Detailed Notes on the League of Nations
League of Nations
Aims of the League
The League of Nations was established with three main aims:
Preventing future wars.
Administering the post-war peace settlements.
Promoting international cooperation.
Preventing Future Wars
The League aimed to prevent future wars through several methods:
Promoting disarmament: Article 8 of the Covenant aimed to reduce national armaments to the lowest point consistent with national safety.
Abolishing secret diplomacy: Article 18 required member states to register and publish all future treaties with the League.
Arbitration: Article 13 committed member states to arbitration by the League in case of disputes. The League would investigate, judge, and its decision would be binding.
Collective Security: Article 16 stipulated that member states would act together against any country seen as a threat to peace, using economic sanctions or joint military action.
Key Terms:
Arbitration: Settling disputes by an impartial third party.
Collective Security: All member states working together to defend any threatened member.
Economic Sanctions: Refusing to trade with a nation defying the League's judgements.
Administering the Post-War Peace Settlements
The League worked to ensure the terms of the peace settlements were carried out in two main ways:
Arranging Plebiscites: For example, the Treaty of Versailles stipulated the Saar Valley would be administered by the League for 15 years, after which a plebiscite would determine if it belonged to France or Germany. The League arranged the plebiscite in 1935, and the Saar region voted to return to Germany.
Organizing Mandates: Colonies taken from defeated nations were run as mandates, administered by another country (the Mandatory) appointed by the League. The Mandatory had to submit an annual report to the League's Mandate Commission, as outlined in Article 22 of the Covenant.
Promoting International Cooperation
The League aimed to improve relations between member states and the lives of their citizens by:
Improving working conditions and wage levels through the International Labour Organization (ILO).
Repatriating prisoners of war and resettling refugees.
Providing loans to new countries, such as Austria and Hungary.
Encouraging the development of education.
Promoting improvements in public health, such as disease prevention and control.
Structure of the League
The main organs of the League of Nations were the General Assembly and the Council.
These were supported by other institutions, including the Secretariat, the Permanent Court of International Justice, and various commissions and committees.
The General Assembly
Met annually in Geneva, Switzerland, symbolizing the desire for peace.
Each member state could send up to three representatives, with one vote per state.
The Assembly's main role was to decide general policy, deal with the admission of new members, and handle the organization's finances.
Any decision taken by the Assembly had to be unanimous.
Key Term:
International Red Cross: Founded in Geneva in 1863 to ease the suffering of those adversely affected by war and armed conflict.
Unanimous Decision: A decision agreed by everyone; in the League's General Assembly, a single country could prevent a decision by voting against it.
The Council
A smaller body whose main function was to settle political disputes between nations.
Held four ordinary sessions each year, with extra meetings in times of emergency.
The Council met a total of 107 times between 1920 and 1939.
As with the General Assembly, decisions had to be unanimous.
Made up of permanent and non-permanent members:
Permanent members: Britain, France, Italy and Japan were the original permanent members. The USA was to have been a permanent member but decided not to join the League. Germany became a fifth permanent member when it joined in 1926. When Germany and Japan both left the League in 1933, the USSR was added as a permanent member.
Non-permanent members: Initially, there were four, elected every three years by the General Assembly. The first non-permanent members were Belgium, Brazil, Greece and Spain. The number of non-permanent members was increased to six in 1922, nine in 1926 and 11 in 1933.
The Secretariat
Carried out the day-to-day work of the League: preparing agendas, publishing reports and dealing with vital routine matters.
Based in Geneva and directed by a Secretary-General, the first of whom was the British diplomat Sir Eric Drummond (1919-1933).
The Permanent Court of International Justice
Based at The Hague in the Netherlands, the Permanent Court was designed to deal with legal disputes between states.
Key Term:
The Permanent Court of International Justice: Often referred to as the World Court, it achieved some success in the 1920s but became less used in the 1930s. Although it ceased to exist in 1946, the United Nations established the International Court of Justice to replace it
The Permanent Court consisted of 15 judges of different nationalities who were elected for a period of nine years by the General Assembly. The Court ran from 1922 to 1946.
