Omer Aloni

Aloni
CAMBRIDGE series editors
Name  Institution
STUDIES IN
INTERNATIONAL
AND
Name  Institution
Endorsements book names
CAMBRIDGE
STUDIES IN The League of Nations
COMPARATIVE
LAW
NAM E bio
INTERNATIONAL
AND and the Protection
COMPARATIVE
LAW of the Environment

Protection of the Environment

The League of Nations and the

Cover illustration: Members of the League of Nations

during an assembly in Geneva, Switzerland, 1920.
Image: Hulton Archive / Stringer / Getty Images

Series cover design by Zoe Naylor.

 THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS
AND THE PROTECTION
OF THE ENVIRONMENT

In the history of how the law has dealt with environmental issues over the
last century or so, the 1920s and 1930s and the key role of the League of
Nations in particular remain underexplored by scholars. By delving into
the League’s archives, Omer Aloni uncovers the story of how the interwar
world expressed similar concerns to those of our own time in relation to
nature, environmental challenges, and human development, and reveals
a missing link in understanding the roots of our ecological crisis. Charting
the environmental regime of the League, he sheds new light on its role as
a center of surprising environmental dilemmas, initiatives, and solutions.
Through a number of fascinating case studies, the hidden interests,
perceptions, motivations, hopes, agendas, and concerns of the League
are revealed for the first time. Combining legal thought, historical
archival research, and environmental studies, a fascinating period in legal-
environmental history is brought to life.

omer aloni is Research and Postdoctoral Fellow in the Faculty of Social

Sciences, University of Bar-Ilan, Ramat-Gan, Israel. He received his PhD
from Tel-Aviv University (Faculty of Law). He holds research affiliations
with the University of Potsdam, the Rachel Carson Center for
Environment and Society (LMU Munich), and the Max Planck Institute
for Legal History and Legal Theory. He was awarded the Tallinn Prize by
the European Society for Environmental History for the best research in
2018 and 2019.
 c a m b r i d g e s t u d i e s i n i n t e r n a ti o n a l
a n d c o m p a r a t i v e la w : 1 5 9
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THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS
AND THE PROTECTION
OF THE ENVIRONMENT

OMER ALONI
Bar-Ilan University
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www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108838191
DOI: 10.1017/9781108937399
© Omer Aloni 2021
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2021
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Aloni, Omer, 1982 – author.
Title: The League of Nations and the protection of the environment / Omer Aloni, Bar-Ilan
University, Israel.
Description: Cambridge, United Kingdom; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press,
2021. | Series: Cambridge studies in international and comparative law; 159 | Based on
author’s thesis (doctoral – University at Tel-Aviv, 2019), issued under title: Back to the
League of Nations: evaluation of the environmental regime: 1919–1939. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020056951 (print) | LCCN 2020056952 (ebook) | ISBN 9781108838191
(hardback) | ISBN 9781108937399 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Environmental law – History – 20th century. | League of Nations.
Classification: LCC K3585 .A46 2021 (print) | LCC K3585 (ebook) | DDC 344.04/609042–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020056951
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020056952
ISBN 978-1-108-83819-1 Hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of
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accurate or appropriate.
 CONTENTS

Acknowledgments page ix

Introduction 1
1 Fighting Pollution Made by Humankind 34
The League of Nations and the Endeavors of the Convention
against the Pollution of the Sea by Oil
1.1 Introduction 34
1.2 Historical Background of Polluted Seas and Human
Concerns 40
1.2.1 Polluted Seas As a Domestic Problem: Concerns of Oil
Pollution in Britain and the United States 40
1.2.2 The Transnational Phase: The 1923 Paris Conference,
and the First International Conference on the Pollution
of the Sea by Oil (Washington, 1926) 45

1.3 The League of Nations and the Antipollution

Campaign 49
1.3.1 The Save-the-Seabirds Campaign Reaches the League:
A Special Committee of Experts Is Formed 50
1.3.2 The Committee of Experts Discusses the Pollution Problem
and Prepares a Special Questionnaire with a Draft
Convention 55
1.3.3 The League Distributes the Questionnaire with the Draft
Convention; States and Organizations Reply 63
1.3.4 Finalizing the Antipollution Convention, and the Bitter
End 76

1.4 Conclusion: Pollution, Seas, and the post-1945

Period – from Geneva to Stockholm and Back
Again 79

v
vi c o n t en t s

2 The League of Nations and the Whaling

Dilemma 87
2.1 Sea of Whales 87
2.1.1 Introduction 87
2.1.2 General Timeline and Outline 97

2.2 Whales and Whaling: The Historical Background

of Whaling in a Nutshell 99
2.3 Interwar Diplomacy and the Rise of International
Whaling Law 109
2.3.1 Preparing to Launch a Special Questionnaire 109
2.3.2 Replying to the League: States and Different Organizations’
Responses to the Special Questionnaire 117
2.3.3 The Codification Committee Summarizes the Replies
with a Sense of Urgency 128
2.3.4 Toward the April 1927 Experts Meeting in Paris, and the
British Interdepartmental Conference on the Question of
International Control of Whaling
(October 1927) 140
2.3.5 The Early 1930s and the First International Whaling
Convention 152
2.3.6 Toward the 1937 Convention: The Media Picks
a Side 160

2.4 Conclusion 171

3 Sanitation, Spreading Diseases, and Environmental
Concerns: The League of Nations’ Campaign for Rural
Hygiene 187
3.1 Introduction 187
3.2 Background and Historical Survey: A Brief Introduction
to the Historiography of Sanitary Efforts and
Environmental Concerns 193
3.3 The League of Nations, Rural Hygiene, Sanitation,
and Environmental Threats 200
3.3.1 Early Steps and Preparations: The Interchange Program
(1928), and the Budapest Conference
(October 1930) 205
3.3.2 The 1931 European Conference on Rural
Hygiene 212
 c o n te n t s vii
3.3.3 Following Up the 1931 Conference and Preparing
for the Second Intergovernmental Conference on Rural
Hygiene 216
3.3.4 The Intergovernmental Conference of Far Eastern Countries
on Rural Hygiene, Bandoeng (Java),
August 1937 220

3.4 Conclusion 235

4 Raw Materials, the Timber Crisis, and Fears of Deforestation
during the Interwar Period 248
4.1 Introduction 248
4.2 Timber in the Interwar Period 254
4.2.1 A Short Introduction to the Special Interest of the League
in Raw Materials 255
4.2.2 Striving for a Global Timber Regime: International Bodies
Apply Institutional Energy to International Timber
Production and Trade 258
4.2.3 The Timber Wars of the 1930s 263

4.3 The Timber Challenge and Concerns of Deforestation:

The League Harmonizes Economic, Industrial,
and Environmental Perspectives 265
4.3.1 Regulation of the Timber Trade to Support the
Industry 267
4.3.2 Environmental Concerns Added to the General
Economic-Industrial Framework 275

4.4 Conclusions: A (Comparative) Glimpse of the post-1945

Period, Forest Conservation, and International
Law 286
5 Evaluating the Environmental Regime of the League of
Nations: Comparative Discussion 291
5.1 Environmental Challenges and Problems As an
Accelerator for Collective International
Action 292
5.2 Legal and Procedural Ways in Which the League
Handled the Environmental Questions As Evolving
Complex Dilemmas 296
viii co ntents

5.3 The League Practiced Different Modes of International

Law through Its Environmental Regime 305
5.4 Who Gets to Play the Game of International Law: New
States and NGOs 309
5.5 The Central Role of Scientific Expertise 322
5.6 Devoted Individual Pioneers 330
5.7 The League Did Not Suddenly Become an
Environmental Shrine 332
6 Conclusion 338

Bibliography 356
Index 365
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Above all, I owe my supervisor, David Schorr, a huge debt of gratitude for
believing in this research project from the beginning. His enriching and
precise guidance inspired me ever since I have started to think of the
League of Nations.
In writing this study, I also owe a great deal to a long list of academic
institutes and research centers in Israel and abroad for their generous and
confident support in my developing project: the Tel-Aviv University
Buchmann Faculty of Law, the Zvi Meitar Center for Advanced Legal
Studies, the Taubenschlag Institute of Criminal Law, the Cegla Center for
Interdisciplinary Research of the Law, the Professor Nathan and Judith
Feinberg Fund for Advancing International Law Research, the Rachel
Carson Center for Society and Environment of Munich’s Ludwig-
Maximilians-Universität, and the Max Planck Institute for Legal
History and Legal Theory. I gratefully acknowledge the continuing and
loyal support of the David Berg Foundation Institute for Law and History
that enabled me to conduct a true legal history study from scratch.
I also thank the International Minerva Fellowship and the Max Planck
Society for supporting my collaboration with a variety of research insti-
tutions and scholarly communities in recent years.
My archival research at the League of Nations Archives in Geneva
would not be possible and fruitful without the most generous assistance
of the professional team, led by Jacques Oberson.
I would like to thank Cambridge Studies in International and
Comparative Law Series’ editors, Larissa van den Herik and Jean
d’Aspremont, for their belief in this project. I am also grateful to
the editorial team at Cambridge University Press for their inspiring
and careful work, and to Tom Randall, Laura Blake, Helen Kitto,
Gayathri Tamilselvan, and Roger Bennett in particular.

ix
x acknowl edg ments

Samantha Rothbart has done an excellent job as my English editor, for

which I am grateful.
I thank Martin Beammann, Patricia Clavin, Ron Harris, Moshe
Hirsch, Liat Kozma, Pnina Lahav, Christof Mauch, Susan Pedersen,
Peter H. Sand, Shani Schnitzer, Natasha Wheatley, and Anna-
Katharina Wöbse for their helpful advice. All errors, however, remain
mine.
 u

Introduction

Prologue
In recent years, historical study of the League of Nations has flourished,
spawning new perspectives and calling into question long-held beliefs
regarding this unique institution. Many of these studies explore ques-
tions regarding the centrality and importance of the League in the first
half of the twentieth century. Additional studies have examined the
League’s influence on the international arena even beyond 1945, and
the establishment of the League’s successor, the United Nations. It
seems that only today, after several decades of harsh historiography
that governed the post-1945 era, has a more positive view of the League
emerged.
The present study joins this renaissance, extending this field of
research by including historical-legal and environmental aspects within
the renewed exploration of the League of Nations. Remarkably, the role
of the League in the history and evolution of international environmental
law remains almost entirely unexplored. This project uncovers the ways
in which the League, as one of the first institutions of its kind, constituted
and regulated relations between nature, environment, and humankind.
My revisionist retrospective will not limit its scope to the linear historical
borders of 1919 and 1939, but also strives to identify the League’s influ-
ence and place in, and its impact on, environmental regulation after the
League was formally dissolved in 1946. As the environmental story of the
1920s and 1930s unfolds, I will not focus on dilemmas of environmental,
conservationist, preservationist, and industrial-economic interests alone;
rather, I include political, legal, and institutional motivations, both obvi-
ous and hidden, that took place in this complex environmental regime.
As such, I will also draw attention to environmental issues that involved
third-world exploitation in general, and the historical-environmental
impact of these questions on colonialism and imperialism (and vice
versa) in particular.

1
2 i n t rod uc ti on

Given the abundance of different studies engaged in the eclectic tasks

of the League, which takes into account researchers’ legal studies in this
area, we have not yet seen an attempt to systematically map or to
thoroughly investigate the contribution of the League in terms of inter-
national law, environment, and nature.
By telling the story of interwar environmental perspectives, I wish to
navigate and explain different trends in the history of global environ-
mental law and in studies on the League. Using these questions to track
possible links between history, law, and environment, I shall explore
those opportunities in environmental law and international relations in
which the League was so deeply involved. This reclaiming of the past
enables us to deepen the conventional analysis beyond what we would
describe as “historiographic amnesia,” which is typically characteristic of
research about the League, as exemplified by Scott’s Rise and Fall of the
League of Nations.1 As such, the story of the League as a whole, with its
different (and sometimes inconsistent) chapters and challenges – which
up until now have been missing from both the history of international
law and environmental history serves as fresh territory for new, unique
exploration.2
Unlike the Soviet archives, which were kept locked behind the Iron
Curtain and were thus unavailable to Western scholars until the early
1990s, the accessible archives of the League in Geneva have remained all
but forgotten for half a century. As such, a traditionally hazy historical
view of the League has inhibited thorough study in fields ranging from
political science to international law. New readings and new findings
about the League and its effect on the evolution of international environ-
mental law call into question long-held conceptions of the League and the

1
Among the few important works within the historiographic framework of the “decline and
fall of the League” are: E L M E R B E N D I N E R , A T I M E F O R A N G E L S : T H E T R A G I C O M I C
H I S T O R Y O F T H E L E A G U E O F N A T I O N S (1 97 5 ); or G E O R G E S C O T T , T H E R I S E A N D
F A L L O F T H E L E A G U E O F N A T I O N S (1 9 73 ). For another realistic analysis in this regard
see F . S. N O R T H E D G E , T H E L E A G U E O F N A T I O N S : I T S L I F E A N D T I M E S , 1 9 20 –1 9 46
(1986).
2
The memory of the League in the history of modern times underwent a changing historio-
graphic evolution during the twentieth century, and into the dawn of the twenty-first
century. These changing trends in the research have been affected, first, by certain new
historical discoveries that focus on a variety of activities of the international forum.
Second, they have also been affected by various historical and geopolitical circumstances
of the twentieth century, such as the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the end of the Cold
War. And third, some of the revisionist scholars argue that this image has changed as
a result of the way in which the League’s successor, the United Nations, was created and
how it evolved in the second half of the twentieth century.
 prologue 3

history of environmental law. Using this new historiography allows me to

reveal the apparent indifference of the common environmental histori-
ography to the role and involvement of the League in shaping the global
legal-environmental regime – a regime whose development in the inter-
war world I will examine. In the following chapters, which cover almost
every part of the Earth – from the depth of the oceans to wooded
landscapes – I will prove the existence of a mutually influential relation-
ship between the League and the developing environmental agendas and
movements of its time, as well as the movement towards an international
conception of environmental law.
The twentieth century was one of international cooperation on a variety
of environmental issues. Governments worldwide, from Europe to Latin
America and beyond, signed nearly 4003 environmental treaties and agree-
ments throughout the period, half of which were initiated as a response to
different reflections on the modern question of nature and wildlife conser-
vation. Indeed, many of these conventions and transnational agreements
are “no more” than simple bilateral fishing agreements, which emerged as
a result of neighboring states’ common concerns – including concerns
about certain geographical regions in which countries might experience
species loss. The rest of these international legal agreements were more
complex and they usually engaged several different countries, some of
whom often did not even share a geographical border. This century,
even without the League’s presence, marks a period of commitment to
nature protection in general, and to species and animal protection in
particular.
The study of the Anthropocene tells us that environmental changes
and crises as a result of humankind’s activities occurred even prior to the
first decades of the twentieth century.4 However, the turn of that century
is perhaps the first time that the impact of human behaviors threatened
many of the planet’s major bio-systems. Compared with earlier (some-
times, very early) implications of human societies on surrounding nature,
this period introduced several parallel threats that humankind posed to
the environment. It seems that the interwar period revealed a clear
recognition and understanding of the overall negative impact of humans
on surrounding nature, exemplified by instances of disappearing ocean
species, shrinking forests, oil pollution and its related contamination of

3
MARC CIOC, THE GAME OF CONSERVATION: INTERNATIONAL TREATIES TO PROTECT
T H E W O R L D ’ S M I G R A T O R Y A N I M A L S 2 (2009).
4
E R L E C. E L L I S , A N T H R O P O C E N E : A V E R Y S H O R T I N T R O D U C T I O N (2018).
4 in tr od uc tion

seawater and birds, and the environmental-sanitary dangers emerging

from rural peripheries around the world. Prior to the League’s environ-
mental regime, there had never been such a collective, organized, and
continuing (even if only for a relatively short period) general policy in
terms of international law and international governance.
Just as environmental concerns guide some policymakers today, the
League discussed numerous areas that it believed would have signifi-
cant consequences for the basic conditions of all life in the future.
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, it discussed questions that are
familiar to us today, including: How does one define an environmental
risk or challenge? What action should the international community
take? How should international law mobilize in response to environ-
mental challenges? The League, sometimes together with other bodies,
understood that the future of nature (and human society) as they knew
it depended on their actions. Moreover, at least some of the current
huge environmental challenges in terms of our twenty-first century,
such as oil spills and pollution of the sea, ruthless whaling, spreading
diseases and pandemics (not to mentioned the devastating outcomes of
COVID-19), and accelerating forest loss (see the news from Brazil’s
Amazon rainforest in 2020) were – as the following interwar stories
will show – there, or here on the still-suffering planet, also during the
1920s and 1930s.
Similarly to how we currently face global environmental dilemmas,
the League’s regime tackled various realms and fields: science, politics,
economics, social tensions, history, and law too, of course. Nature
protection considerations often competed with the economic interests
of developing societies who were hungry for natural resources.
Responsibility for future generations guided the League, alongside
economic and industrial incentives and the race to the bottom in
exploiting the planet’s treasures. Many of the key interwar issues are
the same as the ones that the international community (and, unfortu-
nately, also the environment) is facing today, in the midst of the
ecological crisis, such as pollution, overexploitation, food, raw mater-
ials, mass extinction, technological improvements, scientific explor-
ation, water, diplomacy, ecosystem management, and more.
Indeed, the broad scope of history encompasses several periods that
have never been considered to have anything – or very little – to do
with environmentalism or nature protection. Recently, however, as the
scholarship of environmental history has continued to expand,
scholars have changed our perceptions of these periods. Some have
 res e arch fields and genera l structure 5

argued that the Third Reich and the Nazi Movement were not just
extremely violent or devastating phenomena, but that they also had
a coherent or systematic approach towards nature.5 Likewise, reinter-
pretation of the Venetian Empire has suggested that one understand it
as a power that had an (early) environmental conception of trees and
timber as a basis for its political, military, and engineering success.6
Through my explorations of the interwar period over the last few
years, I truly believe that it is an appropriate time to add this period,
and that of the League in particular, to the developing chain of legal
and environmental historiography.

Research Fields and General Structure:

Bridging Two Separate Historiographies
This research presents a historical analysis of various policies, discus-
sions, decisions, and acts related to the environment that were made by
different organs, officials, and departments of the League or in their
involvement; it also addresses the intersection of environment, humans,
and law. My findings will reveal a bridge between two particular fields of
research that up to this point have been treated as distinct and separate:
the historiography of the League, and the development of international
environmental law.
In order to better situate the context of this study, the following section
will provide a general overview of the central building blocks in the
relevant bodies of literature.

On the Emerging Historiography of the League of Nations

During the last two decades, and especially in recent years, scholars from
different schools and disciplines have become increasingly interested in
the League as an area of study. Fresh research has shed new light on the
reality of the period between the two wars of the twentieth century,
prompting a vigorous investigation of the history and significance of
the institution that was tasked with maintaining world peace and order
during that volatile time.

5
HOW GREEN WERE THE NAZIS? NATURE, ENVIRONMENT, AND NATION IN THE
T H I R D R E I C H (Franz-Josef Brüggermeier, Marc Cioc & Thomas Zeller eds., 2005).
6
See, e.g., C H R I S T O F M A U C H , T H E G R O W T H O F T R E E S : A H I S T O R I C A L P E R S P E C T I V E O N
S U S T A I N A B I L I T Y (2014).
6 i n tr od uc ti on

New discoveries of the last few years have enabled a “reapproaching” to

the intangible “spirit of Geneva.”7 A careful inquiry into the environmental
perspectives that guided the diplomats and officials of the League, as well of
those of the different bodies that negotiated with the League during the 1920s
and 1930s, is therefore part and parcel of the broader renaissance of the
League. A great variety of works have begun to emerge, offering new
perspectives regarding the perceived bright new future for humankind in
the post-1918 world; some of these perspectives impacted the evolution of
international environmental law, leaving a thumbprint that can still be seen
today.
These changing perspectives of the League’s historical role are based
on historical methodologies and archival research, which bring new
readings to the history and analysis of the League’s various activities,
tendencies, and initiatives. The engagement of legal scholars – particu-
larly legal historians – in studies of the League, has only of late been
undertaken.8 This engagement of legal historians stands to provide new
angles that allow for deeper insights into the League’s research commu-
nity. Legal history can offer a better understanding of the relevance of
different tasks performed by the League and its organs, and could fill in
certain gaps in the body of historical knowledge.
The common historic perception of interwar Geneva is that of a failed
and weakened capital of early internationalism – naïve and unrealistic. It
has also repeatedly been blamed for failing to prevent World War II. As
a result, historians and other scholars have almost completely avoided
studying activities other than peacekeeping and collective security, two of
the League’s main responsibilities. As mentioned above, this historiog-
raphy has been undergoing fundamental change of late.9
Dozens of studies conducted recently have argued that the League did
much more than simply attempt to create a system of collective

7
As described by Susan Pedersen, who is considered to be the “founding mother” of the
revision of the League. Susan Pedersen, Back to the League of Nations, 112 A M . H I S T .
R E V . 1091 (2007), 1113.
8
Michael Fakhri, The 1937 International Sugar Agreement: Neo-Colonial Cuba and
Economic Aspects of the League of Nations, 24 L E I D E N J. I N T ’L L. 899 (2011).
9
For instance, a relatively large number of scholars are specifically interested in the
interwar campaign the League led against the trafficking of women and children. See,
e.g., the studies of L I A T K O Z M A , G L O B A L W O M E N , C O L O N I A L P O R T S : P R O S T I T U T I O N
I N T H E I N T E R W A R M I D D L E E A S T (2017); Paul Knepper, The Investigation into the Traffic
in Women by the League of Nations: Sociological Jurisprudence as an International Social
Project, 34 L. & H I S T . R E V . 45 (2016); Magaly Rodríguez García, The League of Nations
and the Moral Recruitment of Women, 57 I N T ’L R E V . S O C . H I S T . 97 (2012).
 r e s e a rch f i el ds an d g en er a l stru c tu re 7

security.10 Issues such as refugees,11 economic stability and recovery,12

minority protection,13 public health,14 and the complexity of the man-
date system,15 for instance, stand today at the center of scholarship on the
history of the League. Numerous works have shown that the League was
identified and defined as much more than just an “International Security
System”16 – even by contemporary players of the interwar period, includ-
ing its leading figures and jurists.17 Another idea that seems to have lost
its validity is the claim that the League (and the organs that operated its
institutional structure) allegedly opposed the adoption of any agenda that
could be interpreted as interfering in the sovereignty of nation states.

10
Usha Natarajan, for instance, pointed to the link between the legacy of the League’s
mandate system (which was one of its central enterprises) and different approaches
regarding the reconstruction of the Iraqi state at the beginning of the 2000s and in the
aftermath of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime: Usha Natarajan, Creating and
Recreating Iraq: Legacies of the Mandate System in Contemporary Understanding of Third
World Sovereignty, 2 4 L E I D E N J. I N T ’L L. 799 (2011). Gerald Halman’s study echoes the
gap or differences between the failed state concept of the early 1990s, and the League’s
understanding of this concept: Gerald B. Halman, Saving Failed States, 89 F O R E I G N
P O L ’Y 3 (1992–93). In that context, see also the work of Ralph Wilde: From Danzig to
East-Timor and Beyond: The Role of International Territorial Administration, 95 A M .
J. I N T ’L L. 583 (2001).
11
Keith D. Watenpaugh, The League of Nations’ Rescue of Armenian Genocide Survivors and
the Making of Modern Humanitarianism: 1920–1927, 115 A M . H I S T . R E V . 1315 (2010).
12
PATRICIA CLAVIN, SECURING THE WORLD ECONOMY: THE REINVENTION OF THE
L E A G U E O F N A T I O N S : 1 9 20 –19 46 (2013).
13
CHRISTIAN RAITZ VON FRENTZ, A LESSON FORGOTTEN: MINORITY PROTECTION
UNDER THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS – THE CASE OF THE GERMAN MINORITY IN
P O L A N D : 1 9 20 –1 9 34 (1999); Mark Mazower, Minorities and the League of Nations in
Interwar Europe, 126 D A E D A L U S 47 (1997); C A R O L E F I N K , D E F E N D I N G T H E R I G H T S O F
OTHERS: THE GREAT POWERS, THE JEWS AND INTERNATIONAL MINORITY
P R O T E C T I O N 1 87 8 –1 93 8 (2004).
14
IRIS BOROWY, COMING IN TERMS WITH WORLD HEALTH: THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS
H E A L T H O R G A N I S A T I O N S : 1 92 1 –1 94 6 (2009).
15
Natasha Wheatley, Mandatory Interpretation: Legal Hermeneutics and the New
International Order in Arab and Jewish Petitions to the League of Nations, 227 P A S T &
P R E S E N T 205 (2015).
16
On the change in the common perception of the League’s task of securing the post–World
War I world see, e.g., M A R K M A Z O W E R , N O E N C H A N T E D P A L A C E : T H E E N D O F
E M P I R E A N D T H E I D E O L O G I C A L O R I G I N S O F T H E U N I T E D N A T I O N S (2009), and
G O V E R N I N G T H E W O R L D : T H E H I S T O R Y O F I D E A , 1 81 5 T O T H E P R E S E N T (2013);
SUSAN PEDERSEN, THE GUARDIANS: THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS AND THE CRISIS OF
E M P I R E (2015).
17
Existing research on these legal-professional issues and the interplay within the League as
an institution has looked into the question of how lawyers and legal thinking contributed
to the shape of the League system. See, for example, Stephen Wertheim, The League of
Nations: A Retreat from International Law? 7 J. G L O B A L H I S T . 210 (2012).
8 in t rod u c ti on

However, in spite of this recent boost in interest in the League, especially

in those issues that were or are considered to be part of the League’s broad
“humanitarian agenda,”18 very little attention has been given to this period
in the history of diplomatic and legal international environmentalism.
Apart from minimalist references here and there, such as those that
describe the interwar period as nothing more than a few groping attempts,
the common perception is that environmental issues were never on the
League’s agenda, and that they only gained traction with the UN: “The UN
system, weak as it is in terms of sovereign authority, changed this. A broad
agenda established by mostly liberal powers that won World War II. It
included concern for . . . a world-wide view of nature.”19

The Common Historiography of the Evolution of International

Environmental Law Has So Far Disregarded the League
In a similar pattern, the conventional historiography of the evolution of
international and transnational environmental law also tends to skip over
the interwar period almost completely. Indeed, although several scholars
who have studied the development of this international-legal regime have
lately identified “evidence of increasing domain structure”20 in the last
third of the nineteenth century, and especially during the fin de siècle, the
period of the League remains, almost entirely, a legal-environmental-
historiographic “black hole.” Except for the historic investigation into the
role of certain NGOs at that time, environmental historians almost exclu-
sively begin their studies with the establishment of the United Nations.
Therefore, the common environmental-history narrative places much of

18
THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS’ WORK ON SOCIAL ISSUES: VISIONS, ENDEAVOURS AND
E X P E R I M E N T S (Magaly Rodríguez García, Davide Rodogno & Liat Kozma eds., 2016).
19
John W. Meyer, David J. Frank, Ann Hironaka, Evan Schofer & Nancy B. Tuma, The
Structuring of a World Environmental Regime, 1870–1990, 51 I N T ’L O R G . 623, 631–32
(1997) (emphasis added). For further reading on the institutional aspects of the role of the
UN in shaping the international legal environmental regime – such as in the establishment of
the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), or the World Health Organization (WHO),
see L Y N T O N K . C A L D W E L L , I N T E R N A T I O N A L E N V I R O N M E N T A L P O L I C Y (1990), and
J O H N M C C O R M I C K , R E C L A I M I N G P A R A D I S E (1989).
Yet, one should note that new studies of the League deal in particular with the history
of creating the technical organizations or internal professional agencies of the League
(which are also known as “performative bodies”) in the 1920s, and their legal-institutional
aspects (see, e.g., Kayo Yasuda, From the League of Nations Health Organization to the
WHO 1943–1946: The Succession and Development of International Functional
Cooperation, 2 A N N A L S J A P A N E S E P O L . S C I . 194 [2010]).
20
Meyer et al., supra note 19, at 624.
 r e s e a rch f i el ds an d gener al stru c tur e 9

its emphasis on the post–World War II period, as most investigations tend

to mark the starting point of international environmental history with the
UN Environment Programme (UNEP), founded at the U N Conference on
the Human Environment in Stockholm, in June 1972.21 By introducing
evidence that environmental thinking did in fact take place within the
discussion, negotiations, and routine practice of internationalism and
diplomacy in the interwar period (linking the issues of nature protection,
endangered species, pollution, sanitation, natural resources and raw
materials, superpowers, colonialism and imperialism), we might more
effectively refine the “the prevailing narrative”22 of the history of inter-
national environmental law.
This scholarly gap becomes even more apparent when one takes into
account how overwhelmingly substantial the field of environmental
history has become in recent years. As I will describe in each chapter,
rich scholarship has been written on almost each and every realm in the
history of nature, environment, and humankind – from the history of
earthquakes, to volcanic eruptions, droughts, deforestation, climate
change, nuclear and renewable energy, sanitation, and more. Where
different studies have focused on environmental issues, periods, or insti-
tutions, no comprehensive study in the interdisciplinary field of environ-
mental history has yet been conducted on the League.
Following the previously mentioned trend of “historiographic
amnesia” regarding the League’s presence in general, there is likewise
a general indifference to the League’s environmental role. Studies on the
League and on the history of international legal environmentalism are
both silent on this issues. The commonly accepted descriptions tend to
emphasize that concerted global action in an environmental context did
not occur, and perhaps could not have occurred, before 1945 – and more
likely not before 1972 – the year in which the UN initiated its formal
organized environmental program in terms of international law.23

21
See, for instance, Wolfram Kaiser and Jan-Henrik Meyer, who focus on the UN as the true
starting point of modern environmental protection: Wolfram Kaiser & Jan-Henrik
Meyer, International Organizations and Environmental Protection in the Global
Twentieth Century, in I N T E R N A T I O N A L O R G A N I Z A T I O N S A N D E N V I R O N M E N T A L
PROTECTION: CONSERVATION AND GLOBALIZATION IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
1 (Wolfram Kaiser & Jan-Henrik Meyer eds., 2017) [hereinafter I N T E R N A T I O N A L
O R G A N I Z A T I O N S A N D E N V I R O N M E N T A L P R O T E C T I O N ].
22
See Watenpaugh, supra note 11, at 1322.
23
See Wolfram Kaiser & Jan-Henrik Meyer, Introduction: International Organizations and
Environmental Protection in the Global Twentieth Century, in I N T E R N A T I O N A L
O R G A N I Z A T I O N S A N D E N V I R O N M E N T A L P R O T E C T I O N , supra note 21, at 2–3. Even
10 i nt r o d u c t i o n

Regardless of what has been written, environmental changes had

occurred as environmental problems long before the establishment of
the UN. Moreover, the international arena, using legal discourse and
introducing legal mechanisms, was aware of these challenges. As my
research reveals, the League tried to solve a series of environmental crises
such as the sea pollution caused by oil discharge from ships, which
threatened the coastline of different countries (Chapter 1); dwindling fish
stocks in general, and the growing threat of the extinction of the whale due
to rapidly developing whaling techniques (Chapter 2); diseases that
emerged from rural peripheries in Eastern Europe and East Asia, and
which thrived and spread due to poor hygiene and public health conditions
in the countryside (Chapter 3); and difficulties in the timber trade given the
economic and commercial outcomes of the Great Depression and the
dumping policy of the Soviet Union, which intertwined with a growing
concern about deforestation that was presented as a phenomenon that
dramatically changing the natural landscape (Chapter 4). All these envir-
onmental challenges urgently required solutions.
According to the common environmental history perspective, it was
only in the second half of the twentieth century – and certainly not during
the interwar period and the reign of the League – that measures of this kind
could have been taken into consideration. Scholars have argued that two
dramatic changes in world society that occurred in the second half of the
twentieth century can serve as variables that explain the rise of contem-
porary environmental regimentation. The first change involved the expan-
sion of rationalized scientific analyses of nature, while the other change was
organizational and involved the rise of an international associational
framework, principally the UN system,24 which provided arenas that

minimalist descriptions given by scholars who study the origins and development of
international environmental law, if they do refer to or mention the role of the League
during the shaping of this international legal regime, do not lean on the League in and of
itself, but ascribe much of the contribution of advancing international legal-
environmental initiatives not to the League, but to other international developments.
Instead of focusing on the League, these scholars choose to attribute such environmental
measures to the growing involvement of scientists and other researchers, along with early
environmental NGOs, as these factors screened and influenced the events and processes
carried out in the institution. They argue that, despite the absence of a central inter-
national power, it is evident that environmental policy rallied behind a culture of
“rationalism and science” (Meyer et al., supra note 19, at 625). However, could it be
that the League had a role in that development?
24
See, e.g., Meyer et al., supra note 19, at 629. For a broader and detailed description of the
environmental history of the twentieth century, and of the awareness of changes between
nature and humankind, as well as the shift between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, see
 l a y o u t o f t he c h a p te r s 11

encouraged mobilization around broad global interests and transcending

nation-state agendas (and, in many cases, restrictions or reluctance). The
expansion of rationalized scientific analyses of nature and the rise of the
UN provided an expanding international framework, in which both
a global-environmental discourse and legal-environmental transactions
arose. The research literature emphasizes25 the importance of the appear-
ance of an international regime’s framework on the historical timeline:
“Together, these two forces provide an expanded world-level frame within
which interaction and discourse about environmental issues could
expand . . . .”26
To be certain, a rich legal history on the history of environmental law
in modern times does already exist. Works such as those of Peder
Anker,27 for instance, aim to trace environmental policies that tend to
mirror international law and international discourse, decades before the
establishment of the UN. However, even when Anker, one of the pioneers
of the historiography of environmental law, refers to the period under
investigation, he attributes minor importance, if any at all, to the role and
place of the League. Instead, his work analyzes the role of the British
Empire, which adopted innovative environmental policies – most par-
ticularly what he describes as its experimental “ecological imperial leg-
acy” outside Europe.

