One of the most famous catchphrases to describe the First World War was H.G. Well's ‘war to end all wars’. Once an idealistic slogan, it is now mainly used sardonically as a tragic depiction of what felt at the time to be the longest and bloodiest war of the age. But Wells described what in 1914 seemed a plausible outcome of the war: this was expected to be the last great conflict between nations before an international order was finally established. This view was later shared by another well-known liberal internationalist, Alfred Zimmern, who advocated for a treaty that made war a crime in any circumstance and a covenant to substitute the old order of ‘power-politics’ with ‘responsibility-polities’. As one of the chief interpreters of the League of Nations (LON), Zimmern remains a symbol of the contradictions of the institution in its quest to establish a ‘new order’ through the rule of law.Footnote ¹ However, this new order was not destined to last, as the League's life was short, eventful and ultimately tragic.Footnote ²

In this essay, I will dive into some of the recent titles that add to the rich landscape of research into institution-building and international activism. Numerous studies have shown how different agents gave rise to new visions of a world order within the context of the pioneering design of the LON. From economic and social organisations to technical bodies to research military statistics, individuals and organisations formed what Pedersen called a ‘force field’, creating a cluster of forces devoted to the creation of international order.Footnote ³ As Raymond Fosdick – one of the most ardent supporters of the League and the fourth president of the Rockefeller Foundation – wrote in 1952, the history of the LON ‘tells the story of a great and daring design – the first effective move in the history of mankind toward the organization of a world-wide political and social order’.Footnote ⁴

Two books have taken advantage of the first centenary of the LON to provide a broad overview of these historical issues: Henig's The Peace That Never Was: A History of the League of Nations (first edited in 2010, reprinted in 2019) and Ikonomou and Gram-Skjoldager's The League of Nations: Perspectives from the Present (2019).

In the first, Henig places the League into a broad historical perspective by tracing the background, development and ramifications of the ‘world order’ projects. The first chapter explains the origins of the first global order project. Already in 1915, there was a British League of Nations Society founded by Viscount Bryce. But the ideas on how to control the world differed greatly: while H.G. Wells was in the League and wanted tight control of armaments, air forces and the army, others, like J.A. Hobson, thought it should have the power to intervene in economic matters. A more limited proposal was made by Leonard Woolf in the Fabian Society in 1916 with his manifesto entitled International Government, which advocated that an international authority, rather than a ‘permanent international police force’, should control the world. Lord Robert Cecil also had something to say: he supported the idea of an organisation with rules in which pressure could be exerted, like a blockade, against rogue nations.Footnote ⁵

Chapter 2 of the book reveals that the drafting of the League of Nations Covenant mirrored the very intellectual contradictions its members grappled with. This endeavour unfolded amidst an exceptionally challenging context: the demise of four major empires, widespread financial collapse, global social unrest and revolutions and the desolate aftermath of the battlefields in France and Belgium. Beyond the immediate context, the Covenant itself harboured unresolved issues like racial inequality. Notably, the League assumed the role of ‘liquidator or trustee’ for the ‘bankrupt states’ of Russia, Austria-Hungary and Turkey. This involved delegating ‘authority, control, or administration’ to other states, acting as ‘mandatories’ over newly formed nations emerging from the shattered Eastern and South-eastern European order.

Thus, Henig underscores the League of Nations’ inherent imperialist perspective, exemplified by key figures like South African Prime Minister Jean Smuts. a central ideologue who held deeply racist views, deeming Africans ‘barbarians’ incapable of self-governance and unsuited for the European ideal of political self-determination.Footnote ⁶ As discussed in earlier historiography, the significance of British imperial ideologues, particularly Jan Smuts, deserves emphasis.Footnote ⁷ The 1920 US withdrawal, while intended to limit involvement, left Britain and France struggling to carry the League's weight, creating space for Smuts's pivotal role. His vision for a liberal, consultative League remained tethered to its imperialist roots, exemplified by his racially tinged approach and the desire to extend imperial ideals within a new framework. This historical juncture emphasised the need for both continuity and reform, as the struggling League sought a diplomatic space to avoid the horrors of war.

This text sheds light on a crucial argument within recent historiography, as highlighted by the book: the notion of a ‘new order’ inadvertently paved the way for American post-war hegemony.Footnote ⁸ In essence, the League of Nations, initially conceived under the influence of the British Empire, ultimately served as a bridge to the Pax Americana. While advocating for self-determination, its key supporters implicitly perpetuated the dominance of European powers and racial hierarchies in global governance. This, perhaps, is unsurprising considering the widespread citizen activism in these countries, ranging from national pro-League associations like the British League of Nations Union to the flourishing transatlantic philanthropic foundations.Footnote ⁹ Although not the most up-to-date in terms of recent historiography, Henig's book is a valuable testament to some of the issues that dominated decision-making in the League's history, with a clear presentation in a brief and chronologically structured manner, a work perhaps aimed more at providing a general overview of the League for students than for specialised researchers.