Commissions and Committees
A number of commissions and committees were established by the League of Nations to deal with specific problems.
The main commissions dealt with issues such as mandates, disarmament, refugees and slavery.
There were committees for matters relating to international labour, health, child welfare, drug problems and women's rights.
These commissions and committees achieved some notable successes during the 1920s.
They facilitated the repatriation of some 400,000 prisoners of war, set up refugee camps, began the process of finding preventions for diseases such as malaria and leprosy, closed down a number of Swiss companies that were selling illegal drugs, and arranged for the freedom of some 200,000 slaves in countries such as Burma.
However, little progress was made during the 1920s in terms of disarmament, restricting working hours or extending the rights of women.
Key Term:
Repatriation: Returning people, such as prisoners of war, refugees or migrants, to their country of origin.
Collective Security and the League's Involvement in the Resolution of Disputes: Successes
To achieve its main aim of preventing war, the League of Nations developed a system known as collective security. Members of the League would jointly take economic and, if necessary, military action against any country that was posing a threat to peace.
The system was established by Article 16 of the covenant:
The intention was that any future dispute between nations should be referred to the League, which would carefully review all of the issues involved. The League would then decide how best to resolve the dispute, and insist that all of the countries involved accepted its decision. If a country refused to do so and began preparing for war, League members would be asked to impose economic sanctions against it. If these failed to have the desired effect, League members would collectively threaten military action.
It was assumed that, confronted by the combined strength of the League's member states, aggressive countries would be forced to back down.
This system enabled the League to play a key role in the successful resolution of a number of political disputes during the 1920s.
Teschen (1920)
With rich coal deposits, the Teschen area had been one of the wealthiest and most industrialized regions of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
In 1919, violence erupted between Czechoslovakia and Poland, which both claimed the region.
The League arbitrated the dispute, splitting the region between the two countries in 1920.
Although neither country was entirely satisfied, both accepted the decision and the fighting ceased.
The Åland Islands (1921)
The League resolved a dispute over the Åland Islands, located between Sweden and Finland.
The population was Swedish-speaking, but the islands belonged to Finland since the early 1900s.
Most inhabitants wanted to become part of Sweden, but Finland was reluctant to lose sovereignty.
The Swedish government raised the issue with the League of Nations.
The League decided that the islands should remain with Finland.
Both countries accepted the League's decision, and the threat of war was averted.
The Swedish government responded with disappointment but loyally accepted the decision.
The League's decision was based on detailed consideration of all the issues involved and provided specific guarantees to protect the rights of Swedish people in the islands to maintain their own language and culture.
Upper Silesia (1921)
The people of Upper Silesia were divided over whether they wished to be part of Germany or Poland.
This led to local riots between 1919 and 1921.
The League of Nations decided that the area should be divided between Germany and Poland.
The League's decision was accepted by both Germany and Poland, and the vast majority of the Upper Silesians themselves.
Mosul (1924)
The city and region of Mosul had been part of the Turkish Empire until 1918.
Mosul became part of the British mandate of Iraq.
Turkey demanded control of the region.
In 1924, the League of Nations found in favor of Iraq.
The Turks accepted the decision after reaching an agreement with Britain.
The Greece-Bulgaria Border Dispute (1925)
Following a border dispute, Greece invaded Bulgaria in 1925.
Bulgaria ordered its troops to offer only token resistance, showing faith in the League to find a peaceful settlement.
The League condemned the invasion and called for Greece to withdraw and pay compensation to Bulgaria.
Greece complied with the League's decision.
The League's success in dealing with these disputes was due to its arbitration and decisions being accepted by all parties involved.
These were relatively minor disputes, none of which directly involved any of the world's major powers.
Collective Security and the League's Involvement in the Resolution of Disputes: Challenges
Despite its success in resolving minor disputes, the League's powers were limited and its authority was increasingly challenged.
