The Chequered History of the Beleaguered League of Nations

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Military history, Regional History

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).

Opening session of the League’s assembly, 1920 (Source: Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

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).

Map of LoN member countries

“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).

2nd Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935-36

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).

Palace of Nations (Geneva) League HQs (Photo: League of Nations Archive)

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 Passport in History: Travel Papers to Regulate Mobility, Identity and Control

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
National politics, Political geography, Regional History, Travel

We live in an age fraught with concerns about security in the wider world, a symptom of which is the ongoing demand for more secure passports enhanced by ever smarter applications of technology – biometric data (eg, photographs, fingerprints and iris patterns), ePassports (embedded microprocessor chips), etc. The international passport today is a much valued and for some a lucrative commodity𝔸, but when did people first start to use passports as we understand the concept?

Passports or their document antecedents were known to exist in ancient civilisations – artwork from the Old Kingdom (ca.1,600 BC) depict Egyptian magistrates issuing identity tablets to guest workers; in the (Hebrew) Bible Judaean governor Nehemiah furnishes a subject permission to travel to the Persian Empire; Ancient Chinese bureaucrats in the Han Dynasty (fl. after 206BC) issued a form of passport (zhuan) for internal travel within the empire, necessary to move through the various counties and points of control.

Henry V

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In medieval Europe the prototype travel document emerged from a sort of gentleman’s agreement between rulers to facilitate peaceful cross-border exchanges (‘The Contentious History of the Passport’, Guilia Pines, National Geographic, 16-May-2017, www.api.nationalgeographic.com)…it provided sauf conduit, allowing an enemy safe and unobstructed ”passage in and out of a kingdom for the purpose of his negotiations”. This convention however was ad hoc, haphazard and capricious, the grantor’s ‘authority’ bestowed on the traveller might not be recognised at any point in his or her travels (Martin Lloyd, The Passport: The History of Man’s Most Travelled Document (2005)). The Middle Ages nonetheless did bring advances in the formulation of travel documents for extra-jurisdiction movements. Individual cities in Europe often had reciprocal arrangements where someone granted a passport-type paper in their home city could enter a city in another sovereignty for business without being required to pay its local fees (‘When were passports as we know them today first introduced?’, (Rupert Matthews), History Extra, 29-Sep-2021, www.historyextra.com). King Henry V, he of lasting Agincourt fame, authorised just such a early form of passport/visa as proof of identity for English travellers venturing to foreign lands, leading some to credit him with the introduction of the first true passport. The issuing of travelling papers sanctioned by the English Crown were enacted by parliament in the landmark Safe Conducts Act of 1414.

A ‘passport’ letter furnished by King Charles I to a overseas-bound private citizen of the crown, dating from 1636

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Before the rise of the nation-state system in 19th century Europe, large swathes of the populations of the multitudinous political entities—largely comprising serfs, slaves and indentured servants—routinely required “privately created passes or papers to legitimise their movement” (‘Papers, Please: The Invention of the Passport’, (Eric Schewe), JSTOR Daily, 17-Mar-2017, www.daily.jstor.org). Kings, lords and landowners all issued ad hoc laissez-passer of their own definition and design (Baudoin, Patsy. The American Archivist 68, no. 2 (2005): 343–46. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40294299). A systemic, standardised passport would not materialise until the 20th century.

It was only with the arrival of world war in 1914 that governments, motivated by security needs, turned their attention to tightening up entry requirements between the new nation-states, putting immigration quotas on the agenda (US legislators for example were eager to check the flow of immigrants into the country). Spearheaded by the newly created League of Nations (and aided by the availability of cheaper photography) a passport system began to evolve that was recognisably modern. The League in 1920 introduced a passport nicknamed “Old Blue”—specifying the size, layout and design of passports for 42 of its nations—thus establishing the first worldwide passport standards𝔹. Passports “became both standardized, mandatory travel documents and ritual tools reinforcing national identity” (Schewe).

Later the “Old Blue” passport was expanded into a 32-page booklet which included basic data about the holder such as facial characteristics, occupation and address. “Old Blue” had remarkable longevity, remaining the norm for passports until 1988 when it was superseded by a new, burgundy-coloured passport as the international standard (‘The World’s First Official Passport’, Passport Health, www.passporthealthusa.com).