Layout of the Chapters

Remarkably, the role of the League in the history and evolution of
environmental law remains almost entirely unexplored. I explore differ-
ent aspects of the League’s deep involvement in trying to solve global
environmental problems in the 1920s and 1930s. Archival research in the
Palais des Nations reveals some surprising – and relevant – discussions
and ideas of the unique role played by transnational organizations,
NGOs, civil society groups, and non-state actors in vigorous campaigns
and intensive international efforts for the protection of nature or the

J. R. MCNEILL, SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN: AN ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY

OF THE T W E N T I E T H C E N T U R Y W O R L D (2000).
25
See, e.g., E R V I N G G O F F M A N , F R A M E A N A L Y S I S (1974); David E. Snow,
E. Burke Rochford Jr., Steven K. Worden & Robert D. Benford, Frame Alignment
Processes, Micromobilization, and Movement Participation, 51 A M . S O C . R E V . 464
(1986).
26
Meyer et al., supra note 19, at 629.
27
PEDER ANKER, IMPERIAL ECOLOGY: ENVIRONMENTAL ORDER IN THE BRITISH
E M P I R E : 18 95 – 19 4 5 ( 2 00 1) .
12 introduction

environment, and for the preservation of a variety of natural resources in

the period under examination.
As the interwar environmental regime unfolds, my revisionist retro-
spective does not limit itself to the linear historical borders of 1919 and
1939, but also identifies the influence and position the League held, and
its effect, on environmental regulation after 1945 – and sometimes
considerably later.28 I also identify the motivations and the political
patterns, both obvious and hidden, which were present during this
environmental regime.
This study is divided into four main chapters, each of which deals with
a different real-time environmental, economic, political, and legal test
case handled by the League. I will discuss these chapters and the chal-
lenges they cover in the fifth chapter.
The first chapter traces the intensive joint effort to reach an agreement
on the International Convention Relating to the Pollution of the Sea by
Oil. As I elaborate, several organs and officials of the League were
involved in the complex legal consultations and coordination surround-
ing the promotion of an international convention that aimed to fight and
put a stop to oil discharge from ships – pollution that threatened shores
and communities in various countries. The special convention of the
League aimed to improve an earlier transnational convention that was
agreed on in 1926. However, as I will show, the League’s campaign was
more intense and dealt with the conflict of interests between the shipping
industry and those parties that wished to protect the sea and nature from
oil pollution. This legal-environmental effort was carried out by and
under the auspices of the League, and it stands as a case study of the

28
It should be noted that this project deals with a broader definition of International Law.
I will generally discuss “law,” “transnational law,” or “global law.” In this way, the
dissertation will also examine the implications of the League policies and negotiations
of the different legal systems that Geneva was interacting with, as a part of a global (or
transnational) legal discourse in the interwar period. For an example of the overlap
between environmentalism, transnational law, global law, and/or international law,
which tends to blur our strict definitions, see, e.g., Astrid Mignon Kirchhof & Jan-
Henrik Meyer, Global Protest against Nuclear Power. Transfer and Transnational
Exchange in the 1970s and 1980s, 39 H I S T . S O C . R E S . 165 (2014); Michael L. Hughes,
Civil Disobedience in Transnational Perspective: American and West German Anti-
Nuclear-Power Protesters, 1975–1982, 39 H I S T . S O C . R E S . 236 (2014). Naturally, this
research does not intend to unpack the complexity of the sometimes “duel” conflict
relations between these two broad terms. For a more direct, precise, and focused discus-
sion on this theoretical field of international law studies, see, e.g., Joseph S. Nye & Robert
O. Keohane, Transnational Relations and World Politics: An Introduction, 25 I N T ’L O R G .
329 (1971).
 l a y o u t o f t h e ch a p t e r s 13

evolution of environmental perspectives and voices who chose to turn to

international law for help.
Although the antipollution campaign ultimately failed in terms of the
interwar period, it is nevertheless important given the many relevant
threads it weaves together: the joint effort of several states and agencies;
the deep involvement of NGOs from various states, who advocated for
the protection of migrating birds that were dying in their thousands as
a result of poisoned sea water); supportive public opinion with relatively
wide media coverage; international and transnational questions of law
and inquiries relating to international relations; and the battle between
the environmentalist agenda and competing industrial interests (along
with their political lobby and pressures). Moreover, as I will show in the
conclusion portion, the interwar effort was not in vain as it contributed to
the postwar convention of 1954.
The second chapter covers the intensive diplomacy related to whal-
ing, one of the central international campaigns that was led by the
League. As technological developments in the field of whaling (by
Norwegian, British, Japanese, and other fleets) rapidly increased, scien-
tists and others became increasingly concerned that whales were about
to become extinct, a claim that gained more and more attention. Given
capabilities as a new, professional body of international law, the League
became the center for a fierce battle between whaling powers (who were
reluctant to accept any external intervention in “their” profitable indus-
tries, and the legal limitations this would undoubtedly entail for their
fleets) and scientific associations and “neutral” voices (who urged the
League to prevent a version of the tragedy of the commons on the high
seas).
This chapter compares the different negotiations and proposals for the
first international whaling conventions that were prepared by the League
(and signed in 1931 and 1937), in order to regulate and control the boom
in whaling expeditions. These had begun to travel farther and farther in
the oceans, bringing the species to the brink of historical disaster.
I have placed the treatment of whaling in this chapter, as it follows on
from the consideration of maritime pollution (covered in the first chap-
ter). As both of these case studies relate or are entangled in the webs of
waves, water, seas, and international law, it seems as they should follow
each other, as they depict a certain sense of water security. Based on these
first two chapters together, one can interpret the ways in which the
League and other interwar participants saw the sea, at least to a certain
extent, as a legal world.
14 introduction

The third chapter explores the League’s “rural hygiene” campaign.

During its work on different reflections of sanitary problems that put
local, national, and global public health at risk, the League invested
substantial scientific, comparative, and professional effort while it was
considering different possible policies with which these dangers and
challenges could be faced. These suggested policies, articulated in terms
of international law, focused mainly on the eradication of a variety of
environmental-sanitary risks and spreading diseases, which the League
believed to be plaguing the countryside in Eastern Europe and across the
“Far East” (as it was called by the participants). Among the international
community’s concerns were the need to protect water resources from
human and nonhuman pollution, to treat refuse, to fight spreading
diseases particularly in rural areas, to limit fly breeding, to control rats
and pests, and more. Citing these concerns as threats to local, national,
and international communities, the League conceptualized agricultural
peripheries as a rural frontier from which humanity could better protect
itself, using various means of sanitary engineering, special medical ser-
vices, and political awareness.
This chapter tracks two main events that took up much of the League’s
attention. First, it assembled the European Conference on Rural Hygiene
(1931) and, later, parallel to its main agenda and realms of inquiry and
cooperation, the Intergovernmental Conference of Far Eastern Countries
on Rural Hygiene, which was held at Bandoeng, Java in August 1937.
The fourth chapter uncovers the problem of timber production and
trade following the Great Depression, and the increasing concerns of
spreading deforestation in various areas around the world.
The Kingdom of the Forests gained particular attention during the
interwar period: international bodies (including the League) were inter-
ested in controlling and coordinating the production and supply of
different raw materials (such as coal, cotton, oil, gum, wheat, and
sugar) to the international market, both in regular times and during
times of crisis. Immediately after the World War I, the League became
interested in timber in particular. At the end of the 1920s, about
forty million cubic meters of sawn timber – the most popular product
at this time – were exported worldwide per year.29 This figure was cut
almost in half when the Great Depression of 1929 started to affect
international commerce and timber production. Accusations against

29
WALTER GROTTIAN, DIE UMSATZMENGEN IM W E L T H O L Z H A N D E L 19 25 – 19 3 8, 1 44
(1942).
 l a y o u t o f t h e ch a p t e r s 15

a dumping policy of the Soviet Union, which stood as a central part of the
Five-Year-Plan, have been heard. This alleged policy applied pressure of
its own and put other national timber industries at risk. The League
wished to support these industries and encouraged the development of
an international regime of mutual cooperation and coordination between
exporting and importing countries.
While independent international organizations, such as the International
Institute of Agriculture in Rome, or the Comité International du Bois,30
have focused on timber, different voices started in the late 1930s to advocate
for the protection of trees and forests. These parties (mostly led by the
French delegation to Geneva) encouraged the League to fight against
deforestation – a phenomenon that was spreading as an environmental
result of industrial-economic development – in Scandinavia, the Soviet
Union, Europe, and North America. At that point, the interwar story of
timber reflected a sort of harmony between the League and Western nations’
commercial interests. With their profits severely reduced, some of these
nations turned to international law and cooperation to protect their national
industries and to stabilize dropping prices. The League, driven by its own
agenda, wished to see the control of supply of the timber market and
restricted production in order to prop up prices and thereby ensure the
survival of the industry. With the merging of these threads, environmental
considerations were woven into the plot, coloring the dilemma with urgent
calls to restrict timber production and forest harvest in order to stop
deforestation from expanding. These dimensions added another layer to
the economic incentives and industrial interests surrounding the timber
issue.
The fifth chapter will provide a broader comparative view of the
League’s environmental concerns. The main aim of the additional dis-
cussion in this chapter is to weave these different initiatives (which are
described separately in each chapter) into a coherent and broad regime,
one that has a common ground, continuity, and certain dynamics. As
each chapter explains the role played by central theories, ideas, conflict-
ing interests, environmental challenges, and scientific or professional
concerns, this chapter will put them together and explain some of the
differences and common patterns. Moreover, this analysis also revises the
League’s different endeavors from contemporary environmental per-
spectives, and assesses their relevance to current dilemmas where nature
protection conflicts with human needs. Likewise, I will also deal in this

30
The International Timber Committee.
16 introduction

part with some more general questions, such as the perennial problem of
Eurocentrism.
Each of the following chapters explores a different dimension of the
League’s history of environmental policy. They focus, chronologically
and thematically, on the environmental impacts of pollution of the sea by
oil, the growing whaling industry and endangered whales, rural hygiene
and sanitation problems in different regional peripheries, and timber
production and fears of spreading deforestation. However, this study is
not a comprehensive history that covers every aspect of the League’s
engagement with issues that had – to some extent – to do with nature or
ecosystems. There may well be other concerns that the League handled
that also involved environmental perspectives.31 Rather, I present
a broad, sweeping legal-historical overview of several of the most critical
environmental challenges that the interwar world faced, in order to
understand the notions and reasons behind the League’s environmental
leadership and to explain both its shortcomings and achievements.
The concluding part reviews several of the key patterns in the League’s
environmental regime as it unfolded. I will also use this opportunity to
discuss some of the broader implications of this study for international
environmental policymaking.
Next to the techno-environmental and legal questions covered in each
chapter, the environmental story reveals the complex institutional frame-
work of the League. Although this research does not intend to cover or
analyze the complex institutional structure of the League, it will describe
and deal with its meanings in relation to the case studies and the way they
evolved during the period. It should be noted however, as this study
covers the League as a complex organization, that the main organs of the
League were the Assembly, the Council, and the Secretariat. One can find
them, and their changing roles, in each chapter. The Assembly, which
met once a year, consisted of representatives of all the member states and
decided on the organization’s policy. The Council, whose main mission
was to settle international disputes, included four permanent members
(British, France, Italy, and Japan) and four (later nine) others elected by
the Assembly every three years. The Secretariat, the heart of the League in
many aspects, carried out the day-to-day work of the League, under the
31
Given the possible ways to conduct archive-based research in legal history, and although
I have done my best not to omit the important policy areas and to capture all the major
realms in which the League dealt with environmental perspectives as central part of its
considerations, there might still be some hidden issues that involved these perspectives
but which have not been covered in this study.
 layo ut of the chap t er s 17

direction of the Secretary-General, prepared the agenda, and published

reports of the meetings. The League’s institutional framework also
included autonomous bodies,32 and a list of committees and commis-
sions received mandates from the League.33 Main parts of this research
will analyze and interpret the work of these special bodies, sometimes
working almost independently, under the auspices of the League. As the
first chapter will show, for instance, the issue of oil pollution was dis-
cussed under the supervision of the League’s Communications and
Transit Organisation. The Organisation was one of the auxiliary bodies
established by the Covenant of the League, and it had the authority to
focus on and study various questions of a more or less technical charac-
ter, or so it seemed.34
Moreover, the Organisation discussed the oil pollution problem in
collaboration with the Economic Committee. The Committee was part of
a series of several other functional fixed committees (next to the
Financial, Fiscal, and Statistical Committees), all of which were part of
the Economic and Financial Organisation, which was another auxiliary
body of the League.35 As central parts of my study show, the Economic
Committee would make up most of what would become the League’s
environmental regime.
It should also be noted that although the chapters refer from time to
time to the League as a whole, the institutional structure on the ground
was obviously more complex. The League was not, either in the environ-
mental questions or in any other issue, a single, unified entity, seeming to
possess knowledge and will of its own. Therefore, in relevant places, the
chapters will differentiate the views of the League’s various organs (or
individuals or groups within those organs).

32
Such as the Permanent Court of International Justice (PCII), which its establishment was
provided for the in the Covenant of the League; or the International Labour Organisation
(ILO/BIT), that was established in 1919 at the Paris Peace Conference as an international
organization working in cooperation with the League.
33
Such as the Permanent Mandate Commission or Opium Advisory Committee (Advisory
Committee on Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs).
34
For a review on the role of the Organisation for Communications and Transit as
a mediator in the global process, see, among others, Frank Schipper, Vincent Lagendijk
& Irene Anastasiadou, New Connections for an Old Continent: Rail, Road and Electricity in
the League of Nations Organisation for Communications and Transit, in M A T E R I A L I Z I N G
E U R O P E : T R A N S N A T I O N A L I N F R A S T R U C T U R E S A N D T H E P R O J E C T O F E U R O P E 113
(Alexander Badenoch & Andreas Fickers eds., 2010). For a description of the institutional
framework of the League, see, e.g., N O R T H E D G E , supra note 1.
35
The Economic and Financial Organisation was created at a special institutional confer-
ence the League held in Brussels in September–October 1920.
18 introduction

The League’s Environmental Regime As a Story of Legal History

and Continuity
As I elaborate in each of the chapters, I have placed the League’s
endeavors in each specific legal, environmental, economic, and political
challenge on its “own” relevant historical developing timeline. None of
these issues – pollution of the sea by oil, the whaling dilemma, the rural
hygiene campaign, or timber industry crisis and fear of deforestation – is
isolated or without context. The League, too, was part of a developing
process of emerging environmental awareness. As the historical back-
ground of each chapter highlights, in many of the case studies that
formed the cornerstones of the interwar environmental regime (and
prior to 1919 or before the League started to handle these missions),
there were already relevant and influential national or transnational legal
arrangements that tried to solve or address these problems.
The League was not alone in developing environmental awareness
during the interwar36 period. Power relations were often apparent in
the discussions on environmental issues. The balance of power (or lack
thereof) was frequently highlighted in the League’s engagement with
environmental issues. This was not unique to the League’s regime. The
early environmental treaties, signed outside the League, that dealt with
wildlife in Africa in 190037 and 1933,38 for instance, were a stitch on the
warp and woof of colonialism; and the North American bird treaties39 of
the early twentieth century were largely an outcome of the actions of US
scientists and activists (conservationists and ornithologists) – though not
really Canadian or Mexican ones. Some issues of the interwar environ-
mental regime reveal or reflect power relations, colonial hegemony, and
the strong will of new states to take part in the game of international law
per se.
There are individual histories that focus on interwar environmental
challenges (as my study illustrates); but a systematic overview of the
surveys that have aimed to cover the interwar period as part of a broad
depiction of all of environmental history (such as the panoramic

36
The environmental history of the League as a postwar period, correlates with a developing
field within the intensifying spectrum of environmental history. This field or subfield
focuses on the effects that conflicts in war and combat had upon nature and ecosystems.
See, e.g., N A T U R A L E N E M Y , N A T U R A L A L L Y : T O W A R D A N E N V I R O N M E N T A L H I S T O R Y
O F W A R (Richard P. Tucker & Edmund Russell, eds., 2004).
37
The 1900 Convention for the Preservation of Wild Animals, Birds, and Fish in Africa.
38
The 1933 Convention Relative to the Preservation of Fauna and Flora in the Natural State.
39
The 1916 Migratory Bird Treaty.
 t he l e a g u e’s environmental regime 19

overviews of John McNeill40 or Ian Whyte41) shows that the interwar

period is considered to be almost worthless in the greater scheme of
modern environmental history. Even in his groundbreaking book, com-
prising no fewer than 421 pages, McNeill dedicated just one sentence (!)
to the role of the League in the environmental history of the twentieth
century: “By 1935 the clear decline in Blue Whales led to regulations
overseen by the League of Nations. These had scant effect.”42
McNeill says nothing further: either on the intensive involvement of the
League in the convoluted campaign for international whaling law (which
continued almost throughout the interwar period), or on the League as
a whole and as an institution that promoted the environmental regime.
Certainly this introductory section cannot cover every book that seeks
to provide an overview of all environmental history; however, there are
a few notable examples that continue to overlook the interwar period
(though they include other earlier periods, as I have mentioned), such as
Whyte’s A D I C T I O N A R Y O F E N V I R O N M E N T A L H I S T O R Y , published in
2013.43 Like others, Whyte ignores the role and the position of the
League. However, in his detailed interdisciplinary environmental dic-
tionary (in Whyte’s own words), which covers several hundred different
terms of environmental history over 500 pages, there is not a single term
relating to the League. In contrast, institutions such as the Council for the
Preservation of Rural England receive two different mentions;44 the
Royal Society for the Protection of Birds gets three separate references
in his survey.45 Terms relating to international environmental law do
appear, but they refer to the term Globalization (on page 218).

40
M C N E I L L , supra note 24.
41
I A N D . W H Y T E , A D I C T I O N A R Y O F E N V I R O N M E N T A L H I S T O R Y (2013).
42
M C N E I L L , supra note 24, at 242. To reinforce my argument regarding the “hidden
chapter” of the League in the history of international environmental law, one can also
point to a clear reality: in the legal-historical overviews of international environmental-
ism, such as the work of Meyer et al. on the evolution of the global regime, no more than
a single paragraph is dedicated to the role (successes and failures alike) of the League (See
Meyer et al., supra note 19, at 631). This single paragraph, in a comprehensive description
beginning in the year 1870 and ending in the early 1990s, is a poignant illustration of the
common description and understanding of the genealogy of international environmental
law and the role of the League in its evolution.
43
W H Y T E , supra note 41.
44
On pages 122 and 202.
45
On pages 175, 347 and 424. However, it does not mention the role of the society in the
interwar campaign against the pollution of the sea by oil, an initiative that drove the
League to lead an international discussion on the first environmental convention of its
kind (see the discussion in Chapter 1).
20 introduction

The same is true of another work that aims to explore a comprehensive

environmental vision of human history. Like Jared Diamond’s G U N S ,
G E R M S , A N D S T E E L , 4 6 Clive Ponting’s study47 tells of the relationship
between the environment and human history. Ponting examines a variety
of historic world civilizations, from Sumeria to ancient Egypt, and from
Easter Island to the Roman Empire. He argues that human societies have
repeatedly built communities and structures that have grown and pros-
pered by exploiting the Earth’s resources, only to expand to the point
where those resources can no longer sustain the societies’ needs, popula-
tions or aims. One of his primary arguments is that the reason for these
empires’ collapse lies in the environmental history crises.
Was there an international environmental crisis during the interwar
period? Ponting mentions the League only in two very brief remarks.
First, he discusses the case of Nauru (on page 194), and mentions that the
island was first a German territory (colony), then a League of Nations
mandate, and then a United Nations mandate.48 Second, he refers to the
League in his discussion of the issue of food in the twentieth century (on
page 246).49
I should be more accurate. There is quite a rich historiography that
explores supranational dimensions of environmentalism – including their
explicit legal policies – in periods that preceded the first half of the twentieth
46
JARED DIAMOND, GUNS, GERMS AND STEEL: THE FATES OF HUMAN SOCIETIES
( 1997).
47
CLIVE PONTING, A NEW GREEN HISTORY OF THE WORLD: THE ENVIRONMENT AND
T H E C O L L A P S E O F G R E A T C I V I L I S A T I O N S (revised edition, 2007; original ver. 1991).
48
For another study that tracks the role of the Nauru in a shift in international environ-
mental law later on in environmental history see Antony Anghie, “The Heart of My
Home”: Colonialism, Environmental Damage, and the Nauru Case, 34 H A R V . I N T ’L L.J.
445 (1993).
49
But the interwar period is being mentioned for comparative perspective. Ponting argues
that the period was worse in terms of Western conditions (especially in the United States
and in Britain). Following the Great Depression, the international community became
threatened by the increasing problem of famine, as people “starved to death on the streets
of New York and in Britain” (Ponting, supra note 47, at 246).
This can also explain the League’s initiatives to present global standards of nutrition:
the League collected worldwide information and officially estimated that a third of the
population was too poor to buy the minimum diet that the League believed to be essential
to maintain health.
Moreover, the only relevant reference, as I see it, in Ponting’s study, appears in Chapter
8: “The Rape of the World.” Here, under the subtitle “Whaling,” he discusses the whaling
industry’s interest in devising a scheme to control catches “so that whaling could continue
at a sustainable . . . level.” Without mentioning the ongoing and intensive endeavors of
the League in an explicit manner, Ponting mentions that “[s]ome attempts were made in
the 1930s but they failed . . . .” (Id. at 166).
 the l eague ’s e nvironmental regime 21

century. However, while these studies have moved beyond local, national-
domestic questions of environmental history and have identified a trans-
national shift in environmental history, they have largely focused on imperial
or colonial networks, dimensions, and frameworks. In that sense, one can
easily find works that uncovered pre-1946 or pre-1972 transnational envir-
onmental law, such as Richard Grove’s work. In his study, Grove was one of
the first historians who found the origins of environmentalism in the unex-
plored realm of Western (British, French, and Dutch) colonial policies in
East Asia, the Caribbean, and other regions. In this retrospective, Grove
pointed out the significance of the colonial impact on the global environment
beyond the European metropolis that controlled Western empires overseas.
He further looked at the ways in which – for the first time in transnational
contexts – conservationist notions were reflected in these empires’ policies
abroad, and how they handled the limitations of local and global natural
resources.50
Likewise, Rachelle Adam51 introduced the complexity of species
extinction in different regions in Africa, and showed how the British
intensive effort to protect these endangered species should be understood
as part of early environmental law. Marc Cioc,52 or Mario Prost and
Yoriko Otomo,53 also looked at international environmentalism that
used legal terms and mechanisms beyond the nation-state model in
imperial or colonial frameworks. Yet the historiography remains silent
on international environmental law that is not part of imperial or colonial
studies.54
Though there are a few scholars who have recognized or identified the
preliminary formation of the early international environmental regime at

50
R I C H A R D H. G R O V E , G R E E N I M P E R I A L I S M : C O L O N I A L E X P A N S I O N , T R O P I C A L
I S L A N D E D E N S A N D T H E O R I G I N S O F E N V I R O N M E N T A L I S M , 1 60 0 –1 8 60 (1996).
51
RACHELLE ADAM, ELEPHANT TREATIES: THE COLONIAL LEGACY OF THE
B I O D I V E R S I T Y C R I S I S (2014).
52
C I O C , supra note 3. See, in particular, the ways in which Cioc describes the role of
colonial legacy in the evolution of international whaling law, and regarding the protection
of migratory birds.
53
Mario Prost & Yoriko Otomo, British Influences on International Environmental Law:
The Case of Wildlife Conservation, in B R I T I S H I N F L U E N C E S O N I N T E R N A T I O N A L L A W :
1 91 5 –2 0 15 , 192 (Robert McCorquodale & Jean–Pierre Gauci eds., 2015).
54
Moreover, compared to the general discourse that characterized early transnational
imperial environmentalism, and the period of the League that followed, it would be
rather hard to find the same “neo-colonial romanticisation” (Prost & Otomo, supra
note 53, at 210) in its discussions on environmental challenges. In most cases, as I will
describe, the League, in general, did not turn to exotic or mysterious features in its
representation of the fauna and landscape of the non-Western world.
22 i n t r o d uc t i o n

the turn of the twentieth century, they have tended too often to narrow
the focus of their research. Some have chosen to focus on other frame-
works, largely bypassing the League’s legal-environmental activities dur-
ing its reign – both those that were successful and those that failed. David
Frank55 and David Pepper,56 for instance, have examined efforts in the
first two decades of the twentieth century to place environmental con-
cerns within the international legal discourse. Although both have
claimed that these efforts provided “weak frameworks” in the operative
international dimension, my work will study the League as a framework
in the context of historical analysis of the evolution of international
environmentalism, which promoted international legal activity and dis-
course. One can find therein different policies57 that aim to protect
wildlife58 and the campaign for the prevention of whaling.59 However,
for instance, right after Prost and Otomo discuss different conservation
treaties and international conferences that took part in the protection of
wildlife in Africa and in setting rules for hunting management in the
1910s, they move on to describe the “post-war period,” which marked
“a further sea change for international conservation” as a whole.60
The “war” they refer to is, obviously, World War II, leaving the
interwar period (the global arena after 1918) overlooked.
This tendency to overlook the League becomes even more apparent in
scholarship that aims to disrupt common perceptions or concepts of
environmental historiography, and to uncover the origins of international
environmental law. Prost and Otomo describe the 1950 International
55
David J. Frank, Science, Nature and the Globalization of the Environment: 1870–1990, 76
S O C . F O R C E S 409 (1997)
56
D A V I D P E P P E R , T H E R O O T S O F M O D E R N E N V I R O N M E N T A L I S M (1984).
57
Meyer and his associates, for instance, referred to the increasing ecosystem perspective in
the late 1910s. However, they attributed it primarily to advances and scientific activity (in
the local–national context), but not to an international–institutional policy, or to any
legal interface. See Meyer et al., supra note 19, at 630.
58
See, for instance, the international conference of 1900, which was assembled for the
protection and conservation of wild animals in Africa; as well as the convention which
followed it – ironically, this convention simultaneously called for the rescue of the African
Animal Kingdom and for the protection of hippos and giraffes, as well as for the
eradication of dangerous species such as lions, baboons and pythons. See S H E R M A N
S. HAYDEN, THE INTERNATIONAL PROTECTION OF WILD LIFE: AN EXAMINATION
OF TREATIES AND OTHER AGREEMENTS FOR THE PRESERVATION OF BIRDS AND
M A M M A L S (1942).
59
For a broad analysis of the history of international efforts to make whaling sustainable
in the twentieth century, see K U R K P A T R I C K D O R S E Y , W H A L E S A N D N A T I O N S :
E N V I R O N M E N T A L D I P L O M A C Y O N T H E H I G H S E A S ( 2013).
60
Prost & Otomo, supra note 53, at 205.
 t he l e a g u e’s en v i r o n m e n t a l r e g i m e 23

Convention for the Protection of Birds alongside “the first treaty to tackle
marine pollution”61 – the International Convention for the Prevention of
Pollution of the Sea by Oil (which was adopted on May 12, 1954, and
amended in 1962 and 1969). However, even their revisionist work fails to
mention that the same legal-environmental campaign took place not long
before the development they analyze: during the 1930s, to be precise. This
parallel chain of concerns about nature, industry, and the coastal landscape
that led to the sketching of a similar legal solution under the auspices of the
League is completely omitted from this description of environmental legal
history. As my first chapter describes, the League led an international
coalition (that faced bitter resistance from the shipping industry and its
political lobby) that showed a growing concern for dying birds that were
washing up on the shores by their thousands.62
While one can see a significant change in the course of the League
historiography in general since the 1990s, there still has yet to be an
equivalent development in the historiography of legal environmentalism.
My study challenges this gap in the common historiography of environ-
mentalism, while shattering or revising some of its arguments and
premises.63

61
Id. at 206.
62
Indeed, as I will elaborate in the first chapter, the nascent environmental challenges the
League faced as early as the 1920s seem to have failed to reach binding international
conventions – if we are to discuss the final results. However, the very fact that compre-
hensive studies, which acknowledge by definition the role of the gradual historical
evolution of international environmentalism, skip the interwar period as a whole seems
to justify my claim. In one of their notes, for instance, Prost and Otomo mention that the
1950 International Convention for the Protection of Birds was “the result of a series of
conferences, following on from a 1902 Convention for the Protection of Birds.” And yet,
they are satisfied with minimizing – in my opinion – the contribution of the efforts that
had been invested in the battle over the interwar work-in-progress convention, which was
according their (too) general observation “limited in its effectiveness” (Prost & Otomo,
supra note 53, at 206, note 54 (emphasis added)).
63
The need, or at least the possibility, to revise or reassess descriptions of the activities and
history of the League as seen through the lenses of the history of international environ-
mental law becomes even more pronounced, as I claim, when considering the primary
and secondary literature on which scholars in the field have based their research. When
Meyer and his colleagues state that all efforts to encourage the League to operate in
environmental issues “failed in any respect,” they refer to Hayden’s assessment, made in
1942. Hayden, however, dealt with international environmental law in the 1940s, from the
very specific perspective of the protection of wild animals. He also asserted that “the
question [of protecting] whales was treated alone by the League” (H A Y D E N , supra note
58, at 148).
Another “minimalist” estimation of the joint effort to promote environmental issues
and concerns by the League appears in Ronald Mitchell’s research. Yet, even in this kind
24 introducti on

Indeed, in contrast to the limited historiographic perspectives I have

briefly presented, several recent works have expanded the scope and
reach of research on the League into environment-related subjects.64
Though they examine certain environmental issues within the frame-
work and history of the League,65 they still lack, in my mind, a broader
overview that brings to light a systematic and comprehensive analysis of
the League’s environmental legal activities. My analysis therefore weaves
these activities into a regime that can be revised, studied, and compared
in legal manners, interpretations, and methodologies.
As noted above, it seems that only recently has the historical view of
the League become illuminated with new perspectives, contrasting to the
former view that characterized it for almost half of the last century. Is it
not then time, following the example of the changing historical research,
to shatter old-fashioned images of the League also with regard to the
interface between studies on the League and the history of international
environmental law?

of study, the focus is given to scientific perspectives on a specific field (pollution of the sea
by oil). See Ronald Mitchell, International Oil Pollution of the Oceans, in I N S T I T U T I O N S
FOR THE EARTH: SOURCES OF EFFECTIVE INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL
P R O T E C T I O N 1 8 3 (P. H. Hass, R. O. Keohane & M. A. Levy eds., 1993).
64
Sunil Amrith and Patricia Clavin’s recent study, for example, which was published only in
2013, examines the infrastructure and the involvement of internal bodies of the League,
and the networks that were established by the League from 1930 to 1945 to fight hunger
and nutrition in rural areas, particularly in East Asia. The League, however, was also
trying to initiate a similar move in 1939 to promote these conditions in rural areas of
Europe. This economic-history research focuses on the realms of nutrition, health, and
rural development, and one can see the environmental perspectives engaged therein. In
addition, the study also seeks to examine the history of relations between the institutions
that participated in this system. These kinds of missions, and others, set the framework
for what later developed into the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the
World Health Organization (WHO), and the International Bank for Reconstruction and
Development (IBRD). See Sunil Amrith & Patricia Clavin, Feeding the World: Connecting
Europe and Asia, 1930–1945, 218 (suppl. 8) P A S T A N D P R E S E N T 29 (2013).
65
The work of Anna-Katharina Wöbse, for example, deals with the effort invested during
the campaign for international environmental consent regarding a common ecological
concern, as reflected in the (failed) Pollution of the Sea by Oil Convention. However,
Wöbse does not look or go any further but the discussions and proceedings of that one
complex convention. Wöbse, the first scholar who tried to find environmental inter-
national legal history in the interwar period, ends her revelation with yet another
description of the common pattern of the rise and fall of the League, and expresses her
findings with an awareness of the clichés about the history and the role of the League:
“The failure to impose a comprehensive pollution control regime may seem to confirm
the clichés about the League’s shortcomings . . . .” See Anna-Katharina Wöbse, Oil on
Troubled Water? Environmental Diplomacy in the League of Nations, 32 D I P L O M A T I C
H I S T . 519, 519 (2008).
 b e f o r e c o n c l u d i n g t h e in t r o d u c t i o n 25

Before Concluding the Introduction

A few additional general remarks before I move on to the League’s
environmental regime. The following chapters will maintain a linear
path of the historical timeline as far as possible; however, I will also try
to avoid a mere chronological description and nothing more. My analysis
is not entirely a “strict,” laboratory-style analysis. History cannot, and
should not, be explained in terms of separate and isolated factors alone.
An approach that either tries to follow the historical evolution through
a chronologic chain of events, or one that focuses only on one specific
role or agency, might miss part of the almost chaotic, and very human,
course of history. Economic reasons and commercial interests alone
cannot give us a full picture – if there is any – of the campaigns for
international environmental regime. Nor can an isolated examination of
the environmentalist and conservationist agendas of that time reveal the
entire story. The mixed variety of the (sometimes conflicting) parties
involved had a direct effect on how the interwar questions of pollution,
whaling, rural hygiene and sanitation, and timber unfolded.
Moreover, this is not the first study to claim that international interest
in conservation existed before the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Likewise, this
is also not to suggest that this interest in conservation has always been
translated or articulated into an agreement. In most cases, it was not.
However, the urgent calls that pushed the League and the international
community to act have not yet been studied thoroughly or as a part of
a coherent, continuing, regime.66
Having provided this general introduction to the League’s environmen-
tal regime, it should also be noted that it is hard to accurately compare the

66
For example, the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild
Flora and Fauna (1973) (better known as CITES), which scholars and environmental
activists consider to be one of the most prominent stages of international environmental
law in the post–World War II era, oversaw the import and export of listed (at risk of
extinction) species. The legal mechanism used in CITES was based on a system of
licensing authorization that operated very much like the method that was introduced in
the interwar environmental conventions that I will discuss (see my discussion in Section
2.3.5 of Chapter 2, in which I elaborate on the first international whaling convention of
1931). Some scholars (such as Prost and Otomo, and other scholars who have focused on
colonial environmental legacies) have claimed, however, that these legal mechanisms
were shaped by the British Imperial legacy and experience overseas (Prost & Otomo,
supra note 53, at 207–08). However, my study will show that the traditional scholarship in
environmental history – which attributes most (if not all) of the landmarks of early
international environmental law to the role of empires (and in particular the British
Empire – see G R O V E , supra note 50) – tends to skip other bodies and states of that period.
26 introducti on

scope and volume of environmental initiatives that preceded 1946 with

those that followed the year that the UN was established. Surely these two
chapters of environmentalism differ considerably in their definitions,
theoretical framework, and aims. Both the environmental achievements
and ecological failures of the second half of the century easily overshadow
those of the first half as a whole, and of the interwar period in particular.
The second half of the century, for instance, stands out as a much more
institutionalized period in terms of environmental cooperation and inter-
national coordination. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), for
example, joined the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO), the World Meteorological Organization
(WMO), and the International Maritime Organization (IMO). Likewise,
the 1946 International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling over-
came both its earlier versions of 1931 and 1937, and compared to later
international cooperation against the pollution of the sea by oil, the “early”
(and precedential) convention of the League on that issue can be seen as
almost amateur.
But that does not seem to be the right question. The evolution of
international environmental law in the twentieth century, and also beyond
it, definitely has visible roots in the 1920s and 1930s. Even if one were to
claim that most of these activities were a colossal failure on the ground, the
layered developing geology of international (environmental) law67 owes at
least some of its explanations to the interwar period, whether it is con-
sidered a success or not. Likewise, the main goal of this study is not to
evaluate how were these environmental issues on the ground, and what was
their impact in “real” or measured terms. I rather focused and was inter-
ested in the ways in which different perspectives on these concerns were
reflected by terms and discourse of international law. Indeed, there is no
doubt that the early 1950s marked a new chapter in the history of global
environmentalism. The 1950 International Convention for the Protection
of Birds (on the matter of the cause of sea pollution), for instance, was
agreed on by various European nations. But should not environmental
history judge this final and formal stage of 1950 alongside the interwar
series of discussions and drafts of legal convention that had tried to
establish a worldwide agreement for the protection of migratory birds?68
67
J. H. H. Weiler, the Geology of International Law – Governance, Democracy and
Legitimacy, 64 Z E I T S C H R I F T F Ü R A U S L Ä N D I S C H E S Ö F F E N T L I C H E S R E C H T U N D
V Ö L K E R R E C H T 547 (2004).
68
Most of the environmental history that focuses on international protection for migratory
birds tends to study the twists and turns of transnational conventions that mostly related
 before concluding the introduction 27

As I will argue, at least some of the natural or obvious characteristics of

the ways in which international law as a whole, and international envir-
onmental law in particular, has been shaped over time, were already
evident during the interwar period. The issues that follow in each chapter
were part of an ongoing process that also included legal mechanisms as
central tools with which these environmental challenges could be
confronted.
This brings me to the notions of conservation and preservation in
common environmental studies discourse. Biodiversity, wildlife protec-
tion, and sustainability are some of the most recognized terms of ecology
today, but it seems that at the beginning of the previous century, words
such as “conservation” reigned supreme.69 As I will demonstrate in each
chapter, at times, international and subnational actors simultaneously
relied on reflections or interpretations of both of these theoretical terms
in real-time test cases; sometimes, they articulated their demands using
only one or the other.
This is not the place to launch into a discussion of the history of these
two key notions in environmental history, but since my study aims to
deal with the interplay between them as they were reflected in early
international law, I shall present a brief overview of their definitions
and differences.
The study tackles the question of whether or not the League’s use of
international law, governance, and diplomacy in the following test cases
practiced conservationist approaches or preservationist ones. Environmental
historians who have studied different chapters in the evolution of inter-
national environmentalism tend to suggest several interpretations of the
theoretical and substantial tendencies that were used or implemented within
legal discourse, agreements, conventions, and treaties of the relevant period
being studied. This work will distinguish between Environmentalism (and
those who share its perspectives as Environmentalists), or protection of the

to North America. However, following the 1902 Convention for the Protection of Birds
(which, most scholars argue, was limited in its effectiveness), the interwar period did
introduce a growing interest in attempts to reach an international convention on behalf of
the League. In fact, as I elaborate and discuss in Chapter 1, the Convention Against the
Pollution of the Sea by Oil was ignited by early efforts and fierce discussions regarding the
post–World War I condition of certain shores, which were covered by thousands of dead
birds that had been poisoned by the oily waters of the sea in the aftermath of the naval war
transportation.
69
For a discussion on the history of conservation (in American context), see, e.g., J U D S O N
KIND, THE CONSERVATION FIGHT: FROM THEODORE ROOSEVELT TO THE
T E N N E S S E E V A L L E Y A U T H O R I T Y ( 2 00 9 ).
28 introduction

environment (as we understand it in its modern sense, as a political,

social, and cultural phenomenon that has been defined as such since
the late 1960s); and Environmental (and those who share its perspec-
tives as Environmentals), which collects into itself any measures and
actions that engage with the connection between nature and human
environment.70
Likewise, I will also distinguish, where relevant, between conservation
and preservation, and the ways these terms were used – and modified –
by different interwar players. Conservation usually refers to the sustain-
able use and management of natural resources including wildlife, water,
air, and earth deposits. The conservation of renewable resources ensures
that they are not consumed or exploited faster than they can be replaced.
The conservation of nonrenewable resources like fossil fuels involves
ensuring that sufficient quantities are maintained for future generations
to utilize. Conservation of natural resources usually focuses on the needs
and interests of human beings, for example the biological, economic,
cultural, and recreational value such resources have.71
Preservation, in contrast, attempts to maintain in their present condition
areas of the Earth that are so far untouched by humans – regardless of their
significance to human society, economy, and consumption. Preservationist
agendas usually adopt a far less human-centered approach to environmental
protection (than in conservationist approaches), placing a value on nature
that does not relate to the needs and interests of human society and
individuals. This conception of nature argues that ecosystems and individ-
ual species should be preserved whatever the cost, regardless of their
usefulness to humans, and even if their continued existence would prove
harmful to humankind. This follows from the belief that every living thing
has a right to exist and should be preserved.
Between these (raw) definitions, the international whaling conven-
tions of 1931, 1937, and 1946,72 for instance, can be read, understood,
and interpreted in several different, ways. On the one hand, the interwar
conventions demonstrate or articulate the concept of conservationist

70
For a preliminary sketch of the difference between these two “types” of environmental-
ism, see Danielle Tesch & Willet Kempton, Who Is an Environmentalist? The Polysemy of
Environmental Actions, 8 J. E C O L O G I C A L A N T H R O P O L O G Y 67 (2004).
71
Therefore conservationists accept that development is necessary for a better future, but
only when the changes take place in ways that are not wasteful.
72
As I elaborate in Chapter 2, although the 1946 Convention was introduced after the
League was dissolved, it seems that it should still be considered as a legal product of the
interwar period.
 b e f o r e c o n c l u d i n g t h e in t r o d uc t i o n 29

environmental policies: they promote the wise use of exploitable natural

resources, and sustainability. “These treaties,” as Marc Cioc puts it,
“offered no protection to individual species until they had already
become ‘commercially extinct’ (that is, too rare to hunt profitably).”73
But on the other hand, as I will show further in Chapter 2, these conven-
tions used a “preservationist” discourse, such as setting sanctions against
the overexploitation of certain whale species, establishing geographical
sanctuaries in certain marine areas, and forbidding whaling in certain
seasons (these were articulated in legal terms as well).
Did the League express preservationist perspectives in its actions and
discussions that involved environmental reflections? Should the League
rather be considered a conservationist institution? How can we distin-
guish conservation from preservation in this matter? Perhaps the League
is better treated as forum that expressed preservationist and conserva-
tionist views and concerns simultaneously, or interchangeably.
However, referring to environmental perceptions in the interwar
period does not mean I am claiming that the different players involved
in the battle on nature and natural resources used our own language.
Although this is not the place to engage with some of these broad issues,
I shall rather seize this opportunity to discuss briefly possible claims
concerning certain weaknesses of the main methodology used in this
research and the possible difficulties it might involve. As other scholarly
debates have shown, the turn to history in international law has also
demonstrated a certain complexity of methods, and mostly interpret-
ation, used in international legal history. To state the obvious, we must be
cautious, for instance, of anachronism.74 Although I will use (and more
than once) later concepts such as “NGOs,” “regime,” or even “environ-
ment,” as I describe and analyze the League’s activities in relation to
nature, I am aware, of course, of the potential problems of this common
mode of writing legal history. As the debate between Phillip Alston and
Jenny S. Martinez on the possible risks of anachronism in international
legal history in particular has already shown, one should not take out of
context terms that were used in a certain period, or “force” one’s current
interpretation on contemporary terms that were used in the past.

73
C I O C , supra note 3, at 8.
74
For a debate on the possible risks of anachronism in the history of international law in
particular, see the controversy between Phillip Alston and Jenny S. Martinez over the
interpretation of human rights terms in different time periods: Phillip Alston, Does the
Past Matter? On the Origins of Human Rights: An Analysis of Competing Histories of the
Origins of International Human Rights Law, 126 H A R V . L . R E V . 2043 (2013).
30 introduction

In other words, the ways in which I strive to “bring alive,” if I am to

borrow from Alston’s analysis,75 the environmental chapter of the
League, primarily through archival research that provides a real feel for
the ways in which the League developed its policies with regard to nature,
cannot, and should not, overlook or dismiss the duty of being careful and
mindful of the gap between different historical periods, the terms in use,
and their interpretations. Legal scholars in particular sometimes tend to
rely on the “search-engine mentality,”76 which insists on interpreting
certain terms without being sufficiently cautious about their historical
context. Therefore, whenever I discovered an interwar use of discourse
on nature, exploitation of natural resources, or nature protection I did
my best to be aware of both the similarities and the differences between
that period’s contemporary context and our current environmental and
legal discourse.
One more cautious remark. Although the main focus of the study is on
the League, this is not to claim or to assume that it was the only body that
considered environmental views. The League certainly was not the only
organization that paid attention to or fought for environmental causes.
As I will show, the League was part of an international network of
independent or external bodies and agencies – national, regional, profes-
sional, transnational, industrial, political, and international – that took
part in the continuing debates over timber production, pollution of the
sea by oil, spreading diseases in the global periphery, and whaling. In
each campaign or environmental challenge, I will sketch the role of other
organizations that collaborated with or challenged the League (or those
that “used” the League to promote their own environmental agendas). In
each environmental issue, the League served as the center (or, at least, as
one of the centers) of discussions and as the focus of the decision-making
process, successful or unsuccessful as these decisions (ultimately) were.
The League’s environmental experience (including, most certainly, its
failures along the way) allowed it to develop its institutional relevance as
well as “its” international law per se – the League was not simply a vehicle
for the environmental agenda. A majority of the interwar environmental
initiatives actually began as subnational initiatives or national endeavors,
and were only later elevated into the international sphere. Historically,
this meant that in most cases, domestic77 legal attempts came first,

75
Id. at 2047.
76
Id. at 2049.
77
Or colonial, depending on the relevant geopolitical context.
 b e f o r e co n cl udi n g t h e i n t r od u c tion 31

followed by transnational or international campaigns. The League was

obviously not the first forum that fulfilled transnational opportunities
and aspirations in terms of international law. However, it was the first
institutionalized forum of international law and diplomacy, with an
agreed founding document (the Covenant of the League of Nations,
from April 28, 1919).
Indeed, in certain environmental issues, some other states paved the
way. Germany, for instance, stood behind the initiative of the African
treaties at the turn of the twentieth century,78 while the Americans (and
not the Canadian or the British) advanced the bird treaties of the early
twentieth century.79 Some scholars have argued that this was also the case
with the whaling problem, in which Norway80 played a leading role.
In an intriguing way, the League followed at least some of these early
initiatives – it did not start everything from scratch. As I show, the League’s
endeavors in each environmental challenge followed up at least one (if not
several) development(s) that preceded it. However, despite this general
notion of continuity, the League marked a transition from local or national
efforts to guarantee sufficient stocks (of birds for game, for instance, or of
whales for the growing whaling industry) for current and future gener-
ations, to a much larger perspective – one that took into account all of
humanity (or, at least, substantial parts of it). By analyzing the inter-
national regulations (be they against the pollution of the sea by oil, or
the whaling conventions) or modes of international governance (in sup-
porting, for instance, thoughts of controlling timber trade and securing
prices after the Great Depression and Soviet dumping policy) that the
League promoted, I will explain the ways in which the League created this
shift in (international) environmental law.
An overview of interwar environmentalism reveals the common
belief that the focus should be placed on regulating (rather than

78
Especially the Convention for the Preservation of Wild Animals, Birds, and Fish in Africa,
or the 1900 London Convention (signed in London, May 19, 1900); although it was absent
from the following – the Convention Relative to the Preservation of Fauna and Flora in
their Natural State, or the 1933 London Convention (signed in London on Nov. 8, 1933).
See B E R N H A R D G I S S I B L , T H E N A T U R E O F G E R M A N I M P E R I A L I S M : C O N S E R V A T I O N
A N D T H E P O L I T I C S O F W I L D L I F E I N C O L O N I A L E A S T A F R I C A (2016).
79
Convention for the Protection of Migratory Birds Signed between the United States and
Great Britain, or the 1916 Convention, which was signed in Washington, DC on Aug. 16,
1916; and the Convention between the United States of America and the United States of
Mexico for the Protection of Migratory Birds and Game Mammals (or the 1936
Convention), signed in Mexico City on Feb. 7, 1936.
80
See C I O C , supra note 3.
32 i nt r o d u c t i o n

eradicating) activities like hunting, exploitation, and trade. Most

conservationist agreements of the first half of the twentieth century
were rooted in the perception that trade in endangered species81 was
“here to stay,” and that a pragmatic approach aimed at controlling the
problem’s excesses was likely to be more effective than an “abolition-
ist approach.”82
Indeed, this study does not to argue that “what was will be again”
(Ecclesiastes 1:9). The justifications of environmentalism and the
theoretical structure have certainly evolved since the 1920s and
1930s. Conservationist approaches, which dominated the field of
pro-nature perspectives in modern times and shaped a large number
of the environmental initiatives that were discussed by the League,
were replaced with newer preservationist perspectives. The broad
field of environmentalism changed fundamentally during the twenti-
eth century. A significant change relates to the role of scientific
concerns, which in many cases prompted environmental discussions
during the studied period. The focus on protecting individual dom-
inant species83 shifted during the post–World War II period to the
study of whole ecosystems instead. In other words, scientific schol-
arship, which contributed to and shaped international environmental
law solutions at the time, moved from trying to defend one endan-
gered species to a broader and more comprehensive view of nature
as an ecosystem.
Going back to the interwar period, I chose the title of this study
because it truly expresses the intensive and comprehensive involve-
ment of the League in a list of complex, fierce, and problematic
political, legal, economic, and social dilemmas that were entangled
with fundamental environmental considerations. I will examine the
role of the League from the perspectives of environmental policy,
international law, and legal history. The following chapters address
different interrelated questions, such as: To what extent did the
League, its internal institutions, and other transnational organizations
active during that time relate to environmental issues? How significant
were environmental considerations in relation to other considerations
and interests, such as economic development and the interests of the

81
Most of which were considered to be raw materials. See my discussion in Chapters 2
and 4.
82
Prost & Otomo, supra note 53, at 208.
83
Such as whales. See my discussion in Chapter 2.
 before concluding the introduction 33

Great Powers, as can be viewed in the League’s policy? In what ways

were environmental concepts or approaches embodied and reflected in
the League’s policies, and how did they compete or conflict with other
interests and incentives? To what extent did the League influence
global environmental-legal arrangements of that time, and how did it
affect the development of legal and diplomatic spheres after 1945?
 1

Fighting Pollution Made by Humankind

The League of Nations and the Endeavors of the
Convention against the Pollution of the Sea by Oil

1.1 Introduction
Four years after the guns had finally fallen silent, another alarming threat
emerged from the sea. Communities in cities, towns, and resorts along
the shore watched with growing fear how World War I endured, at least
with regard to its dark environmental aftermath. A thick layer of oil
covered the shores of many different countries, disturbing everyday life
and badly affecting tourism, fisheries, and other commercial activities.
Great Britain and Germany were the first to notice this oil pollution
near the shore. It was no surprise that two of the most industrialized
European nations were also the first to be severely affected by the conse-
quences of their technological and economic development. Soon after,
several other states such as France, the Netherlands, and the United
States reported on the same problem. The strange thick layer of filth
that began to blanket different shores first appeared in countries that had
been through the Industrial Revolution.
The oil was doing much worse than just damaging the view. People,
especially nature lovers, started to notice a parallel disturbing phenom-
enon: thousands of dying seabirds started to cover the shores along
shipping routes, poisoned by oil that polluted the water.
Although the League of Nations was coping with so many other – and
to a certain extent more acute – consequences of World War I, some
groups and states found that the 1930s were the right time to approach
the League’s high-ranking officials. These bodies wished for the League,
along with the entire international community, to lead a campaign for an
international convention that would control – and finally reduce – levels
of oil pollution in the sea.
The first chapter will explore different discussions and legal acts of the
League of Nations as it dealt with the growing problem of pollution of the
34
 1.1 i nt roduction 35

seas and oceans by oil in the period under investigation. In the following
sections, I will examine how different environmental perspectives, ideas,
and solutions were defined and articulated while the League was chal-
lenged both by environmental pollution of the oceans, and by competing
interest groups pushing the League to support their various agendas.
This chapter has three central parts (in addition to the introduction).
First, in order to situate the interwar story of oil pollution as a part of
a developing environmental-legal plot, the chapter starts with a short
historical review of the issue of oil pollution of the sea. The first section
will describe the evolving problem – and awareness – of seas becoming
polluted by oil discharge. It will show that the interwar period was not the
first time human communities were concerned about the implications of
pollution of the sea on their interests. Relying on a linear-historical
perspective, the role of the League will be examined and evaluated as
part of a continuing transnational problem, such as the example of the
Preliminary Conference on Oil Pollution of Navigable Waters,1 which
was triggered by a similar cause but chose to deal with the environmental
challenge outside of the auspices of the League.
The second (and central) section of the chapter explores the ways in
which the League became involved in the evolving challenge of solving
the pollution crisis. I will start with the first calls that advocated for saving
the birds from death. The focus on the role of NGOs will support my
claim that this planned international environmental-legal advocacy devi-
ated from domestic constraints and barriers.
In this section, I will further track the activity of a special committee of
experts the League had assembled (through its Communications and
Transit Organisation) in order to study the issue of oil pollution. I will
explore the committee’s intensive discussions on new means of inter-
national regulation that aimed to fight oil pollution of the sea as
a consequence of oil discharge from ships, on the proponents and
opponents of the legal campaign, and on the outcome of the League’s
efforts: the special convention against the pollution of the sea by oil,
which was introduced in 1935.
Following this historical narrative, I will wrap up with some brief
conclusions. Having looked at the legal and practical outcomes of
the special campaign of the League, I will also provide an overview of
the post-League era. Here, my main claim is that, in order to evaluate the
League’s historical role as an agent of environmentalist considerations,

1
Mostly referred to as the Washington Conference of 1926.
36 f i g h t i n g p o l l u t i o n m a d e b y h u m a n k i nd

we should also compare its antipollution efforts with later developments –

and obstacles – in terms of international environmental law and pollu-
tion of the seas and oceans. In that sense, the timeline that the League was
part of did not break once the League dissolved. Unfortunately, pollution
of the sea continued to be a troubling environmental – and legal –
problem in the second half of the twentieth century: as an international
or regional, as well a local-national, problem. Although the League ceased
to exist, some of the tensions and the suggested solutions it discussed in
the 1930s were still on the table.
In this chapter, which is also the first tangible opportunity to revisit the
League’s complex environmental regime, I will examine the convention’s
intensive and ambitious efforts against the pollution of the sea by oil. This
international effort engaged different bodies, some of which were affili-
ated with the League, and some of which were independent but still in the
League’s orbit. As I will show, this early environmental campaign turned
to firm and explicit legal mechanisms in order to achieve its goals. By
doing so, the campaign captured the attention and resourcefulness of
some of the leading forces and persons of interwar diplomacy.
As I will elaborate, several officials and organs of the League were
involved in the long and complex process of legal consultation and
coordination that went into preparing an international convention.
While the environmental problem was escalating, the League focused
on the dangers and costs of oil pollution, given that it viewed the sea as an
international common. Moreover, most of the discussions and consult-
ations, which lasted several years, took place under the direct auspices of
the League, and leaned on a new type of institutionalized international
law that was, literally, under construction. This was not merely
a “technical” fact, but also one that had historical, environmental, and
legal significance.
Despite the bustling antipollution activity and fierce legal-environmental
battle between conservationist groups from all around the world and pro-
industrial bodies, both environmental history and legal studies have tended
so far to skip this interwar story of birds, oil, and shipping.
The League of Nations was not the first body to deal with the outcomes
of pollution. In the age of sailing, there was naturally no problem of
pollution along coasts or harbors.2 However, as sailing gave way to coal
2
There was an incipient problem that resulted from the careless deposit of refuse. Thus,
early preindustrial pollution legislation existed as early as 1814 in Great Britain to prohibit
emptying rubbish or filth into any navigable, river, harbor, or haven. See 54 Geo. 3, c. 159.
§ 11 (1814).
 1. 1 i n t r o duct i o n 37

and coal in turn gave way to oil after World War I, modern societies had
to learn to cope with the side effects of the commercial and industrial
development of shipping.
However, studies that have focused on polluted marine environments
from the period that preceded the second half of the twentieth century
are rather scarce. Moreover, most of the legal or environmental history
that has studied the effects of oil pollution and legal remedies or reactions
at the turn of the twentieth century has focused primarily on domestic
and national legal campaigns – mainly in British and American contexts –
but has not been very interested in transnational and international
endeavors.3 Joseph A. Pratt, for instance, focused only on the environ-
mental legal campaign of the 1924 American Oil Pollution Act,4 and
analyzed the legal entanglements in that period.
Furthermore, although there are a few examples of legal history that
have explored different legal measures that aimed to fight oil pollution
and which moved beyond domestic and local test cases, they neverthe-
less skipped the interwar period. Joseph Sweeney, for instance, studied
local legal campaigns as early as 1908 (in Britain and the United States),
as well as transnational frameworks (such as the convention achieved at
the 1926 Washington Preliminary Conference on Oil Pollution of
Navigable Waters). However, even this kind of “multidimensional”
broad description almost completely overlooks the role of the League.
In his survey, which stretches over more than fifty pages, the League is
mentioned only once and very briefly, to say the least: “During the
interwar years, action to implement an international regime to control
oil pollution was requested by the League of Nations; but nothing was
accomplished.”5
The international dimension of oil pollution only began to be
revealed in environmental and legal literature after the late 1960s or
1970s, where studies exploring later or current periods used similar
research questions to the ones that I use in this study.6 Earlier attempts
3
One well-known exception is the abundant discussion on the many interpretations of the
Trail Smelter arbitration between the United States and Canada. See, among others, Alfred
P. Rubin, Pollution by Analogy: The Trail Smelter Arbitration, 50 O R . L. R E V . 259 (1971).
4
JOSEPH A. PRATT, BLACK WATERS: RESPONSES TO AMERICA’S FIRST OIL POLLUTION
C R I S I S (2008).
5
Joseph C. Sweeney, Oil Pollution of the Oceans, 37 F O R D H A M L. R E V . 155, 189 (1968).
6
See, among others, Daniel Owen, The Marine Implementation of the EC Birds and Habitats
Directives: The Cases of Shipping and Oil Exploration Compared, in C H A L L E N G I N G
COASTS BOOK SUBTITLE: TRANSDISCIPLINARY EXCURSIONS INTO INTEGRATED
C O A S T A L Z O N E D E V E L O P M E N T 159 (Leontine E. Visser ed., 2004).
38 f i g h t i n g p o l l ut i o n made b y hu m ank ind

to regulate oil pollution by law other than domestic law, as argued in

works such as those of Sweeney or Tafsir Johansson and Patrick
Donner,7 mostly classified oil pollution damage as maritime tort,
while “other systems of law” were not and still are not very successful
in their attempt to codify this procedure by means of international law.8
However, research that focused on the damage caused to birds by
oil pollution seems to be more substantial. Besides current works
that move between environmental and legal perspectives,9 studies
have described environmental history that warned of the dramatic
impact of oil pollution on animals – and birds in particular. Early
twentieth-century NGOs (such as the British Royal Society for the
Protection of Birds, and the Royal Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals) warned in the interwar period that all it took
was a small amount of oil to cause lethal consequences to both birds
and their eggs.10
Scholarship that analyzed international protection of birds was
carried out in the early twentieth century and interwar period.
Sherman Hayden, for instance, reviewed legal agreements that aimed
to protect birds (and other animals) by means of international law.11
G. A. Brouwer also studied the roots of institutional frameworks
working to protect birds as part of international biodiversity.12 It
should be mentioned, however, that although these kinds of studies
were interested in transnational patterns, the study of legal arrange-
ments intended to protect bird life in various regions was not as
widespread as the study of other legal arrangements (mostly in imper-
ial contexts) that strove to preserve wildlife species such as lions, tigers,
and elephants.13

7
TAFSIR JOHANSSON & PATRICK DONNER, THE SHIPPING INDUSTRY, OCEAN
GOVERNANCE AND ENVIRONMENTAL LAW IN THE PARADIGM SHIFT: IN SEARCH OF
A P R A G M A T I C B A L A N C E F O R T H E A R C T I C (2015).
8
Sweeney, supra note 5, at 169.
9
See, e.g., G. Troisi, S. Barton & S. Bexton, Impacts of Oil Spills on Seabirds: Unsustainable
Impacts of Non-Renewable Energy, 41 I N T ’ L J. H Y D R O G E N E N E R G Y 16549 (2016).
10
A D I C T I O N A R Y O F B I R D S 407 (Bruce Campbell & Elizabeth Lack eds., 1985).
11
SHERMAN STRONG HAYDEN, THE INTERNATIONAL PROTECTION OF WILD LIFE: AN
EXAMINATION OF TREATIES AND OTHER AGREEMENTS FOR THE PRESERVATION OF
B I R D S A N D M A M M A L S (1942).
12
G. A. BROUWER, THE ORGANISATION OF NATURE PROTECTION IN VARIOUS
C O U N T R I E S (1938).
13
See, among others, R A C H E L L E A D A M , E L E P H A N T T R E A T I E S : T H E C O L O N I A L L E G A C Y
O F T H E B I O D I V E R S I T Y C R I S I S (2014).
 1. 1 i n t r o duct i o n 39

As I will elaborate, some scholars who have studied the issue of oil
pollution in legal terms, such as Ekaterina Anyanova14 and Edgar Gold,15
entirely skipped the first half of the century and treated the problem as
a clear post–World War II issue of international law.
Indeed, even before starting the story of this chapter in early environ-
mental law, I am tempted to open with a (bitter) spoiler: this case study of
the entanglements concerning the League’s antipollution initiative is,
ultimately, a history of failure. Most of the hopes and goals of the original
plans were not fulfilled, at least not during that time.
However, numerous elements were reflected in the many convolutions
of the antipollution convention: environmental notions and perspectives;
the central role of professional experts and scientific expertise in the
discourse of international law as a source of legitimacy; the economic
interests that challenged environmental and scientific interests; the
involvement of different NGOs, non-state actors, and other bodies in
the game of international law; the interactions between traditional
powers and traditional diplomacy vis-à-vis new emerging states eager
to have a say in how international law was to be constructed – and
formulated – by the League as an unfamiliar forum; the relatively wide
media coverage; and the new routine and mechanisms of crafting and
shaping international law.
In this chapter, I will argue that we should refer to the antipollution
convention not only as a case study in environmental history, but also as
an opportunity to deepen our understanding of the routine and work
methods of different departments and organs of the League as an institu-
tion. The League developed internationalism and shaped international
law as a whole, and not only with its environmental regime. In many
ways, the players, organizations, and other interested parties that played
a role in the battle of the convention were not only concerned for the sake
of the polluted seas, or for dying poisoned seabirds. They were also
advocating for what they saw as justified ways in which the League and
other nations should shape (or not) international law per se.
Likewise, as with several other environmental issues the League was
handling, different parties had interpreted the pollution crisis as an
environmental issue, as well as one that projected dilemmas and basic

14
Ekaterina Anyanova, Oil Pollution and International Marine Environmental Law, in
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT – AUTHORITATIVE AND LEADING EDGE CONTENT
F O R E N V I R O N M E N T A L M A N A G E M E N T 29 (Sime Curkovic ed., 2012).
15
E D G A R G O L D , H A N D B O O K O N M A R I N E P O L L U T I O N (1998).
40 f i gh t i n g p o l l ut i o n made b y hu m ankind

definitions of international law such as sovereignty, territorial waters,

and relations between superstate organizations and nation states.

1.2 Historical Background of Polluted Seas and

Human Concerns
Before the League took a hold of the oil pollution discussion, there were
also earlier attempts to solve the problem: first by domestic means (in
Britain and the United States), and then also beyond local and national
barriers. The following section will briefly introduce the landmark devel-
opments of oil pollution along the evolving historical timeline: first, it
was a national problem (Section 1.2.1); then, when local measures were
not successful, the issue of oil pollution became a transnational regional
concern (Section 1.2.2); and finally, it became an international issue that
was given to the League to solve.
The sections that follow will mainly provide a linear-chronological
overview. However, it should also be noted that, in certain places, I have
chosen to describe the evolution of the discussion through a different
lens: when the national-domestic character of the antipollution campaign
transformed, becoming regional and then international in its dimen-
sions. This kind of description also exemplifies the shift from local to
international, and justifies the central role of the League as it treated the
concern for pollution of the sea as an international matter that demanded
collective action.

1.2.1 Polluted Seas As a Domestic Problem: Concerns of Oil Pollution

in Britain and the United States
World War I marked not only the end of the long nineteenth century and
a turning point in modern history, but also a time that introduced major
changes in modern technology in general, and in means of transportation
in particular. True, oil-fueled ships had been sailing back and forth prior
to the bitter autumn of 1914, but combat needs and considerations16
together with the efficiency of oil engines led to a fairly rapid change in
that feature of naval (and then commercial) transportation. In fact,
16
Compared to coal-fueled battleships, oil-fueled battleships were much safer to navigate in
dangerous water, as they produced less smoke and were thus less visible and therefore less
easily detected by the enemy. Moreover, the fact that oil-fueled ships were faster and
quicker to navigate within the turbulent waters of World War I made the choice much
easier.
 1.2 h istorical background of polluted seas 41

already during the battles of World War I, Britain entrusted its navy with
oil-fueled ships instead of the traditional nineteenth-century steam- or
coal-fueled ships.17
Once the war was over, the naval fleets decided not to revert to the
technology of their former ships; moreover, they encouraged the mer-
cantile fleet to follow suit, not only in Britain, but in most of the leading
maritime nations of that time. As the interwar period began, the naval
and maritime world that unfolded was very different from the one that
preceded it.18 Before World War I, less than 3 percent of ships in
operation used oil-fueled engines; in 1922, shortly after the establishment
of the League, this figure was nearly a quarter.19
One of the outcomes of this technological shift in marine transporta-
tion was the phenomenon of polluted waters due to oil refuse. Experts
were the first to identify the link between the technological developments
in shipping and the negative effect on nature and animals.20 At first, in
the aftermath of World War I, ornithologists had assumed that sunken
submarines and naval wrecks that had been lost during the battles were to
blame for the oil, and that it would not take long for this toxic side-effect
to disappear from the shore.
However, the real reason was different. Ship crews flushed their oily
tanks with seawater, which they then discharged into the open sea in
ports all around the globe. The floating muck was not from oil spills,
wrecks, or sunken submarines but rather the constant cleaning proced-
ures. Moreover, ships also pumped used oil overboard.
Four years after the guns became silent, the British Royal Society for
the Protection of Birds (hereinafter RSPB) moved to solve the worsening
problem. In its Annual Report bulletin of 1922, the Society observed that
instead of fading away slowly with the ocean waves, the oil problem
remained and had actually become even worse – it had “developed with
alarming rapidity until now the cry is heard from all around our
shores.”21
17
DANIEL YERGIN, THE PRIZE: THE EPIC QUEST FOR OIL, MONEY, AND POWER 86
(1991).
18
For a discussion on the technological developments with regard to marine transportation,
see S O N I A S H A H , C R U D E : T H E S T O R Y O F O I L 9–10 (2006).
19
22.34%, to be accurate. See Rudolf Drost, Die Oelpest und ihre Wirkung auf die Lebewelt
des Meers, 4 N A T U R F O R S C H E R 541 (1927– 1 92 8 ).
20
Anna-Katharina Wöbse, Oil on Troubled Water? Environmental Diplomacy in the League
of Nations, 32 D I P L O M A T I C H I S T . 519, 525 (2008).
21
ANNUAL REPORT OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY FOR THE PROTECTION OF BIRDS 8
(Presented at the Annual General Meeting, Mar. 7, 1923) (London; 1922).
42 fighting pollution made by humankind

The RSPB, which would become one of the main forces behind the
antipollution campaign, turned public attention (first in Britain) in the
early 1920s to the problem at sea and on the shores. Since the exact details
were not yet completely clear at that time, devoted NGOs22 quickly
worked to establish a link between the increase in marine transportation
and the disturbing number of oil-covered seabird carcasses covering
European and North American beaches. NGOs were also the first to
warn the public that all it took was a small amount of oil to cause lethal
consequences to both birds and their eggs.23
The RSPB spoke on behalf of the dying, poisoned birds, but the birds
were not the only victims of the industrial-technological development.
An eclectic coalition of interest groups was created in the 1920s, sharing
the damages caused by oil refuse at sea.
Tourists and touristic business, for instance, complained in the early
1920s about the side effects of oily water. Fishermen and fisheries saw
their properties badly affected by the pollution; so did civilian authorities
with regard to public safety, given the danger of flammable sludge on shores
under their responsibility. Insurance corporations were also worried: not
because of the terrible agony of the birds, but because of the risks posed by
the flammable marine-transportation stains and their financial costs.
Landlords were concerned that the market value of their real estate would
be damaged by these disturbing phenomena.24 All of these parties had their
own interests to protect in the anti-oil-pollution campaign, which can
almost be seen as an early-twentieth-century version of a grassroots move-
ment representing different voices. The collaboration between nature-
protection associations, tourism businessmen, civil servants, and others25
constituted a call to put an end to the pollution threatening what each held
dear.
At first, as with other environmental challenges that troubled the interwar
world,26 different states tried to find their own, national solutions. As the use

22
Especially British NGOs, but as I will elaborate also Dutch, French, German, and
American nature-protection associations.
23
A D I C T I O N A R Y O F B I R D S , supra note 10, at 407.
24
For a discussion on the collateral damage effect of oil pollution see, for instance, S O N I A
Z . P R I T C H A R D , O I L P O L L U T I O N C O N T R O L (1987). During the American Congress’s
discussions on the oil pollution problem, Congress elaborated on the variety of parties
that threatened by the problem, including the “potential fire hazards, destruction of
fisheries, and depreciation of seashore resort properties.” See 42 Stat. 821–22 (Pub. Res.,
No. 65 of July 1, 1922) (quoted by Sweeney, supra note 5, at 187).
25
Wöbse, supra note 20, at 526–27.
26
Mainly, as the next chapter will uncover, the whaling dilemma.
 1 . 2 hi s t o r i c a l ba c k g r o u n d of p o l l u t e d se a s 43

of oil by shipping and industry dramatically increased, local authorities in

charge of ports and parliaments in different states27 took action by means of
special port regulations to prohibit the discharge of oil in certain harbors.28
The first important versions of general legislation forbidding the
discharge of oil in territorial waters were enacted in Britain in 1922 and
in the United States in 1924. In Britain, the Oil Pollution Act of 1922
limited the common practice of discharging and washing oil from ships
to a distance of at least three miles from the shore. At almost the same
time, the United States enacted a similar law in 1924, thanks to the quasi-
environmental lobby of the National Coast Anti-Pollution League.29 The
American Oil Pollution Act of 192430 was also based on the principle of
banning oil discharge from ships within territorial waters.31
This phase of national legislation briefly described above would even-
tually pave the way (inadequately, as it turned out) for future develop-
ments. Although bills were passed by the legislator, there were already
those who called to move beyond the limits of domestic legislation, as the
issue had become an international problem. Already during the discus-
sions on the American Act, Congress requested that the President con-
vene an international conference of maritime nations to determine

27
Iceland, for instance, was one of the first countries to enact a formal antipollution
regulation of its own. It is also interesting to note that Iceland was a rather unique case
with its maritime legislation. Compared to the whaling problem, it was Iceland, and no
other nation, that first introduced early whaling law. See the following discussion in
Sections 2.3.1 and 2.3.6 in Chapter 2.
28
Sweeney, supra note 5, at 187.
29
The National Coast Anti-Pollution League was a mainstream internal American network
and public-political coalition of elected officials, public health activists and advocates, and
devoted practitioners. Together, they formed this network in 1922 as they fought the
nuisance along the Atlantic Coast. For a study that has focused on the role of this
interesting activist group, see Bill Kovarik, Oil Pollution and the National Coast Anti-
Pollution League, http://environmentalhistory.org/people/gifford-pinchot-and-the-anti-
pollution-league/. Unless mentioned otherwise, all the relevant websites and online
references were last visited on Sept. 1, 2020.
30
33 U.S.C. §§ 431–37 (1957) (originally enacted as Act of June 7, 1924, ch. 316, 43 Stat. 604).
31
According to Sec. 3, “except in case of emergency imperiling life or property or unavoidable
accident, collision, or stranding, and except as otherwise permitted by regulations prescribed
by the Secretary [ e.g. Secretary of War] as hereinafter authorized, it shall be unlawful for any
person to discharge, or suffer, or permit the discharge of oil by any method, means, or
manner into or upon the coastal navigable waters of the United States from any vessel
carrying or having oil thereon in excess of that necessary for the lubrication requirements and
such as may be required under the laws of the United States . . . .”
For a study on the American legal and environmental entanglements with oil pollution
in that period see, for instance, J O S E P H A. P R A T T , B L A C K W A T E R S : R E S P O N S E S T O
A M E R I C A ’ S F I R S T O I L P O L L U T I O N C R I S I S (2008).
44 fighting pollution made by humankind

effective means32 to prevent pollution, so that the problem could be

solved by tools of international law.
Moreover, apart from the need for international action, there was
another problem. Although the American legislation did introduce
some important restrictions,33 no one really knew for sure at this stage
how far the drifting oil could travel. Scientific data was still lacking and so
the distance limits were based on general estimations.
As concerns piled up, public pressure and media coverage of the
British NGOs’ campaign put the problem of sea pollution on the agenda
of national politics. Supportive politicians in Parliament promoted
a discussion in the House of Commons.34 This move demanded tougher
legal measures that would directly affect the shipping industry.
Both the RSPB and another British civil society association working for
animal welfare – the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals (hereinafter RSPCA) – threw their weight behind possible
stricter solutions. In their British campaign, these NGOs referred to
a polluter-pays principle and argued that this principle should also be
applied to oil-pollution cases. As such, these NGOs argued that in cases
of oil pollution, ship owners would be held responsible for the pollution
and its collateral damages.35
In addition to the polluter-pays principle, the campaign pushed for
a techno-environmental solution. The main goal of the antipollution
coalition was to use law to force ship owners to install a mechanical device
on board ships that would prevent discharge of oil into the sea. This
separator, which had already been introduced to the maritime industry
before the public campaign started, could remove oil from wastewater
before it was discharged from ships, thereby preventing water contamin-
ation and damage to the shore and coastal environment.36
However, as reasonable as this solution seemed in terms of technology and
environment, it was not simple when it came to the industry’s interests. As
I will elaborate, the shipping industry claimed that a mandatory installation
of separators was both technically unfeasible and, above all, too expensive.
The shipping industry was reluctant to agree to the proposed new
restrictions and tried to dodge the domestic initiative in Britain. The

32
Sweeney, supra note 5, at 187.
33
P R I T C H A R D , supra note 24, at 6–7.
34
Wöbse, supra note 20, at 527.
35
For a discussion on private law questions of oil pollution damage see Sweeney, supra note
5, at 164–80.
36
Id. at 189.
 1 . 2 hi s t o r i c a l ba c k g r o u n d of p o l l u t e d se a s 45

shipping lobby – mainly represented by the Board of Trade – argued, for

instance, that the suggested technology of onboard separators would cost
too much to install and required too much room on board – something
a luxury marine transportation vessel could not afford. The lobby further
objected that compulsory installation of separators would create an impos-
sible financial burden for the industry. Given the alleged costs standing
before it, the shipping industry pushed for further discussion on possible
stricter rules concerning zones in which discharging oil would be banned,
instead of agreeing to the compulsory installation of separators.37
Indeed, unlike the doubts raised by the whaling industry in the parallel
dilemma (on which I will elaborate in the next chapter) on whether or not
whales might become extinct due to increased hunting, in this case the
British shipping industry was willing to agree to several restrictions and
did not move to reject them altogether. On the one hand, it was willing to
discuss the cost of further restrictions on areas where oil pumping and
discharge were prohibited. But on the other hand, the non-state actors
involved, and especially the animal-conservation NGOs, claimed that
there was actually no use in debating or even agreeing to the enlargement
of restricted areas for oil discharge. The crucial issue, the RSPB argued
back, was using law in order to enforce a mandatory installation of
separators on board any ship. “The nations cannot, so to speak, sweep
the oil into the middle of the oceans and leave it there,” the formal
bulletin of the Society noted in summer 1922.38 This, the RSPB argued,
was because the problem was now starting to be discussed publicly, which
introduced an international dimension to the issue.
At this preliminary stage of environmentalism, several actors were
fighting against the convention of treating the ocean as a common
dumpster for hazardous industrial waste or modern waste such as oil.

1.2.2 The Transnational Phase: The 1923 Paris Conference,

and the First International Conference on the Pollution of the Sea
by Oil (Washington, 1926)
American and British coastal cities, communities, and nature-protection
associations were not the only ones that were affected or concerned by
drifting oil. Other countries also suffered in the early decades of the

37
See the RSPB’s description of the shipping industry’s arguments – Royal Society for the
Protection of Birds, 10 B I R D N O T E S A N D N E W S 18 (1922).
38
Id.
46 f i gh t i n g p o l l ut i o n made b y hu m ankind

twentieth century. In this section, I will briefly introduce the main

principles of several regional and transnational frameworks that strove
during the interwar period to prevent pollution of the sea by oil, in ways
that did not take place under the auspices of the League.
In 1923, Paris hosted a nongovernmental international conference, the
Congress on the Protection of Flora, Fauna, and Natural Sites and
Monuments. Different nonofficial representatives of several associations
convened in order to better coordinate their different activities. Led
mostly by the RSPB (and other representatives of British NGOs), this
transnational collaboration requested to take part in the new inter-
national governance that was created in the aftermath of the war.39
Like the RSPB, the Parisian congress served as a site for mutual
collaboration between several national associations to fight the negative
effects of oil pollution in the oceans on seabirds and migrating birds; such
associations included the Dutch parallel organization Nederlandsche
Vereeniging tot Bescherming van Vogels, or the American Zoological
Society of New York, alongside similar French associations.40 By the time
the congress concluded, all representatives, although they had neither
governmental nor official roles on behalf of states, had reached an agreed
declaration. They agreed that their joint efforts at home – advocating in
the public sphere for domestic legislation in the parliaments – should
focus on the compulsory installation of separators, rather than on dis-
cussions over the size of the restricted zone for oil discharge.41
The Paris Conference was, however, still no more than a preliminary
transnational collaboration – one that did not produce (if it ever intended
to) any concrete “hard” legal instrument. At any rate, different environ-
mental efforts, beyond national frameworks and borders, were part of
a general trend at the turn of the century. Moreover, it seems that the role
of NGOs in this intensifying conservationist transnational activity can-
not be overlooked.

39
On the 1923 Paris Congress see L Y N T O N K. C A L D W E L L , I N T E R N A T I O N A L
ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY: FROM THE TWENTIETH TO THE TWENTY-FIRST
C E N T U R Y 50 (1996); A N N H I R O N A K A , G R E E N I N G T H E G L O B E : W O R L D S O C I E T Y
A N D E N V I R O N M E N T A L C H A N G E 3 5 ( 20 1 4) .
40
For a description from the mid-1920s on the Paris Conference, see P R E M I E R C O N G R È S
I N T E R N A T I O N A L P O U R L A P R O T E C T I O N D E L A N A T U R E (Raoul de Clermont et al. eds.,
1925).
41
F.-E. Lemon & Keith Henderson, Destruction des Oiseaux de mer par les d‫י‬chets d’huiles de
la navigation, in P R E M I E R C O N G R È S I N T E R N A T I O N A L P O U R L A P R O T E C T I O N D E L A
N A T U R E 157–59 (Raoul de Clermont et al., eds. 1925) (quoted in Wöbse, supra note 20, at
528–29).
 1 . 2 hi s t o r i c a l ba c k g r o u n d of po l l u t e d se a s 47

The next step, the special Preliminary Conference on Oil Pollution of

Navigable Waters held in Washington DC in the summer of 1926,
continued the growing international concern on the matter. Some
scholars have argued that the Washington Conference came in the
wake of an “aroused public interest”42 that followed the political discus-
sion on the American Oil Pollution Act of 1924. Congress requested that
the President convene an international conference of maritime nations to
determine effective means to prevent the pollution of navigable waters.43
Between June 8 and June 16, 1926, the delegations of twelve
industrialized44 maritime states convened in Washington for the first
international conference focusing on oil pollution of the sea. The confer-
ence was attended by experts representing the interests of conservation
societies, fisheries, shipowners, oil producers, and marine insurance
underwriters.45 The Washington Conference considered the causes of
pollution, the classification and admeasurements of vessels, territorial
zones, and enforcement measures.46
This time, unlike the Paris Conference three years earlier, most of the
representatives were official agents and the delegations were formal –
a reflection of the intensifying threat. Moreover, the Washington
Conference ultimately managed to produce a legal document, not just
a public transnational call for action as in the case of the 1923
Conference: the first International Convention on Oil Pollution. The
fact is, however, that this agreement was not ratified by any state.47
Along with this legal product, the Washington Preliminary Conference
marked two important steps forward. First, it marked a growing awareness
of the nature of the pollution problem as a common international chal-
lenge, one that demanded international solutions rather than national or
regional ones. Second, and compared to the central aim of the Paris
Conference of 1923, the 1926 Washington Conference aimed to use legal
measures to encourage the shipping industry to comply. The main issue
was once again the compulsory installation of separators, a solution that
the industry was deeply concerned about. It seems, however, that the

42
Sweeney, supra note 5, at 187.
43
Id.
44
Except for one – Japan – the rest were European or North American: Great Britain,
Denmark, the United States, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Spain, France,
Italy, and Belgium.
45
Sweeney, supra note 5, at 188.
46
See Wöbse, supra note 20, at 528; Sweeney, supra note 5, at 187–89.
47
Anyanova, supra note 14, at 31.
48 fighting pollution made by humankind

shipping industry still had the upper hand and managed to block the
initiative to introduce compulsory installation as a binding international
standard. According to the conclusions of the Washington Conference, the
installation was to be achieved by means of incentive legislation (of each
state) to exempt the space required for separators from the ship’s payment
of tonnage dues.48
Moreover, the transnational framework in Washington allowed for
some decisive suggestions, some of which served as a legal base for future
discussions on these concerns and possible solutions. One of the central
issues for discussion following the Paris Conference was the demand for
the total prohibition of oil discharge at sea, no matter the distance from
the shore or port. The states involved were not at all receptive to this
suggestion. Just as with the whaling case, where maritime nations such as
Britain and Norway resisted harsh international restrictions – often while
denying that there was a real problem at all – Germany and the
Netherlands49 argued that the problem of oil pollution at sea did not
actually exist.
Unable to reach a binding agreement on the controversial separ-
ators, the Washington Conference signed an international conven-
tion that focused on the alternative option favored by the shipping
industry – the measure of restricted zones for oil discharge. The
different delegations concluded that the zone should be extended to
150 miles.50
Following the Washington Conference and the preliminary trans-
national phase of the antipollution campaign, the efforts to ban oil
discharge from ships and vessels did not cease just because the first
international legal attempt had failed. Instead of letting go, activist parties
looked for alternative institutional and international frameworks.
Indeed, though it would take some time for British unrest to reach the
League’s Secretariat in 1934, the international approach was already
underway. In the next section, I will analyze how the oil pollution
problem evolved, transforming from a transnational to an international
issue, this time under the auspices of the League of Nations.

48
Preliminary Conference on Oil Pollution of Navigable Waters (1926) T.S. No. 736-A,
at 440.
49
Wöbse, supra note 20, at 528.
50
Prior to the 1926 Conference, in certain states the restricted zone covered no more than
three miles. However, as I have mentioned, the NGOs that were involved rejected the
restricted-zone mechanism given its inadequacy in real-time circumstances.
 1 . 3 l e a g u e of n a ti o n s & t he a nt i p o l l u t i o n c a m pa i g n 49

1.3 The League of Nations and the Antipollution Campaign

In this central part, I will explore the antipollution campaign under the
auspices of the League. Having concluded Section 1.2 with a discussion of
earlier transnational steps such as the 1926 Washington Conference,
I will now move further along the historical timeline and focus on several
landmark events.
In Section 1.3.1, I will discuss Britain’s formal request to the League in
summer 1934 to prepare an international solution for the oil pollution
problem.
In Section 1.3.2, I will describe how the Communications and Transit
Organisation, a special auxiliary body of the League, took control of the
issue and summoned a special committee of experts. I will analyze the
preparatory work of that committee between 1934 and 1935, and will
elaborate on its decision to distribute a special questionnaire and a draft
convention in early 1935 to the international community in order to get
feedback on a possible new antipollution convention.
Section 1.3.3 will focus on the various replies and views the League
received, all of which expressed different concerns: some in favor of
creating new techno-environmental requirements that would (legally)
force the shipping industry to fight pollution, and some against these
kinds of measures. This section, however, will present not only the official
stance and replies of various states, but also petitions and calls prepared
by worried NGOs who were advocating for the protection of birds and
nature, and urged the League to use international law to fight pollution.
This section will analyze the legal procedure through which these NGOs
identified the League as the – and not just a – relevant institution to carry
out the antipollution campaign.
As I show, this advocacy “targeted” national authorities before it
turned to the League – and to international law – for rescue. However,
when these domestic measures failed, the NGOs’ advocacy for the pro-
tection of birds began to turn away from domestic constraints and
legislators, which mostly favored the shipping industry’s interests, to
the new forum of the League. This section will hence focus on the
conceptual shift from national and domestic modes of activity to inter-
national modes. This shift saw interested parties appeal to the League to
use its mechanisms to support the antipollution camp.
Then, in the last section (1.3.4), I will explore how the League, relying
on its special committee of experts, intensively discussed new means of
international regulation that aimed to fight oil pollution of the sea.
50 f i g h t i n g p o l l u t i o n m a d e b y h u m a n k i nd

The second part of the chapter will conclude with the final arrangements
of the special antipollution convention of 1935, and the compromise it
reflected between the conflicting interests, perspectives, and agendas of
the parties involved.
In general, this part will on the one hand uncover the vast support in
reaching a binding convention against oil pollution and the different
suggested means of preventing oil spills and discharge. But on the other
hand, it will compare the contrasting positions of different states and
bodies, which rejected most of the restrictions in favor of saving the
shipping industry’s interests.

1.3.1 The Save-the-Seabirds Campaign Reaches the League: A Special

Committee of Experts Is Formed
Although it was an environmental collaboration of associations led by the
RSPB and the RSPCA that first opened up a national discussion in Britain
on the problem of oil pollution (which then moved into the transnational
sphere), the issue was also tackled by another player of interwar inter-
nationalism. Just as in the case of the endangered whale, scientists were
among the first to identify the oil problem and to turn to the League for
rescue.
An American biologist, George Wilton Field, presented his petition in
1931 that urged the League to lead the charge against oil pollution in the
oceans. Doctor Field was a pioneer in the field of shellfish aquaculture
and water pollution and took an interest in different conservation
issues.51 Field addressed the Economic Committee of the League and
shared with it his scientific findings52 on the issue.

51
On Field’s role in the American conservation movement, see W A L T E R J. W I L S O N ,
G E O R G E W I L T O N F I E L D , 1 86 3 –1 93 8 : A P I O N E E R C O N S E R V A T I O N I S T (1968).
52
The scientific and professional expertise of different persons who approached the League
and its auxiliary bodies became a central characteristic of the League’s activity. Dr. Field
gained his reputation as a leading biologist in North America, having joined the Bureau of
Biological Survey of the United States Department of Agriculture in the middle of the
1910s, and having supervised the seventy-four national American bird and mammal
reservations.
In a similar way to the international, or at least transnational, affiliation of other
interwar scientists (advocating for and in front of the League), Field became a formal
consultant to the government of Brazil in the early 1920s on matters of environmental
conservation of birds and other species. His international prestige and field of expertise
also afforded him the position of United State representative for international cooper-
ation on water pollution control under the auspices of the League.
 1 . 3 l e a g u e of n at i o n s & t h e an t i p o llu tion c am paign 51

Doctor Field, as representative of objective science, seemed to be

advocating for a set of different considerations. On the one hand, given
the large number of seabird deaths, he urged the League to use inter-
national law, and its authority and influence, to fight against the pollution
of the oceans. But on the other hand, he also relied on economic argu-
ments. Dying birds (and their protectors among the conservationist
NGOs) were calling on the League to rescue them from deadly poisoning;
but this agonizing phenomenon also had negative economic impacts.
People had to pay higher taxes and more money for increased food
prices, and for the betterment of seaside leisure resorts and tourism
businesses that were suffering from the consequences of oil pollution
on the shore.53
The invitation that was extended to the League and “its” institutional-
ized international law did not only come from America. Even when
NGOs (primarily in Britain) began to suggest a transnational approach,
domestic pressure did not cease. The British NGOs had hoped that the
delegations would agree on stricter solutions for the pollution problem
back at the transnational conferences in Paris and Washington in the
1920s; with this in mind, the parallel political campaign at home con-
tinued, targeting the industry’s reluctance to cooperate.
Conservationist or pro-conservation politicians encouraged the gov-
ernment in the early 1930s to promote suitable regulations outside
British Isles. In 1931, in the House of Commons, Sir Alfred Cooper-
Rawson, a businessman and Conservative Party Member of Parliament,
officially supported an international move – of the League – led by
Britain. Great Britain was, according to him,
still the largest maritime Power in the world, and although Britannia may
not rule the waves, there is no reason why she should not keep them clean,
and set an example to other countries. If we set that example to other
countries by passing legislation, we may at Geneva get other nations of the
world to follow our example.54

In May 1933, Parliament discussed the dilemma once more. It instructed

the Foreign Office to run a comparative legal investigation to study how
other maritime nations were willing to discuss this issue at the League.55

53
See George Wilton Field, Memorandum on Oil Pollution Presented before the Economic
Committee of the League of Nations, Geneva 1931, Manuscript, Public Record Office
[hereinafter PRO], Foreign Affairs [hereinafter FO], 371/15138 (A6902/2678/45).
54
House of Commons Debates, July 29, 1931, Col. 2300f.
55
Wöbse, supra note 20, at 529.
52 f i g h t i n g p o l l ut i o n made b y hu m ank ind

As environmental awareness rose in Britain, mostly thanks to media

coverage and the public campaign of local-national NGOs, and as polit-
ical pressure increased correspondingly in London, the British govern-
ment decided to turn to further external frameworks and to approach the
League56 on this matter.
Given the cross-border nature of the problem, oil pollution chal-
lenged national laws that were inadequate. Moreover, faced with pres-
sure from bird lovers, a sympathetic media, and a defensive shipping
industry at home, the British government was hoping to dodge the issue
of oil pollution by handing over any perceived responsibility to the
League. On the one hand, both the government and Parliament were
under growing public pressure to introduce tough new legislation that
would focus on the industry. But on the other hand, the shipping
industry lobby had a political power of its own at the Palace of
Westminster.57 Therefore, it seemed to the British government that
the League was its best option to avoid legal and political confrontation
with a powerful industry at home.
It should be noted that this was likely a strategic political maneuver on
the British government’s part. First, the government suggested that an
external authority tackle the suggested oil-pollution regulation – particu-
larly the demand for obligatory separators – since the problem, they
argued, could only be solved by means of internationalism and not by
domestic legal solutions.58
Concern about reluctant commercial parties at home also encouraged
the government to turn to a superstate forum – this time to the one in
Geneva. However, it did not only intend for the League to find a solution
that would balance the competing interests (and concerns) of environ-
mental associations and the shipping industry. To a certain extent, the
League actually also functioned as a mechanism for adjusting (and
easing) public and political pressure between the various political sides
in Britain. “We should then be in a strong position in the public eye,
having pressed for action and been prevented by the coolness of other

56
Sweeney, supra note 5, at 189.
57
On the political power of the shipping industry in British history, see R O N A L D H O P E ,
A N E W H I S T O R Y O F B R I T I S H S H I P P I N G (1990).
58
Compared to the almost exact opposite reaction of the British government in the case of
the League’s initiative for the progressive codification of the exploitation of the products
of the sea (meaning, to initiate an international whaling law), and early British (with other
whaling nations) reluctance towards any international supervision of whaling. I will
discuss that in the following chapter.
 1.3 l ea gue of n ations & the antipollution campaign 53

[nations],” asserted one official on behalf of the Foreign Office in London

in October 1933.59
On July 19, 1934, Britain officially presented the problem of oil pollu-
tion to the League. The British government called for international action
to save the oceans from further pollution.60 It seems that without the
public pressure of civil associations such as the RSPB and RSPCA, there
would have been no governmental initiative to begin with, and the
League would not have been invited to solve the problem.
Regardless of whether the initiative stemmed from the government or
an NGO, once the League had the opportunity to tackle the British
government’s request, it placed the pollution problem on its agenda
and gave it a platform. The League’s new institutional mechanisms and
routine were well suited to the pollution inquiry, and it got its own legal-
diplomatic process. Because of the technical nature of questions relating
to marine transportation, the League’s Communications and Transit
Organisation took over. In what would become its familiar method of
prioritizing bureaucratic-technical expertise in shaping early inter-
national governance,61 the League took upon itself the task of negotiating
the oil pollution problem.
In response to the British request, the Communications and Transit
Organisation started to look into the issue and to prepare it for further
international steps. Following the recommendation of “certain
Governments” that approached the Organisation,62 several experts
were invited to form a special committee of experts in order “to study
the question of the pollution of the sea by the discharge of oil.”
Meanwhile, the RSPCA, one of the original pioneers of the campaign,
did not sit idle and hurried to send its communication to the League that
summer of 1934, even before the committee of experts started its discus-
sions. The Society enthusiastically offered its services to the League, and
emphasized that it and its members would be happy to assist the League
with any step in the fight against the pollution problem.63 In the
59
Note, Oct. 30, 1933, PRO, London, FO, 317/17329 (W 12231/7252/50).
60
Sweeney, supra note 5, at 189.
61
For a broader study on the raised status of technical expertise and professional bureau-
cracy in the creation of European modern continental governance, see W O L F R A M
KAISER & JOHAN SCHOT, WRITING THE RULES FOR EUROPE: EXPERTS, CARTELS,
A N D I N T E R N A T I O N A L O R G A N I Z A T I O N S (2014).
62
Confidential Summary of Proceedings of the Committee of Experts, Dec. 5, 1934, League
of Nations Archives [hereinafter LoN Archives], C.C.T./P.E./2., 15326, at 1 [hereinafter
Confidential Summary].
63
Letter to the League of Nations, June 29, 1934, LoN Archives, Dossier 50/2625/2625.
54 f i g h t i n g p o l l ut i o n made b y hu m ankind

following months of November and December 1934, the committee of

experts discussed the problem during a series of special sessions.64
Despite the seemingly objective request, the proposed committee was
leaning towards economic and industrial interests, as most of its members
represented the shipping industry’s commercial interests. The Italian repre-
sentative to the committee of experts was, for instance, S. Giacchetti, a port
captain, Head of the Mercantile Marine Division at the Ministry for
Communication; the Japanese expert was also a captain, named
Y. Ishikawa, probably much closer to his national shipping industry than
to nature protection considerations. Likewise, the American representative,
Captain Chester H. G. Keppler, was the Naval Attaché of the United States
Embassy in Berlin. It should be noted that the Americans sent an expert of
their own as an official representative, although the Wilsonian United States
was never a member state of the League. His Danish peer, Captain
F. V. H. Laub, the Director of the Port of Copenhagen, also brought his
professional background in the shipping industry. France sent P. H. Watier,
Counsellor of State and Director of Navigable Waterways and Maritime
Ports in the Ministry of Public Works.65 Among the different representa-
tives who served on board the committee, it seems that the only member
who was not inherently sympathetic to the interests of shipping and marine
transportation was the second Japanese expert, M. Yokoyama, who was
“merely” a diplomat, a Consul-General at Geneva.
In an intensive series of discussions in late 1934, the committee studied
and compared the damage caused by oil pollution to birdlife, touristic
resorts, fisheries, and communities on shore respectively. Its members
analyzed the disturbing phenomenon, its implications, and impacts, and
also suggested reviewing possible ways to solve the problem. However,
compared to other professional committees established by the League,
which included representatives of NGOs (such as from civil society and
nongovernmental welfare associations),66 it seems that this special com-
mittee mostly consisted of experts who were closer to the commercial
needs of the shipping industry and its economic interests.

64
Confidential Summary, supra note 62, at 1.
65
Who was replaced later on as the discussion went on by C. Lemoine, another official who
was much more familiar with the industry’s interests (he served as Chief Engineer of
Roads and Bridges in the French administration).
66
See, for instance, the case with the special Committee of Experts’ discussion on the
problem of women and children trafficking in Paul Knepper’s The Investigation into the
Traffic in Women by the League of Nations: Sociological Jurisprudence as an International
Social Project, 34 L . & H I S T . R E V . 4 5 (2015).
 1.3 l ea gue of n ations & the antipollution campaign 55

But that does not mean that concerned NGOs let go of the issue. Opening
the oil pollution problem to the pluralistic and accessible67 forum of the
League gave the signal to a variety of NGOs to step in. As I will show, once
the committee of experts started to fulfill its duty, different NGOs asked to
take part in its work. As in many of the humanitarian issues handled by the
League, civilian associations with different national backgrounds turned to
the League to facilitate their entry into the ongoing discussion.

