The Chequered History of the Beleaguered League of Nations

Posted on May 22, 2023August 5, 2023 by E Curb Nottus

ARISING from the ashes of the catastrophic Great War the League of Nations was founded in 1919 on high Liberal ideals but with the most challenging of tasks – “to promote international cooperation and achieve peace and security “. Ultimately, the League failed to live up to its mission statement, in the end floundering badly in its efforts to stop aggressive acts by rogue states and prevent the outbreak of a second world war.

Fear of failure?
The interwar years were marked by numerous incidences of disputes between states over territories and borders. One of the most apparent shortcomings of the League (LoN) was its choosiness in deciding which conflicts to intervene in and which not to…under the League’s foundation secretary-general Eric Drummond, the approach was a cautious and selective one, prompted by the fear that failure might undermine the body’s authority in the international arena (‘League of Nations’, History, Upd. 23-Mar-2023, www.history.com).

The LoN’s reluctance to involve itself in every international dispute also came down to the inherent weakness of its position. Where one of the discordant parties was not a member of the LoN and especially a larger power, the capacity of the organisation to effect a viable resolution was severely curtailed. The LoN declined to intervene when Soviet Russia attacked a port in Persia in 1920 in the belief that non-member Russia would disregard its authority. The LoN’s dispute resolution capacity was similarly neutralised in the 1923 Corfu incident…Mussolini’s Italy had bombed and invaded the Greek island leading to Greece asking the LoN to intervene but Mussolini, though a member, simply ignored the LoN’s attempts to mediate in the conflict.

Structural and functional weakness, the power of single veto
The League’s organisational structure proved a further impediment to the realisation of LoN’s primary purpose of maintaining inter-governmental peace. Unlike its successor world body the UN, all LoN members, whether powerful or minor players on the world stage, had equal voting rights in the assembly with the making of decisions requiring unanimity from the members, the necessity of universal consent a recipe for perpetual indecision and impasse (‘Why Did the League of Nations Fail?’, Luke Tomes, History Hit, 27-Oct-2020, www.historyhit.com).

“League of Victors”, minus the US
Critically, several of the more internationally significant nations were excluded from the new world body. The United States by choice excluded itself from membership, a massive setback to a world body’s claim to inclusiveness. In the aftermath of WWI and the Russian Revolution the vanquished Germans and the USSR🅐, were prevented from joining. At LoN’s point of peak membership (1935) there were 58 League nations, at its dissolution (1946) this had dwindled to only 23 members.

League idealism trumped by real politik
Viewed through rose-coloured glasses the LoN’s proponents assumed the organisation’s creation would herald in an era of internationalism. Their naïveté between the wars was exposed by the rise of ultra-nationalism especially when it coalesced in a totalitarian regime (acerbated by the Great Depression): for individual nations, League of Nations or no League of Nations, fundamental self-interest remained paramount (Tomes).

Expansionism by far-right regimes unchecked
In the 1930s, in a deteriorating international climate, the eruption of serious crises demonstrated the LoN’s impotence vis-a-vís aggressively inclined renegade states. When the imperial Japanese army invaded Manchuria (Northeast China)—a clear breach of Article 10 of the League’s Covenant (disrespecting another member’s sovereignty)—the LoN took no action against the offending nation. When the Commission eventually ruled that Manchuria should be returned to China, Tokyo responded by simply relinquishing its League membership and staying put🅑. When Fascist Italy’s provoked a colonial expansionist war against a much weaker state Abyssinia (Ethiopia) in 1935, the LoN’s condemnation and subsequent economic sanctions on the Italian aggressors were undermined by the great powers Britain and France who in a secret deal green-lighted Italy’s action in East Africa. The British and French concession to Italy was meant to help lure Mussolini away from allying with Germany and Hitler. Once again particular countries put self-interest ahead of the collective security goals of the LoN. Rome’s response to the League’s threats, like Japan and Germany before it, was to to pull Italy out of the LoN. The Ethiopian crisis damaged the League’s reputation further and reinforced the paucity of its peacekeeping role.