(Source: WSJ Graphics)

Marc Chagall (self-portrait): one of a number of famous Nansen passport holders

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End-note: Married women travellers and the ‘stateless’
As the standardised international passport took shape, married women (unlike single women) were not admitted initially into the ranks of passport-holders in their own right, rather they were considered merely “as an anonymous add-on to their husbands’ official document”, eg, ”John Z and wife” (the wife’s public identity at the time still tied very much to that of their spouse‘s). In 1917 newly married American writer Ruth Hale’s request for a passport in her maiden name to cover the war in France was denied (‘The 1920s Women Who Fought For the Right to Travel Under Their Own Names’, (Sandra Knisely), Atlas Obscura, 27-Mar-2017, www.atlasobscura.com). Also bereft of passports in the modern-state system were those refugees who found themselves stateless in the turbulent aftermath of WWI. To address this crisis the League of Nations issued ”Nansen passports”ℂ from 1922 to 1938 to approximately 450,000 refugees. Originally intended for White Russians and Armenians (and later for Jews feeing persecution under the Nazis), the “Stateless passports” allowed their holders “to cross borders to find work, and protected them from deportation (‘The Little-Known Passport That Protected 450,000 Refugees’, (Cara Giaimo), Atlas Obscura, 07-Feb-2017, www.atlasobsura.com)𝔻.

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𝔸 like the small island-states Malta and Cyprus who happily sell their citizenship to anyone who can afford it (up to US$1,000,000)

𝔹 “Old Blue” was originally written in French, just like the origin of the word ‘passport’ itself — passeport, from passer (“to pass” or “to go”) and port, meaning ‘gate’ or ‘port’

ℂ named after their promoter, Norwegian polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen

𝔻 the Stateless passports didn’t of course stop the numbers of stateless refugees from continuing to escalate alarmingly…the UNHCR estimates that the global number of stateless persons is now more than 10,000,000

Hans Island “Whisky War”: Seemingly a Straw Quarrel Conducted with Restraint and Civility

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
Geography, International Relations, Political geography, Politics, Regional History

With so many hotspots and tense border stand-offs across the world, the dispute over an obscure island in the Arctic region by two peaceful modern western democracies definitely flies under the international radar. The unlikely spot is Hans Island, a 1.3 square kilometre slab of rock situated in the middle of the Nares Strait separating Greenland from Canada’s Northeast periphery. Barren and uninhabited, devoid of natural resources, the island has been the object of claims on it by both Denmark (of which Greenland is a sovereign part) and Canada since the 1930s¹.

Initially, the League of Nations adjudged the dispute in Denmark’s favour in 1933². But given the ineffectiveness and eventually dissolution of the inaugural world body, the LoN’s ruling carried little weight.

Over the decades Denmark and Canada continued to disagree on who owns Hans Island – without either doing anything about it. Bilateral negotiations in 1973 completely sidestepped the issue of the island’s sovereignty – a maritime border with the vertical line drawn through Nares Strait conveniently left the island itself untouched, and thus still unresolved.

An assertion of sovereignty done with humour and good nature

The 1980s saw an escalation of the competing claims in a tit-for-tat exchange of flag-planting on the island. First there was the hoisting of the Canadian maple leaf (accompanied by an additional item, a trademark bottle of Canadian whisky). The Danes duly responded with their own flag and a bottle of Danish schnapps.

The issue threatened to flare-up again in 2005 when Canadian defense minister Bill Graham earned Copenhagen‘s ire with his unilateral visit of Hans Island. However common sense prevailed and both sides committed to enter into a process to resolve the matter…since then though little headway has been made towards this goal.

A proposal for Inuit authority on the ground

In 2002 academics proposed that Canada and Denmark share control of Tartupaluk (the Greenlandic name for Hans Island), with hands-on management devolving to Inuit control. So far nothing has come of this.

Postscript: A straw prize on the surface but potentially a promising long-term prospect?

Though never getting remotely close to a military confrontation, the periodic posturing and grandstanding by Canada and Denmark reflects the desire of both governments to secure possession of Hans Island. Two material considerations seem to inform the disputants‘ commitment to the cause – the possibility of oil and gas reserves in the seabed around Hans Island and the potential of the (Nares) strait as a future international shipping route.