1.3.2 The Committee of Experts Discusses the Pollution Problem

and Prepares a Special Questionnaire with a Draft Convention
Following the British request, and once the League (through its the
Communications and Transit Organisation) had organized the special
committee of experts, the committee started to discuss the oil pollution
problem. After a series of proceedings in November and December 1934,
the committee concluded its preliminary work and prepared an official
document that was to be sent worldwide. As this section will elaborate,
the committee finalized both a questionnaire and a draft proposal for an
antipollution convention.
As a matter of fact, as other parts of the League’s environmental regime
would demonstrate, this was a part of the League’s routine diplomatic,
institutional, and legal work, which followed the “usual procedure of the
Communications and Transit Organisation”68 and also of other per-
formative bodies of the League.
During this preliminary stage, the British position appeared to be the
dominant stance. As American public opinion changed and the demand
for a solution to the oil-pollution problem slowly decreased, the United
States was no longer officially involved in the campaign, at least not to the
extent that it had been during the 1926 Washington Conference.69
Likewise, other leading forces, such as France and Germany, avoided
taking on a central role and generally preferred to defend their industrial
and governmental interests.70

67
And in many ways, much more democratic than other frameworks in which NGOs could
have made their voice heard. I elaborate on the democratic characteristics of the League in
Section 5.4 of Chapter 5.
68
Confidential Summary, supra note 62, at 1.
69
On America’s involvement in the League’s antipollution campaign see Sweeney, supra
note 5, at 189.
70
Unlike the French, Swiss, and German NGOs, who strove to influence the League on that
matter.
56 f i g h t i n g p o l l u t i o n m a d e b y h u m a n k i nd

Given that Britain’s official representative to the committee of experts

was C. H. Grimshaw of the Marine Department of the Board of Trade,
and the expert that would serve as the committee’s chairperson, the
formal British agenda eventually elevated the industry’s interests over
those of the NGOs with their petitions, warnings, and demand for
mandatory separators.
The committee, and the shipping industry as a whole, knew how
damaging oil pollution was. Under the subheading “Damage to Bird-
Life,” the committee admitted in its confidential Summary of
Proceedings from early December 1934 that in both Britain and the
United States
numerous cases of the destruction of sea-birds on the shores of these
countries have been reported. The birds’ feathers become saturated with
oil, rendering them unable to swim, fly or dive and thus causing them to
die a painful and lingering death of starvation. In Italy, societies for the
protection of animals have made similar complaints with regard to bird-
life.71

However, despite the reports of “damage to beaches,” “injury to bathers,”

and “danger of fire in ports,” as well as the serious threat that the oil
problem posed to fisheries (it severely affected shellfish and submarine
flora), the committee, on behalf of the industry, strongly objected to any
measures made compulsory by international law. “It was evident from
the answers given that the shipowners in all countries of which the Experts
on the Committee are nationals, were opposed to the compulsory fitting
of separators on their vessels . . . .”72
The committee tended to agree with the industry’s representatives.
Although birds were suffering and dying, the committee admitted that
efficiency and economic concerns trumped the NGOs’ advocacy of
a binding international regulation to make separators on ships manda-
tory. The installation of such, explained the committee’s Chairman
Grimshaw, would result in “a heavy economic burden” on shipping.
The committee felt that it had no choice but to favor the industry’s
interests over those of migratory birds. Otherwise, commercial disaster
would threaten the future of the shipping industry, “which would make
itself all the more felt in view of the bad economic conditions prevailing.”
Moreover, during the preliminary stage of the committee’s inter-
national inquiry, different national industries also complained to the
71
Confidential Summary, supra note 62, at 1.
72
Id. at 2 (emphasis added).
 1.3 l eague of n ations & the antipo llution campaign 57

League about large ships that were equipped with tankers that would
need separators with a capacity of at least 250 tons. In these cases, the
technical fact was that no separators of this capacity “ha[d] so far been
constructed.”73 However, even if the proposed new regulation were only
to apply to new vessels that would be constructed in the future (rather
than forcing all existing fleets to bear the burden of fitting compulsory
separators), the industrial needs still had the upper hand. The American
expert said that he thought there was a tendency “to instal [sic] such
separators on war ships . . . as well as on passenger ships burning oil, but
not on tankers.” The parallel French position, however, concluded that
French shipowners, like their peers from abroad in Europe, East Asia,
and America, were opposed to the installation of separators on board
new ships.74
Once the committee had removed the threat to industry, if not to the
birds – at least for the time being – it was willing to further discuss other
means on its agenda as an alternative. Instead of the “radical” solution of
separators (to which the industry was strictly opposed), the industry
suggested revisiting the discussion on prohibited coastal zones, within
which the discharge of oil from vessels should be banned.
At that point, the British cemented their pro-industrial stance. Chairman
Grimshaw, in his own proposal, pointed out the “advantages” of leaving
international law as flexible as possible. He proposed a more general
agreement that would leave “individual states” to establish their own
restricted zones. According to Grimshaw’s agenda, the exact extent of the
restricted zone would vary “according to the needs of their respective
countries.”75 As the stricter measure of separators was currently off the
table, the industry attempted to maintain its momentum and to defend its
interests. At this stage, Grimshaw was suggesting a mild solution with regard
to international law. In the summary from December 1934, the focus was on
countries’ needs rather than on the environmental implications of the oil
problem. These needs, he admitted, might change after a certain time, but
the countries could nevertheless modify the width of their restricted zones
from time to time – keeping, “of course,” the other contracting states duly
informed about these modifications.
However, in spite of their pro-shipping-industry backgrounds, other
experts were firmly in favor of a stipulated width for the restricted zone.

73
Id.
74
Id. at 3.
75
Id.
58 f i g h t i n g p o l l ut i o n made b y hu m ank ind

The American expert was the most progressive among them, and the
United States suggested that the width should be set to no less than 150
miles; other experts (and states), however, called for a less demanding
width than the Americans had.
The Danish expert explained that in view of “the conditions prevailing
in Danish waters,” his government would hardly contemplate the estab-
lishment of a zone as wide as the one suggested by the Americans.
Moreover, the French expert supported a different kind of restriction,
one that favored the creation of several smaller restricted areas (rather
than one general zone) along those parts of the coast “where oil pollution
ma[de] itself felt.” The French representative to the committee cynically
observed that with the English Channel, which stretched almost 21 miles
to Dover and measured exactly 150 miles at its widest part, a 150-mile-
wide zone might actually “cover the whole distance between the coast-
lines of two countries.” Italy noted, however, that if the committee did
indeed recommend a 150-mile zone, then special attention should be
paid to the question of safety. Italian ships might be imperiled, for
instance, if they were to empty tanks of ballast water 150 miles from
the coast in bad weather, thereby threatening their safety.
Generally speaking, most of the experts rejected the British call to leave
the issue of oil pollution to national-domestic considerations and legisla-
tion, and instead promoted relying on a binding international regulation.
Arguing against the British proposal, most of the experts noted that the
150-mile limit seemed reasonable76 since it was difficult to predict how
far oil might travel. As scientific assessments had shown, this distance
could vary significantly depending on conditions such as the weather and
currents. However, no matter how much the experts argued about how
wide this zone should be, NGOs remained totally opposed to this legal
solution. From their perspective, no restricted zone could ever be wide
enough to be truly effective. As the French expert put it, the problem with
the solution of a restricted zone was that, eventually, “masters would
prefer to discharge their oily water outside the zone,”77 and the ocean
would remain polluted.
All of the experts who presented their professional and national
positions on these issues expressed a decisive objection to the compulsory
installation of separators. The Danish representative stated that his
government would not be inclined to impose such an obligation upon

76
Except for the Japanese, who would agree to a zone that measured no more than ten miles.
77
Confidential Summary, supra note 62, at 5 (emphasis added).
 1.3 l eague of n a tions & the antipollution campaig n 59

shipowners. The American expert explained that the United States’

objection to this proposal was driven by the “present economic situ-
ation,” which made it rather difficult to impose upon harbor authorities
this kind of regulation.
The committee, however, tried to argue that from a technical perspec-
tive, it simply did not have the capacity to enforce the compulsory
installation of separators. The Summary of Proceedings also detailed
that according to most of its members, it was impractical to find suitable
barges that could carry out this complicated technical-engineering task.
The Italian member, for instance, stated that in his country, separating
barges could only be found in certain military ports, but not in regular
civilian ones. This was also the claim made by the United States; whereas
in the case of Denmark and Japan, separating barges did not exist to begin
with.
Both the reports handed to the League, and the reports of professionals
who served on the committee of experts, indicate that priority was given
to the shipping industry. Even so, the dangers of polluted water were
becoming more obvious, even to the representatives on the committee.
This likely had to do with the fact that the League’s institutional routine
tended to give scientists and scientific observations more room to be
heard.
In its confidential report from December 1934, the committee took into
account an anonymous warning that was mentioned during its sessions.
Contrary to the shipping industry’s claims that “[a]ccording to some
statements made at Washington,78 oil on the sea quickly evaporated,”
scientific estimations were different. According to one “recent report,”
“only 10% of oil or oily mixture evaporate at normal temperature.”
Moreover, “[a]n English scientific expert had . . . stated that the asphalt
which forms part of the oil mixtures practically never disappears . . . .”79
Moreover, although the committee (mostly) favored the shipping
industry’s interests, its work also meant, as Chairman Grimshaw sud-
denly realized, moving some of the legal terms and solutions away from
domestic jurisprudence and sovereignty: “The Chairperson reminded the
Committee that at Washington [i.e., the 1926 Convention], the question
of exempting vessels from the proposed obligation . . . was left to national
legislation.”80 While now in the mid-1930s, the committee was discussing
78
That is, the Washington Conference of 1926.
79
Confidential Summary, supra note 62, at 7.
80
Id. at 6 (emphasis added). It seems that even Grimshaw was trying to persuade the
committee not to turn to international regulation. In doing so, he also “reminded” the
60 f i gh t i n g p o l l ut i o n made b y hu m ankind

possible solutions as a basis for binding international regulations on oil

pollution of the sea.
In trying to place the League’s antipollution campaign on a broader
timeline that reflects the evolutionary process of shaping international
environmental law, perhaps the League’s own comments on the matter
might assist. The experts assigned to the mission defined their initiative
as part of an ongoing process. As the committee of experts concluded its
proceedings and made preparations for a new antipollution convention
through the League, it specifically referred to prior legal arrangements.
Under the subheading “Revision of the Washington Draft Convention of
1926,” a special committee acting on behalf of the League’s Organisation
for Communication and Transit was assembled to follow up on what
needed to be fixed and improved.
Although most of the representatives to the committee were not keen
to see the warnings delivered by NGOs and scientists make their way into
the concluding text and recommendations, the revision process itself
reflected legal – and environmental – development. This was, as
Chairman Grimshaw expressed, an “opportunity” – and one that “should
be taken” – to examine the provisions of the Washington Draft
Convention, which had never been ratified. After all, legally speaking,
the Washington Convention (which was created outside the League in
the mid-1920s) served as the foundation for the improved convention
that the League would soon introduce to the world. However, Chairman
Grimshaw explicitly mentioned that if the League introduced a new
convention, it would not be limited by earlier arrangements. He agreed
that it “would be of advantage to record any suggestion of the kind, but he
wished to make it clear that it must not be assumed that a Convention on
the lines of that of 1926 was necessarily the form of Convention which
might be considered by the League.”81 Likewise, despite the obstacles the
League faced throughout its existence, this institution also offered many
new opportunities. Unlike the earlier Washington Convention, which
was limited by its scope, the League’s new convention would be able to
reach a much larger international community and garner greater

experts that the 1926 Washington Convention had avoided setting international restric-
tions like the ones being discussed by the League’s committee. Back then, he said, for
safety reasons, the discussants and the states involved had chosen not to enforce the
restricted zone: they were reluctant to bind themselves and their fleets in the event of an
emergency (as the crew might have to discharge oil within the restricted zone by the
shore).
81
Id. at 7.
 1.3 l ea gue of n ations & the antipoll ution c ampaign 61

attention thanks to its institutional framework, routine, mechanisms of

international law, and diplomacy.
The committee of experts revised the original 1926 Washington
Convention (the one that was never ratified), taking into consideration
the League’s international reach. As a result, the first amendment to the
convention reflected the League’s framework, agenda, and institutional
possibilities. Whereas earlier legal arrangements were built on trans-
national ground, the new forum of the League shifted the discussion –
particularly the solutions – into the sphere of internationalism. The
committee deliberated the professional, scientific, and technical consid-
erations of the oil pollution issue, concluding that a new international
agreement should be established to solve the oil pollution problem.
Although the core technical and environmental articles in the 1926
Washington Convention remained an important component of the
newer convention, this time it was the League (as an institution and
not an ad hoc forum) that was going to introduce a solution to the
problem.
However, as the League considered possible improvements to the 1926
Washington Convention, the issue of compulsory separators was put on
hold.
Regarding the compulsory provision of separators, the Chairman
remarked this was a rather complicated matter . . . . There would, how-
ever, be an opportunity of discussing this subject later, when the replies to
the questions relating to it which would be included in the . . .
Questionnaire to be sent to Governments of maritime countries had
been considered.82

Although at this preparatory stage the committee rejected the NGOs’

demand for the compulsory installation of separators (and only sup-
ported their use in theory), the new draft convention introduced at the
end of the Summary included several improvements. Given that oil
pollution was an ongoing problem, several of the articles in the commit-
tee’s new draft focused on improving the ineffective aspects of the 1926
Washington Convention through better legal framing.
Article V of the original 1926 Convention, for instance, used the words
“vessels flying their national flag.” The committee suggested that this
wording, which enabled naval crews and vessels to dodge the restrictions
simply by choosing another national flag (to avoid legal obligations), be
replaced with more concrete language. Stricter legal framing would
82
Confidential Summary, supra note 62, at 12.
62 fighting pollution made by humankind

minimize the instances of ships that were trying to evade legal responsibil-
ity by exploiting customary international law.83 By reframing this article,
the League showed that it spoke the language of international law and was
aware of the shortcomings of the existing legal arrangements.
“The words ‘vessels registered in any of their ports’ have been inserted in
lieu [of the former legal terms] . . . in order to define more clearly the vessels
in respect of which each Government undertakes the obligations imposed
by the Agreements.” With this, the new, stricter articulation ordered that the
“contracting Governments undertake . . . to take the necessary measures to
render illegal the discharge of oil or oily mixture . . . within any area.”84
This was also the case with several other articles from the original text
drawn up in Washington. Article I of the original Washington text also
underwent revisions that resulted in much tougher legal terminology.
According to the suggested new articulation (Article III in the League’s
preliminary draft), the discharge prohibited in any area prescribed pur-
suant to the former definitions mentioned in the draft included crude,
fuel, or diesel oil – or any mixture containing more than 0.05 percent to
1 percent of such oil. The committee added a remark explaining that it
would be wiser to insert the wording “shall be prohibited” instead of
“may be prohibited.” The issue of prohibition was “so essential” a matter,
the confidential summary argued, that “it would seem preferable to
employ a mandatory than a permissive expression,”85 especially consid-
ering this issue would be a keystone of what would eventually become the
next international convention.
It seems that the main articles of the suggested draft were actually
reclaiming the core issues of the Washington Convention. Only this time,
the techno-environmental obligations were based on the authority of the
League. According to Article III, the governments undertook to establish
areas in waters adjacent to their coasts within which discharge of oil
would be prohibited. And according to Subsection (a) of that article, the
heart of the draft, in the case of coasts bordering the open sea, such areas
would not extend more than fifty nautical miles from the coast.
83
The use of flags of convenience (“Panlibhon”), primarily those of Panama, Liberia,
Honduras, and possibly others, under which many foreign ships are registered in order
to escape certain legal obligations, continues to be a central problem in international law
and shipping. This example of the interwar period shows that international environmen-
tal law also dealt with these implications under the auspices of the League and tried to find
an alternative legal solution. For a study on the issue see, e.g., B O L E S L A W A. B O C Z E K ,
F L A G S O F C O N V E N I E N C E : A N I N T E R N A T I O N A L L E G A L S T U D Y (1962).
84
Confidential Summary (Annex 1), supra note 62, at 17.
85
Confidential Summary, supra note 62, at 18.
 1.3 l eague of n a tions & the antipollutio n campaig n 63

In that sense, Chairman Grimshaw’s original minimalist goal – leaving

the width of the prohibited strip up to the states’ considerations (and to
their legal domestic arrangements) – had failed. Nevertheless, unlike the
drifting oil on the seas, the campaign for obligatory separators seemed to
be fading away as the committee officially turned down the proposed
solution of compulsory separators on ships. In this dilemma, the com-
mittee was firmly opposed to forcing the industry (and the governments)
to install separators on ships. According to Article VI of the committee’s
draft convention, the contracting governments agreed that “no penalty or
disability of any kind whatever in the matter of tonnage measurement or
payment of dues be incurred by any vessel by reason only of the fitting of
any device or apparatus for separating oil from water.”
The suggested draft was not perfect, but it managed to achieve
a compromise between the contrasting agendas and competing interests
of the shipping industry and pro-commercial supporters on the one
hand, and those of nature-protection NGOs, scientific associations and
societies, and independent actors fighting against the harmful effects of
the pollution on their coasts on the other hand.
Having said that, although the committee seemed to be doing its best
to overcome NGOs’ advocacy and demands, this was still not the end of
the campaign. The League’s institutional framework was not homogen-
ous, and at least some of the maritime powers would be surprised by the
broad range of feedback and responses that would follow.
Concluding this stage of its professional work, the committee prepared
the questionnaire and the draft convention for worldwide distribution in
January 1935.

1.3.3 The League Distributes the Questionnaire with the Draft

Convention; States and Organizations Reply
Concluding the work of the special committee of experts on behalf of the
Communications and Transit Organisation in late 1934, the League took
the next step of opening up its initiative to member states, other states,
and relevant parties. The year of 1935, amidst the stormy geopolitical
waters of the 1930s, was an important year for internationalizing possible
legal and techno-environmental solutions to the oil pollution problem.
Although the issue of mandatory separators did not receive the legal
support that NGOs and scientists were hoping for in the former round of
the committee’s discussions, the League remained focused on reaching
an international agreement that would solve the crisis of polluted seas.
64 f i gh t i n g p o l l ut i o n made b y hu m ankind

This round of activity, however, had brought with it new participants and
positions.
As part of the League’s procedural routine, the next step was to
introduce the initiative into the international arena. The Secretary-
General, Joseph Avenol86 communicated to the League’s Council that
the committee had informed him that the subject was ready for an
international convention. On January 23, 1935, the Secretary-General
presented a long list of states with the circulated questionnaire and the
draft convention. Shortly thereafter, the League published its proceed-
ings, explaining that
[t]he Committee of Experts were agreed that some international measures
should be devised so as to limit the evil as much as possible, and the
Communication and Transit Organisation therefore recommended that
efforts should be made to attain the conclusion of an international con-
vention on the subject. The advantages . . . are . . . obvious, in that the
damage which is now being caused to property in harbours, to the
interests of seaside resorts, to bird life, and to fisheries, would very largely
if not entirely be obviated.87

The mode of using special questionnaires as a mechanism to engage with

international law received its golden age under the auspices of the
League, as the interwar environmental regime reveals. There was
a general feeling of optimism about this new type of internationalism.
Technical communication had improved and, with it, access to the
international community, largely as a result of the procedural and diplo-
matic possibilities that the League was able to offer as an institution.
Although Chairman Grimshaw assumed that only maritime powers
would participate in the pollution issue or be the main drivers behind
discussions on it, the questionnaire and the draft convention opened the
issue up to a much broader and more democratic international discus-
sion. More than seventy states, members and non-members alike,

86
Joseph Louis Anne Avenol served as the second Secretary-General of the League of
Nations (July 1933–August 1940). Even with the recent renaissance in the study of the
League, the biographical genre of the historical persons who built and led the League in
the 1920s and 1930s is still underdeveloped. One of the very few works in this genre is
James Barros’s survey on Avenol’s role from the late 1960s. See J A M E S
BARROS, BETRAYAL FROM WITHIN: JOSEPH AVENOL, SECRETARY-GENERAL OF
T H E L E A G U E O F N A T I O N S , 1 9 33 – 19 4 0 (1969).
87
Summary of the Replies (Part I), Series of League of Nations Publications, VIII. Transit
1935. VIII. 5, Pollution of the Sea by Oil (Communicated to the Assembly, the Council
and the Members of the League), Aug. 15, 1935, LoN Archives, at 3 [hereinafter Summary
of the Replies].
 1.3 l eague of n a tions & the antipollutio n campaig n 65

received the questionnaire, which focused entirely on the oil pollution

problem. Among the list of states who responded were maritime powers
such as the United States, the Soviet Union, Canada, and Germany, along
with landlocked countries such as Czechoslovakia and Switzerland. The
League sought to ensure that all would be able to take part in the legal-
environmental proposal.
The survey that was distributed posed eight different questions. The
different governments were asked to state whether they had noticed the
effects of pollution or any other effects in their territories, and to provide
detailed particulars under each heading.88
In spite of the committee’s political, commercial, and pro-industrial
affiliations,89 the League soon saw that the questionnaire opened the
question up to broader international consideration. As other case studies
88
Furthermore, the survey specifically asked states for “scientific or other evidence regard-
ing the extent of oil pollution at sea.” All the member states were requested to report on
the extent of oil pollution and the devices they were using to combat it. The first, and most
important question, reflected the campaign’s primary goal: it asked the states about the
effects of oil on birds. Then, the states were asked to comment on economic and technical
aspects, and to notify the League if they thought oil pollution might also affect fish and the
fishing industry, public health, “the amenities of the beaches for bathing, recreation etc.,
and . . . harbours . . . .” (The League of Nations Communication and Transit
Organisation, Pollution of the Sea by Oil: Summary of Additional Replies to the
Questionnaire, LoN Archives, Aug. 1, 1936, A.20.1935.VIII.)
The third question challenged the relevant states, asking them directly whether or not
they would be willing to agree to an international standard that would require the
installation of separators on ships, “with or without exceptions in the case of certain
vessels.”
Most of the questions that followed, it should be emphasized, dealt directly with the
burning question of separators. “Are you prepared,” asked Question Number 4, “to agree
to an international requirement that such separators should be designed for and fitted to
all new ships which will carry or burn oil?”. Perhaps anticipating that some maritime
nations would object, the committee also added, “If not, please state reasons for declining
to agree.” The next question asked about the types of separators used by the shipping
industry and how much would they cost. In another question, states were asked if there
were port facilities to separate waste oil on shore.
The eighth, and final, question asked states for their opinion about enforcing the
restricted zone for oil discharge (as previously mentioned, this solution was favored by
both the shipping industry and most of the committee’s members). Once again, the
League and its bodies turned to scientific discourse: “It has been contended that oil and
oily mixtures discharged from ships at sea may pollute the coasts after travelling, in
certain conditions, distances more than 50 and even more than 150 nautical miles. Please
supply any evidence, based on scientific or other observations made by your country,
which may bear on this question.” (Id.).
89
Keeping in mind, for instance, the industrial and professional background of the mem-
bers of the committee, as I explained earlier, together with their reluctance to consider the
obligatory installation of separators.
66 f i gh t i n g p o l l ut i o n made b y hu m ankind

will show,90 these special questionnaires proved to be far “riskier” than

traditional ones. After all, inviting outside parties to weigh in on inter-
national law allowed them to raise their own agendas and ideas that other
powers – especially maritime nations with their own interests to protect –
might oppose. The “neutral” (legal) tone the League used to communi-
cate its ideas allowed various states and bodies to engage in the develop-
ing discussion in a more open and democratic way. Indeed, these
conflicts of power had not simply vanished with the Paris Peace
Conference, which delivered the League into the post–World War
I era. Political interests and affiliations, alongside economic motivations,
continued to affect international issues throughout the League’s rule.
However the ways in which international law worked and had progressed
had changed. With the Progressive Era behind it, especially in the North
Atlantic, the League based its activity on scientific knowledge and object-
ive reasoning. As the environmental questions show, including of course
those related to marine environments, science diplomacy played an
essential role in defining these dilemmas, their reasons and sources,
and possible solutions.
By summer 1935, although the League’s Secretariat had not yet
received all the replies to the questionnaire, it had received the majority
of those from the leading maritime countries. The Secretariat set about
compiling these responses in a special summary, in which it further listed
the different victims of sea pollution in perceived order of importance:
first and foremost birds, followed by fish and fisheries, touristic resorts,
and harbors.91
As with other environmental concerns, many states – including both
maritime powers and those states not directly affected by sea pollution –
were eager to take part in the evolving discussion on oil pollution.
Having been exposed to environmental issues throughout its work
alongside (primarily British) nature-protection agencies in the 1920s, the
United States’ reply did acknowledge the “extensive damage” to the
Atlantic coast; however, the official American stance framed the problem
as one that had run its course between 1919 and 1930. In 1934, the
American reply argued that “reports from various United States coastal
areas showed that pollution had disappeared or had greatly improved.”92
90
As in the case of the whaling regulation the League developed from 1926, in which it
distributed a special questionnaire that related to the “exploitation of the products of the
sea.” See my discussion in Chapter 2.
91
Due to the danger of fire on decks.
92
Summary of the Replies (Part II), supra note 87, at 11. See Sweeney, supra note 5, at 189.
 1.3 l eague of na tions & t he antipollutio n campai gn 67

The British government, however – at least at this point – did not try to
dismiss the problem. The official summary prepared by the League
featured a rather heartbreaking description from Britain, rather than
one that typically might have been more laconic or diplomatic in nature:
“Numerous sea-birds are reported to have been observed dead or dying
in lingering starvation in recent years on various parts of the shores.
Their wings were saturated with oil, and they were unable to fly, swim or
dive.”93 The Canadian report was just as emotive: “Thousands of sea-
birds perish each year as a result of pollution of the sea by oil. . . . [I]n
areas polluted by oil birds’ plumage becomes saturated and they cannot
dive or go under water for their food. They, consequently, cannot feed
and slowly starve to death.”94
But not everyone was so easily moved. Newfoundland assessed
the effect of oil pollution on birds in a single word: “negligible.” While
the Egyptian government did not express a specific opinion on any of the
questions relating to birds, in its response to the question relating to ports
and lighthouse administration, it did admit that the discharge of oil “is
doubtless harmful to them.”95
One way or the other, concern for the suffering birds paved the way for
scientific support, as the French reply shows. “The disappearance of sea-
birds which has been noted for some time as a result of the increasing use of
heavy oil . . . has been brought to the notice of the public authorities . . . .”
The report drawn up by the French focused on cause and effect, scientific
experiments, and professional observations and methodology as a basis for
both international discourse and information sharing: “Professor Portier,
Member of the Academy of Medicine, has studied the effects of the
discharge of fuel-oil residues on such birds.”
The report clearly relied on objective observations and scientific evi-
dence in making its conclusions:
The experiments recently made have been absolutely conclusive so far as
concerns the harmful action of oil on sea-birds; the bird, whose feathers
have been soaked in fuel oil, dies of cold, since the oil cuts off the air from
the bird’s feathers, and water penetrates, chills the body, and causes death.96

Moreover, the experiments carried out by a qualified scientist had also

proved that birds whose feathers have been soaked in oil refuse to enter

93
Summary of the Replies (Part II), supra note 87, at 11.
94
Id. at 12.
95
Id.
96
Id. (emphasis added).
68 fighting pollution made by humankind

the water. Hence, the birds were damned if they entered the polluted sea,
and damned if they did not: in the case of seabirds, not entering the water
meant an agonizing death by cold and starvation, since they could not
dive into the sea to find food.97
Compared to other interwar environmental problems, oil pollution
seemed much less important in scale. Several nations, such as the Union
of South Africa, Bulgaria, India, Iraq, Italy, Iceland, Latvia, and Turkey
concisely stated in their replies that there was no evidence of the deleteri-
ous effects of oil pollution in their territories (and territorial waters).
Likewise, the Commonwealth of Australia (which comprised the states of
New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, and
Western Australia, as well as ten federal territories) did not express an
opinion on any of the points raised.98
Nevertheless, other states involved confirmed the existence of prob-
lems near their shores. Moreover, in their replies, these states challenged
the pro-industrial agenda by explicitly focusing on the effect of oil
discharge on birds and by relying on clear environmental observations.
Denmark, for instance, replied that “regular reports of the destruction
of birds in certain localities and at certain seasons have been received by
the Government”;99 whereas the Irish Free State reported that the “dele-
terious effects” on birds were noticeable, especially on its southeast coast.
Norway pointed out that “although oil pollution has been rarely noticed,
in many localities birds have perished from such effects”; and Sweden,
which did not play any significant role during the League’s environmen-
tal discussions, also stated that there was “evidence of a large-scale
destruction of sea-birds in the vicinity of the Swedish coasts.”100
These replies indicate that most states were convinced that oil pollution
was directly responsible for the death of migratory birds. As a result, this
became the central issue, more so than related concerns such as the effects of
oil pollution on fish and the fishing industry, or the danger of fire in harbors.
Unlike the effect on birds, almost no clear evidence was reported
concerning any of the other issues discussed. In its reply to the inquiry
on the possible effects on fish and the fishing industry, Canada, for
instance, stated that there was “no evidence that fish have changed
their habitat as a result of oil pollution.”101 The Australian reply briefly
97
See the British reply (Id. at 11).
98
Id. at 13.
99
Id. at 12.
100
Id.
101
Id. at 17.
 1 . 3 le ague o f n ati o n s & t he a n tip o l l u t i o n ca m pa i gn 69

mentioned that with regard to other subjects badly affected by oil, the
Government could only vaguely recall “one case” that was reported in
South Australia “some years ago,” of a fish that “had perished from the
effect of oil pollution.”102
Given this backdrop, the League understood that the issue at stake was
the willingness to subscribe to an international regulation, but that it
would have to base this decision either on a requirement for compulsory
separators, or on favoring the zoning system – something the committee
of experts had recognized early on. The British reply revealed this
dilemma, which addressed both options. Speaking the language of the
evolution and genealogy of international law, the British reply to the
questionnaire attached the current dilemma of the mid-1930s to
the former pillars in the legal struggle against oil pollution. In this way,
the League’s efforts pursued the measures achieved in Washington, and it
worked intently to revive – and in some instances to fix or improve – the
1926 Washington Convention as a legal base. As a matter of fact, the very
question of compulsory separators directly related to the solution that
was brought to the fore in the mid-1920s; however back then, it lacked the
authority, resilience, and devotion of the League.
The basic conflict prevailed. The remedy mentioned in the question-
naire – choosing between the progressive but strict solution of compul-
sory separators, and the establishment of limited dumping zones, carried
with it extensive practical, industrial, legal, and economic implications. It
was now up to international law, and the League, to decide the matter.
Earlier discussions that had been held by the committee of experts had
taken into account only certain opinions (especially those of the shipping

102
Id. at 13. Having said that, it should be noted that the French reply (which was an
exception) raised some concerns regarding the damage caused by oil not only to birds,
but also to fisheries and their equipment. France replied to the section entitled the
“Fishermen’s Calling” and explained that stress “should be laid on the damage caused to
fishing-nets and tackle used in contaminated waters . . . . In certain cases, tackle has been
rendered unfit for use, a very considerable loss being thus caused to the owners of the
damaged material” (Id. at 17). Moreover, it had also complained that small coastal
fisheries were seriously affected by polluted water, and that fish that were caught in
places where such pollution was particularly serious very often had a “strong oily flavor,”
which rendered them unfit for consumption (Id. at 16). France also identified a link
between pollution and economic consequences, as it warned that in certain cases, the
impossibility of selling polluted fish had brought the fishing industry almost completely
to a halt, as it needed to wait until traces of the contamination had disappeared. On
several occasions, large quantities of dead, poisoned fish “were seen floating on the
surface, which tends to show that pollution . . . may lead to the wholesale destruction of
fish” (Id. at 17).
70 fighting pollution made by humankind

industry). The broader forum of the Assembly, however, was more

transparent as the British response showed when it referred directly to
improvements made in the field since the last (failed) round of 1926:
Societies such as the Royal Societies for the Protection of Birds and for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and many local coastal bodies sup-
ported by a body of opinion are in favour of this remedy [separators], the
advocates of which support their contentions . . . by a statement that
separators are much cheaper than they were in 1926 and that the oil
recovered from them can be used again.103

Moreover, supporting the view of nature-protection associations, the

British report admitted that any option other than separators would
not do enough. The zoning solution was almost useless. The British
believed that “the voluntary action by the shipowners . . . in prohibiting
the discharge by their ships . . . within fifty miles of any coast has touched
only the fringe of the evil.”104 They went on to say that the RSPB “rejects
entirely” any remedy involving the establishment of zones “on the
ground [sic] that no ‘zone’ could be wide enough to be effective, since
there is evidence that oily substances discharged at sea will float for very
long periods, and drift many hundreds of miles.”105
Hence, the role and importance of international law, and the League as
its creator and representative, grew considerably: “[T]the action needed
is . . . legislation . . . declaring that pollution by . . . ships is prohibited
everywhere and requiring that effective measures be taken for preventing
pollution.”
However, in its report to the League (and the international commu-
nity), the British acknowledged that the shipping industry still needed to
be considered. Britain’s governmental report took into account perspec-
tives other than those relating to nature protection and it mentioned the
Chamber of Shipping and the Liverpool Steamship Owners’ Association
in this regard, as a counterexample to the role of the RSPB and the
RSPCA. The Chamber of Shipping contended that the fitting of separ-
ators would be “impracticable” in the case of many vessels, and unneces-
sary in that of others, while it would impose upon the shipowners
“a heavy additional financial burden which, in the present state of their
industry, they could not bear.”106

103
Id. at 18.
104
Id. (emphasis added).
105
Summary of the Replies (Part II), supra note 87, at 19.
106
Id.
 1.3 l ea gue of n ations & t he antipollution campaign 71

Although the British reply emphasized the contentious issue of separ-

ators and the industry’s explicit reluctance to accept them, Britain
decided to step back from the task of finding an international solution –
whatever it would eventually be – including ruling on separators as
a progressive international regulation, and instead entrusted the League
with this responsibility. “The . . . Government is prepared to fall in with
any international scheme proposed by the League . . . .”
When other maritime powers tried to defend the industry, Britain’s
stance ultimately won out. Leading maritime powers such as Canada
rejected the solution of separators on the grounds that this international
requirement opposed industrial interests. The Danish argued that “the
considerable financial burden which would be placed on shipping by an
international requirement for the fitting of separators in ships which
carry or burn oil is out of proportion to the advantages to be expected
from such an arrangement.”107 France refused any obligation to fit
separators, considering such act to be “far too burdensome” to French
shipowners, “who [had] already been hard hit by the present crisis.” They
would be less willing to accept an obligation stipulated by international
law, since the goal of this legislation could be obtained “by simpler and
less expensive methods.”108 But between environmental concerns and the
shipping industry’s interests, Britain seemed unwavering in its support of
the League’s endeavor to find a solution to the problem of pollution:
The effectiveness of any remedy will depend partly upon its merits but
largely upon international action in applying it. The action of one or two
countries alone could not be effective. While this is the general position of
His Majesty’s Government, it would . . . agree to an arrangement which
made it necessary to fit separators in ships . . . .109

Britain’s support for this progressive – and to the shipping industry,

rather radical – solution of compulsory separators received the approval
of a few others. Besides those lands under British influence, such as
Egypt,110 India,111 and Iraq,112 Spain, for instance, announced that it

