The League of Nations
The League of Nations occupies a fascinating yet paradoxical place in human history. Over time, its come to symbolize both a path to peace and to war, a promising vision of world order and a utopian illusion, an artifact of a bygone era and a beacon for one that may still come. As the first experiment in world organization, the League played a pivotal, but often overlooked role in the creation of the United Nations and the modern architecture of global governance.
In contrast to conventional accounts, which chronicle the institutions successes and failures during the interwar period, Cottrell explores the enduring relevance of the League of Nations for the present and future of global politics. He asks: What are the legacies of the League experiment? How do they inform current debates on the health of global order and US leadership? Is there a dark side to these legacies?
Cottrell demonstrates how the League of Nations soul continues to shape modern international relations, for better and for worse. Written in a manner accessible to students of international history, international relations and global politics, it will also be of interest to graduates and scholars.
M. Patrick Cottrell is Associate Professor of Political Science at Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon, United States. He is author of The Evolution and Legitimacy of International Security Institutions (2016), and numerous articles on topics ranging from global governance to international sport.
Global Institutions
Edited by Thomas G. Weiss
The CUNY Graduate Center, New York, USA
and Rorden Wilkinson
University of Sussex, Brighton, UK
About the series
The Global Institutions Series provides cutting-edge books about many aspects of what we know as global governance. It emerges fromour shared frustrations with the state of available knowledgeelectronic and print-wise, for research and teachingin the area.The series is designed as a resource for those interested in exploring issues of international organization and global governance. And since the first volumes appeared in 2005, we have taken significant strides toward filling conceptual gaps.
The series consists of three related streams distinguished by their blue, red, and green covers. The blue volumes, comprising the majority of the books in the series, provide user-friendly and short (usually no more than 50,000 words) but authoritative guides to major global and regional organizations, as well as key issues in the global governance of security, the environment, human rights, poverty, and humanitarian action among others. The books with red covers are designed to present original research and serve as extended and more specialized treatments of issues pertinent for advancing understanding about global governance. And the volumes with green covers-the most recent departure in the series-are comprehensive and accessible accounts of the major theoretical approaches to global governance and international organization.
The books in each of the streams are written by experts in the field, ranging from the most senior and respected authors to first-rate scholars at the beginning of their careers. In combination, the three components of the series-blue, red, and green-serve as key resources for faculty, students, and practitioners alike. The works in the blue and green streams have value as core and complementary readings in courses on, among other things, international organization, global governance, international law, international relations, and international political economy; the red volumes allow further reflection and investigation in these and related areas.
The books in the series also provide a segue to the foundation volume that offers the most comprehensive textbook treatment available dealing with all the major issues, approaches, institutions, and actors in contemporary global governance-our edited work International Organization and Global Governance (2014)-a volume to which many of the authors in the series have contributed essays.
Understanding global governance-past, present, and future-is far from a finished journey. The books in this series nonetheless represent significant steps toward a better way of conceiving contemporary problems and issues as well as, hopefully, doing something to improve world order. We value the feedback from our readers and their role in helping shape the on-going development of the series.
A complete list of titles can be viewed online here: https://www.routledge.com/Global-Institutions/book-series/GI.
The British Media and the Rwandan Genocide (2018)
by John Nathaniel Clarke
Millennium Development Goals (2018)
by Sakiko Fukuda-Parr
Sustainable Development Goals and UN Goal-setting (2017)
by Stephen Browne
Inside the United Nations (2017)
by Gert Rosenthal
International Institutions of the Middle East (2017)
by James Worrall
The Politics of Expertise in International Organizations (2017)
edited by Annabelle Littoz-Monnet
Obstacles of Peacebuilding (2017)
by Graciana del Castillo
First published 2018
by Routledge
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2018 M. Patrick Cottrell
The right of M. Patrick Cottrell to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Cottrell, Patrick, author.
Title: The League of Nations : enduring legacies of the first experiment at world organization / M. Patrick Cottrell.
Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017015255| ISBN 9781138930889 (hardback) | ISBN 9781315680033 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: League of Nations-History.
Classification: LCC JZ4871 .C67 2018 | DDC 341.22-dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017015255
ISBN: 978-1-138-93088-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-68003-3 (ebk)