End-note: A third claimant to Hans Island has emerged in recent years, Russia, filing its claim through the orthodox UN channels

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¹ “a bizarre sliver of territory for two countries to fight over” as one observer depicted it (Bender)

² a tricky matter to adjudicate on as the island technically lies in both countries’ waters, falling within the 12 mile-territorial limit under international law

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Referenced websites and sources:

‘Analysis: Hans Island – and the endless dispute over its sovereignty’, (Martin Breum), High North News, 24-Oct-2018, www.highnorthnews.com

‘2 countries have been fighting over an uninhabited island by leaving each other bottles of alcohol for over 3 decades’, (Jeremy Bender), Business Insider, 10-Jan-2016, www.businessinsider.com

‘Canada and Denmark Fight Over Island With Whisky and Schnapps’, (Dan Levin), New York Times, 07-Nov-2016, www.nytimes.com

‘Hans Island Case – A territorial dispute in the Arctic’, (Master Thesis), (Nikoleta Maria Hornackova), Aalborg University, May 2018, www.projekter.aau.dk

The Fiume Enterprise and d’Annunzio: A Peculiar but Prophetic Prelude to the Italian Fascist State

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
Biographical, International Relations, Political geography, Regional History

In the aftermath of the Great War, among the numerous issues facing the post-world war peacemakers was what to do about the status of Fiume, which had been part of the  (dissolved) Austro-Hungarian Empire. Both the newly established Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (KSCS), and Italy, laid claims to the city whose population included significant numbers of Italians as well as Croats and Slovenes. While the Paris Peace Conference deliberated over Fiume’s fate❈, an Italian poet-adventurer named Gabriele d’Annunzio took advantage of the city’s state of flux to invade with a small private force in the name of Italian irredentism.

The “Poet-Warrior”
D’Annunzio was an international celebrity in his time, an unconventional, physically small but larger-than-life, multi-faceted character, an Italian man of letters who also saw himself as un uomo d’azione (‘a man of action’)⌖. Having seized the disputed Adriatic port of Fiume, d’Annunzio offered his prize to the Italian government who not wanting to endorse d’Annunzio’s dubious coup, rejected the offer [‘An Irishman’s Diary on Gabriele d’Annunzio — the “John the Baptist of Fascism” and would-be IRA quartermaster’, (Mark Phelan), The Irish Times, 07-Mar-2018, www.irishtimes.com]. Spurned, d’Annunzio reacted by declaring Fiume’s independence as the “Italian Regency of Carnaro”, AKA Impresa di Fiume (‘Endeavour (or Enterprise) of Fiume’).


Progressive reforms and a repudiation of the Versailles Treaty
The constitution (la carta del Carnaro) of d’Annunzio’s unrecognised enclave contained an idiosyncratic “grab-bag” of ideas, including elements from both the Left and Right. The charter included many progressive articles – calling for the full equality of women in society, tolerance for both religion and atheism, a social security system, medical insurance and age pensions✪[Michael A Leeden, The First Duce: D’Annunzio at Fiume, (1977)]. D’Annunzio’s regime was the first to recognise the Soviet Union and pitched the idea of a kind of “anti-league of nations” for (select) oppressed peoples of the world—which in d’Annunzio’s thinking was those countries which fared badly in the post-WWI territory carve-up and were holding a grudge—including offering assistance in the form of arms to the IRA in its struggle to free itself from British colonialism (🔺photo: d’Annunzio and some of his supporters in Fiume).


Culture, ‘counterculture’, plus proto-fascism
La carta del Carnaro made music a key principle of the state, the arts flourished with daily public poetry readings and concerts. Impresa di Fiume established a corporatist state along anarcho-syndalicalist lines. The Adriatic city exuded a veritable bohemian buzz, becoming, as Hughes-Halley notes, a “political laboratory” for all manner of political persuasion including anarchists, syndicalists, socialists and ultimately, fascists. It wasn’t all politics either…all manner of perceived ‘subversives’ and outliers, including the socially marginalised, the unorthodox and the disenfranchised, flocked to d’Annunzio’s enclave – fugitives, drug dealers (and takers), prostitutes, discontented idealists, ‘pirates’, dandies, homosexuals, artistic “drop-outs”, runaways, and so on⊞ [Lucy Hughes-Halley, The Pike: Gabriele D’Annunzio, Poet, Seducer and Preacher of War, (2013)].

