University of Heidelberg

A3 Networking

The Real Fiction of Unreal Equality: Networking the International System

Coordination: Madeleine Herren-Oesch

Abstract

The research project "Networking the International System" aims at providing a systematic overview on international organisations in the first half of the twentieth century with a special focus on Asian participation. International organisations are discussed as translators of institutional concepts and ideas for a commonly accepted, but always controversial global ‘language’. The project intends to stimulate a debate on the importance of international organisations and their networking for transcultural bargaining processes and, at the same time, to contribute to scholarly self-reflection on existing master narratives in international history. Research is centred on the League of Nations and its affiliated organisations and associations. The collections and publications of these international organisations, therefore, provide most of the project’s source material.

A database (LONSEA: League of Nations Search Engine), developed in cooperation with global historians and database specialists, will collect detailed information about the international organisations of the interwar period and beyond, in oder to uncover underlying institutional activities and personal networks. Several case studies are designed in close connection to the League of Nations system; PhD projects complement each other to a survey on different forms of global interaction.