The history of the League of Nations and the United Nations has recently enjoyed newfound attention. Against a backdrop of contemporary scrutiny of international norms’ potency, historians have tracked backwards seeking to understand the origins and legacies of global governance. The resulting work has found the genesis of international organizations in European attempts to resurrect their world after two decimating world wars. This historical scholarship has demonstrated the centrality of international institutions to twentieth-century European history. Yet much of the work has focused on political leaders, leaving open historical questions about the many Europeans who flocked to the banner of international work and filled out its institutions.

Our panel proposes papers that aim to understand better the European experts and bureaucrats who settled temporarily or permanently in Geneva, New York, and the field offices of international institutions. Who were they? What personal or institutional experiences—and what understandings of the past—pushed them toward an international organization? What did they find satisfying or frustrating about the work once engaged? How did their differing backgrounds shape their work at the new institutions and, ultimately, how did they transform these institutions themselves? The four proposed papers focus on the social formation and social experience of the Europeans who became international civil servants and/or technical experts through the League of Nations or the U.N. In broad terms the panel seeks to offer data toward a historical sociology of European bureaucrats and experts who pursued unknown futures in a twentieth-century creation—the international organization.