Although the Fiuman duce wasn’t a fully-fledged fascist himself, his political ideas and his aesthetics in inspired an imitator in Benito Mussolini and informed the blueprint for the future Italian corporatist-fascist state – d’Annunzio’s legacy which prompted many to see him as a kind of “godfather of Italian Fascism” includes the staging of mass rallies, demagogic speechifying, black-shirted vigilantism and Roman salutes (Phelan). Moreover, d’Annunzio’s adventurism in the Regency of Carnaro contributed to a weakening of Italian democracy and paved the way for the Fascist takeover and consolidation of the corporatist state (Hughes-Hallett).

D’Annunzio’s exile and defenestration
Under a deal between Italy and KSCS (Treaty of Rapallo, 1920), the enclave’s name was changed to the Free State of Fiume. D’Annunzio refused to acknowledge the agreement and having failed to reach a modus vivendi with the Italian government, impetuously and unwisely declared war on Italy – with predictable, disastrous results. Fiume was bombarded and d’Annunzio was forced to flee—relocating in exile to Lake Garda in the eastern Lombard region—leaving his Reggenza and his schemes for a new world order in tatters. A later agreement (Treaty of Rome, 1924) sealed Fiume’s full annexation by Italy. Injuries sustained by the still popular d’Annunzio in 1922 when he mysteriously fell from a window (possibly an assassination attempt) worked to Mussolini’s favour, whether he was implicated or not. D’Annunzio withdrew from politics and Mussolini secured his continued inactivity through the payment of inducements. D’Annunzio however characteristically did not remain entirely mute, proffering advice to Mussolini whenever he felt the inclination◰, such as his warning, unheeded, in the 1930s to Il Duce not to enter into an axis pact with Hitler.

Topnymic end-note: Flume, Fiume, Rijeka
Fiume today is the city of Rijeka (‘River’ in Croatian) within the Republic of Croatia (post-Yugoslavia space)… roughly, a bit over twice the size of Fiume in d’Annunzio’s day, it comprises the most important deep-water port on the Croatian coast.

 


⋄ ⏦ ∝ ⧜ ∘ ⋄ ⏦ ∝ ⧜ ∘ ⋄ ⏦ ∝ ⧜ ∘ ⋄ ⏦ ∝ ⧜ ∘ ⋄ ⏦ ∝ ⧜ ∘ ⋄ ⏦ ∝ ⧜ ∘ ⋄ ⏦ ∝ ⧜ ∘ ⋄ ⏦ ∝ ⧜

❈ the Allies’ (and US president, Wilson’s) preference had been to make Fiume into a buffer state, a prime candidate for the headquarters of the soon-to-be created League of Nations

⌖ d’Annunzio was many more things as well — decadent artist and musician, aesthete, war-monger and war-hero, necromancer, pioneering aeronautist, serial debt-defaulter, libertine and cad, above all perhaps, an indefatigable self-publicist (Hughes-Halley)

✪ progressive platform aside, Comandante d’Annunzio retained an elitist perception of his own role in national affairs, inspired by Nietzsche, that of the Übermensch or superuomo (the “superior man” who rises above society’s mediocrity)

⊞ it would be interesting to know if the Fiume Enterprise had any influence on the creation of contemporary Užupis, the bohemian “independent republic” of artists ensconced within the city of Vilnius, Lithuania 🇱🇹 – see blog Vilnius I, Senamiestis & Užupis: From Old Town to Artistocrazy? (06-November 2015)

◰ Mussolini and d’Annunzio exchange some 578 letters and telegrams until the latter’s death in 1938 [Peterson, Thomas E. “Schismogenesis and national character: the D’Annunzio-Mussolini correspondence.” Italica, vol. 81, no. 1, 2004, p. 44+. Gale Academic OneFile, Accessed 21 Sept. 2020].