Vilna (1920)
A dispute arose between Poland and Lithuania over Vilna, the capital of Lithuania but with a predominantly Polish population.
Polish troops occupied the city in 1920.
The League ordered Poland to remove its forces and tried to arrange a plebiscite.
Poland reinforced its troops in Vilna and annexed the city and its surrounding area in 1922.
Poland defied the League of Nations, and the territory remained in Polish hands until 1939.
Britain and France supported Poland's claim to Vilna, leaving the League powerless to enforce its decision.
The underlying weaknesses of the League of Nations were fatally exposed as early as 1920, with Britain and France putting their own national interests ahead of their commitment to the League.
The Invasion of the Ruhr (1923)
German failure to pay war reparations led to France and Belgium invading the Ruhr, Germany's most important industrial region, in 1923.
Two members of the League of Nations were breaking the rules to which they had committed themselves by signing the Covenant of the League.
Since decisions of the Council had to be unanimous, the League was effectively prevented from taking action to deal with this incident.
It was the Dawes Plan of 1924 that finally led to the withdrawal of French and Belgian troops from the Ruhr region, the League of Nations having been powerless to either prevent or end it.
The Corfu Incident (1923)
In 1923, Italy blamed Greece for the death of three Italian officials monitoring the border between Greece and Albania.
Mussolini demanded compensation and occupied the Greek island of Corfu.
Greece appealed to the League of Nations, which ordered the Italian troops to withdraw.
Mussolini refused to accept that the League had the authority to deal with this issue, threatened to withdraw Italy from the League, and referred the matter instead to the Council of Ambassadors. The Council decided that Greece should pay compensation to Italy.
This incident exposed two fundamental weaknesses of the League of Nations. First, as a member of the League of Nations Council, Italy was in a position to prevent the League from taking any action. Second, the League's decision was effectively overruled by another body - the Council of Ambassadors.
Key Term:
The Council of Ambassadors: An intergovernmental agency founded in 1920 with the task of implementing the terms of the Paris peace settlement and mediating territorial disputes between European states. Chaired by the French foreign minister, the other nations represented were Britain, Italy and Japan. In view of its decision not to ratify the Paris peace settlement, the USA had observer status only (it could oversee the rulings of the Council of Ambassadors but had no power to change them).
The League of Nation's effectiveness was heavily dependent on the attitudes of its most powerful members.
The League was ineffective when these powerful nations put their own interests above their commitment to the League of Nations, as over the issues of the Ruhr invasion and the Corfu Incident.
Many member states were already expressing concern that the League provided no real guarantee of international peace and security.
Weaknesses of the League
Even during the 1920s, when the League enjoyed some success in resolving international disputes, it was clear that its powers and authority were limited. There were a number of reasons for the League's weakness.
Created by an unpopular peace settlement
The League emerged from the treaties agreed at the Paris peace settlement.
The League was closely associated with treaties that were unpopular in many countries and which inevitably led to numerous territorial disputes.
To many observers, the League of Nations was an organisation created by, and for the benefit of, the First World War's victorious nations - a perception reinforced by the fact that none of the defeated nations was initially allowed to join.
Member states
The League of Nations was conceived as a global organisation.
Of the world's major powers, only Britain, France, Italy and Japan were members of the League throughout the 1920s.
Germany was not allowed to join until 1926, the USSR did not become a member until 1934 and the USA was never a member.
The USA's refusal to join the League of Nations
The USA rejected the post-war peace settlement and the League of Nations, despite the fact that its president had been so instrumental in the creation of both.
By the time Wilson returned to the USA from the Paris Peace Conference, the Republican Party had gained control of the Senate.
To most Americans, the best way of ensuring that the USA did not become involved in another war was a return to the policy of isolationism.
The USA's refusal to join the League was a significant blow to its prospects of success, reducing both its credibility and financial security.
