of Global History, Freie Universität Berlin

Table of Contents:

Introduction
pp 1-20
Rethinking History, Globally
By Stefanie Gänger, Jürgen Osterhammel

Part I - Forms of Inquiry and Argumentation
pp 21-114

1 - Explanation
pp 23-46
The Limits of Narrativism in Global History
By Jürgen Osterhammel

Select 2 - Comparison
2 - Comparison
pp 47-69
Its Use and Misuse in Social and Economic History
By Alessandro Stanziani

3 - Time
pp 70-91
Temporality in Global History
By Christina Brauner

4 - Quantification
pp 92-114
Measuring Connections and Comparative Development in Global History
By Pim de Zwart

Part II - Concepts and Metaphors
pp 115-182

5 - The Global and the Earthy
pp 117-138
Taking the Planet Seriously as a Global Historian
By Sujit Sivasundaram

6 - Openness and Closure
pp 139-160
Spheres and Other Metaphors of Boundedness in Global History
By Valeska Huber

7 - Scales
pp 161-182
From Shipworms to the Globe and Back
By Dániel Margócsy

Part III - Configurations and Telos
pp 183-273

8 - Tacit Directionality
pp 185-209
Processes, Teleology and Contingency in Global History*
By Jan C. Jansen

Select 9 - Distance
9 - Distance
pp 210-234
A Problem in Global History
By Jeremy Adelman

10 - Materiality
pp 235-253
Global History and the Material World*
By Stefanie Gänger

11 - Centrisms
pp 254-273
Questions of Privilege and Perspective in Global Historical Scholarship
By Dominic Sachsenmaier

More info with CUP.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Boston Area Colloquium on the History of International Law, "History of International Law Colloquium" (Boston, Spring-Fall 2025, DEADLINE: 31 December 2024)

Description:

The organizers of the Boston area colloquium on the history of international law are pleased to announce a call for papers to be presented during the Spring and Fall of 2025. This initiative is organized with the support of Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies, which will host a series of book talks, and Harvard Law School’s Institute for Global Law & Policy, which will host the paper series.

The call is open to all scholars, covering all areas of international law and all periods of history. Because this initiative aims to build a community of scholars in the Boston area, preference will be given to those who can present in person.  To be considered, please email a copy of your submission to mamolea@bu.edu by Dec. 31, 2024.

Contact Professor Andrei Mamolea (mamolea@bu.edu) for more info.

BOOK: Scott LINCICOME & Clark PACKARD (eds.), "Defending Globalization: Facts and Myths about the Global Economy and its Fundamental Humanity" (Cato Institute, 2024)

Source: Barnes & Noble

Description:

Original essays about the ideas and facts underlying globalization, rebutting the most common arguments against globalization today and educating readers on the intersection of globalization and our societies and cultures.

The COVID-19 pandemic, war in Ukraine, simmering US-China tensions, and rising global populism have led to globalization facing renewed attention—and criticism—from politicians and pundits across the political spectrum. Like any market phenomenon, the free movement of people, things, money, and ideas across natural or political borders is imperfect and often disruptive. But it has also produced undeniable benefits—for the United States and the world—that no other system can match. And it’s been going on since the dawn of recorded history.

The original essays from both Cato Institute scholars and outside contributors compiled in this volume offer a diverse range of perspectives on globalization—what it is, what it has produced, what its alternatives are, and what people think about it—and offer a strong, proactive case for more global integration in the years ahead.

Covering the basic economic and political ideas and historical facts underlying globalization, rebutting the most common arguments against globalization today, and educating readers on the intersection of globalization and our societies and cultures—from where we live to what clothes we wear and what foods we eat—Defending Globalization will not just educate and entertain readers but also demonstrate the essential humanity of international trade and migration—and why the United States and the rest of the world need more of it.

Contributors include Deirdre N. McCloskey, James Bacchus, Johan Norberg, Daniel W. Drezner, Jeb Hensarling, Marian L. Tupy, and Tom G. Palmer.

About the editors

Scott Lincicome is the vice president of general economics and the Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute. He is also a senior visiting lecturer at Duke University Law School, where he has taught a course on international trade law and previously taught international trade policy as a visiting lecturer. Lincicome has written on numerous economic issues, including international trade; subsidies and industrial policy; manufacturing and global supply chains; economic dynamism; and regulation. Prior to joining Cato, Lincicome spent two decades practicing international trade law. He is the editor of Empowering the New American Worker: Market-Based Solutions for Today’s Workforce (2022).

Clark Packard is a research fellow in the Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute. He was previously a resident fellow at the R Street Institute focusing on international trade policy. Packard is a contributor to Foreign Policy and has written for National Review, Lawfare, The Bulwark, Business Insider, the National Interest, and other publications.

More info with the Cato Institute.

CALL FOR PAPERS AND CONTRIBUTIONS: "Among Empires: Transimperial Circulation of Political Models and Scientific Knowledge. The Case of Four “Latecomers” (Germany, Italy, Belgium, and Japan), 1880s-1940s" (Università di Napoli Federico II, DEADLINE: 30 November 2024)

Over the last three decades at least, historians of different orientations have striven to overcome the nation-state as the unit of analysis to instead highlight the global dimension of phenomena, establish comparisons, or analyze the intersections and interconnections between different political entities. The attempt to apply this approach to empires has led to the development of a ‘transimperial’ research agenda, which focuses on spaces of intersections, encounters, and clashes of colonial rulers and anti-colonial actors within and across empires and brings under the same analytical framework competition, cooperation, and connectivity. In the transimperial approach, the comparison has been intended more as a historical object of investigation than as a method of historiography. Through the ‘politics of comparison,’ different historical actors observed and assessed other empires’ ideas and practices, aiming to emulate, reject, or mix them and giving place to new models of colonial policies.

We seek original contributions that, through the lens of the politics of comparison, focus on four latecomer empires, namely Germany, Italy, Belgium, and Japan – the case of the United States which also falls within this chronology is not part of our project – that started their colonial expansion at the end of the nineteenth century. In these countries and their colonies and protectorates, heated debates took place around the search for (historical or current foreign) models, and politicians, activists, and intellectuals often demanded the transimperial circulation of colonial knowledge, be it legal, political, or scientific.

In particular, we are interested in two distinct yet bordering fields:

 Models of colonial policies from a global perspective: for example, the debate on direct/indirect rule, regimes of belonging (citizenship, colonial subjecthood), education policies targeted at colonial subjects, co-optation in the colonial administration of local peoples, etc.

 Transimperial circulation of colonial knowledge in scientific fields such as medicine, agronomy, anthropology, legal culture, etc.

Selected scholars will be invited to present their research either in individual seminars or larger workshops that will take place in 2025 at the University of Naples Federico II or the University of Eastern Piedmont (Italy). The organization will fully reimburse the scholars coming from Europe; in other cases, it will assess on a case-by-case basis.

Papers will then be published as contributions in a peer-reviewed collective publication in English edited by the group working on the project “Imperial Entanglements: Latecomer Colonial Empires and the “Politics of Comparison” (1880s-1940s)” (PRIN 2022), a project jointly funded by the Italian government and the European Union (see www.imperialentanglements.it)

Applicants should submit:

1. an abstract of their paper of about 500 words

2. a short biography (no more than 300 words)

Email: imperialentanglements2022@gmail.com

Deadline: 30 November 2024

Acceptances will be sent by December 2024

Consult the project organizer's website "Imperial Entanglements" for more info.