With a more wide-ranging perspective, Ikonomou and Gram-Skjoldager's edited collection The League of Nations: Perspectives from the Present (2019) presents an accessible introduction to most of the inner topics of research developed by recent historiography. Through a series of concise studies organised into three thematic sections, the book delves into the diverse ways in which the League shaped global affairs and the lives of those involved in this pioneering experiment in international organisations. The book includes twenty-one chapters divided into three main blocs: the Secretariat (the directorship, translation service, bureaucratic and political organisation, gender distribution, etc.); the external context of the League (the mandate, relationship with minorities, interactions with different countries, the origins of neoliberal economic theories, production of quantitative statistics, rise of social scientists and medical hygiene); and the projection of the League's image (combatting misinformation, the investment in films, novels, paintings, and comics, or the working conditions in the Secretariat). All three parts emphasise the importance of weighing the success and impact of the League's social, technical and humanitarian work alongside its more trumpeted peacekeeping failures. The book contributes to studies on diplomatic and political history but also to the history of images, cultural and gender studies, and varied insights into the art of propaganda and the dissemination of internationalism.

In the introduction, the authors express their desire to establish connections between research on the LON and current political concerns and cultural debates. The book assembles a wide range of scholars from different geographies, broadening the debate into an exploration from different angles: the interplay between international and national, the relationship between nationalism, politico-religious thoughts, and the rise of pacifism, or the credit deserved by individuals in the design of the institution, such as Erik Colban's diplomacy within the Minority Section,Footnote ¹⁰ or the political thought of Jewish writer Israel Zangwill.Footnote ¹¹ A key element of the book here is the wide variety of primary sources used – mostly from the League of Nations Archives in Geneva – and the display of visual materials, such as photographs, charts, and tables. The aim of the authors is quite clear: instead of focusing on security matters or great power politics, the chapters give priority to new historiographical perspectives: the inner mechanisms of the League, its administrative staff, and themes such as gender, internationalism, empire and neoliberalism.

What insights can be drawn from the League of Nations’ broad range of activities? Several interconnected arguments can be found, many building on the earlier historiography. Considered collectively, all chapters depict the League of Nations as a multifaceted and intricate institution, full of tensions, conflicting ideologies and contradictions between its principles and practices. One of the most interesting chapters to describe the emergence of conflicting visions of world order is that of Marco Moraes, who examines the various practices and interpretations of internationalism. Contrasting the administration of the Secretariat under Eric Drummond (1919) and that of Joseph Avenol (1933–40), the author shows how the concept of internationalism evolved. This tension was reflected in a superb document, the 1930 Report of the Committee of Thirteen, when a small but vocal minority, led by Germany and Italy, argued that ‘[s]o long as there is no Super-State, and therefore no “international man”, an international spirit can only be assured through the cooperation of men of different nationalities who represent the public opinion of their respective nationalities’.Footnote ¹² This discussion shows the disquieting similarities between fascist internationalism and liberal functionalism: many international technical bodies did collaborate with the Nazis or the Vichy regime. By studying Avenol's tenure, the author reassesses the dichotomies that have traditionally been used to describe the interwar period: political/technical, internationalist/nationalist, collaboration/resistance.Footnote ¹³ Here, the author takes a balanced approach by acknowledging how the LON echoed the social and political systems of a time of European hegemony – a moment of buoyant authoritarian regimes, rampant nationalism and fascist ideologies. Its successor, of course, would follow this trend by reflecting the American hegemony.

Rather than adopting a singular, uniform interpretation, the book tends to view the league as a norm-setting institution actively involved in the codification of international norms. This perspective is illuminated in Florian Wagner's exploration of how the organisation played a role in legitimising colonialism.Footnote ¹⁴ Similarly, Tomoko Akami presents a parallel interpretation, emphasising the contributions of the League's experts to the organisation's role in shaping global governing norms.Footnote ¹⁵ It gives a good overview of the many areas of study present today, while at the same time highlighting the many continuities with the international order established in the post-1945 period.