107
Id. at 19–20 (emphasis added).
108
Id. at 20.
109
Id. at 19.
110
Which replied that its government “should support” the British agenda on the matter.
111
Which added that it would support the use of international law for this purpose,
provided that the fitting of such separators was not compulsory for small vessels.
112
Which declared that its government “would be glad” to accept an international agree-
ment of this kind.
72 f i g h t i n g p o l l ut i o n made b y hu m ankind

too would support the League’s international requirement,113 as did

several other states involved in the discussion.
Those states that rejected the solution, and what they saw as the
harsh enforcement of international law, provided their own justifica-
tions for doing so. The Italian government, for instance, argued that
Mediterranean countries, unlike the northern ones (and the North
Atlantic in particular) had not suffered any serious damage from oil
pollution. According to Italy, this was due to the fact that the
geographical and environmental patterns of the Mediterranean Sea
differ from those of other seas and oceans. In this case, the govern-
ment argued, a modified antipollution regulation should be intro-
duced (if any at all). This was because in Italian waters in particular,
the regular currents in the straits (which Italy claimed were “the
only ones of any importance”) have an ebb and flow that tends to
disperse the oil floating on the water, rather than to send it in any
one direction (as in the case of the British Isles, Scandinavia, or the
Baltic states).114
The variety of responses to this interwar environmental initiative
supports the general claim of the unique characteristics of the crafting
of international law under the auspices of the League. It is true that some
traditional powers that had typically shaped diplomacy, and most of the
world order prior to the establishment of the League, resented and
explicitly objected to this move in international law: such as France or
the Netherlands,115 or nations like Norway116 – with its vast whaling
industry and shipping corporations – who had a clear interest in thwart-
ing this new attempt to change shipping rules. However, other relatively
new players – such as India, Bulgaria, Latvia, New Zealand, Japan,117 and
Turkey – encouraged the League to pursue its revolutionary techno-
environmental solution.118 Even the Irish Free State, despite its direct

113
Summary of the Replies (Part II), supra note 87, at 25–26.
114
Id. at 30.
115
The Dutch government declared it too was opposed to the compulsory installation
because of the difficult financial position of its shipping industry.
116
Justifying its objection to the new regulations, Norway replied that oil pollution “cannot
be effectively prevented even by a general ruling that separators be installed.” Moreover,
the Norwegian government announced to the League that it would not be willing to
charge the national merchant marine the fee of ten million crowns, the estimated total
amount needed to fit of all of its ships with separators.
117
Which complained that oil pollution not only damages local fisheries but also affects the
national production of algae and seaweed.
118
Summary of the Replies (Part II), supra note 87, at 18–22.
 1.3 l eague of n ations & the antipo llution campaign 73

interests in the shipping industry to strengthen its national economy,

enthusiastically supported a compulsory international regulation “with-
out exception.”119
Hungary was one of the few states that distanced itself from the
antipollution regulation giving as its reason that it was a landlocked
state;120 however, Hungary was an exception rather than the rule.
Other landlocked countries, as well as states with no direct stake in an
oil pollution regulation,121 identified the antipollution campaign as part
of a broader move: the right to become involved in the making of
international law.
States, members and non-members alike, were not the only ones that
took part in the League’s antipollution discussion. Besides the RSPB, the
organization that had started the save-the-birds campaign back in
Britain, other NGOs from different countries identified the League’s
move as an opportunity to get their foot in the door of international
law. In addition to the formal replies to the questionnaire, the League
Secretariat received a variety of petitions, requests, and reports from
nature-protection societies.
Moreover, many of these non-state actors relied on scientific discourse
in their communications with the League. The variety of formal letters
that reached Geneva used a common language: that of objective data and
research. It seems that institutionalized international law, unfamiliar to
some of the players in the post–World War I world, needed to be built on
solid ground, and that ground was science. In the modern culture of the
twentieth century, science had become a source of legitimacy.
Evidence of this came in the form of a report sent by a German animal
rights association, the Hamburger Tierschutzverein von 1841.122 This
report gathered data on dying birds and oil pollution along the German
coast. The report concluded that the only solution to the problem was the
introduction of a world-binding regulation that would require the

119
Id. at 21.
120
Id. at 22.
121
Such as Czechoslovakia, for instance, who also supported the proposed solution of
mandatory separators “without exception.” (Id.).
122
Letter by the Bureau International Humanitaire Zoophile, Mar. 13, 1935, LoN Archives,
50/2625/2625 viii. The scope of the international and transnational cooperation between
nature-protection organizations over the problem of oil pollution is exemplified by this
statement. Originally, the database was put together and revised by the German associ-
ation in Hamburg. The Swiss office of the Bureau International Humanitaire Zoophile,
which itself was a part of the Animal Defence Society in London (with the Duchess of
Hamilton and Brandon as its president) sent the organization’s report to the League.
74 f i g h t i n g p o l l u t i o n m a d e b y h u m a n k i nd

installation of separators. Two French associations reached the same

conclusion on the need for separators: a hunting organization named
St. Hubert, and la Ligue pour la Protection des Oiseaux.123
The RSPCA also promised to assist the League “with evidence and
stuffed specimens of birds which have been so destroyed.”124 A similar
offer of alliance came from the American Humane Association, an
umbrella organization that combined more than 530 different animal
rights and nature-protection societies across the nation. The Humane
Association urged the League and its special committee, “to use [its] great
power . . . to stop this whole, unnecessary pollution of the seas [and] . . .
prevent this waste of bird life.”125 Another American environmental
association, the Audubon Society of Illinois, also approached the
League and asked to take part in the discussion on a new global law.
The Audubon Society emphasized the genuine belief of its members, as
well as of other NGOs around the world, in the League and its ability to
bring about needed change for the suffering birds. “We are all sure with
all your able workers, you will perfect an effective means of correcting the
error.”126
The League, as a new and unfamiliar institution, needed to satisfy some
of its own institutional and political interests along the way. The League’s
quest for legitimacy and worldwide acknowledgment as a new power in
international relations also became apparent in the oil pollution discus-
sions. When the League revised some of these NGOs’ petitions, it gave
special attention to media coverage of the oil pollution issue. In response
to the Audubon Society of Illinois’ statement of support for the League,
one of the high-ranking officials of the League replied, “Perhaps . . . you
will yourself find ways in which the support of public opinion can be
added to the efforts now being made by the League for the protection of
bird and marine life.”127
This environmental issue became a quid pro quo arrangement: the
League would address the NGOs’ calls for help and use its institutional
means and power to save the fauna and flora of the planet. In return,
123
Or the National Bird Protection League. A. Feuillée-Billot, De la nécessité d’une entente
internationale pour la protection des oiseaux de mer contre l’huile lourde et le mazout, in
Deuxième Congrès international pour la protection de la nature 155–162 (Abel Gruvel
ed., 1932); See also Comte W. d’Adix, “Les oiseaux et le mazout” Le Bulletin du Saint-
Hubert Club de France (Février 1935), LoN Archives, 50/2625/2625.
124
Letter to the League of Nations, June 29, 1934, LoN Archives, 50/2625/2625.
125
Letter to the Secretary-General, Jan. 8, 1935, LoN Archives, 50/2625/2625.
126
Letter to the Secretary-General, Nov. 27, 1935, LoN Archives, 50/2625/2625.
127
Letter to the Illinois Audubon Society, Dec. 11, 1935, LoN Archives, 50/2625/2625.
 1.3 l eague of n ations & the antipo llution campaign 75

these NGOs would do their best to support the League’s quest for
legitimacy, international acceptance, and authority. In this way, the
Western media’s deepening affection for nature protection in the early
twentieth century served both the NGOs’ and the League’s interests.
The significance of scientific data was also reflected in the procedural
ways in which the League strove to shape international law. Almost every
state that participated in the discussion on the pollution problem turned
to scientific observations. The United States, for example, notified the
committee of experts with a formal scientific observation entitled “Report
on Oil Pollution Experiments: Behaviour of Fuel Oil on the Surface of the
Sea”: a comprehensive document prepared by an associate engineer from
the Bureau of Standards, Department of Commerce.
As with other cases in its environmental regime, as I will demonstrate,
the League actively encouraged scientific research.128 “Certain scientific
investigations have been undertaken on behalf of the United Kingdom
Government,” mentioned the British reply to the questionnaire.129
Egypt’s involvement in the discussion is another example of how the
League’s structure and methods broadened the stage of international law.
Egypt delivered a special report prepared by the Faculty of Science of the
Egyptian University, which described the ways in which oil discharge had
affected the marine environment of the Red Sea. It concluded, however,
that “[n]o effect . . . on the pearl industry was noticed . . . .”130 Italy also
sent conclusions gathered from different inquiries carried out by leading
Italian research institutes specialized in marine biology.131
With its unfamiliar mechanisms and authority, the League posed
a threat with its new antipollution regulation, pushing several trad-
itional and pro-industry players to hastily improve their current posi-
tions. With the possibility that separators could soon become
compulsory, concern about the potential economic and industrial con-
sequences was reignited. Suddenly, other prior legal arrangements did
not seem as frightening as they had only a couple of years earlier, before
the rise of the League. Concerned about future developments in inter-
national environmental law, the government of the Netherlands was
suddenly willing to embrace the former international agreement that it

128
For a discussion on the link between global (environmental) governance and informa-
tion sharing, see Frank Biermann & Philipp Pattberg, Global Environmental Governance:
Taking Stock, Moving Forward, 33 A N N . R E V . E N V T L . R E S O U R C E S 277 (2008).
129
Summary of the Replies (Part II), supra note 87, at 29.
130
Id. at 30.
131
Id.
76 fighting pollution made by humankind

had completely ignored since the mid-1920s. In its reply to the League,
the Dutch government stated, “however . . . [that it was] prepared to
accept the draft Washington Convention which contemplates a study of
the question. Already the Government voluntarily applies the stipula-
tions of this draft Convention.”132
The same alarm can be found in the reply of the Free City of Danzig,133
which perhaps tells the entire affair as a developing story. The govern-
ment of Danzig, whose city was an important port city of the interwar
period, was initially reluctant to support the suggested stricter inter-
national regulations. Originally, the government questioned whether
the issue of pollution called for international regulation at all. However,
as the discussion evolved, some of the players in Danzig began to
understand which way the wind of international law was blowing – at
least at this point in the discussion. Hence, despite its skepticism of the
need for “radical measures,” the government was “prepared to accede to
any international agreement adopted . . . .”134

1.3.4 Finalizing the Antipollution Convention, and the Bitter End

Despite the pro-industry agenda of the committee of experts, and
although many of the involved governments had much to lose if the
demand to install separators eventually became an international regula-
tion, the League and the Communications and Transit Organisation
moved forward with the antipollution initiative. According to the
Communications and Transit Organisation’s explanations, it seemed
that the intensive participation of a variety of states in the international
process of inquiry and consultation – and the strong sense of inter-
national support for compulsory installation – had been a deciding
factor.
In one of the organization’s reports from autumn 1935, the detailed
replies showed that “the chief maritime countries . . . are, on the whole,
against this remedy, so far as it involves the compulsory provision of

132
Id. at 22.
133
The Free City of Danzig (now Gdańsk) enjoyed a unique legal status during the interwar
period. Its strong German affiliation and its history, together with the terms of Article
100 of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, created its status as a semi-autonomous city-state
that existed between 1920 and 1939. For a study of this complexity (which was published
shortly after World War II), see J O H N B . M A S O N , T H E D A N Z I G D I L E M M A – A S T U D Y
I N P E A C E M A K I N G B Y C O M P R O M I S E ( 1 94 6 ).
134
Summary of the Replies (Part II), supra note 87, at 31.
 1.3 league of n a tions & the antipollution campaig n 77

separators on existing ships.” While on the other hand, the countries that
supported taking such a step by means of international law were “those
which possess no mercantile marine or a comparatively small one.”135
Taking into account that the League only started to tackle the oil
pollution problem in summer 1934 (when the government of the
United Kingdom first addressed the Secretary-General in July) – and
compared to other international initiatives, environmental and other-
wise, of the interwar period – the fact that it took no more than a year to
introduce a complete draft for an international convention should not be
overlooked.136 This final draft was based on major parts of the 1926
Washington Convention, as well as on the different replies by the states
from around the world. The suggested 1935 antipollution convention
was quite similar to the one that had been published back in 1926 under
the auspices of the League (although it had never been ratified).
Moreover, this time, the environmental agenda was clear and specific
(with the obligation of separators), and it was discussed by the League
and its bodies.
But then, the oil problem was suddenly left behind. Following the
vibrant international discussion based on the questionnaire and the
work of the committee of experts, the Convention against the Pollution
of the Sea by Oil was never actually introduced. Somehow, the sense of
enthusiasm and urgency had dissipated. No serious follow-up discus-
sions on the 1935 antipollution convention were recorded. In the years
that followed up until the League ceased to exist as an institution, the new
convention – and the oil pollution problem – lost their place in the
League’s ongoing agenda and routine.
What were the reasons for this? Some might argue that throughout the
interwar period, the League was occupied with far more acute problems
and challenges than pollution, especially since the international commu-
nity and collective security were hanging by a thread with the rise of
Fascism and Ultra-Fascism in Europe and in Japan.137 This likely had
135
Communications and Transit Organisation, Pollution of the Sea by Oil, Report on the 2d
Session of the Committee of Experts, Oct. 21–25, 1935, C.449.M.1935.VIII., LoN
Archives, at 3.
136
The whaling dilemma, for instance, became an ongoing discussion starting from the
mid-1920s and remained an open issue for intensive legal deliberations throughout the
1930s; it included the introduction of two international conventions down the road.
137
One of the sources that was published during the war specifically referred to the possible
link between the deteriorating external geopolitical situation and the feasible future of
the convention, as Europe and other parts of the world were headed toward another
battlefield. According to this observation, in 1936, when the new antipollution
78 f i g h t i n g p o l l u t i o n m a d e b y h u m a n k i nd

a lot to do with the history of the late interwar period, and yet this
explanation cannot stand by itself. As the interwar environmental regime
shows, until its very end as an institution, the League worked intensively
to find solutions for many other concerns, such as sanitation and rural
hygiene in Eastern Europe and East Asia; the whaling dilemma; and the
issue of timber trade and related concerns of deforestation. All of these
issues occupied the League during the late 1930s and on the cusp of
World War II.
Hence, perhaps we should look for other acceptable reasons. It might
be that the League’s already very busy schedule and routine in the second
half of the 1930s pushed some of these problems aside (although certainly
not all of them). Perhaps other environmental concerns seemed to be
more worrying and urgent.
According to the common procedure of interwar international law,
a special international conference was supposed to be convened in order
to finalize the antipollution convention and to introduce it for ratification
by the states. This time, however, it would be done with much stronger
international support and commitment, unlike the 1926 Washington
Convention from ten years earlier. However, external politics beyond
the environment, the oceans, migratory birds, and oil pollution pene-
trated the dome of Geneva and affected some of its tasks besides main-
taining collective security and peacekeeping. Key maritime powers, such
as Imperial Japan, (already Nazi) Germany, and (Fascist) Italy dramatic-
ally withdrew from League at that stage. Due to the turbulent geopolitical
situation, the League’s relevant bodies (primarily the committee of
experts) no longer believed it would be possible or feasible to promote
the convention. Chairman Grimshaw, although unhappy with the section
on separators (which featured in the final draft), nevertheless conceded in
a letter to one of his colleagues: “[W]e apparently must take it as settled
that there can be no International Conference before 1937, if the
League . . . is in existence then.”138
However, political instability did not halt the diplomatic activity aimed
at the realizing the antipollution convention, and at putting an end to the
oil pollution problem in the sea. In a letter from summer 1937 addressed
to Grimshaw, it was mentioned that representatives of Canada, the

convention was handed in to the League’s Secretariat, the League was still “brooding over
the question [the antipollution convention], but worse things were in store for the
League of Nations and no further word has been heard on oil pollution.” H A Y D E N ,
supra note 11, at 13.
138
Letter by Grimshaw to Tombs, Apr. 21, 1936, LoN Archives, 50/18544/2625.
 1 . 4 co n c l u s i o n 79

United States, and the Union of South Africa were still working on the
possibility of organizing the conference, at which the new achievement of
the League’s environmental diplomacy could be publicly introduced.
These representatives had maintained their belief in interwar inter-
national law and were “anxious that a convention should be concluded
on this subject.”139
But it seems that the League was on a course of decline as 1938 and
1939 approached. Some states were turning away from the League and its
new mode of international governance, and retreating to mechanisms
and frameworks that had preceded the League: more “traditional” sys-
tems or networks of bilateral mutual agreements and transnational
arrangements. At this point, France, for instance, suggested an almost
copy-paste bilateral or multilateral agreement between different states
without the institutional framework of the League.140
And then, in the late summer of 1939, war arrived and put an end to
this international collaboration that was so close to imposing a new and
relatively progressive environmental regime on a reluctant industry in
order to save the birds, the sea, and the shore.

1.4 Conclusion: Pollution, Seas, and the post-1945 Period – from

Geneva to Stockholm and Back Again
As with other challenges handled by the League, World War II might
have terminated the existence of the League as an institution, but it did
not halt the course of environmental history. The League’s role – and
influence – in legal and other issues did not simply vanish.
As I briefly described in the introduction, some scholars have placed
the pollution problem as a clear post–World War II issue. According to
such descriptions, “public interest in the environment” got stronger, and
coastal states’ concerns about “increasing ship-source marine pollution
and oil spills”141 started to be heard after World War II. Edgar Gold has
argued that the connection between incidents involving tankers and oil
spills in environmentally or economically sensitive areas emerged142 only
in that period. However, the interwar antipollution campaign shows that
the 1940s, and especially the 1950s, should be understood as bearing
139
Letter by Tombs to Grimshaw, Aug. 8, 1937, LoN Archives, 50/18544/2625 (emphasis
added).
140
See, P R I T C H A R D , supra note 24, at 64–70; Wöbse, supra note 20, at 535.
141
Anayanova, supra note 14, at 29.
142
G O L D , supra note 15.
80 f i gh t i n g p o l l ut i o n made b y hu m ankind

some connection to the League’s effort, even if one believes that these
later developments were not necessarily a direct continuation of the
interwar period.
Like other environmental campaigns of the interwar period, the oil
pollution campaign saw the emergence of certain technological develop-
ments, some of which, it could be argued, were responsible for the
problem of pollution in the first place. In terms of periodization, the
League was established at a time when new, faster ships that were
equipped with different technical improvements began to change marine
transportation and worsened the oil pollution problem as a result.
Therefore, the role of the League should not be skipped in the evolution-
ary process of international environmental law. Overlooking the interwar
period is not only unjustified in terms of environmental history, but
could also lead to inaccuracies, to say the least.
This trend in scholarship not only means that a whole chapter in the
evolution of environmental history is incomplete, but also that certain
milestones in the genealogy of the international regulation of marine
environment pollution are missing. The interwar period stands right
between the Washington Convention of 1926 and much later legal
arrangements, such as the Declaration on the Human Environment
(Stockholm Declaration) of 1972, or transnational regional legal agree-
ments – such as the Convention on the Protection of the Marine
Environment of the Baltic Sea Area of 1992, and the parallel 1992
Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-
East Atlantic. The polluter-pays concept, for instance, was one of the
principles at the heart of the Baltic Sea Area Convention.143 This legal
regime, which was based on tort law mechanisms and placed liability on
shipowners, was already being discussed during the interwar period.144
As this chapter has explored, important environmental concerns of the
1920s and 1930s took their place alongside other initiatives that occupied
the League during this time.
Our understanding of the developing antipollution regime and the
layered structure of international law would not be complete without an
assessment of the interwar period. After all, it was during this period that,
under the auspices of the League, mechanisms aimed at solving concerns
regarding the transportation of oil and oil incidents were first introduced.
The international nature of the problem and its effects upon nature and

143
The Baltic Sea Area Convention was also known as the Helsinki Convention.
144
See my discussion in Section 1.2.1 above.
 1.4 c onclusion 81

communities brought together different bodies, all of whom were con-

cerned about the deteriorating situation. The sea became a particular and
turbulent site of common problems and international law at the same
time.
The migratory nature and behavior of wild birds added an inter-
national dimension to the ongoing discussion, and made these creatures
obvious subjects for international law. Migrating species of birds such as
Audubon’s Shearwater or Waxwings were seen as international creatures
because they challenged the notion and capability of national or domestic
sovereignty. Any measure taken by one state, progressive as it might be,
could not be enough to solve the threats to the survival of birds or to
prevent drifting oil from crossing borders, territories, and sovereignties.
Therefore, the international nature of different species of birds invited
the League to step in as a relevant power.
Ultimately, the League’s actions in this regard were a disappointing
failure. This study does not try to deny either the historical facts, or the
significance of these legal and diplomatic discussions. As Ekaterina
Anyanova, Edward Salter, and John Ford have argued, we can indeed
trace a “comprehensive regulatory regime” on the prevention of marine
oil pollution, and particularly oil spills from ships, however much earlier
than the period to which these scholars refer. This regime, they claim,
developed in international law “in the course of time.”145 These were
important bricks that the League introduced and used to build antipollu-
tion regulation in the second half of the twentieth century (and, in some
cases, also in the early twenty-first century). However, the role of the
League continues to be overlooked in the literature. Some of the examples
of the (more successful) post–World War II antipollution period show
that several central issues on which the League focused prevailed and
reappeared. Further studies into the primary sources would be better able
to decide whether or not these issues continued, or were influenced by,
the League’s campaign.
As briefly mentioned earlier, the Helsinki Convention of 1992 once
again highlighted the mechanisms of legal liability that were introduced
during the interwar period. More generally, Principle 7 of the Stockholm
Declaration,146 which was the first overall declaration that covered
a broad variety of issues relating to the responsibility of humankind for
145
Anyanova, supra note 14, at 31; Edward Salter & John Ford, Holistic Environmental
Assessment and Offshore Oil Field Exploration and Production, 42 M A R I N E P O L L U T I O N
B U L L . 45, 49–50 (2001).
146
The Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, 1972.
82 f i g h t i n g p o l l u t i o n m a d e b y h u m a n k i nd

the environment, echoed legal terms that were used by the League.
Principle 7 stated that “States shall take all possible steps to prevent
pollution of the seas by substances that are liable to create hazards to
human health, to harm living resources and marine life, to damage . . . or
to interfere with other legitimate uses of the sea.” This was basically
a repetition of the wording that had appeared in the 1935 antipollution
convention. Article II of the League’s convention demanded that the
“contracting Governments agree to take the necessary measures to
ensure that their . . . vessels shall take every possible precaution to
prevent oil pollution.”
As a matter of fact, the League’s antipollution agenda, together with its
legal ammunition, did not vanish when the League dissolved.
Immediately after World War II, the Transport and Communication
Commission (this time of the League’s successor, the United Nations)
reintroduced the concern about oil pollution of the seas in another
ongoing international discussion.
Once again, the issue was revived. Reports signed by experts piled up
(only this time in New York City and not in Geneva), and devoted
environmental NGOs restarted their international advocacy. And, indeed,
almost fifteen years later than the League was hoping for, the international
conference on the issue of oil pollution of the sea finally convened. The
British took the lead once more, since the British section of the
International Committee for Bird Preservation had set up the independent
Advisory Committee on Oil Pollution of the Sea147 in the early 1950s. In
1953, this Advisory Committee had organized an international conference
in London as a basic structure for the international network of non-state
organizations working for the protection of birds. This time, without the
distraction of a global war, the official diplomatic follow-up was not so late:
in 1954, the United Kingdom convened an intergovernmental conference
of forty-two nations.148 On May 12, 1954, the different states agreed on the
International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution of the Sea by Oil
(OILPOL), which came into force four years later, in 1958.149

147
Phyllis Barclay-Smith, Oil Pollution of the Sea, 7 B U L L . I N T ’L C O M M I T T E E F O R B I R D S
P R E S E R V A T I O N 51 (1958).
148
Indeed, this international cooperation was not under the auspices of the United Nations,
but it gathered states that were responsible for 95 percent of the global shipping tonnage
(see Wöbse, supra note 20, at 535).
149
International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution of the Sea by Oil, 1954, The Center
for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), Earth Institute, Columbia
University, http://sedac.ciesin.org/entri/texts/pollution.of.sea.by.oil.1954.html.
 1 . 4 co n c l u s i o n 83

Unfortunately, the progressive provisions that the League had

advanced in the mid-1930s, primarily the compulsory separators, were
now replaced, much to the satisfaction of the shipping industry. The
convention, however, returned to the safety of the restricted zone as
a legal-environmental solution.
It should also be noted that Article 24 of the Geneva Convention on the
High Seas150 stipulated the obligation of states to draft national legisla-
tion on pollution prevention for ships, pipelines or seabed activities.
Moreover, compared to the detailed discussions on specific sections of
the antipollution convention during the League’s period, the “umbrella
convention” of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea
(UNCLOS), adopted on December 10, 1982151 did not include detailed
rules for the protection of the marine environment, only general provi-
sions. These rules, proclaimed UNCLOS, would be implemented by
means of “future regulations” of international law.152 In other words,
this example shows that the way in which the League dealt with the
problem of oil pollution was, at least to a certain extent, more direct
and explicit than later legal-environmental arrangements.
However, oil pollution, together with its tragic outcomes, was still on
the global public agenda throughout the second half of the twentieth
century.153 Pollution of the sea154 was still an urgent environmental
concern, as it had been in the interwar period. All too often, media
coverage of environmental disasters caused by oil discharge, which

150
Convention on the High Seas, 1958. United Nations, Treaty Series, Vol. 450. P. 11, p. 82.
151
And came into force on November 16, 1994.
152
See, for instance, Ling Zhu, Do We Need a Global Organization for the Protection of the
Marine Environment, in I N T E R N A T I O N A L M A R I T I M E O R G A N I Z A T I O N S A N D T H E I R
C O N T R I B U T I O N T O W A R D S A S U S T A I N A B L E M A R I N E D E V E L O P M E N T 157 (Peter Ehlers
& Rainer Lagoni eds., 2006). Moreover, unlike the League’s intricate attempts to create
detailed legal definitions, UNCLOS provisions for maritime protection (which are
contained in Part XII of the convention) were rather general, though they remain
important globally today. The convention stipulates the general obligation of states to
protect the marine and coastal environment and its resources (Article 192). Article 193,
however, grants states the right to develop their natural resources (under the consider-
ation of their natural environmental policy), and also stresses their duty to protect and
preserve the marine environment. (However, it should be noted that the general provi-
sions of Articles 192 and 194, which deal with the measures to prevent, reduce, and
control pollution of the marine environment, are considered to be part of international
customary law.)
153
And, unfortunately, also at the dawn of the twenty-first century. For a discussion on the
case of the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2008, see David Bond, The Science of
Catastrophe: Making Sense of the BP Oil Spill, 3(1) A N T H R O P O L O G Y N O W 36 (2011).
154
Especially from sunk ships and vessels.
84 fighting pollution made by humankind

severely affected marine life and creatures that lived on shore (mostly
birds),155 revived the call for tighter antipollution regulation and
a stricter environmental regime. During the second half of the century,
by which time the League had become a historical memory, NGOs – such
as the RSPB, and a new and rather effective organization in town,
Greenpeace156 – played a “significant role in raising the salience of oil
pollution, widening support, and pressuring lawmakers.”157
To conclude, it seems that the current environmental regime still lacks
strict and precise legal protection from oil pollution of the seas. In light of
this, is it really fair to say that the League’s legal endeavors “withered”?158
In terms of legal history, the picture might be more complex. The central
aim – a binding legal document that would mark a turning point in the
evolution of environmental marine regulations – had failed, and the
League ceased to exist before it could see its effort translated into any
later legal arrangement. However, the ways in which the League dis-
cussed notions and solutions, which were close to being fulfilled in terms
of international law, do deserve our attention.
The intensive interwar discussion surrounding the oil pollution
problem serves as a vehicle with which one might journey into the
past of modern environmentalism. First, this discussion shows that
the reason why the oil pollution crisis of our time became an inter-
national issue is because it was already an issue of international law

155
Such as in the famous cases of the supertanker SS Torrey Canyon off the southwest coast
of the United Kingdom in 1967, with an estimated 25–36 million gallons of crude oil
spilled; Ixtoc 1 Oil Well (in the Bay of Campeche, Mexico) of 1979 with no less than
140 million gallons spilled; and the Castillo de Bellver (off Saldanha Bay, South Africa) of
1983, with 78.5 million gallons spilled. These and many other disasters that had a huge
impact on birds and the marine environment, and which were caused by the discharge of
oil or sinking ships, had an international legal and environmental legacy.
Moreover, one of the most famous illustrations of the Gulf War of 1991 was the
devastating environmental outcomes of the oil spill – one of the largest spills in history –
that occurred during this crisis. The pictures of dying, poisoned creatures on and near
the shores of the Persian Gulf, and particularly those of dead cormorants and other birds
saturated with thick black oil, disturbed the public. See Hosny Khordagui and Dhari Al-
Ajmi, Environmental Impact of the Gulf War: An Integrated Preliminary Assessment, 17
E N V T L . M G M T . 557 (1993).
156
For a study on the rise of Greenpeace see, e.g., John-Henry Harter, Environmental Justice
for Whom? Class, New Social Movements, and the Environment: A Case Study of
Greenpeace Canada, 1971–2000, 54 L A B O U R / L E T R A V A I L 83 (2004).
157
Ronald Mitchell, International Oil Pollution of the Oceans, in I N S T I T U T I O N S F O R T H E
EARTH: SOURCES OF EFFECTIVE INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION
241 (Peter M. Hass, Robert O. Keohane & Marc A. Levy eds., 1993).
158
Wöbse, supra note 20, at 536.
 1 . 4 co n c l u s i o n 85

during the 1920s and 1930s. As my examples from the many different
agreements of the second half of the twentieth century show, at least
some of the legal terms can be understood or interpreted either as an
extension of, or influenced by, the League’s endeavors to save the sea
and its creatures. And second, the interwar pollution discussion chal-
lenges the common narrative of early environmentalism. The League’s
antipollution campaign reveals that early international environmental
matters were not issues of Western empires and colonial powers alone,
as mainstream environmental historiography often tells us,159 but
involved a variety of different states and bodies. These new players in
the game of international law included states that were not considered
to be central political powers of that time (such as Canada and Spain)
and who took advantage of the new institutional opportunities the
League had to offer, as well as NGOs from different states that identified
this as a propitious time to advocate for their own conservationist
agenda by using the League’s procedures. The test case of the antipollu-
tion campaign serves as an example of an almost “united” environmen-
tal move from below. The original initiative started its journey through
the grassroots agenda of NGOs, where it managed to find its way to the
highest circles of institutional international law – all the while over-
coming national political barriers and challenging conventional inter-
national patterns of state-to-state frameworks. Along the way, as
League and interwar international law began to focus on the problem,
certain traditional and maritime powers attempted to bury this call and
to fight against solutions they thought would jeopardize their industrial
and economic interests, and put unbearable technical and financial
burdens on their shipping industries. Finally, although this convention
ended as a failure in terms of applicable law, it nevertheless showed how
the League enabled and practiced a democratic, open, and pluralistic
process of crafting international (environmental) law.
Moreover, it is quite impressive that so many states, not to mention the
League itself, were able to finalize a legal agreement aimed at protecting
birds, while at the same time dealing with serious challenges that threat-
ened collective security and stability in the 1930s.

159
See, e.g., A D A M , supra note 13; Mario Prost & Yoriko Otomo, British Influences on
International Environmental Law: The Case of Wildlife Conservation, in B R I T I S H
I N F L U E N C E S O N I N T E R N A T I O N A L L A W : 1 9 15 –2 0 15 , 192, (Robert McCorquodale &
Jean-Pierre Gauci eds., 2016); R I C H A R D H. G R O V E , G R E E N I M P E R I A L I S M : C O L O N I A L
EXPANSION, TROPICAL ISLAND EDENS AND THE ORIGINS OF ENVIRONMENTALISM,
1 60 0– 1 86 0 (1996).
86 fighting pollution made by humankind

Taken together, the League’s environmental and legal reflections

throughout the antipollution campaign tell a story of environmental
history with its own lessons to offer. Indeed, the bodies that chose to
side with the League in the 1920s and 1930s are perhaps different from
those who have played a role in recent (and current) environmental
controversies in the international arena. And yet many of the same
tensions remain: a reluctant industry that continues to oppose environ-
mental campaigns that threaten its interests; states that refuse to accept or
cooperate with initiatives of non-state actors in the international sphere;
deteriorating nature; and devoted civil-society organizations and vision-
ary dreamers that are quick to recognize new possibilities offered by the
institutional framework and the formative period of the League.
 2

The League of Nations and the Whaling Dilemma

We think that in this way the League of Nations would be able, in a relatively
short space of time, to solve one of the greatest problems for the future of
humanity and achieve, in this respect, the noble aim for which it was
created.1

2.1 Sea of Whales

2.1.1 Introduction
During the last week of January 1927, the Committee of Experts for the
Progressive Codification of International Law, one of the special com-
mittees under the auspices of the League of Nations, sent a detailed
memorandum to the headquarters in Geneva. After an extensive pro-
cess of back and forth replies and suggestions between the League and
different states (members of the League and nonmembers alike, as well
as some other surprising bodies who showed an interest including
several unique organizations, professional unions, and research institu-
tions), the Committee approached the General Secretariat of the League
with a list of measures that needed be taken as soon as possible in order
to solve “one of the greatest problems” threatening mankind and its
prosperity.
With interwar Europe, and many other parts of the world in the 1920s,
facing acute and troubling concerns, such a phrase could refer to any
number of issues – issues that might have arisen while redrawing
European borders, or while supervising the implementation of one of
the many disarmament agreements that postdated the bloody battles of
World War I, or perhaps while handling the self-determination agendas

1
Report by the Committee of Experts for the Progressive Codification of International Law.
Received in the registry of the League of Nations on Jan. 1, 1927, League of Nations
Archives [hereinafter LoN Archives], 19/55517/47284 (it should be noted that the Report
referred to the problem of whaling).

