This paper examines un-official correspondence sent to the League during the Dispute reconfiguring the perceptions of this event in both European history and in a global context. I argue that the examination of these documents changes the story of the interwar years, League historiography, and the Dispute by considering the ways ordinary people understood the events unfolding around them. Current understanding of the League is marred by ex post facto cynicism because of its ultimate failure to maintain world peace. A re-examination of the Dispute through these documents, which have never before been considered as a body, forces a reconsideration of the historiography concerning the interwar era and global understanding of what was at stake.
The Ethiopian Question: Reconfigurations of the Inter-War Period through Un-Official Correspondence to the League of Nations during the Italo-Ethiopian Dispute
Saturday, March 15, 2014
Chairman's (Omni Shoreham)
In December 1934 a frontier skirmish between the Italians and Ethiopians at Walwal in southern Ethiopia touched off the Italo-Ethiopian Dispute (1934-1938). This Dispute, brought before the League of Nations, was one of a number of events in the inter-war period that contributed to public concerns about collective security. The official record deals with the Dispute in the shadow of World War II, Germany, and Japan. Beyond the official record is another body of documents in which the people of the world expressed what they were thinking about the Dispute. Although not power brokers or major actors on the political stage, thousands of individuals wrote to the League. Organizations of all types—including labor, veterans, women’s groups, church groups, and many others representing millions of people—sent correspondence to the League concerning the Dispute.
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