The LoN failed miserably in its stated objective of bringing about international disarmament, on the contrary under its watch rearmament and military buildup in Germany, Italy, Japan and the USSR greatly expanded in the 1930s. Without armed forces of its own the LoN was reliant on the great powers to enforce its authority which they were generally unwilling to do. The League in time of state conflicts thus fell back on negotiation and arbitration and the threat of sanctions (never fully implemented), in which it had a sorry track record (‘The League is Dead. Long Live the United Nations’, The National WWII Museum, 19-Apr-2022, www.nationalww2museum.org).

Footnote: The League’s legacy
While the League of Nations was unable to realise its raison d’être, a workable system of international cooperation and security, there was a positive side to its existence. Where smaller nations were involved the LoN did have some success in settling disputes of neighbouring countries peacefully, eg, between Finland and Sweden in 1921 over the Aland Islands. The organisation’s activities embraced many issues of concern and urgency in its day, including efforts to curb the opium traffic; tackling the scourge of tropical diseases like malaria and leprosy; post-WWI refugee crisis and POW repatriation; recognising the rights of ethnic minorities; regulation of workers’ wages and conditions; curtailing the arms trade. While not always successful in these projects the pioneering LoN can be credited for providing a framework for its successor the UN to carry out its humanitarian work.

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🅐 Germany was eventually allowed to join in 1926 and Soviet Russia in 1934
🅑 Nazi Germany likewise relinquished League membership in 1933 when challenged by the League, freeing it to embark on a massive military buildup and pursue its territorial expansion goals in Europe. The Soviet Union was another significant withdrawal from the LoN family, expelled in 1939 for invading Finland

The Malayan Emergency: A Last Hurray for Britain and Empire

Posted on April 17, 2022February 13, 2023 by E Curb Nottus

Comparative politics, Inter-ethnic relations, International Relations, Military history, Regional History

◬ British Malaya 1948 (Image: NZHistory)

The Second World War and the occupation of British Malaya by the Japanese gave the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) an opportunity to take a more prominent political role in Malayan society. Britain’s feeble submission at the hands of the Japanese invaders put paid to any notions of invincibility felt about the British colonial regime. Into the British void stepped the MCP, it’s military wing, the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army, mainly composed of ethnic Chinese guerrillas, bore the brunt of armed resistance against the Japanese. After the Japanese surrender the MCP were afforded a brief taste of governing before the British returned [Richardson, Thomas. “The Malayan Emergency.” In Fighting Australia’s Cold War: The Nexus of Strategy and Operations in a Multipolar Asia, 1945–1965, edited by PETER DEAN and TRISTAN MOSS, 1st ed., 115–36. ANU Press, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv25m8dqh.13]. The MCP was also active in Malayan labour circles, embroiling itself in the vanguard of strikes and disturbances against substandard labour conditions and wages.The MCP increasingly targeted British-controlled industry in the country, especially the production of rubber and tin, the mainstays of the Malayan economy, putting it on a collision course with the British Malaya authorities.

◬ Advertisement: Guarding national assets against the “communist bandits” (Source: Pinterest)

Sungai Siput incident
After three European planters were murdered by the komumis in Perak state in 1948, the MCP was proscribed as a political party and a state of national emergency declared in Malaya and Singapore. A protracted guerrilla war followed—for purposes of insurance it was not described as a war, hence the term “Malayan Emergency” (Darurat Malaya)a⃞—pitting Malayan Chinese communists against Britain, the Malay-dominated Federation and Commonwealth countries.

The combatants’ motives
Britain’s motives for cracking down on the MCP radicals was transparent and twofold. First, it’s priority was to protect its economic and commercial imperial interests in Malaya…its prized reserves of tin and rubber representing “by far the most important source of dollars in the Colonial Empire”. In 1948 this was doubly important to the UK, having just lost its colonial possessions in India [‘British Imperial Revival In The Early Cold War: The Malayan’Emergency’ 1948-60’, Liam Raine, History Matters, 23-Nov-2020, www.historymatters.group.shef.ac.uk]. Secondly, in the bipolar context of the Cold War and as the US’ ally, Britain was doing its bit to keep South-East Asia in the capitalist camp by blocking an attempt to extend the communist imprint on the region. Conversely, the Chinese in Malaya, disaffected with British colonial rule and its monopoly of the country’s lucrative raw materials, were seeking to achieve Malayan independence and forge a socialist stateb⃞. The MCP’s military arm adopted a strategy of raiding mines and estates (industrial sabotage) and attacks on soldiers, police, colonial collaborators and high-ranking officials (even succeeding in assassinating the British high commissioner). When the British launched counter-raids, the communist guerrillas would retreat to jungle outskirts where they could be hidden within the Chinese community and receive crucial material support from a network of civilian supporters known as Min Yuen.

◬ Jungle patrol (Photo: Imperial War Museums)

◬ General Gerard Templer (Image: npg.si.edu)

Briggs Plan
To counter the guerrillas’ stratagem the British devised the Briggs Plan (Rancangan Briggs) to try to isolate the insurgents from their rural support base. Half a million rural inhabitants (including the indigenous minority, the Orang Asil), labelled “squatters” by the British, were forcibly removed from their land and resettled in “New Villages” (Kampung baru)c⃞. As well as physically separating the guerrillas from the Chinese community—thus halting the vital flow of food, information and recruits from the peasants to the insurgents—the plan included a campaign to win the “hearts and minds” of the rural population and lure them away from the communists. Separating the “fish” from the “water”, British intelligence called it. Education and health services including better amenities were provided for some of the New Villages. This second British objective was less successful as a force for achieving cohesion among rural Malayans. The new British initiative, under the new high commissioner Gerard Templer, while effective militarily, was ruthlessly heavy-handed in its approach. The strategy’s rigorous population control and punitive measures alienated the Chinese inhabitants, at the same time many Malays, jealous of the infrastructure afforded the new settlements, were disaffected.
[‘Briggs Plan’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wkipedia.org ].

Decolonisation and independence
The British counter-insurgency’s effectiveness in whittling away the guerrillas’ support prompting the MCP’s leader Chin Peng to try to negotiate peace, however talks failed due to the insistence by Malayan leaders, especially Tunku Abdul Rahman, that the guerrillas surrender unconditionally. The granting of independence to Malaya in 1957 was a critical body blow to the MCP’s hopes as thereafter the struggle was no longer an anti-colonial cause. Inaugural prime minister Rahman was now able to characterise the conflict against the communists as a “People’s War” and unify the majority behind him. Bereft of its raison d’être the guerrilla movement quickly dissolved with the last significant group surrendering in 1958 at Perak. Most of the other insurgents still at large including Chin fled north across the Thai border [DVA (Department of Veterans’ Affairs) (2021), The Malayan Emergency 1948 to 1960, DVA Anzac Portal, accessed 14 April 2022, https://anzacportal.dva.gov.au/wars-and-missions/malayan-emergency-1948-1960 ].

MCP failings
At the end of WWII the communists’ guerrilla resistance to the Japanese had won it a following among significant numbers of Malayan Chinese, however during the Emergency it failed to consolidate that hold. The MCP’s stated mission was to build a broad coalition uniting Malaya’s racial groups (Malays, Chinese, Indians), in practice it blundered but making no real appeal to non-Chinese segments, the party remained predominantly the domain of the ethnic Chinese community. Even more damning was its non-engagement with rural Chinese (>90% of the Chinese population), the party steadfastly maintained an urban focus, failing to take the concerns of Chinese peasants seriously. The British were able to exploit the MCP’s omission to lever significant grass-roots support away from the guerrillas.[Opper, Marc. “The Malayan Emergency, 1948–1960.” In People’s Wars in China, Malaya, and Vietnam, 173–204. University of Michigan Press, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3998/mpub.11413902.12].

Lurching into imperial irrelevance
In the twilight of Britain’s once majestic global empire, the Malayan Emergency was its fleeting, final hurray. The 1956 Suez Crisis nakedly exposed the limitations of Britain, foreshadowing a status as a spent international force. With decolonisation in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Oceania in full swing through the Fifties and Sixties, the Sun was setting on the British Empire after all.

