Social Scientists Learning from History: How Their Ideas Changed the Multilateral Governance of (De-)colonization from the Mandate Commission to the Trusteeship Council

• In Event: National, Transnational and International Histories of Sociology and Social Thought

Abstract

This paper analyzes how social scientists participated in the establishment and functioning of two key multilateral commissions put in charge of administering and then moving the colonies of the defeated Axis block toward independence respectively after the First and Second World War: Geneva’s League of Nations (LoN) and its Mandate Commission; and the new United Nations (UN) Trusteeship Council. In particular, it will focus on two figures who played a pivotal role in each era: William Rappard (1883-1958), a American-Swiss economic historian who moved from Harvard University to Geneva to serve as a member of the Mandates commission from beginning to end and who created the Graduate Institute of international studiesm (a leading interdisciplinary research and teaching Institute funded by the Rockefeller Foundation at the heart of the LoN’s capital); and Ralph Bunche (1904-1971), an African American political scientist who finished a PHD comparing the colonial administration of a French African colony with the multilateral governance of a neighboring ex-German colony under French mandate during the interwar era, and who lead a brilliant career as a diplomat and institution-builder in the postwar era, by creating first the Trusteeship Council to succeed to the Mandates Commission as well as brokering many peace deals, including a cease-fire between a former mandate territory turned independent (e.g. Israel), and its neighboring Arab states (a role for which he received the Nobel Peace prize in 1950). By comparing the two figures’ professional trajectories and detailing how their ideas evolved in conjunction with geopolitical and institutional shifts in the organization of the LoN and then UN systems, this paper examines how social scientists learn from history to create new institutions, in this case, in the context of decolonization.

Author

• Gregoire Mallard, The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies