A League of Empires: Imperial Political Imagination and Interwar Internationalisms

Abstract

The emergence of the League of Nations marked an important historical moment in the internationalisation of imperial and colonial affairs. Among other important aspects, the League worked to suppress slavery and all its forms, providing a platform for the circulation of information about colonial realities. Debates about slavery established new consensus about imperial civilization and created novel legal frameworks to consider the relationship between slavery, forced labour, racial discrimination, and “native welfare.” At the same time, through the Slavery Commission, the League created common instruments and questionnaires to analyse and interpret imperial and colonial systems. All these processes were also sponsored by the International Labour Organization (ILO), namely by its Committee of Experts on Native Labour. The international scrutiny and tentative supervision of the imperial and colonial modi operandi, which potentially involved the restriction of imperial sovereignty, were gradually institutionalised. By exploring the historical co-constitution of distinct internationalisms and imperialisms, this paper explores the intersection of political power and shared norms. The debates within the League and ILO and the role played by humanitarian transnational pressure groups are analysed, as are the ways in which European colonial empires dealt with these new frameworks, resisting their potential constraints via strategies of inter-imperial cooperation, but also seizing their actual political and economic opportunities, aiming to enhance their international legitimacy as Empire-states and to consolidate their colonial rule.

* Translated by Sara Veiga

This text—associated with the projects Internationalism and Empire: The Policies of Difference in the Portuguese Colonial Empire in a Comparative Perspective and Change to Remain? Welfare Colonialism in European Colonial Empires in Africa (1920–1975), both funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (Refs: FCT-PTDC/EPH-HIS/5176/2012 and IF/01628/2012)—has benefited from the critique and suggestions of several colleagues. I wish to thank Susan Pedersen, Glenda Sluga, Sandrine Kott, Ann Laura Stoler, Frederick Cooper, José Pedro Monteiro, Martin Thomas, Davide Rodogno, Natasha Wheatley, Meredith Terretta, Ryan Irwin, Diogo Ramada Curto, Corinna Unger, Simon Jackson, Maria Framke, Aimee Genell, Amalia Ribi, Alexander Keese, António Costa Pinto, Florian Wagner, Jessica Pearson, Hugo Dores, Vanessa Ogle, and Stephen Legg.