Footnote: Peace delayed
On 31 July 1960 the Yang di-Pertuan Agong (Head of the Malayan government) officially ended the Emergency. The communist guerrilla force, without their general secretary Chin Peng (by now a guest of the Chinese government in Peking) and shrunken to less than 2,000 men, continued the futile fight against the Malayan state from their border outpost. Armed resistance to the government in Kuala Lumpur from underground units resumed in the late Sixties, but the splintering of the MCP into three opposing factions and a series of internal purges further undermined the effectiveness of its cause. Finally, in December 1989 the Thais brokered the Hat Yai Peace Agreement between the Malaysian government and the MCP [‘Chin Peng, an obituary’, Anthony Reid, New Mandela, 05-Oct-2013, www.newmandela.org].

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a⃞ the MCP termed the conflict the “Anti-British National Liberation War”
b⃞ the MCP’s platform included progressive measures such as full equality for women
c⃞ in addition, 10,000 Malaysian Chinese suspected on being communist sympathisers were deported to mainland China

The ‘Battle of Broken Hill’: The Curious Incident of the Afghan Cameleers’ Two-Man War on the Silver City

Posted on February 14, 2022March 3, 2022 by E Curb Nottus

Inter-ethnic relations, Military history, Racial politics, Regional History

On New Years Day 1915 two members of the small immigrant Afghan community of Broken Hill launched an unexpected and deadly attack on a passing convoy of open ore-trucks carrying 1,200 industry picnickers to Silverton. The incident itself did not escalate much further, the so-called ‘battle’ was over after a 90-minute shootout, with the perpetrators dealt with and summarily despatched by a contingent of police, soldiers and private riflemen from the town, however it’s ramifications were more lasting and widespread. What was on the surface a random, mindless and unprovoked attack on innocent picnic-goers, had a complicated lead-up.

The casualties:
In the carnage two of the “sitting duck” picnic party were killed by the attackers’ gunfire and up to ten others wounded. The two gunmen then retreated from the scene towards the West Cameleers camp, killing another, unrelated civilian on the way. The police, troops and volunteer militia members of the ‘posse’ caught up with the two attackers at Cable Hill and engaged them in a shootout at a nearby rocky quartz outcrop known as “White Rocks”. During the shootout a fourth victim was killed by stray shots from the perpetrators’ gunsⓐ. A police constable was also wounded and both Muslim assailants were ultimately killed in the affray.

In the immediate aftermath of the incident the two perpetrators were wrongly identified as Turks—the Ottoman Turkish Empire has recently sided with the German Reich in the world war against Britain (and therefore against Australia)—due to a Turkish flag and a letter pledging allegiance to the Sultan of Turkey found among the possessions of one of the attackers. In fact the two Muslims originated from the northwest frontier of British India (within modern Pakistan or just over the border in Afghanistan).

The assailants:
Badsha Gool Mahomed
(aged about 40) a Pashtu-speaking Afghan Afridi tribesman whose two stays in Australia were punctuated by periods of service in the Turkish Army. After a decline in work for cameleers he was employed in the Broken Hill area’s silver mines before being retrenched. At the time of the incident Mahomed was an ice cream vendor in the townⓑ.
Mullah Abdullah (aged about 60) a Dari-speaking halal butcher and imam for the local cameleer community. Abdullah too tried camel-driving but finding it not feasible turned to working as a butcher in “The Hill”, supplementing it by presiding as spiritual leader for the Afghan community.

‘Barrier Miner’ 2 January 1915’

The influential local newspaper the Barrier Miner had a field day with the incident… “War in Broken Hill”, “The New Year’s Day Massacre“, (Attack) “under the Turkish flag”. Some modern writers have described the “Battle of Broken Hill” as a terrorist incident, “terrorist-suicide mission” (and Abdullah as a) “grey-bearded zealot, fiery when insulted” [Christine Stevens, ‘Abdullah, Mullah (c. 1855–1915)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/abdullah-mullah-12763/text23021, published first in hardcopy 2005, accessed online 10 February 2022], and inevitable parallels have been drawn with the contemporary landscape of international terrorism. Giving credence to the train ambush being considered a politically motivated act was the edict of Ottoman sultan Mehmet V that the faithful of the Islamic world take up the fight (jihad) against the enemy in the war, made just two months earlier in November 1914 (which undoubtedly struck a cord with the radicalised Mahomed) [‘History repeating: from the Battle of Broken Hill to the sands of Syria’, Panayiotis Diamadis, The Conversation, 03-Oct-2014, www.theconversation.com].