A concluding essay by Patrick Finney sums up the main themes through which the League can inspire further research and new questions: exploring the origins of international relations as a discipline with the foundation of the first department in Aberystwyth in 1919, analysing the dark legacy of minorities protection, or exploring the images of internationalism in arts, fiction and culture.Footnote ¹⁶

Two books written in the Spanish-speaking world contribute to the list of studies on this subject. In La Sociedad de Naciones y la reinvención del imperialismo liberal (2020), José Antonio Sánchez Román has added to the body of recent literature a rigorous analysis of the limits imposed on the organisation from the outset as a consequence of the aforementioned American withdrawal and the exclusion of the nascent Soviet Union. The author rethinks the history of the LON from a broader, more original and complex perspective. His study sheds light on crucial aspects such as the origins of the welfare state through the newly created humanitarianism; the pioneering projects of financial governance set out in Brussels in 1920; some early expressions of liberal feminism; or the determined, if frustrated, advocacy for a European union from 1930 onwards. Sánchez Román succeeds in explaining the history of some evolving concepts, despite their extreme complexity. The most important one, ‘liberal imperialism’, deserves some discussion. With this expression, the author connects a historical thread between the LON and what is later referred to as global or multilevel governance. Despite the initial appearance of an exaggerated argumentative leap, the reading of the work provides ample reasons for this: the transition from classical imperialism to new forms of action in the ‘grand chessboard’.Footnote ¹⁷ This argument relies on the mutations experienced by the British Empire, using the League of Nations as a benchmark to contrast the depth of these transformations and the resistance encountered.

This approach involves a nuanced use of the terms ‘imperialist’ and ‘liberal’, which may seem somewhat unorthodox when viewed from a present-day perspective. However, Sánchez Román's work faithfully reflects the blurry boundaries in the thinking of politicians, intellectuals or activists who participated in debates about the territorial configuration of the British Empire and its foreign action. Sánchez Román cleverly raises the question of the distinction between principles and actions: while President Wilson formulated an ambiguous basis for self-determination, the interwar system featured global inequality and hierarchical structures, allowing for diverse interpretations and practices of sovereignty.Footnote ¹⁸

A good example of this is analysed in the third chapter through the discussion of the mandates system and its paternalism over distant territories. Examining the 1919 minority protection regime, the author acknowledges its trial-and-error development in the 1920s, marked by ineffective discussions within the Society of Nations.Footnote ¹⁹ Here Sánchez Román highlights the impracticality of correcting vulnerability amid exclusive nationalisms, and racial and religious issues. The League of Nations and other actors faced challenges in addressing these complexities, turning the minority protection regime into a contentious battleground. Reintroducing the voice of the Spanish diplomat Pablo de Azcárate, a Minority Committee member, the author illustrates the contradictions faced by liberal internationalists in confronting political rather than humanitarian practices.

While the concluding chapters of the book delve into explaining continuity models in ethnic, economic and managerial aspects – encompassing policies like refugee assistance, public health initiatives and efforts to combat human trafficking – the book's central thesis endures. The League was conceived among internationalist sectors of the British Empire as a mechanism to help respond to the crisis of imperial governance deepened by the First World War. In other words, the organisation was to become an international reinforcement to sustain the order of European empires in the face of the challenges of anti-colonial revolts and acute social tensions across the globe.Footnote ²⁰ Consequently, the League escorted the traumatic transformation of liberal imperialism during the interwar period and helped to reinvent the notion of liberalism and design new ways of understanding sovereignty.

Another recent book by a Spanish author deserves attention: Rodríguez Lago's World Citizen: Salvador de Madariaga y las redes pioneras del mundialismo (2022) is a thrilling example of new research on pacifist and internationalist sociability networks. In recent years there has been a sort of ‘Madariaga revival’, in which the author of these lines has participated. This is due, to a large extent, to the pioneering role this writer and diplomat played as an advocate of a world government, both as a public intellectual and at a diplomatic level in the Secretariat of the League of Nations. Madariaga played a key role too as ambassador to Washington and Paris during the Second Spanish Republic, while simultaneously being Spain's permanent delegate to the League. Not surprisingly, Henig quotes his books as one of the most useful sources for analysing everyday lives in the halls of Geneva.Footnote ²¹ Madariaga's memoirs are indeed a fundamental source for understanding the ‘international civil service’ that emerged in the Palais Wilson in Geneva in the 1920s.

