Magaly Rodriguez Garcia

This edited volume offers a fresh look into the history of the League of Nations. It uses the League of Nations' involvement in social issues as a unique prism for understanding the League's development, as well as the development of interwar international relations more generally. Off the beaten path of diplomatic history, this perspective allows the authors to trace less familiar actors and unexpected alliances. It enables contributors to reassess the League's impact on European societies, their colonial possessions, and non-European states. As such, it also marks a paradigm shift in the League's Eurocentric historiography toward one that acknowledges its global reach.

Visions, Endeavours and Experiments

The League of Nations' Work on Social Issues

The history of international free trade union organisations during the first two decades of the Cold War is an important but often neglected aspect of the development of post-war labour and liberalism. In this path-breaking book, Rodríguez García fills this void in the historical literature by offering a comparative analysis of two cases, the European Regional Organisation (ERO) and the Inter-American Regional Workers' Organisation (ORIT), which were created in the early 1950s as regional branches of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). The author employs the term 'labour liberalism' to describe their wide variety of functions. She argues that social democratic and reformist trade unions, which made up the bulk of ICFTU members, were fundamentally shaped by liberal values, even while calling for the active participation of organised labour in the planning and implementation of projects promoting liberal democracy and socio-economic development at home and abroad. By placing international free trade unionism centre stage, this book adds significantly to our understanding of post-war labour and liberalism.

The ICFTU and the Defence of Labour Liberalism in Europe and Latin America (1949-1969)

Liberal Workers of the World, Unite?

Marcel van der Linden

Jasmien van Daele

Geert van Goethem

In 2009, the International Labour Organization (ILO) celebrated its ninetieth anniversary. The First World War and the revolutionary wave it provoked in Russia and elsewhere were powerful inspirations for the founding of the ILO. There was a growing understanding that social justice, in particular by improving labour conditions, was an essential precondition for universal peace. Since then, the ILO has seen successes and set-backs; it has been ridiculed and praised. Much has been written about the ILO; there are semi-official histories and some critical studies on the organization's history have recently been published. Yet, further source-based critical and comprehensive analyses of the organization's origins and development are still lacking. The present collection of eighteen essays is an attempt to change this unsatisfactory situation by complementing those histories that already exist, exploring new topics, and offering new perspectives. It is guided by the observation that the ILO's history is not primarily about «elaborating beautiful texts and collecting impressive instruments for ratification» but about effecting «real change and more happiness in peoples' lives».

Magaly Rodriguez Garcia

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