A union closed shop
Imam Abdullah on the other hand had fresh personal grievances against the locals. He had for some time suffered racist harassment from the town’s youths. In addition, Abdullah had fallen foul of the local branch of the Butchers Trade Union which took a discriminatory approach to not-British butchers in the town…only a week or so earlier the non-unionised Afghan butcher had been convicted for the second time of selling meat without a licence by the chief sanitary inspector. Whether the two men were motivated by a sense of persecution or patriotism, relations between the Afghan community and the Europeans in Broken Hill had been disintegrating for some time with the ‘Ghan’ cameleers camp targeted for sabotage. [‘The Battle of Broken Hill and repercussions for the German Community’, The Enemy At Home, www.migrationheritage.nsw.gov.au].

Economic downturn knee-jerk
A heightening of inter-ethnic tension was a direct result of the grim economic climate of the day, mine closures in Broken Hill meant unemployed miners and the search for alternate work…it didn’t take long for resentments to surface about Muslim immigrants taking white jobs. Afghan immigrants were made to feel unwelcome in Broken Hill and other outback towns with the cameleers relegated to living on the edge of European society in ‘Ghantowns’. Tensions were particularly heated between the local unionised teamsters and the immigrants, largely due to the Afghans cameleers being simply more competitive labour options than the white teamsters…cheaper to hire and providing a quicker service than that of the teamsters’ wagons. This perceived threat to the position of European teamsters in the Broken Hill district led them to retaliate with violence against the Afghan community [‘The Battle of Broken Hill’, Mike Dash, Smithsonian Magazine, 20-Oct-2011, www.smithsonianmag.com].

A “lone wolf” attack
Despite the assailants leaving a note indicating that they had acted alone, many citizens in Broken Hill connected the event to the Turkish enmity towards the British Empire in the warⓒ. An incensed mob, hell-bent on wreaking retribution against the Afghan cameleer camp, had to be prevented from launching reprisals against the outlier Afghan community. The focus then switched to Broken Hill’s German community who many believed had agitated the brace of Afghans into attacking the picnic train. The police and military this time were unable to stop the rampant mob from torching the German Club to the ground.

Wider ramifications
A crackdown of the authorities was not long in coming. With newspapers like the Barrier Miner and the jingoistic Sydney Bulletin beating up the story for all it’s worth and with headlines trumpeting “Turk atrocity” and “Holy War”, “enemy aliens” from Austrian, German and Turkish working in the Hill’s mines were sacked, followed swiftly by Federal attorney-general Billy Hughes’s blanket internment of all foreign aliens in the country.

Footnote: In a bizarre coincidence Broken Hill’s “ice cream cart terrorism” had a resounding echo in the abhorrent 2016 Bastille Day “lone wolf” terrorist attack in Nice, France. The perpetrator who drove his lorry down a seafront promenade, killing 86 pedestrians (most of them mowed down by the speeding vehicle), told the police when questioned at the site prior to committing the atrocity that he was delivering ice cream.

↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝↜↝
ⓐ the four victims of the two cameleers’ localised “Holy War” were the only Australians killed on home soil as a result of enemy fire during the Great War

ⓑ Mahomed‘s ice-cream cart was used to transport the duo’s concealed weapons to the railroad ambush site

A Prototype for ‘Modern’ Democracy and Universal Suffrage?…the Transitory Ripublica Corsa

Posted on December 11, 2021April 16, 2022 by E Curb Nottus

International Relations, Military history, Regional History

Corsica is best known of course as the birthplace of France’s most famous general/ emperor/dictator/ego, the one and only Napoleon Bonaparte. However the rocky island of Corsica is deserving of greater recognition for the novelty of its 1750s experiment with democracy and universal suffrage. Prior to 1755 Corsica was a colonial outpost of the Republic of Genoa. Corsicans under the nationalist, resistance leader Pasquale Paoli rebelled against Genoa’s rule in that year[❂] and drove the Genoese off the island (except for a few coastal towns where they were still in occupancy).