87
88 the l eague of n ations and t he whaling dilemma

of different minorities around the world.2 However, this Committee,

whose final report concludes with the optimistic quotation provided
above, was a special (international) committee of diplomats and jurists
that had dedicated its attention to the threat of extinction of whales at
the beginning of the twentieth century. This Committee viewed the
whale issue as an urgent and troubling problem the international
community – and international law in particular – needed to face as
soon as possible.
As I will argue in the following chapter, the study of the whaling
dilemma of the 1920s and 1930s emphasizes both the humanitarian
drive of the League, and its enthusiastic approach to issues and problems
that seemed – at least to some statesmen and diplomats who preceded the
rise of the League – to be completely beyond its jurisdiction, its original
goals, and its authority. Numerous reports reveal the League’s deepening
involvement in such issues, including the threat to different species of
whale, such as baleen, right, and gray whales. These reports express the
League’s belief that international law held the power and ability to fight
the danger posed by extinction and to protect valuable parts of nature.
The League served as a forum that integrated diverse and rival consider-
ations simultaneously, such as international goodwill,3 scientific expert-
ise, international governance, commercial and industrial interests,
environmental concerns, and pioneering notions of international legal
authority and collaboration.

2
Two other broader, classical and familiar accounts of the general history of the League of
Nations during its two decades of existence are E L M E R B E N D I N E R , A T I M E O F A N G E L S :
T H E T R A G I C O M I C H I S T O R Y O F T H E L E A G U E O F N A T I O N S (1975); and G E O R G E S C O T T ,
T H E R I S E A N D F A L L O F T H E L E A G U E O F N A T I O N S (1973; U.S. ed., 1974). Other
important surveys are F . S . N O R T H E D G E , T H E L E A G U E O F N A T I O N S : I T S L I F E A N D
T I M E S : 1 92 0 –1 94 6 (1986), and John Mearsheimer’ s The False Promise of International
Institutions, 19(3) I N T ’ L S E C U R I T Y 5 (1994). For different examples of the humanitarian
issues and other social aims and problems handled by the League see, among others, T H E
LEAGUE OF NATIONS’ WORK ON SOCIAL ISSUES: VISIONS, ENDEAVOURS AND
E X P E R I M E N T S ( Magaly Rodríguez García, Davide Rodogno & Liat Kozma eds., 2016).
3
IRIS BOROWY, COMING TO TERMS WITH WORLD HEALTH: THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS
H E A L T H O R G A N I S A T I O N 1 9 21 –1 9 46 (2009); S T E P H A N I E L I M O N C E L L I , T H E P O L I T I C S
OF TRAFFICKING: THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL MOVEMENT TO COMBAT THE SEXUAL
E X P L O I T A T I O N O F W O M E N (2010); Keith David Watenpaugh, “A Pious Wish Devoid of
all Practicability”: Interwar Humanitarianism, the League of Nations and the Rescue of
Trafficked Women and Children in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1920–1927, 115 A M E R I C A N
H I S T O R I C A L R E V I E W 1315 (2010); J E A N A L L A I N , T H E S L A V E R Y C O N V E N T I O N S : T H E
T R A V A U X P R É P A R A T O I R E S O F T H E 19 26 L E A G U E O F N A T I O N S C O N V E N T I O N A N D T H E
19 5 6 U N I T E D N A T I O N S C O N V E N T I O N 31 (2008).
 2 . 1 se a o f wh a l e s 89

For those studying the League’s environmental regime, the scope of the
actors and forces that were involved in this cooperation extends well
beyond “familiar” European borders and into the international arena.
I will present and analyze campaigns and concerns that involved nations
from (almost) every continent,4 commercial corporations, early and
emerging civil society organizations, and different bodies and depart-
ments of the League itself. As an international institution, the League was
dealing with environmental dilemmas as they unfolded.
The seas were open to all. Although only a relatively small number of
states took part in the intensifying practice of whaling, the urgent need
for a legal regime that would regulate the different powers and their
harvests had been discussed by different forums within the League, at
conferences and special commissions. Rapidly developing exploitation of
the treasures of the sea, as the League referred to it when it started to
tackle the issue, caused fears of impending disaster. Thus, a variety of
actors emphasized the necessity of law – any kind of law – and of
professional diplomatic efforts, legal mechanisms, and proper solutions.
During the interwar period, this special committee of the League
(followed by other bodies and agencies) addressed particular questions
on international law, sovereignty, industrial needs, and nature. Although
the committee was not originally created to review the possibility of
establishing an international regulation for whaling, it was not long
before a unique mode of operation and of international law “on-the-
move” emerged – the dynamics of which led the Committee on an
intensive journey toward what would become the first ever international
whaling law. Experts who were involved were either invited during the
League’s ongoing discussions to contribute from their scientific know-
ledge and fields of expertise,5 or were sent as delegates by various states;
most expressed deep concern over the danger of an impending whale
extinction. Some shared surprising, progressive observations of the prob-
lem and sketched pioneering drafts for a new international whaling law.
This chapter examines the interwar deliberations and the obstacles the
League faced upon launching a fierce and intensive environmental,
economic, political, and legal campaign. Besides the special Committee
of Experts, other bodies and actors – including old empires, new
4
In the case of the problem of whaling, however, attention was mostly given to the least
national place on earth: the seas around Antarctica. See William Cronon’s introduction to
KURKPATRICK DORSEY, WHALES AND NATIONS: ENVIRONMENTAL DIPLOMACY ON
T H E H I G H S E A S , xix (2013).
5
Among them were legal scholars, economists, and other professional experts.
90 t h e l ea gue of n at ion s a nd th e w hal i ng d il e mma

emerging states, and independent organizations with their own agendas –

became involved in dilemmas that brought to the fore early environmental
issues, powerful commercial and industrial interests, and the increasing
importance of scientific expertise. The chapter will explore the ways in
which diplomacy and international cooperation were monitored by certain
parts of the League, as well as the effort it dedicated to securing the survival
of whales on the high seas by legal mechanisms. This chapter will also
assess the role of the League and its contribution to the legal foundations of
international ocean governance in general, and to the development and
evolution of international whaling regulation in particular. To do so, I will
use a timeline that tracks both the period before the League was established
in 1919, and the period following its dissolution in the aftermath of World
War II, when it was replaced by the new organization of the United
Nations.
In order to place the story of whales and the League in a coherent
context, I will open with a historical background. This section will
include periodization, which will shed light on the interwar period as
part of a broader timeline of the history of whaling and internationalism,
alongside a general outline of the course of events.
Then, I will address the main historical narrative of the period under
examination, which serves as the center of the study. As the historical
narrative unfolds, I will focus on the role of the Committee of Experts for
the Progressive Codification of International Law (hereafter referred to as
“the Codification Committee”) as a leader in intensive international dis-
cussions on the whaling problem, starting from the mid-1920s and
throughout the 1930s. In this central section, I will analyze the various
ways in which the Codification Committee, and different parts of the
League, interacted with multiple players engaged in the battle on whaling:
interwar-period powers and states; powerful and aggressive industries that
feared any kind of external legal obligation or constraints on their eco-
nomic and commercial activities; and activist NGOs, devoted scientists,
and enthusiastic scientific associations who were concerned about the
potential destruction of whale species at the hands of dramatic techno-
logical developments in the field of modern whaling. Importantly, I will
also examine the interactions within the League itself, as a multilayered
institution with its own routine, mechanisms, agenda, and interests in
certain cases, such as that of whaling.
I will trace the landmark events throughout the complex interwar saga
of trying to create international whaling law. These markers will draw on
the international correspondence and interactions between bodies of the
 2 . 1 se a o f w h a l e s 91

League and other political, scientific, and commercial centers. The story
is illustrated by numerous sources: the dozens of replies (including stern
warnings) that were sent to the League on this issue; special reports made
by and for the Codification Committee during its work; drafts of innova-
tive international conventions that proposed some surprising solutions,
and which were discussed and distributed across the (interwar) world; as
well as internal negotiations and various unpublished documents that
shed new light on the vibrant whaling discussion.
As the chapter weaves together the chain of events, challenges, and
entanglements that took place during this complex period, I will also add
a final summary of several different conclusions, following the historical
narrative.
Although there is vast scholarship on the history of whaling, almost all
of these studies tend either to overlook or to dismiss the role of the League.
Mario Prost and Yoriko Otomo, for instance, said that there is “a wealth of
scholarship on this topic [the conservation of whales], but . . . it is beyond
the scope of this chapter to canvass the wide-ranging discussions on
cetacean conservation.”6 Likewise, Gerry J. Nagtzaam, a historian of whal-
ing diplomacy, almost completely omits the era of the League and its
involvement in the issue of whaling, merely observing that “prior to the
establishment of the IWC [International Whaling Committee] in the post-
World War II period, there were earlier attempts to create a global whaling
regime. The effort, however, was hampered by a lack of commitment from
the relevant parties, despite ample long-term economic imperatives to do
so.”7 Other scholars, such as Peter J. Stoett8 or Anthony D’Amato and
Sudhir K. Chopra,9 view the early 1930s as the beginning of a turning
point, when whaling nations began to recognize the need to regulate
catching whales to prevent species extinction. However, they show very
little interest in exploring the history during the “four years of negotiations
between the states attached to the League of Nations . . . .”10

6
See note 52 (at 206–07) in Mario Prost & Yoriko Otomo, British Influences on
International Environmental Law: The Case of Wildlife Conservation, in B R I T I S H
I N F L U E N C E S O N I N T E R N A T I O N A L L A W : 19 1 5– 2 01 5 , 192, (Robert McCorquodale &
Jean-Pierre Gauci eds., 2016).
7
Gerry J. Nagtzaam, The International Whaling Commission and the Elusive Great White
Whale of Preservationism, 33 W I L L I A M & M A R Y E N V T L . L . & P O L ’Y R E V . 375, 393 (2009).
8
P E T E R J. S T O E T T , T H E I N T E R N A T I O N A L P O L I T I C S O F W H A L I N G 57 (1997).
9
Anthony D’Amato & Sudhir K. Chopra, Whales: Their Emerging Right to Life, 85 A M .
J. I N T ’L L. 21 (1991).
10
Nagtzaam, supra note 7, at 393. See also D’Amato & Chopra, supra note 9, at 30; and
S T O E T T , supra note 8, at 57. Moreover, in his overview of the environmental history of the
92 t h e l e a g u e of n a t i o n s a n d th e w h a l i n g d i l e m m a

As I will show later on, although some of these scholars do deal

(however briefly) with the whaling problem during the 1920s and
1930s, they rather choose to assert that the League’s shortcomings as an
international institution had much to do with the failures of its evolving
whaling regime. Perhaps, with regard to the League’s success on the
ground, these assertions are correct. However, a recent study of the
modern history of whaling and international law suggests that even
current international arrangements supervised by the United Nations
are sometimes ineffective, largely due to a “lack of compliance and
enforceability.”11 And yet scholars do not dismiss this period, despite
its failures. Although this study does not aim to focus on the core issues of
international legal studies of compliance and enforceability per se, I will
nevertheless address (in the conclusion) some of the possible reasons why
most of the legal solutions introduced by the League eventually failed or
were not enforced. Here, I will also offer a new perspective on the
influence of the League’s involvement in the whaling dilemma on whal-
ing regulations after 1945. I will also try to explain why some of these
solutions were not ultimately accepted as binding international law.
Other chapters in this study look at the various ways in which the
League addressed environmental concerns and pursued environmental
goals. Here, I will show that the League went to great lengths to ensure the
survival of whales on the high seas, through careful diplomacy and the
monitoring of international cooperation efforts. What the biologist
Garrett Hardin referred to in 1968 as “the tragedy of the commons”12
was already a well-known and apt description of the reality of the
creatures of the sea,13 and the League and its organs were deeply involved
in this international marine and legal dilemma. As I will discuss, the
question of whaling, whales, and international law out in the open seas
actually became one of the central, ongoing issues tackled by the League
in the second half of the 1920s and throughout the 1930s. As a matter of
fact, the League struggled with the dilemma until its last moments, a few
months before Hitler’s divisions would storm Poland.

twentieth century, stretching over almost 400 pages, J. R. McNeill mentions the League of
Nations no more than once: in his discussion on whaling and fishing. See page 242 in
J. R. MCNEILL, SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN: AN ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
O F T H E T W E N T I E T H -C E N T U R Y W O R L D (2000).
11
C A M E R O N J E F F E R I E S , M A M M A L C O N S E R V A T I O N A N D T H E L A W O F T H E S E A , xx
(2016).
12
Garrett Hardin, The Tragedy of the Commons, 162 S C I . 1243 (1968).
13
D O R S E Y , supra note 4, at xi (2 0 13 ) .
 2 . 1 se a o f wh a l e s 93

The League’s long deliberations, transnational correspondences, sci-

entific observations, legal discussions, and multinational negotiations
highlight dilemmas that point to tensions between the scope of inter-
national law and international regulation of the sea on the one hand, and
between international law and the sovereignty of nations on the other
hand. It is clear that the League was facing a very pressing problem: the
decrease of marine life and animals in general, and endangered whale
species in particular. It was an issue upon which the League spent an
enormous amount of time and diplomatic energy and deployed vast
numbers of personnel. The League played a central role in drawing global
attention to the problem, at a time when other parties and organizations
stubbornly advocated against this cause.
I will reveal the complex historical course of the dilemma as it was
discussed by different bodies under the auspices of the League, as well as
between the League and external organizations that were involved in the
issue based on different (and in many cases also conflicting) interests. In
fact, the future of the whale and the threats to its survival – as outlined by
many scientists and agents involved in the ongoing debate – actually
became part of a broader discussion on national sovereignty versus
international (environmental) regulation. Some of the states that partici-
pated in the interwar discussion used the whaling problem as a platform
for legal deliberations, to tackle fundamental questions of international
law and sovereignty.
Besides being a challenging environmental dilemma for global diplo-
macy and evolving international law, the whaling problem also served
as the foundation for emerging institutionalized international law. As
other historians have shown, early international environmental law
existed well before the establishment of the League;14 however, the
framework of the League’s organs, such as the Assembly, the Council,
different special technical committees, and so on was rather new and
full of anticipation, not only when it came to the problem of whales. In
that sense, the League changed environmental law. The whaling
problem15 gained much of its intensity and energy during the interwar
period as an outcome of the structure and diplomatic routine of the
League as an institution. The League’s move from ad hoc initiatives,
14
See, among others, David Frank et al., The Rationalization and Organization of Nature in
World Culture, in C O N S T R U C T I N G W O R L D C U L T U R E 82 (John Boli & George
M. Thomas eds., 1999).
15
Like other problems and challenges that were tackled by the League and its institutional
structure.
94 t h e l e a g u e of n a t i o n s a n d th e w h a l i n g d i l e m m a

which characterized earlier experiences in international environmental

law, to a “constant” or prevailing diplomatic agenda, was more than just
a technical shift. Communicating from its headquarters in the new
capital by Lake Geneva,16 the League’s regime governed by transpar-
ency, fixed procedures, and a firm schedule, all of which were reflected
in the general institutional mechanisms of the League.
The role of scientific expertise within the world of early international
law has been exemplified in different studies,17 and I will show that it can
be viewed throughout the League’s campaign for and against whaling
regulation. However, in the context of environmental concerns, this
scientific discourse played a central role in the vast attention the issue
began to receive in the mid-1920s.
Moreover, the League proved to be “a welcome venue for environmen-
tal NGOs”18 and other kinds of independent organizations19 trying to
play a part – and to secure their interests and agendas at the same time –
by turning to the League and its mechanisms in order to promote their
agendas.
The picture that is revealed as we remove the curtain includes different
organizations, institutions, and interest groups, all playing some part in
the fierce battle over whaling. Some states favored the progressive initia-
tive that the League promoted, while others were reluctant, and some
rejected it completely. Some NGOs and independent actors worked
enthusiastically for the sake of saving the whale, while other transnational
consortiums moved to secure industrial interests. And certain scientists
and dedicated visionaries frequently acted on their own behalf and on
conservationists’ agendas, sometimes in ways that contradicted, or even

16
For an interpretation on the unique features of interwar Geneva, including religious ones,
see Susan Pedersen, Back to the League of Nations, 112 A M . H I S T . R E V . 1091, 1112
(2007).
17
Liat Kozma, The League of Nations and the Debate over Cannabis Prohibition, 9 H I S T .
C O M P A S S 61, 63–64 (2011); Magaly Rodríguez García, Child Slavery, Sex Trafficking or
Domestic Work? The League of Nations and Its Analysis of the Mui Tsai System, in
T O W A R D S A G L O B A L H I S T O R Y O F D O M E S T I C A N D C A R E G I V I N G W O R K E R S 42 8
(Dirk Hoerder et al. eds., 2015).
18
Anna-Katharina Wöbse, Oil on Troubled Water? Environmental Diplomacy in the League
of Nations, 32 D I P L O M A T I C H I S T . 519, 522 (2008).
19
Such as commercial, industrial, and economic organizations with common interests and
international cooperation. See, for instance, the leading role – as I will discuss later on – of
the Copenhagen Council, an international consortium that had a direct interest in the
whaling industry. Based on a specific resolution of the League Assembly in January 1928,
the Copenhagen Council became a formal player in the negotiations and discussions on
whaling regulation.
 2 . 1 se a o f wh a l e s 95

undermined, “their” nation’s interests. We should also pay attention to

the fact that the League itself was not, of course, a homogeneous body. In
some instances, the Codification Committee drove the agenda; in other
cases, the League’s Council, or the Assembly (the more general forum of
the League), was at the center of negotiations. At various times, each of
these organs offered different perspectives and positions on both inter-
national law as a whole, and global whaling regulations in particular. The
wide variety of actors involved had a direct effect on how the question of
whales and whaling unfolded between the League and other parts of the
world.
The history of international law and diplomacy, particularly during
this new and unfamiliar kind of institutionalized international forum,
is, in many aspects, centered on the League of Nations. It was in
Geneva, as Susan Pedersen stated nearly a decade ago, that inter-
nationalism was enacted, institutionalized, and performed.20 As this
chapter will elaborate, the question of whaling became, from its very
first moments, a fierce battlefield for different and unfamiliar players,
traditional and imperial powers alongside emerging states, all wishing
to be part of the creation of international law. All were looking at the
League – some with a sense of great hope, but some with fear and
growing dissatisfaction – as it tried to establish an internationally
binding agreement on whaling that adequately represented different
perspectives, interests, and perceptions of environmental issues, com-
mercial motives, and international law all together. In recent years,
scholars engaged in studies on the League have identified and com-
pared its tensions, characteristics, and modes of operation, which have
appeared in hundreds of documents from the League’s archives. As
such, the negotiations on international whaling law demonstrate the
many intersections and interactions between individuals and organ-
izations in the midst of early institutionalized international law. They
highlight the rise of information sharing as a leading method of
discussing and practicing diplomacy during the first half of the twen-
tieth century. They reveal the tensions between state sovereignty and
emerging abstract (and ambitious) international authority and govern-
ance. Finally, they underscore the leading role of scientific expertise as
one of the League’s most important means of enhancing (and perhaps
even creating) the basis for its legal legitimacy in a world that was not
yet familiar with this kind of superstate institute.

20
Pedersen, supra note 16, at 1112.
96 t h e l e a g u e of n a t i o n s a n d th e w h a l i n g d i l e m m a

The history of international law, and the environmental – as well as

commercial – problem of the dwindling whale population began at the
start of the twentieth century when people first became aware of the
severe condition of whale populations,21 prompting discussions about
the need for worldwide regulation of the whaling industry. This was
many years before the League was established in 1919, or its actions in
the 1920s and the 1930s. However, we cannot deny that the League played
a central role in how the whaling question developed in the first half of
the new century; nor can we deny its influence on future international
legal arrangements relating to whaling in the second half of the century
and beyond. An honest account of legal history must necessarily evaluate
the League based on both its achievements and its failures. In the case of
whaling law, a study of the League’s initiatives and its outcomes shows
that most did not make it. However, I do not believe that determining the
immediate success of these efforts is the only relevant criterion; especially
from a legal history perspective that looks at the layers that create legal
arrangements in the long run. The fact is that the League (and many
states – members and nonmembers alike) invested huge amounts of time,
resources, and diplomatic effort into this issue. In this way, the whaling
problem became a continuous process of trying to shape international
law, evolving diplomacy, and competing international relations in con-
junction with environmental concerns, agendas of conservation and
nature protection, and also of industrial and commercial interests. This
mix of interests still colors many of the current environmental entangle-
ments of the twenty-first century, and the ways with which earlier diplo-
macy and international law tried to deal with them are worth our
attention.
Moreover, some of the ideas that the League raised did not manage to
find their way into the final, legally binding and official documents it
produced – at least not during its lifetime. As the evolutionary history
and genealogy of (international) law – and environmental history – tend
to show, some of these innovative ideas, such as restricted areas for
whaling, seasonal moratoria, and defending either certain whale species
or specific populations (females or calves), were ahead of their time. The
diplomatic microcosms of the League stood, as I understand it, as an early
experimental stage for pioneering ideas and mechanisms. Some of these
were discussed, and nothing more; some were very close to being
accepted and formulated into legal articles; and some – unfortunately

21
Or at least of some whale species.
 2 . 1 se a o f wh a l e s 97

for certain species of whales – had to “stand in line” and wait their turn in
the course of legal-environmental history. One way or another, the
League served as a vibrant diplomatic laboratory for discussing, deliber-
ating over, and consulting certain environmental ideas and fears that
concerned parts of the interwar world. At least some of this interwar
period has profound implications, and even lessons, for our twenty-first
century world’s pressing global environmental challenges.

2.1.2 General Timeline and Outline

This chapter will cover the turbulent environment in which international
law had to operate in order to tackle the overexploitation of whales and to
ensure their survival.
The chapter begins with the launch on March 22, 1926 of the
Codification Committee’s first special questionnaire. This legal docu-
ment addressed issues focusing on various realms of international law.
Question No. 7 in particular related to different options for “exploitation
of the products of the sea,” (in the words of the Codification Committee),
and also to the future of a (possible) worldwide whaling regulation. I will
first describe the legal-history context and backdrop of the Codification
Committee, and the League’s reasons for assembling it in the first place.
Then, I will go on to explain the sources of the questionnaire, as well as its
original intentions. Surprisingly, what was supposed to be no more than
one section of an almost entirely scholarly discussion on issues relating to
the possibility of starting a comprehensive codification of international
law,22 suddenly became an independent branch, gaining increasing
attention, and filled with tensions and controversies.
I will follow the historical track of the questionnaire, and explore how
it evolved into a microcosm of international relations, interwar diplo-
macy, economic and commercial interests, environmental concerns, and
scientific warnings. I will go on to analyze different replies to the ques-
tionnaire that the League received from different states. I interpret these
both in the context of international legal discourse, and against environ-
mental reflections in a historical perspective. The chapter will also ana-
lyze the obstacles the League faced in its attempts to call a summit for
a special international whaling conference in London. Then, I will discuss
the main impressions of the 1931 Whaling Conference – as a direct

22
Such as the problem of piracy and the role of diplomatic privileges and immunities in the
twentieth century.
98 t h e l e a g u e of n a t i o n s a n d th e w h a l i n g d i l e m m a

outcome of the first initiative of the 1926 Questionnaire – and its

attempts to translate the League’s legal work that had been carried out
during the late 1920s into a binding international whaling convention.
The story will then move to a discussion of how the League revised the
1931 Convention in light of the developments and reactions in the
international arena. In this section, I will focus on certain arrangements
of the 1931 Convention that were considered inadequate to meet the
rapid increase in whaling and changing hunting methods and technolo-
gies. Alongside several other international developments, including
increasing scientific warnings and non-state actors’ activities, the
League’s whaling campaign made relatively quick progress (especially
given the geopolitical turbulence of the 1930s) and led to a second
whaling conference, which was held in 1937. The whaling year of 1937
was one of the last major legal steps taken by the League, before the
institution was made irrelevant by the outbreak of World War II, and
Europe and the rest of the world were thrown into chaos.
Although World War II brought an end to the League as an institution,
the League’s story does not simply end there. As other environmental
issues uncovered in this study show, the interwar period cannot be
disconnected from the rest of environmental history and its continuing
timeline. We cannot examine how environmental history develops,
reacts, and evolves over time while ignoring the 1920s and the 1930s.
Just as environmental historians tend to understand and interpret history
as a chain of events rather than isolated incidents, so we should view the
League’s environmental initiatives as part of an evolving process, and
situate them within a broader timeline. Hence, the historical story of the
League might terminate on September 1, 1939 but its role, ideas, and the
mechanisms it employed in response to the challenge of whaling did not
suddenly vanish. In the final part of this chapter, I will suggest a more
positive interpretation of the League’s effects on the postwar whaling
regime. Although environmental historians who study the entangle-
ments of twentieth-century whaling tend to focus on the role and signifi-
cance of the 1946 International Convention for the Regulation of
Whaling as a cornerstone of whaling diplomacy, I will show why the
League’s conservationist efforts also merit a contextual study, one that
sheds light on later legal arrangements. Moreover, although
September 1939 marks the League’s actual termination, I will not leave
the story unfinished. Rather than presenting the whaling dilemma as an
isolated event, frozen in time, I attempt to weave the entanglements of the
interwar period into the rest of the story of modern whaling diplomacy.
 2 .2 w h al e s a nd wh al i n g 99

In so doing, I suggest a more comprehensive notion of the League’s role

in the evolution of the international whaling regime both in the 1940s
and in the latter half of the century.

2.2 Whales and Whaling: The Historical Background of Whaling

in a Nutshell
The history of whaling and whales begins neither in the modern era nor
with the rise of the League. The following section introduces key points in
the common environmental historiography of whaling, to better situate
this chapter in a continuously developing context.
Whaling as an activity has been carried out since the dawn of human
history in many parts of the globe.23 For centuries, humans treated
whales as a “free resource,” in the sense that they were considered a gift
from nature to be enjoyed by anyone who could catch them.24 However,
until the development of more efficient harvesting technologies in late
modern times, mostly starting from the 1860s onwards, as I will elaborate
later, humans lacked the ability to catch pelagic whales in large numbers.
Therefore, overexploitation of whales was not recognized as a -
problem.25 Though some environmental historians cite the technological
means of the eleventh century as proof of premodern proto-industrial
whaling (which is thought to have originated with the Basques in the Bay
of Biscay),26 such whaling was initially limited to coastal shores and
carried out only from small boats.27 The British and the Dutch quickly
23
Sebastian Oberthür, The International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling: From
Over-Exploitation to Total Preservation, in Y E A R B O O K O F I N T E R N A T I O N A L C O -
O P E R A T I O N O N E N V I R O N M E N T A N D D E V E L O P M E N T 1998/99 29, 29 (Helge Ole
Bergesen, Georg Parmann & Øystein B. Thomnessen eds., 1998).
24
D’Amato and Chopra, supra note 9, at 28. It must be stressed that this notion of “treasures
of the sea” – whales in particular – as natural resources belonging to humankind was still
an influential one in the corridors and negotiation halls in Geneva during the 1920s and
1930s. Several representatives expressed this perception of whales and their habitats in
response to scientific warnings against overexploitation. See, for instance, the specific
comment made in the Roumanian reply to the League as discussed especially in
Section 2.3.2.
25
Oberthür, supra note 23, at 29. Industrial whaling refers to the commercial hunting of the
larger of the migratory seventy-nine whale species, for example, the blue whale.
26
See, for instance, the descriptions in E L I Z A B E T H D E S O M B R E , T H E G L O B A L
E N V I R O N M E N T A N D W O R L D P O L I T I C S 150 (2007); or in D’Amato and Chopra, supra
note 9, at 28–29.
27
Nagtzaam has claimed that by the middle of the fifteenth century, Basque whalers were
venturing further afield, even as far as the eastern coasts of Canada. See Nagtzaam, supra
note 7, at 389.
100 the l eague of nations and t he whaling d ilemma

adopted their rivals’ techniques, expanding their own whaling activity to

Newfoundland in the North Atlantic. As a result, Basque whaling had
almost completely ceased by the end of the sixteenth century. Some
historians argue that the danger of whale extinction had already begun
to emerge at this time and that, in the following century,28 an increase in
premodern whaling threatened the future survival of right whales in the
North Atlantic. By the seventeenth century, whaling countries ventured
as far as the Arctic in pursuit of whales for meat and other products.29 As
the nineteenth century approached, and with the shift in international
European power, the Dutch industry declined while the British whalers
strengthened their control of the sea. With new whalers from France,
Germany, and Spain30 joining the (international) hunt,31 other whale
populations began to suffer. Greenland bowhead whales, the third largest
whale in the major species, were nearing extinction, as was the Biscayan
right whale during that period.32 Between 1750 and 1870, whales were
considered a lucrative and valuable natural source of oil, bone, and other
products, such as perfume and clothing.33
28
PATRICIA W. BIRNIE, INTERNATIONAL REGULATION OF WHALING: FROM
CONSERVATION OF WHALING TO CONSERVATION OF WHALES AND REGULATION
O F W H A L E -W A T C H I N G 66 (1985); E V E R H A R D J. S L I P J E R , W H A L E S 17 (1962); N E I L
A . M A C K I N T O S H , T H E S T O C K O F W H A L E S 14 6 (1965).
29
In this period, English and Dutch vessels in the hundreds primarily hunted right whales –
Greenland whales and nordcapers – in the Arctic, bringing untold wealth to their national
treasuries. See C O M M I T T E E F O R W H A L I N G S T A T I S T I C S , I N T E R N A T I O N A L W H A L I N G
S T A T I S T I C S II 4 (1931), LoN Archives [hereinafter C O M M I T T E E F O R W H A L I N G
S T A T I S T I C S ].
30
It should be noted that American whalers entered the industry in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. On the East Coast, for instance, whaling became a growing industry
in the states of Connecticut, New York, and Massachusetts; while on the West Coast, gray
and right whales were hunted off the California coast. In the years that followed, the
symptoms of overexploitation, along with a local version of the tragedy of the commons,
became apparent on that side of the Pacific Ocean, as American whaling continued to
exhaust the West Coast’s whaling population. Their expeditions moved far beyond
coastal waters, reaching as far as South America and parts of Oceania (Australia and
New Zealand). American involvement in whaling on the high seas in the nineteenth
century (which at its peak amounted to 700 American commercial vessels) was negatively
affected in the 1860s due to the Civil War and its aftermath. Nevertheless, it is interesting
to note that when the petroleum industry was introduced into the American national
economy in the last third of the nineteenth century, the involvement of American whalers
in transnational whaling began gradually to decrease.
31
See F A R L E Y M O W A T , S E A O F S L A U G H T E R 210 (1989).
32
S L I P J E R , supra note 28, at 22; B I R N I E , supra note 28, at 68. Moreover, see generally
G . J A C K S O N , T H E B R I T I S H W H A L I N G T R A D E 3–156 (1978).
33
See A L E X A N D E R S T A R B U C K , H I S T O R Y O F T H E A M E R I C A N W H A L E F I S H E R Y F R O M I T S
E A R L I E S T I N C E P T I O N T O T H E Y E A R 1 8 76 (1878).
 2. 2 w h ale s an d w h ali n g 101

Most environmental historians agree that the modern history of the

industrialization of whaling begins around the early 1870s. The fact that
the American fleet was on its way out of whaling (due to the evolving
petroleum industry, as alternative source to whale oil) did not change
much for the whale population, unfortunately. In 1870, a Norwegian
seaman and inventor, Sven Foyn, presented a technological innovation
that almost completely changed the cetacean industry and massively
increased its brutal efficiency: an exploding harpoon fired from a canon.34
The Norwegian invention enabled whalers to hunt larger, faster-
swimming, rorqual whales such as blue, fin, sei, and minke whales.35
Small, fast steamers called “catchers” joined the explosive grenade har-
poon and the canon.36 Late nineteenth-century technology changed the
field of whaling, and the world of whales, making the fishing fleets from
countries such as Canada, Norway, Japan, Denmark, Iceland, and even
the United States (to a certain extent) more successful in their hunt for
whales. With new and faster steel-hulled ships, equipped with steam (and
later diesel) engines,37 and with the devastating harpoon, “the biggest of
all the Antarctic and Arctic whaling periods was launched.”38
Steam vessels, exploding harpoons, and compressed air made the ocean
much more accessible to whaling, as more and more whales entered into
the hunting zone. These new whaling technologies and hunting methods
enshrined exploitationist practices as the global standard.39 As if that was
not enough, another industrial-technological development was introduced
at the turn of the century – a land station for processing whale products –
which seemed to “complete” this new mass-production era in whaling and
to further threaten the survival of whales. In 1904, Norway established its
first Antarctic whaling station in Georgia; within a year, seven floating
factories were operating. As World War I approached, by 1910, two land