In his 1938 work The World's Design, Salvador de Madariaga stated that ‘the rapid evolution of the world towards a world-city and a world-market, with a unity of its own’, required political structures to be adapted accordingly. Madariaga's ideas were representative of the interwar period's concern for global organisation among a broad range of politicians and intellectuals. He was a staunch supporter of the LON during the critical period of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. At that time, he predicted the decline of the institution if it was unable to stop such blatant aggression against China. But his warnings fell on deaf ears as he earned the ironic nickname of ‘Don Quixote of Manchuria’. Years later, E.H. Carr would mock Madariaga's idealistic convictions in his famous Twenty Years’ Crisis (1939) as an example of a ‘moral conscience’ that was unable to check the aggressions of imperialism.Footnote ²²

In World Citizen, however, the author highlights a lesser-known facet of Madariaga that complements well the idealistic aspect of his figure: his ability to marshal resources and social networks in pursuit of pacifist philanthropic foundations, while at the same time generating an idea of global governance through non-governmental institutions that was certainly ahead of its time.Footnote ²³ Rodríguez Lago rescues from oblivion some of Madariaga's alternative projects, such as the World Foundation, which was supported by some American elites, mainly the political activist and philanthropist Anita Eugenie McCormick Blaine (1866–1954).

As pessimism grew within the Secretariat, Madariaga proposed an organisation within civil society to foster ‘international harmony’. The work explores Madariaga's efforts to mobilise a diverse array of individuals across political, literary, academic and religious realms, urging them to unite in the pursuit of peace amid the looming threat of a new war. An intriguing aspect of World Citizen is its revelation of often overlooked social networks – primarily composed of women such as Anita McCormick or Anne Tracy Morgan.Footnote ²⁴ Central to this endeavour was the World Foundation, aiming to advance global peace through elite-focused awareness, envisioning a cohesive ‘human family’ grounded in spiritual principles. However, as the Second World War unfolded, this spiritual vision faced criticism from figures like E.H. Carr and his realistic view of international relations. Carr argued that these ideals lacked implementation among the ruling elites of the time.

The book is, nonetheless, a history of a failure. The internationalist proposals of the LON would later be cornered by political realism and Cold War paradigms – in which Madariaga himself participated as one of the most fervent supporters of NATO. However, without those initiatives of the 1930s, it would be impossible to understand the founding of the UN, the FAO, UNESCO and the WHO, or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Although history is dominated by stories of victories, it is the failures that explain as much or more about us, even if they always have fewer sponsors. For Rodríguez Lago, it is very timely to analyse the narratives and transnational networks of that first failed globalism, following clues that allow us to make sense of our present marked by uncertainty.Footnote ²⁵

One last book deserves our attention to conclude this analysis: Ploughshares into Swords: Weaponized Knowledge, Liberal Order, and the League of Nations, by David Ekbladh (2022). The title brilliantly reflects the underlying argument, which contends that the transfer of knowledge – especially from Europe to the United States – shaped the world order after the Second World War, and explores how much of a legacy there was of the inter-war period. The book has a twofold purpose: to explore the diverse tools historically employed by different actors in addressing the challenges of establishing and sustaining international order and to underscore the significance of knowledge and analysis in shaping these tools. The underlying argument shows how these visions of world order mutated with the post-war landscape while, at the same time, many structures remained. Among the crucial elements to explain the liberal international order and US hegemony, Ekbladh selects some of the most relevant ideas that emerged in transnational debates through the League of Nations and other interrelated institutions and individuals. Even if the war could bend and break some relationships, ‘the constellation of groups and individuals constituting international society showed remarkable durability’ through the UN.Footnote ²⁶

In the early 1940s, the United States experienced a moment of self-reflection on its power and vulnerability, a period that marked a successful transfer of knowledge from the League of Nations in Geneva to the United States – due to the ‘exile’ of technical experts fleeing from the war in Europe – contributing to the US war effort and post-war planning. These experts, with knowledge in areas such as food, public health and the world economy, played a crucial role in both defeating the Axis powers and shaping post-war strategies against the Soviet Union. Ekbladh explores this knowledge transfer and emphasises the importance of the US's special relationship with the League during the interwar years. Rather than being sceptical outsiders, ordinary Americans were actively involved in the League, exchanging ideas with fellow liberal internationalists to address global challenges arising from industrial modernity. Ekbladh argues that the successful transplantation of internationalist knowledge during the Second World War was possible because it had been nurtured within the liberal international society over the preceding two decades, with the United States playing an integral role.

With this transnational approach, Ekbladh explains that the liberal international society that came about in Geneva wasn't an end in itself: instead, it was more of a lab or a framework where human relations could bring about a cluster of institutions. In contrast with Henig, the author does not enter into a debate on the teleology of American hegemony: the different trajectories of economists, politicians and technicians show that there were very different visions on how to establish a world order. In this sense, contrary to being the sole decision-maker, the US engaged in discussions with individuals from outside the country about what should be established after the war. These external voices didn't always fully embrace the American vision of its dominance but still accepted its power because it appeared capable of promoting values important for a functioning liberal international order.