Having declared the neophyte entity a sovereign state and a republic, Paoli drafted a revolutionary constitution which predated the more celebrated written constitution of the United States of America by three decades. It provided for universal suffrage for islanders over the age of 25…the inclusion of women in the Corsican franchise was a world first[§], building on the island’s earlier precedent of traditional female participation in the podesta (analogous to mayoral elections)[●̲̅̅] [‘The Real First Written Constitution’, Matthew Wills, JSTOR Daily Newsletters, 03-Aug-2018, www.daily.jstor.org].

Inspiring the Corsican constitution were the deeply pervasive ideas of the Enlightenment, thinkers such as Rousseau and Voltaire and the ideals of independence, democracy, progress and liberty. Corsica became a constitutional democracy with a Cunsulta (diet or legislative assembly). Enlightened or not, the new republic went unrecognised internationally with the singular exception of the Bey of Tunis [‘Corsican Republic, the small and ephemeral independent state that held the first modern Constitution Jorge Álvarez, LBV, 30 June 2020, www.labrujulaverda.com].

Alas, both Corsican sovereign independence and universal suffrage did not sustain for long. The Genoese, unable to supplant Pasquale Paoli’s hold on Corsica by themselves, “horse-traded” Corsica to France, precipitating a French invasion of the island in 1768. The Corsicans fought a guerrilla war against the invaders but were always at astronomically long odds of succeeding. After the decisive Battle of Ponte Novu in 1769[✜] the overpowered Corsican republic’s fate was sealed and Paoli was forced into exile in Britain.

Postscript: “The Anglo-Corsican Kingdom”

At the time of France’s conquest of Corsica the British debated intervening to restore Corsican rule but rejected it at the time. The state of war between Britain and France from 1793 following the French Revolution prompted Britain to reverse the earlier decision. ‘Invited’ by the Anglophile Paoli (now back in Corsica) to intervene, the upshot was the creation of a unique if ephemeral union between Britain and Corsica. Although there was some flowery talk about common political values and “sister nationhood”, British motives were primarily military and strategic – with its preeminent naval power, control of Corsica gave it a vital Mediterranean base vis-á-vis revolutionary France (especially important after the British fleet’s 1793 expulsion from Toulon by Napoleon). The outcome of the brief experiment of the union (1794-96) with Corsica as a client of imperial Britain was disillusionment on both sides. Aggravating the situation was the relationship between the London-appointed viceroy Sir Gilbert Elliot and the representatives of the Corsican people, especially Paoli – one of mutual distrust. After 1796 Corsica realigned its future to association with France, a province of which it remains to this day [Carrillo, Elisa A. “The Corsican Kingdom of George III.” The Journal of Modern History 34, no. 3 (1962): 254–74. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1874355.; ‘Britain and Corsica 1728-1796: political intervention and the myth of Liberty’, Luke Paul Long, PhD thesis, University of St Andrews (2018), http://DHL.handle.net/10023/13232].

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[❂] following an earlier uprising by the Corsicans in 1729

[§] Sweden in the early 17th century granted women a limited franchise but only for those holding land and property

[●̲̅̅] Paoli introduced other reforms, a University was established at Corte, the Corsican language was fostered, Corsica minted its own coinage

[✜] the year of Bonaparte’s birth

Just blogging away … doing the hard blog

Continuing the search for signs of Intelligent Life in the University.

Military history

The Chequered History of the Beleaguered League of Nations

The Malayan Emergency: A Last Hurray for Britain and Empire

The ‘Battle of Broken Hill’: The Curious Incident of the Afghan Cameleers’ Two-Man War on the Silver City

A Prototype for ‘Modern’ Democracy and Universal Suffrage?…the Transitory Ripublica Corsa