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One of the world's first truly international humanitarian organisations, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) was championed as a beacon of postwar philanthropy that sought to rehabilitate as well as provide relief. This edited volume offers the first comprehensive study of the UNRRA and seeks to identify the key successes, limitations and enduring challenges it faced in the postwar period. Tracing the rehabilitation of displaced children in the camps of Germany and Austria, to mountainous Greek villages without access to food or medical supplies and refugees in postwar China, it will assess the immediate impact of UNRRA rehabilitation policy on postwar reconst...
Concepts of migration and displacement are all too often separated from ideas of international humanitarianism and occupations; and yet, between 1945 and 1951, victims of war became the joint responsibility of humanitarian workers and military officials in occupied Germany. In this innovative study, Samantha K. Knapton focuses on the lives of Polish displaced persons (DPs) – one of the largest groups in occupied Germany – to shine a spotlight on this interaction for the first time. From the everyday experience of clothing, feeding and sheltering to governmental policies and military actions, Occupiers, Humanitarian Workers and the Polish Displaced Persons in British-Occupied Germany inve...
This book is a vital exploration of the harrowing stories of mass displacement that took place in the first half of the 20th century from the perspective of forced migrants themselves. The volume brings together 15 interrelated case studies which show how the deportation, evacuation and flight of millions of people as a result of the First World War intensified rather than alleviated ethnic conflicts which culminated in population transfers on an even larger scale during and immediately after the Second World War. While each chapter focuses on a different group of refugees and displaced persons, the text as a whole looks at the experience of forced migration as a complex set of evolving rela...
Examining the public information strategies employed by the League of Nations between 1919 and 1940, this book brings together international history, intellectual history and the history of communications to tell the story of how officials in Geneva planned for a new kind of public relations to underpin and strengthen the League's internationalist project. Drawing on multi-archival work and shedding light on the role played by journalists in international diplomacy, it follows in the footsteps of individuals who left promising careers to work for the League's information section and shape opinion on a global scale. Showcasing their vision for an open diplomacy and an informed international public, Seidenfaden shows how this was sought for and achieved against the politically charged backdrop of interwar Europe. Moving beyond the outbreak of WWII, it also shows the legacies that remained after the League was in hiatus, and many of its officials in exile. In doing so, this book reveals how public information strategies developed by the League were transferred into its successor organisation, the United Nations, which continues to shape our world today.
The League of Nations, one of the world's first multi-function intergovernmental organisations, was also one of the first to undergo liquidation. This book unveils the last chapter in its story, showing how complex and time-consuming the end of this 'great experiment' truly was. Starting with the signing of the Charter of the United Nations in 1945 - the death knell of the League - Mumby traces the closure process that followed. From the final meeting of the Assembly in April 1946, the transfer of assets and functions to the UN, the liquidation of the Secretariat, and the last acts of business through 1948, this book follows the story through the eyes of those who made it happen. It demonstr...
During the 20th century dam-building became a truly global endeavour. Built around the world, they generated networks of actors, institutions and companies embedded in globally circulating technological knowledge and discourses of modernization and development. This volume takes a global approach to the history of dams, exploring the complex power relations and internationalist entanglements that shaped them. Shedding new light on the globalization of technology and international power struggles that defined the 20th century, Dam Internationalism shows that dams are artefacts in their own right and have created new and revisionist histories that urge us to rethink classic narratives. From in...
This collection takes a case study approach to enter into and explore spaces of 'Second-Third World' interaction during the Cold War. From the dining halls of a university, to hospital wards, construction sites, military barracks, pubs and more, the chapters drop the scale down from the global to the particular to better see, understand and interpret the complex nature of these spaces. These ordinary spaces are examined to understand how they were conceived, constructed, shaped and reshaped by people over time. Many are physical places of encounter, while others are more abstract, embodying ideological goals. In exploring these spaces the contributors show how the Second and Third World acto...
As ideologies such as communism, fascism and various nationalisms vied for global domination during the first half of the 20th century, this book shows how a specific group of individuals - a cosmopolitan elite - became representatives of those ideologies the world over. Centering on the Indian intellectual M.N Roy, Cosmopolitan Elites and the Making of Globality situates his life within various social circles that covered several ideological realms and continents. An example of an individual who represented ideologies such as anticolonial nationalism, communism and humanism, Roy is identified as unusual but by no means singular in this capacity, and shows how other elites were similarly able to represent ideologies that sought to make the world anew. This book explores how Roy and his peers and competitors became a political elite as they cultivated a cosmopolitan reputation that meant they were taken seriously even when speaking of regions outside of their own. By considering the social and performative practices that turned them into credible, global, cosmopolitans, Wolters uncovers the exclusive basis on which the universal claims of world-changing ideologies were made.
Exploring how modern internationalism emerged as a negotiated process through international conferences, this edited collection studies the spaces and networks through which states, civil society institutions and anti-colonial political networks used these events to realise their visions of the international. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, contributors explore the spatial paradox of two fundamental features of modern internationalism. First, internationalism demanded the overcoming of space, transcending the nation-state in search of the shared interests of humankind. Second, internationalism was geographically contingent on the places in which people came together to conceive and ena...