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Patricia Clavin. Securing the World Economy: e Reinvention of the League of Nations, 1920-1946. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 2013. xii + 400 pp. $125.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-957793-4.

Reviewed bySally Marks (Independent Historian)Published onH-Diplo (September, 2013)Commissioned bySeth Offenbach

e Leagues Other Self

When diplomatic historians contemplate the Leagueof Nations, our minds turn to the council, the assem-

bly, and the failures. We may know something of theAustrian and Hungarian financial reconstructions, if notthose of Greece and Bulgaria, and recall the 1927 WorldEconomic Conference (as well as that of 1933), but are weaware that these were all league activities? Do many ofus realize that the United States participated in numer-ous league economic initiatives, contributed financiallyto the cost of that participation, gave wartime refuge tothe leagues core economic officials, and consulted themextensively about postwar economic and financial plan-ning? Our emphasis tends to be heavily political andchiefly European, as does most of the literature. In anedifying and exhaustively researched work, Oxford Uni-

versity historian Patricia Clavin redresses the imbalanceand examines the leagues economic and financial activ-ities.

Clavin writes, is book tells the story of how dur-ing this period [the thirty years aer World War I] effortsto support global capitalism became a core objective ofthe League of Nations (p. 1). In addition, is studyaempts to give the League its due as an actor, or moreproperly as a company of actors, rather than treating itmerely as a stage. And finally, she asserts that this isalso a history of ideas about capitalism as seen by theleague secretariat (p. 4). ese goals are all met, the last

in part in chapter 5, elsewhere in passages about indi-vidual actors and in footnote critiques of existing litera-ture. Except for a modest number of highly specializedand usually narrow works, Clavin is plowing new groundregarding the activities of the League of Nations.

As Clavin notes, the leagues founders did not ex-pect it to deal with economics at all. However, the 1920Brussels conference, of which Clavin gives a remark-ably lucid explanation, launched what became a majorfocus on financial and economic problems. is first-

world International Financial Conference, convoked bythe league, reached no major decisions but legitimated

the leagues new role in economic diplomacy, creatingan Economic and Financial Commiee which gave rise intime to the Economic and Financial Organization (EFO).It also demonstrated both the ability of the league to re-cruit the aid of leading economists and the urgent needfor reliable statistics. On the laer, the league immedi-ately began to collect, collate, and compare data globally,and continued to do so until its demise, adapting quicklyto innovations. When the United States turned to recip-rocal trade agreements and major public works projectsaer 1933, the league promptly collected data on those.

For the rest, once east European currencies were sta-bilized, the EFO tried to coordinate the policies of na-tions and to nudge the world back toward pre-1914 lev-els of growth. In 1923, the leagues commiees receiveda mandate to study economic and monetary questionsand to issue scholarly policy recommendations on the ba-sis of its reports. is launched a distinguished series ofspecialized studies by mixed panels of governmental, pri-vate, and academic experts who increasingly aemptedto shape the worlds economic and financial relations.

Clavin focuses primarily on the EFOand especiallyitssecretariat. at sounds narrow but is not, for the EFOsecretariat was at the very core of all the leagues eco-nomic activities. One of the lessons of this book is never

to underestimate the power of a bureaucracy. e sec-retariat proposed conferences and research projects (byinternational panels), researched and wrote the prelimi-nary studies, drew up conference agendas, selected dele-gates and panel members, and draed final reports. Itsrole, reach, networks, power (though not that of finaldecision), and influence, though quiet, became very ex-tensive. Although international civil servants were for-bidden to make policy recommendations, it had policieswhich its myriad activities furthered. One effect of its

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least activeon the world stage, as was the league in mat-ters they addressed. One might ask, however, whethertheir contribution to the cast of the global drama equaled

their efforts to stage-manage aspects of it. In any event,Geneva clearly was the focal point for the worlds globaleconomists, a new breed of importance then, and of even

more importance postwar. Sadly, however, they encoun-tered the same problems of state sovereignty, which stillexist, as beer-known league activities did. is is in fact

a study oftryingto secure the world economy andtryingto reinvent the League of Nations, efforts which alas didnot succeed.

If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the list discussion logs at:hp://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl.

Citation: Sally Marks. Review of Clavin, Patricia,Securing the World Economy: e Reinvention of the League of Nations, 1920-1946. H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews. September, 2013.URL:hp://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=39130

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