League of Nations Historiography

Historians for League of Nations Unit, IB HL History

Iriye (Japanese-born American historian)

The League replaced military power with rule of law and 'world public opinion'

Brogan (British historian, born 1936)

League was dependent on goodwill of surrounding nations

Henig (British historian and labour activist)

• Britain was reluctant to commit militarily to the League

• “[The League] was a bold step towards international cooperation which failed in some of its aims but succeeded comprehensively in others”

Morris + Murphy (educational textbook writers)

The League was weak because it's military capabilities were undefined

"final nail in the coffin"

what some historians view the abyssinian crisis as

Wilson (Australian historian, university educated)

Manchurian Crisis did not impact Japanese militarism because there was a return to normal before WWII

Sheehan (American historian)

The Kellogg-Briand Pact was the legal foundation for a new international order

Carr (British historian)

Blamed WWII on Wilson’s utopianism, arguing that power, not idealism, ensures peace.  During the Cold War, not just the League, but the whole idea of collective security seemed a fantasy; ‘realist’ historians viewed the League not only as ineffective but as actually encouraging the Axis powers to go to war.

Steiner (American-british historian, born 1928)

• The Geneva system … was not a substitute for great-power politics but rather an adjunct to it.  It was only a mechanism for conducting multinational diplomacy. 

• “More doors were opened than shut”.

Kennedy (American historian, wrote in 1987)

We might best think of the Second World War as the elaborate fulfilment of the League's best substantive imagination - a war of all against the aggressor.