HHIK00831U CANCELLED HIS 83. The History of the League of Nations, 1919-1945

Område B: akademisk skriftlighed med fokus på kildeanalyse [2019-ordningen]
Historisk kerneområde 2: Akademisk skriftlighed med fokus på kildeanalyse [2015-ordningen]
Historisk tilvalgsområde 1 [2019-ordningen [kun for studerende med grundfag i Historie]]

COURSE CANCELLED

HIS 83. The History of the League of Nations, 1919-1945
In 2019, the one hundred years anniversary of the League of Nations was celebrated across the world. The League of Nations was founded in 1919 as the first universal international organisations and was in this sense the precursor of the United Nations. It inspired great hopes in the war weary populations of the European Continent and beyond after the cataclysmic First World War. However, in the two decades it was fully functional, from 1919 to 1939, it did not manage to solve the social, economic and security challenges that plagued Europe and the world. Instead, after a period of seemingly stabilisation in the 1920s, the great world crisis caused a political backlash that led to a new world war in 1939. Observers and historians have in this light traditionally characterised the League of Nations as an abject failure. In recent decades, a new school of historians have changed this assessment. Using the archives of the League of Nations as well as national archives and a host of private archives, they have shown that the organisation played a crucial and innovative role in developing new institutional and legal techniques of international governance as well as technical cooperation with long term impact. In this course, we shall explore the history of the League of Nations in the context of the interwar history as well as the final years of the organisation after it fled to the United States. The course offers students an introduction to international politics of the interwar period and the role played by the League of Nations. It also offers an in depth understanding of the functioning and politics of the League of Nations and how it contributed to the long-term development of international cooperation. Literature will in English, while primary sources can be in English, French, Italian, Spanish and German depending on the linguistic ability of the students.

In a contemporary world where international organisations are under increasing pressure from great power competition and the rise of nationalism, it is time to revisit their historical foundations.

Course objectives (clarification of some of the objectives stipulated in the curriculum): 
 After the course students will be able to:
• have a fundamental and basic understanding of the history of the League of Nations from 1919-1945
• critically analyze and discuss different methodologies, historical interpretations and social science theories dealing with the history of the League of Nations
• work with archival and oral history sources and discuss critically central problems of course criticism
• prepare and carry out a source-based analysis of the history of the League of Nations