The uses of history in international society: from the Paris peace conference to the present
Abstract
Yet the familiar notion of ‘history’s lessons’—a notion which tends to make most historians uncomfortable, and which surely demands thoroughgoing scepticism—is far from the only use of history in the practice and study of international relations.6One very important and timely subject is the more constitutive role of history in international deliberations over the creation, fragmentation and transformation of nation-states. What follows is a historical comparison of the changing ways in which the past has been used to frame the terms and content of such debates. While we will be exploring the uses of history as a guide or teacher, we propose to examine more specifically and at greater length the growth and persistence of newer uses: first, to bolster claims to independence and territory; and second, in demanding restitution in the form of financial reparations, apologies and other economic and social privileges.
By examining the ways in which history was used 100 years ago at the end of the First World War and in recent episodes of the Cold War and post-Cold War eras, we hope to show both continuities and differences. What specialists must appreciate is that history is being used and will continue to be used not only within the confines of the academy, but within international society itself, where it may serve as a foundation for arbitrating political disagreements, including those regarding the boundaries, assets, rights and duties belonging to states. Indeed, if non-specialist and popular reliance on history has changed at all, it has grown, possibly because other forms of authority have attenuated. Sovereign governments no longer acknowledge territorial and other gains won through discretionary military force as lawful or appropriate. Nor do they tend to call on religion or on theories of empire or racial superiority as formal justifications for state boundaries or sovereignties, as they did in centuries past. Perhaps because we often believe the past is the past and cannot be changed, history has increasingly been seen in this century and the last as a legitimate source of authority.
The twentieth century marked the high point of the nation-state and international relations—itself a new term—focused on state-to-state relations. An increasingly important use of history was as a building block and justification for autonomous nations with their own states and territory. The Paris peace conference of 1919 took place as multinational empires in Europe and the Middle East were disappearing, leaving vast amounts of territory up for grabs. History was adduced by the representatives of would-be nations as an important and sometimes clinching argument. It is true that arguments based on security, economics, access to such assets as railway networks, ports and raw materials, or treaty obligations were also used, but assertions about the national identity of a particular piece of territory necessarily drew heavily on history. Interestingly, conquest, for so long accepted in international law as a basis for acquiring territory, was no longer compatible with self-determination.
While history was also employed in Paris to support demands for restitution unrelated to territory, that application became most prominent later on with crucial changes in the international environment. As the twentieth century wore on, conquest fell away even further than it had done by 1919 as a basis for claims. Furthermore as both old and new states proved reluctant for various reasons to open up border questions or tolerate secession, history was used less as a basis for territorial claims and relatively more to buttress claims for other types of recompense, including financial reparations and the revision of norms and rules deemed incompatible with the principle of sovereign equality. The era of decolonization and anti-colonial liberation, which witnessed a proliferation of new members of international society, was largely a story of demands for a more genuine and multifaceted self-determination without dissolving the borders drawn by colonial Europe. The use of history as restitution persists into the post-Cold War period, where outright territorial annexation remains rare, but where more general questions of state-making and interstate relations are often answered by reference to distant pasts and memories. Thus history continues to serve as a legitimate authority, even a distinct ethic, in international deliberation, although its use should be interpreted according to the political interests it has furthered.
TEXTO COMPLETO EN PDF: La historia y las rel internacionales