The centennial of the First World War has prompted questions about its impact beyond 1918, one of which was the League of Nations. Formed in 1920 following the Paris Peace Conference and the Treaty of Versailles, the League of Nations had an ambitious agenda to check aggression and usher in a new world order following the decimation of war. The League had forty-two founding members, twenty-one other countries joined over the course of the League’s existence from 1920 to 1946. Seven countries left, were expelled or withdrew. The most powerful country in the world, the United States, refused to join having a deep impact on the history of the League.

While the League ultimately failed to prevent another world war its impact on the course of interwar history was varied and complex. It was charged with monitoring militaries and industries adaptable to war-like purposes, it was a place of arbitration for international disputes between member countries providing oversight of international treaties and engagement. It was tasked with promoting fair and humane conditions of labour for men, women and children, with preventing the traffic of women and children and with promoting health and preventing disease. It also housed the Permanent Mandates Commission that bound mandatory countries together - France, Belgium, Japan and the British bloc of Britain, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand - in a new form of colonialism that effected thirteen countries in the Middle East, Africa and the Pacific that were drawn into the mandate system. Despite its failures, the League of Nations did bring countries and people together in new ways from new alignments of nations to new forms of grassroots internationalisms like League of Nations unions.

This two-day symposium seeks papers on any aspect of the League of Nations, its history, impact or legacies.

Please send a paper title and brief synopsis (200 words) to both conveners: j.damousi@unimelb.edu.au and patricia.obrien@anu.edu.au