That complex relationship can be seen in full display through the third chapter of the book, focused on the reluctance of the Roosevelt administration to officially invite the League's economic agencies, especially the International Labour Organization, with the efforts of private American research centres like the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), the Princeton Institute of Advanced Studies, and the Rockefeller Foundation. These institutions aimed to provide a haven for social scientists from Geneva. These ‘technocrats’ occupied a middle-space position of influence, navigating the political landscape around them. It was precisely this ‘liberal international elite’ that sought to draw the United States into informal quasi-membership, a trend that in the 1940s was rewarded for its efforts: the United States not only joined the international liberal institutions but also developed them fundamentally for its benefit.Footnote ²⁷

Among the elements of continuity that stand out the most is the emphasis of those technocrats on having reliable records, information and data on world affairs. A good example of this is the work of Alexander Loveday, a member of the League of Nations Secretariat and Director of the Financial Section and Economic Intelligence Service, who led the statistical endeavours of the institution. His emphasis on providing the information and analysis that could be deployed to solve international issues became second nature to liberal international society in the post-war world.Footnote ²⁸

A few common conclusions can be drawn from these books. First, that transnational studies – featuring international scholars – can reach similar conclusions through different perspectives. A core idea here would be to point out how many of the LON's structures, practices and social networks survived after the Second World War and permeated the newly founded structures of the UN or the World Bank. The second conclusion has been pointed out on several occasions: long before the US government was involved as a leading power in global affairs, American civil society was already looking for ways to exercise world governance through international bodies. That ‘knowledge in exile’ travelled to Princeton, New Jersey, and turned into a powerful weapon in the post-war decades. These new transnational histories related to the League of Nations ‘ecosystem’ allow us to examine the short life of that institution and the debates it generated, in which innovative ideas, concepts and institutions that shaped the Cold War world were put forward. I would argue that the triumph of the international liberal order in the second half of the twentieth century can be explained thanks to the refinement and transfer of knowledge from the LON to the UN. Some of the poorly implemented ideas in the interwar period were embedded into ideologically foundational documents of the post-war era, such as the Atlantic Charter, and most diplomatic assumptions and practices were placed in the institutions that would safeguard that order, such as the UN. This explains the contradictory and uneven application of its principles, which owe much to the pre-war European order and the pre-eminence of Western countries – many of them still colonial empires – in the so-called Third World.

To conclude this essay, I would like to reflect on the common patterns found in the ‘force field’ of institutions created along with the League of Nations and what it meant to the visions of world order. Over time, research has balanced our understanding of the League's successes and failures. The League's existence was not a failed or marginal episode but constitutive of our current international system – and at the same time, revealing of its failures.

Most of these books reveal the conflicting nature of the term ‘internationalism’ – which we should rather study in the plural.Footnote ²⁹ Both Ikonomou and Gram-Skjoldager and Sánchez Román show how the evolution of these internationalisms was anchored in a constant tension between the inertias of different visions of imperialism: from technical approaches to imperial models of governance to the hegemonic visions of a fascist world order in the interwar period. Every internationalist undertaking – from social or economic associations to technical bodies – reflected a particular idea of global governance, consequently causing the frictions and paradoxes within this new international paradigm. Thus, a critical view of this historical experience should make us reflect on the diverse nature of international relations: there is no single system, no natural ‘order’, but a constant to-ing and fro-ing between theories and practices in the emerging world institutions.

A second idea is prevalent in these studies: the history of the League illustrates how the forging of a new world order constituted a process of discarding and polishing ideas and institutions. History allows us to observe both the achievements and the missed opportunities created by this ‘grand experiment’. This is the story told in Rodriguez Lago's book, which recounts a whole constellation of people who, without being directly related to the LON, sought to influence it from outside. With a technical perspective and analysing the transition from the interwar period into the Second World War, Ekbladh's book shows how past experiences permeated the UN, and how they shaped the post-1945 era. These books highlight the valuable lesson that agency is often found in concealed corners: to craft comprehensive global and international histories, it is imperative to commence by uncovering and exploring these frequently overlooked spaces.

The founders of the UN wanted the realities of power to be more apparent in the new organisation than they had been in the case of the League; perhaps for this reason, the UN was regarded with mild scepticism – quite the opposite of what happened with the League of Nations in 1919, when it seemed to capture the utopian hopes for regeneration of many individuals across the globe. In the wake of the complex interplay between the imperial, the postcolonial and the Cold War, the utopia of global governance was lost. Today, we are increasingly aware that every ‘internationalism’ rests on historical pillars and conflicting visions of world order, and is always open to reappraisal.