Other organisations
The authority of the League of Nations was frequently undermined.
For example, the Council of Ambassadors had been established to administer the post-war treaties until such time as the League of Nations was fully operational. In reality, it continued to function until 1931, and on several occasions disagreed with, and took precedence over, the League's decisions (as in the Corfu Incident).
Similarly, countries often chose to ignore the League entirely, preferring to make separate agreements such as the Locarno Treaties of 1925.
The need for unanimity
The Covenant of the League of Nations required that decisions, both within the General Assembly and the Council, must be unanimous.
The requirement for unanimity provided them with the right of veto - the ability to prevent a decision being reached and acted upon.
The League's decision-making process was slow, especially since many decisions required ratification by the General Assembly, which met only once a year.
As a result, the League appeared both slow and indecisive.
Collective security
The League's ability to confront aggression and threats to world peace was based on the notion of collective security - League members working together to impose economic sanctions or, in the worst case situation, taking military action.
A resolution passed in 1923 established that each member state could decide for itself whether or not to provide armed forces in a crisis. This clearly undermined the entire principle on which collective security was based.
Governments in both countries believed that they were militarily weak and that war must be avoided at all costs.
National interests
At times, countries discovered that their commitments to the League of Nations were at odds with their own national interests.
The League took no action in response to Poland's conflict with the USSR because neither Britain nor France had any desire to help a country that was not a member of the League and whose communist government they saw as a threat.
France would clearly not endorse any League action against its own occupation of the Ruhr in 1923.
The League of Nations was only as strong as the willingness of its member states to support it. That willingness was often found wanting.
Role and Impact of the Agencies
The International Labour Organization (ILO)
The ILO was created by and financed through the League of Nations.
Under the leadership of Frenchman Albert Thomas, the ILO enjoyed some success in improving working conditions around the world.
Governments were persuaded to fix maximum working hours (per day and per week), to establish minimum wage levels, to provide sickness and unemployment benefits and to introduce old-age pensions.
The International Commission for Refugees
Under its director, the Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen, the International Commission for Refugees helped to resettle over half a million former prisoners of war who had been stranded in Russia at the end of the First World War.
In 1922, the Commission was responsible for introducing the Nansen passport, the first internationally recognised identity card for stateless refugees.
When violence erupted in Turkey during 1923, the Commission helped to find homes, food and jobs for almost one-and-a-half million refugees, working closely with other agencies to prevent the spread of diseases such as typhoid and cholera.
In 1928, the International Commission was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts to introduce the Nansen passport.
The Health Organization
Achieved a great deal in investigating the causes and possible preventions of epidemics.
It was successful in combating a typhus epidemic in Russia and carried out research on diseases such as leprosy.
Following its research, vaccines were introduced worldwide for diseases such as tuberculosis, diphtheria and tetanus.
The Mandates Commission
The Mandates Commission supervised the territories that had been taken from Germany and Turkey at the end of the First World War.
Supervision was intended to ensure that these territories were well-governed and adequately prepared for their own independence.
While the Commission did not have the power to carry out inspections to ensure the accuracy of these reports, there is clear evidence that the mandatory powers treated these territories differently from their other overseas possessions.
In truth, however, little was done to prepare these territories for future independence.
Financial assistance
The League of Nations was able to provide financial assistance to many countries facing economic difficulties.
For example, Austria and Hungary were facing bankruptcy; the League arranged loans for the two nations and sent commissioners to offer advice on how best to spend the money (1922-23).
This set Austria and Hungary on the path to economic recovery.
Other achievements
The League of Nations played a significant role in responding to issues such as the exploitation of women and children, drug trafficking and slavery.
It helped to free 200,000 slaves in places such as Sierra Leone and Burma.
In 1930, the League investigated rumours of forced labour in the independent African state of Liberia, concluding that the president, Charles D. B. King, and senior government officials were guilty of exploiting the situation.
The president was forced to resign, and the League of Nations insisted that the new government carry out reforms.