34
F R A N C I S D O W N E S O M M A N N E Y , L O S T L E V I A T H A N 95 (1971). Svend Foyn’s first use of
the harpoon gun, in approximately 1864, was not considered a great success, however.
The story goes that he somehow managed to become caught in the line and was hurled
into the ocean, but was rescued.
35
C O M M I T T E E F O R W H A L I N G S T A T I S T I C S , supra note 29, at 5. See, for instance,
Ray Gambell, The International Management of Marine Mammals, in C O N S E R V A T I O N
A N D M A N A G E M E N T O F M A R I N E M A M M A L S 179, 180 (John R. Twiss Jr. & Randall
R. Reeves eds., 1999).
36
O M M A N N E Y , supra note 34, at 95–96.
37
Larry L. Leonard, Recent Negotiations Toward the International Regulation of Whaling, 35
A M . J. I N T ’L L. 91 (1941).
38
D’Amato and Chopra, supra note 9, at 29.
39
See D E S O M B R E , supra note 26, at 151.
102 the l eag ue of n ations and t he whaling dilemm a

factories and fourteen factory floating ships were in operation and sup-
ported whaling worldwide.40 Combined, these new, turn-of-the-century
technologies meant that whaling increased significantly and became suc-
cessful on an industrial scale.
This hunting and producing revolution had a direct impact on the
ground. In 1910 alone over ten thousand whales of different species were
hunted; and in 1914–15, Norway alone caught no fewer than 14,917
whales just in the bountiful waters of the Antarctic.41 The last historical
event that should be mentioned before the League’s appearance in the
story is World War I, which drove whale harvesting into a steep decline
(9468 were hunted in 1918–19). However, after World War I had ended,
the whales continued to be at risk: as early as the first season after the war
(1919–20), shortly before the establishment of the League, the industry
was back on its feet with 11,369 catches. And in a little over a decade,
hunting in the industry had jumped to no fewer than 43,129 catches in
1931,42 despite the League’s strong presence during this period.
And yet, in spite of these worrying numbers, the danger of extinction
did not enter the public awareness until the early twentieth century, when
it became apparent that commercial hunting was negatively impacting
whale stocks.43 Robert Ellickson has argued that prior to this point, there
might well have been a material incentive for whaling nations to actually
continue excessive hunting in order to prevent other states from exploit-
ing this lucrative resource. This scenario rather quickly emerged as
a living version of the tragedy of the (marine) commons.44 However,
some scholars have suggested that a balanced whaling regime preventing
total exploitation of sea species could have been achieved without an
international authority45 like the League.
By the end of the nineteenth century, whalers had exploited whales so
severely that whaling vessels were compelled to go further out into the
oceans every year to hunt.46 This led to the inevitable demise of the

40
See D’Amato & Chopra, supra note 9, at 29; and N . T Ø N N E S S E N & A. O . J O H N S E N , T H E
H I S T O R Y O F M O D E R N W H A L I N G 178–82 (1982).
41
B I R N I E , supra note 28, at 73 (note 26).
42
D O U G L A S M. J O H N S T O N , T H E I N T E R N A T I O N A L L A W O F F I S H E R I E S 398 (1965).
43
O M M A N N E Y , supra note 34, at 92; D’Amato and Chopra, supra note 9, at 28–29.
44
Robert C. Ellickson, A Hypothesis of Wealth-Maximizing Norms: Evidence from the
Whaling Industry, 5 J.L. E C O N . & O R G . 83, 96 (1989).
45
Nagtzaam, for example, asserts that this type of state interest “prevented a conservationist
regime from being put in place, as states jostled to secure relative gains over other states.”
(Nagtzaam, supra note 7, at 390–91).
46
Ellickson, supra note 44, at 96.
 2.2 wh ale s a n d wh alin g 103

coastal whale, which by the new century had become extinct.47 Already in
1913, six years before the establishment of the League, Sir Sidney Harmer,
while serving as keeper of zoology for the British Museum (Natural
History), warned:
It is impossible to avoid seeing an analogy between what is taking place off
South Georgia and the neighboring Antarctic localities and what has hap-
pened elsewhere in the world. . . . In southern waters, indeed, we are still in
the period of prosperity. But, taking into consideration the more deadly
nature of modern whaler’s weapons than those have been almost successful
in the extermination of the Greenland whale,48 it can not be disputed that the
present rate of destruction of whales in the south gives rise to grave anxiety.49

Thus, the story of whaling seems to have reached a critical point by the
time the League came about. The League was beginning to emerge just
when two camps, which would define the bitter politics and practices of
whaling at the turn of the century, were on a collision course. On the one
hand, the whaling industry was undergoing a “technological revolution”50
that managed to revive and likely save the industry. After a boom for much
of the nineteenth century, the industry then found itself in a certain crisis:
commercial fleets had so severely overexploited the whale that this natural
resource was all but depleted. However, new marine and economic oppor-
tunities were literally calling51 to whalers from the depths of the Antarctic.
The bowhead whale, native to Antarctic waters, carried much more blub-
ber than fin whales, their relatively thin counterparts, which made them
both more attractive and more lucrative. On the other hand, the first
decades of the twentieth century were also the time when new and
unfamiliar voices were advocating for the conservation of natural
resources; and different parts of the Western world, especially Theodore
Roosevelt’s America,52 had begun to promote the sustainable use of these
47
David G. Victor, Whale Sausage: Why the Whaling Regime Does Not Need to Be Fixed, in
T O W A R D A S U S T A I N A B L E W H A L I N G R E G I M E 292, 295 (Robert L. Friedheim ed., 2000).
48
Meaning, in Harmer’s words, right whales.
49
Untitled excerpt, source unknown, Nov. 7, 1913, presumably transcribed by Remington
Kellogg, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, International Whaling Conference
and International Whaling Commission, 1930–1968, (Record Unit 7165), Box 8, Folder I.
50
D O R S E Y , supra note 4, at 3.
51
For a painful description of a dying, crying hunted female whale during one of the
expeditions, see the personal experience of the naturalist Farley Mowat, The Trapped
Whale, in M I N D I N T H E W A T E R S 13, 28 (J. McIntyre ed., 1974).
52
Early conservation ideas had started to appear in the American context in the last quarter
of the nineteenth century. Figures such as Gifford Pinchot, an influential forester and
ideologist of this new agenda toward nature, called for the efficient use of natural
resources. According to this conception, which can also be seen in the early eco-
104 the l eag ue o f n ati ons and t he whaling d ilemma

resources. In this tension between early environmentalism and economic

uses, conservationist voices were pushing for restraint – which the League
was able to offer as an institution of international law – in the use of the
whale as a natural resource. These conservationist notions also followed
increasing discussions about whaling as a dilemma, and as a battlefield for
conflicting interests.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, and certainly throughout
the 1920s and 1930s, whale oil was still a relatively cheap source of animal
fat for industrial food processing. Changes in consumerism during that
period, such as an increase in the popularity of margarine as a cheap
alternative to butter, made the world’s whale oil market one of the most
important energy stocks.53 By the new century, whaling had stretched
beyond local-national markets (especially in the West) and developed
into a global industry, with international companies54 supplying the
world economies with whale oil and other byproducts in vast and grow-
ing quantities.55 A relatively short time before the interwar period, in the
whaling season of 1904–05, newly developed whaler factory ships –
which had no need of a home port to process the products of their
catch56 – reached the hitherto pristine Antarctic waters at South
Georgia, demonstrating just how far the industry’s reach had extended.

commercial discussion over whaling, a resource – such as the whale – should provide the
greatest good to the greatest number for the longest time. This early conceptualization of
rational use of nature by mankind, which was better framed and defined later on in the
twentieth century as sustainable, referred at that time to renewable resources such as fish
(and whales in particular) and forests. For a discussion on these early notions on the
“rational use” of natural resources see, for instance, C H A R M I L L E R , G I F F O R D P I N C H O T
A N D T H E M A K I N G O F M O D E R N E N V I R O N M E N T ( 20 0 1) . Likewise, see Emma
Rothschild’s work on the topic of sustainability: Emma Rothschild, Forum: The Idea of
Sustainability introduction, 8 M O D . I N T E L L . H I S T . 147 (2011).
53
Or as William Cronon, puts it: “[W]hale oil became margarine; whale meat became pet
food.” (D O R S E Y , supra note 4, at vii, x).
54
Nagtzaam, supra note 7, at 391.
55
C O M M I T T E E F O R W H A L I N G S T A T I S T I C S , supra note 29, at 4.
56
The technological methods that the whaling industry developed in the late nineteenth and
the early twentieth centuries took huge leap forward, with disastrous consequences for the
whaling population on the high seas. The use of steam engines was succeeded by diesel-
powered floating factories, as they were called, which allowed the ship’s crew to improve
their hunting efficiency. They were not only able to catch faster (and more lucrative)
species of whale (such as blue, fin, humpback, and sei), but also to avoid wasting time
towing carcasses to land-based factories on shore (which ran the additional risk of losing
the carcass on the way). In 1923, another technological improvement that was highly
beneficial to the whalers was building factory ships with a ramp at the stern to allow an
entire hunted whale to be brought aboard in a matter of minutes. See C O M M I T T E E F O R
W H A L I N G S T A T I S T I C S , supra note 29, at 5, 14–15.
 2.2 wh ale s a n d wh alin g 105

When the League finally did begin to discuss the whaling dilemma, it
would be at a symbolic juncture in whaling and environmental history:
there was no longer anywhere that whalers and their ships had not
ventured,57 and nowhere for them to hide.
While it is true that this was not the first time the League had
introduced a conservationist agenda in a transnational arena or spoken
about it in terms of international law, the rapid development of whaling
techniques and equipment, and the high number of whales caught on the
high seas in the early twentieth century, led to attempts to create some
kind of transnational regulation earlier than the one the League would
eventually introduce during the interwar period.
In the 1910s, early transnational negotiations were held in an attempt
to find a unanimous legal solution to the whaling issue (although the
war would bring them to a halt for several years). It was becoming
obvious that whaling was a rapidly expanding global industry beyond
the control of national governments working alone. A short time before
the League was established, the Canadians and Americans formed the
International Fisheries Commission in January 1918 to consult on
regional challenges relating to the exploitation of marine fauna near
their shores. Due to the impact of World War I, the difficulty in
predicting migration patterns of whales, and the inability of any one
nation to create and enforce regulations beyond its territorial waters,
both North American nations agreed there was no other choice but for
maritime nations in general to create an international convention to
prevent the extinction of the whale and to support the survival of the
whaling industry once the war had ended.58
The Canadian-American cooperation is a painful and vivid example of
the perception that whaling could not be solved either by national action
or domestic regulation alone. Imperial or transnational endeavors, in
that sense, were not sufficient. The International Fisheries Commission,
as a regional economic framework, aimed to discuss and attempt to solve
the problem shared by these two countries. Although both countries
agreed that whaling was a common issue, the joint commission con-
cluded that whales’ natural migration patterns, and the ex ante legal
inability of any state to achieve authority beyond its territorial waters,
57
Id. at 14.
58
As mentioned later on in a letter from A. Johnston, Canada’s Deputy Minister of Fisheries
to Deputy Minister, Department of Trade and Commerce, Ottawa, Jan. 30, 1923, National
Archive of Canada, RG 23, vol.1081, File 721–19-5[2] (Quoted in D O R S E Y , supra note 4,
at 299).
106 the l eague o f n ati ons and t he whaling d i l emma

meant any action that was not international in scope was doomed to
failure.
It seems that the Canadian-American commission was aware of the
impacts of the context of the late 1910s. The difficulties of that time and
optimism about the possibility of a postwar international cooperation
served as a backdrop for the rest of the story. The commission called for
a convention of maritime nations once the war was over, where they
hoped to find a common solution to the whaling problem and secure the
future of the industry by preventing extinction.59
When the Canadians and Americans announced their intention to
assemble a special whaling conference right after the war, other members
of the whaling community were not so convinced. The British believed
that bilateral treaties were adequate, especially since the scientific data
about whales did not lend sufficient support to any kind of international
attempt to regulate whaling. Actually, it seems that the British – just like
the Norwegians and other whaling nations – were doubtful of the ability
of any conference – and likely of the League of Nations later on – to tackle
this issue. Any move to place responsibility for the supervision of whaling
in the open seas in the hands of unfamiliar (international) bodies raised
great concern – even at this early stage – among the Anglo-Norse whaling
industries60 regarding their interests. As this chapter will show, the
League addressed these tensions and introduced some innovative legal
mechanisms for the first time in order to solve them.
However, as I attempt to depict the whaling dilemma and the period in
which it unfolded, it is important to remember that this was a complex
issue for all parties involved. The local judiciary in South Georgia and the
Colonial Office, for instance, could have called for severe restrictions on
whaling on “their” side, but the Foreign Secretary would have been able,
and likely, to dismiss the entire idea. Indeed, according to the Foreign
Secretary, Britain should oppose the extinction of “rare and valuable
species,” but in the meantime the Empire should be satisfied with the
practical61 system of licensing.62
59
A. Johnston, Deputy Minister of Fisheries, to Deputy Minister, Department of Trade and
Commerce, Ottawa, Jan. 30, 1923, National Archives of Canada [hereinafter NAC], RG
23, vol. 1081, File 721–19-5[2].
60
D O R S E Y , supra note 4, at 33.
61
Compared to the enormous difficulties of any international agreement; insofar as its
dealings with elusive creatures such as the whale.
62
L. Mallett, Foreign Office, to Colonial Office, May 2, 1912, National Archives of Great
Britain [hereinafter NAGB], Foreign Office [hereinafter FO] 371412/108, pt. I. Even when
the German ambassador, Prince Lichnowsky, expressed a genuine fear that whales were
 2.2 wh ale s a n d w hali ng 107

Generally speaking, in terms of legal documents, starting in 1918

several preliminary proposals for the international regulation of whaling
were discussed63 but did not translate into a binding convention. Some
scholars have focused here on the whaling industry’s own interests,64
which were the motivation behind certain transnational attempts at
regulation outside the League’s framework. The entry of the League,
however, changed the balance of powers, and enabled other voices and
agendas to intervene in a more vigorous way.
Moreover, the absence of any international regulation, supervision, or
enforcement brought the whale to the brink of destruction, according to
scientific experts in the interwar period. Some scholars have argued that
the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century were characterized by
the concept of “frontier economics,”65 with no oversight of whaling
practices, which almost completely defined both the industry and the
oceans. According to this presumption, whalers – and their national
industries as well – assumed that the marine environment consisted of
virtually unlimited resources and whale stocks on the high seas.66 This
unrestrained mode of operation, along with the already vulnerable bio-
logical reproduction of whales,67 brought both the industry and nature to
the threshold of catastrophe.

nearing extinction and suggested an international conference to address the matter, the
Foreign Secretary ignored his proposal. (See Letter by Prince Lichnowsky, German
Embassy, to Foreign Office, 27 Jan. 1913, and the reply from Mar. 10, 1913, both in
NAGB, FO 881/10446, “Further Correspondence Respecting the Preservation of
Whales”).
63
D’Amato & Chopra, supra note 9, at 30.
64
D’Amato and Chopra, for instance, explain that the “Regulation Stage” of 1918–31 was
actually an initiative of the hunting and fishing industries, realizing that their collective
profits depended upon the availability of a sizable catch. The time that any whaling vessel
had to spend on finding and capturing a whale might, in many circumstances, have
strained the economic efficiency of the venture, and made it unprofitable. Hence,
a transnational motivation of whaling industries for “setting up a licensing system
imposing temporal and spatial restrictions” upon their activities was on the move (Id.
at 30).
65
S T O E T T , supra note 8, at 48–49.
66
Id. at 48.
67
Which are slow to mature compared to “other” fish stocks in the ocean. Conservation, in
that sense, is more critical for whale populations than for fish, given their long life cycle.
Whales give birth to live calves and suckle their young. Female sperm whales take between
seven and thirteen years to mature, while males take up to twenty years, and breeding
often does not begin until the age of thirty. (Baleen, or toothless, whales are thought to
generally follow the same biological cycle, but under reduced population conditions are
able to reproduce five and six years.) See R. H A R R I S O N & J. K I N G M A R I N E M A M M A L S
9 1 ( 1 96 5 ).
108 the l eag ue o f n ations and t he whaling dilemma

However, it seems that telling the story of whaling and whales only
through the lens of the tragedy of the whales68 might be an incomplete
story, or an explanation that overlooks and underestimates the complex-
ity of the dilemma. Next to the industry, there were other bodies – such as
NGOs – who played their role in the dilemma. Moreover, although the
whale mostly lived in a non-territorial space, certain domestic legal
arrangements had previously tried to capture its elusive nature.69
Therefore, skipping over the negotiations that created the first
Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (of 1931) in Geneva, as well
as the following conference in 1937, misses an important part of the legal-
environmental history of whaling. For instance, these legal arrangements
introduced many innovative principles, such as Article 9 of the 1931
Convention, which asserted that the Convention covers “all water,”
“including states’ territorial waters” (Article 9). This suggested revision
would also explain, for instance, the reasons and incentives for legal
restrictions of certain whale species but not others. The exploration of
the interwar period from an environmental history perspective can
explain the source of all these ideas;70 such as why coastal aboriginal
peoples were exempt from these restrictions, and who based this inter-
national rule on the fact that they used “canoes, pirogues or other
exclusively native craft propelled by oars or sails,”71 and did not use
firearms or canons as Western fleets did. At the same time, focusing on

68
As a reaction to Cronon’s argument; and see, for instance, the discussion of A R T H U R
F. MCEVOY, THE FISHERMAN’S PROBLEM: ECOLOGY AND LAW IN THE CALIFORNIA
F I S H E R I E S , 1 85 0 –1 9 80 (1 9 86 ) .
69
After all, the prediction of impending exploitation caused concern among some of the
traditional whaling nations, mostly in Northern Europe, which first turned to their
jurisdiction and introduced early domestic-national whaling laws. As early as 1902,
Norway, a country with one of the most productive whaling industries in the world at
that time (also during its political existence under the formal rule of Sweden, which lasted
until 1905), passed a law strictly limiting its whaling companies’ activities for conserva-
tion reasons. Although Norway was by no means a great supporter of (international)
whaling regulations, its law introduced obligations such as a restriction on the number of
catcher ships each whaling station was allowed to have, and rules regarding the distance
(fifty miles) between each whaling station (See C O M M I T T E E F O R W H A L I N G S T A T I S T I C S ,
supra note 29, at 10). Another Nordic state, Iceland, was the first to introduce the
principle of a moratorium on whaling: for twenty years, starting from 1915. See
Chris Stroud, The Ethics and Politics of Whaling, in T H E C O N S E R V A T I O N O F W H A L E S
A N D D O L P H I N S 55, 61 (Mark P. Simmonds & Judith D. Hutchinson eds., 1996).
70
Both the successes and failures, when speaking of their enforcement on the open sea.
71
Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, art. 3, Sept. 24, 1931, 155 L.N.T.S. 349. Quoted
in Randall R. Reeves, The Origin and Character of “Aboriginal Subsistence” Whaling:
A Global Review, 32 M A M M A L R E V . 71, 72 (2002).
 2.3 interwar d iplomacy 109

the League can also explain why certain whaling nations joined the 1931
Convention, for instance, while others, such as Japan, the U.S.S.R., and
Germany,72 did not sign it.
The following sections of the historical narrative will address these
questions and more.

2.3 Interwar Diplomacy and the Rise of International

Whaling Law
2.3.1 Preparing to Launch a Special Questionnaire
In many ways, the interwar period was an appropriate time to review the
fragile situation of the whale. From different ports and locations across
the globe, whalers set out on their transnational search for oil and meat,
equipped with new whaling technologies and faster and stronger ships.
However, decades of intensive hunting at the turn of the century made it
harder to find whales.
Simultaneously, calls for the need for conservation in the industrial
world were starting to be heard. Possible solutions, such as restrictions on
the exploitation of natural resources, were discussed openly. The issues of
the open sea were, by their very nature, supranational: “It is therefore in
the urgent interests of all mankind to put an end to this state of affairs and
discover a new scientific and practical method of exploiting these prod-
ucts [of the sea], which belong not to any one country, but to the whole
world.”73 Although at first glance these kinds of scientific and practical
concerns seem to be peripheral (at least compared to other – much more
pressing – problems handled by the League), their environmental impli-
cations spoke volumes. After all, a changing environment, destroyed
nature, and declining natural resources did not just happen overnight:
The rapid increase of population in the various countries, which is out of
proportion to the increase in the production of ordinary food supplies;
increased and improved methods of transport; improvements in the
refrigerating and preserving industries; the perfection and multiplication
of all industries engaged in transforming the products of the sea and
rendering them more available for human requirements; and, finally, all
the other technical improvements which are stimulating . . . the consump-
tion of sea products and a considerable rise in their commercial value.74
72
As D E S O M B R E notes, supra note 26, at 151–52.
73
Report of the Committee of Experts of the Exploitation of the Products of the Sea, Jan. 24,
1927, LoN Archives (hereinafter LoN Archives), 19/55517/47284, at 106.
74
Id.
110 t h e l e a g u e of n a t i o n s a n d th e w h a l i n g d i l e m m a

As mentioned earlier, the challenges whaling was facing in the first

decades of the twentieth century were discussed in different national and
transnational fora before the League was established. As I will show in the
sections that follow, the League continued to hold the transnational view
that whaling could not be addressed by domestic measures alone, and
began an international discussion to address the problem. The Canadian-
American International Fisheries Commission’s intention in 1918 to
work together on a transnational base once the Great War had ended
made for a practical starting point.
This was how the League came to accept the unofficial challenge that
was thrust into its hands in the 1920s. At first, the League intended to deal
with a broader perspective of what it saw as the need for a new codifica-
tion of international law, not just in terms of whaling or marine fauna in
general. Indeed, the whale had to wait a little longer than the Canadian-
American Commission expected in January 1918, and until a bit later
than the eleventh hour of the eleventh month of 1918, the exact time that
the Great War ended. However, given that the League started to handle
the question of marine fauna (or “products of the sea”) as part of a larger
ambitious initiative, the international discussion quickly evolved into
one that focused more specifically on marine fauna – and the problem
of whaling in particular.
With the start of a new era of international cooperation in 1924, the
League’s Assembly wished to revise several problematic areas of inter-
national law. On behalf of its member states, it asked the international
community for recommendations and suggestions on which issues it
should work to fix or improve using its new institutional capabilities.
On September 22, 1924, the Assembly – the most “public” and inter-
national body within the League’s institutional framework75– requested
that the Council “convene a Committee of Experts . . . whose duty it
would be, after consulting the necessary authorities . . ., [to] report to the

75
In comparison with the Council, the Permanent Mandates Commission (PMC) or the
Permanent Secretariat (which was based on certain other political and international
principles of representation), the Assembly stands out as an objective body in the
framework of the League. The Council, for instance, began with four permanent mem-
bers, based on the role of the global superpowers of that era: Great Britain, France, Italy,
and Japan; and four non-permanent members that were elected by the Assembly for
a three-year term (the first non-permanent members were Belgium, Brazil, Greece, and
Spain). It should also be noted that in the course of time, the number of non-permanent
members in the Council increased: in September 1922, for instance, it grew to six; to nine
in September 1926; and finally to fifteen as the Soviet Union joined the Council (as
a permanent member).
 2.3 interwar diplomacy 111

Council . . . which [questions] are sufficiently ripe and on the procedure

which might be followed . . . to preparing eventually for conference for
their solution.”76 Given the economic and commercial characteristics of
some of the questions at stake (especially concerning marine fauna), and
as with several other interwar issues that mixed economic interests – and
had environmental reflections, too77 – the League’s Economic
Committee was given the task of handling these issues while simultan-
eously reviewing inadequate areas of international law at that time.
In order to do so, the League’s Economic Committee delegated the task
of distributing questionnaires and other legal documents for informa-
tion-gathering purposes to a special subcommittee named the
Committee of Experts for the Progressive Codification of International
Law (hereinafter the Codification Committee). In late 1924 and 1925, this
special subcommittee of experts prepared different issues relating to
international law for open discussion internationally.
The seven preliminary issues that were prepared for this joint open
discussion were fairly eclectic, some of which related to the role of seas
and oceans in terms of legal frameworks. These issues covered general
questions on possible joint legal reform and codification of common
matters, such as nationality (Question No. 1 on the 1926 Questionnaire),
territorial waters (Question No. 2), diplomatic privileges and immunities
(Question No. 3), the responsibility of states for damage done in their
territories to a person or to the property of foreigners, and the problem of
piracy. During the preparatory stage, several participants highlighted the
use of marine resources – or the “exploitation of the products of the sea,”
as it was articulated in Question No. 7 – as a problematic issue that was
equally deserving of international attention.
As the developing international discussion would soon show, the
Codification Committee understood that the question of whaling was
going to be central to the 1926 Questionnaire. At this early stage of
inquiry, many states had already raised the issue of the use of marine
resources, especially whales, and argued that it should be addressed by
the League. New pelagic expeditions and their implication for the whale
stocks of the Antarctic seas likely had something to do with this

76
Report by the Economic Committee on the matter of Exploitation of the Products of the
Sea: Note by the Secretariat – History of the Question, Memorandum from Oct. 14, 1927,
LoN Archives, 19/62527/62527 (II).
77
The Economic Committee, for instance, also dealt with the timber question and, during
the developing discussion in the 1930s, also discussed the fear of deforestation. See
Chapter 4.
112 the l eague of n ations and t he whaling dilemma

intensifying international concern.78 Therefore, during its preparations,

this special subcommittee set out to establish a new whaling regulation,
“with reference” to the existing treaties that dealt with the exploitation of
the sea. After such inquiry, the Codification Committee was also sup-
posed to consider “whether it is possible by way of international agree-
ment rules regarding the exploitation of the products of the sea.”79
While the questionnaire was being prepared, the Codification Committee
decided that the ability to set a global regulation80 on marine fauna and
whaling should not be limited to the member states alone. The Committee
believed that this question, given its international nature, should be open to
comprehensive international inquiry from all state governments, “whether
Members of the League or not.”81 The League took the opportunity to make
its initiative as broad and global as possible.
Led by Professor José Léon Suárez, an Argentinian professor of law
(and the dean of the Faculty of Political Science at the University of
Buenos Aires),82 the Codification Committee wanted to change the rules
of the game. Though it had anticipated that at least some of the “maritime
Powers” would resist any progressive initiative (as Professor Suárez
noted), the Committee’s aim should be to ascertain:
Should not a special technical conference be convened, to draw up
immediately, without regard to the extension or maintenance of maritime
jurisdiction . . ., uniform regulations for the exploitation of the industries
of the sea, whose wealth constitutes a food reserve for humanity, over the
whole extent of the ocean . . . ?83

The Codification Committee understood from the outset that the

whaling dilemma was a legal issue. Whaling strongly captured the inher-
ent complexity of the geopolitical struggle to control and manage the

78
D O R S E Y , supra note 4, at 34.
79
This quote from the private meeting of the Committee of Experts for the Progressive
Codification of International Law on Apr. 8, 1925 appears in the report by the Sub-
Committee from Jan. 8, 1926, LoN Archives, 19/62527/62527, at 1.
80
Alongside a few other possible regulations (on other issues included in the discussion on
the new codification of international law), and depending on the states’ opinions.
81
Report by the Economic Committee on the matter of Exploitation of the Products of the
Sea: Note by the Secretariat – History of the Question, Memorandum from Oct. 14, 1927,
LoN Archives, 19/62527/62527 (II), at 1.
82
And who would serve as the chair of the later Committee of Experts on the Question of
the Exploitation of the Products of the Sea.
83
A quote from the private meeting of the Committee of Experts for the Progressive
Codification of International Law on Apr. 8, 1925, which appears in the report by the Sub-
Committee from Jan. 8, 1926, LoN Archives, 19/62527/62527, at 1 (emphasis added).
 2.3 interwar diplomacy 113

global commons84 (referred to here by the Committee as a global “food

reserve for humanity”). Moreover, given the supranational character of
the whale – which lives in no-man’s-land and constantly crosses territor-
ial borders – on the one hand, and the lack of sufficient legal arrange-
ments, either domestic or international, to save the whale or to regulate
its existence on the other hand, the Committee aimed to find a new,
global whaling law.
A relatively early report by the Codification Committee from January
1926 identified inadequacies in the legal framework as it applied to seas
around the world. “I am still awaiting replies to the request for information
regarding international maritime legislation which I sent . . . to various
legations and institutions in order to acquaint myself with all the available
data,” mentioned Suárez. The existing legal arrangements, as international
and transnational as they were in the mid-1920s, were limited and suffered
from a fundamental deficit in terms of their authority:
As international regulation has . . . been of a limited and local character
and has been directed not solely to the protection of species from extinc-
tion but mainly to establish police measures and to ensure reciprocity and
commerce, regardless of biological interests, which in this case are insep-
arable from economic and general interests. . . .85

The danger, the Codification Committee further warned, threatened

first and foremost the future of the whale, but certainly not this species
alone. The result of pursuing the existing international regulations of
hunting and fishing at sea “has been [a] useful but by no means sufficient
one of delaying, but not preventing, the extinction of some of the . . .
species.”86 However, compared to the pre–World War I legal regime
regarding the economic-environmental exploitation of the high seas, the
involvement of the League marked a basic shift from earlier legal
attempts: this time, not only whales were the focus of intensifying
regulation, but also other marine species that had previously gone
unnoticed. The problem with the whale “has escalated lately even
more,” the Codification Committee stressed. It further warned that
possible extinction of the whale might endanger “other animals” – the
Committee understood that the ocean is a marine ecosystem:

84
See S T O E T T , supra note 8.
85
Report by Professor Suárez from Jan. 8, 1926, LoN Archives, 19/49113/47284, at 6.
86
A quote from the private meeting of the Committee of Experts for the Progressive
Codification of International Law on Apr. 8, 1925; appears in the report by the Sub-
Committee from Jan. 8, 1926, LoN Archives, 19/62527/62527, at 2.
114 the l eague of n ations and t he whaling dilemma
[W]e consider the life of all the species in the animal kingdom, [but]
biological solidarity is even closer among the denizens of the ocean than
among land animals, [hence] the disappearance of certain species would
destroy the balance in the struggle for existence and would bring about the
extinction of other species too.87

Both Suárez and the Codification Committee were talking in legal

terms. Although the Committee did not only include jurists and diplo-
mats, but also scientists and professional experts in industry and com-
merce from different states, the legal discourse – and the existing
(lacking) framework of international whaling law – served as the com-
mon language for all.
As the League prepared to launch its initiative and to further study its
implications worldwide, it addressed the environmental aspects – and
the legal and political difficulties – it would face once the special
questionnaire was distributed. In February 1926, a couple of weeks
before distributing the questionnaire, the Committee sent a special
internal report to the League’s Council regarding Question No. 788 –
it had anticipated early on that this would be a controversial issue. The
Committee identified tensions between legal principles of state sover-
eignty, industrial-economic interests, and (alleged) international
authority, which they had discussed during the preliminary prepar-
ations of the questionnaire.
One short note from the internal report (dated February 9, 1926),
signed by Suárez, specifically referred to the overwhelming “new” whale
stocks of the Antarctic. It states: “The riches of the sea, and especially the
immense wealth of the Antarctic region, are the patrimony of the whole
human race, and our [Codification] Committee is the body best qualified
to suggest to the Governments what steps should be taken before it is too
late.”89
Though it was still “just discussing” the matter of marine fauna with
other bodies within the institutional framework of the League, the
Codification Committee raised rather progressive ideas. A novel example
of this was to use an unfamiliar form of international governance to
monitor a natural resource – the riches of the sea, and whales in particu-
lar – that was owned by the global community. According to that report,
whales were from that moment on to be treated as an international
87
Id.
88
Communication to the Council, the Member of the League of Nations and other
Governments, Feb. 9, 1926, LoN Archives, 19/49113/47284.
89
Id. at 4.
 2.3 interwar diplomacy 115

common – and not merely as a lucrative source for any one specific
nation.
The Codification Committee’s conceptualization of the whale as a collect-
ive asset for all was intended to ensure and to promote international interests,
common to the whole world. Though it was ambitious, however, the
Committee also acknowledged some of the limits of its power, legitimacy,
and authority in the face of legal and practical obstacles it met as a proxy of
the League. The Codification Committee was aware of its lacking mandate
compared with the other bodies involved, and that without the cooperation
and solidarity of other states, its proposed measures and recommendations
were unlikely to be realized and enforced:
To save this wealth, which, being to-day the uncontrolled property of all,
belongs to nobody, the only thing to be done is to discard rules of the
existing treaties, which were drawn up with other objects, to take a wider
view, and to base a new jurisprudence, not on the defective legislation which
has failed to see justice done but on the scientific and economic consider-
ations which, after all the necessary data has been collected, may be put
forward, compared and discussed in a technical conference . . . . In this
way a new jurisprudence will be treated of which to-day we have no
inkling . . . .90

On its fourth page of the report to the Council, the Codification

Committee spoke clearly on the challenges of the whale dilemma and
of treating the open sea as international waters. Even at this preliminary
legal-diplomatic stage, it was clear that the issue of whaling captured the
inherent complexity of the geopolitical struggle to manage the global
commons. As states competed with each other over natural resources, the
lack of clarity regarding the territorial and legal boundaries with regard to
whaling made the dilemma even more complex:
M. Valette91 . . . has described this process of extracting oil from whales,
and it really seems impossible that the Governments interested in pre-
serving so important a source of wealth should do nothing to prevent its
extinction, which will be complete in five to ten years at the most. “This
class of fishing”, he says, “has reached such a point as to be a veritable
butchery, which is the more deplorable when one considers the uniparous
character of whales and the length of their period of gestation.”92

90
Id. at 4–5 (emphasis added).
91
Luciano H. Valette was an Argentine expert involved in the discussion on whaling as the
chief of the Fisheries Department of the Argentine Ministry of Agriculture.
92
Communication to the Council, the Member of the League of Nations and other
Governments, Feb. 9, 1926, LoN Archives, 19/49113/47284, at 4.
116 the l eague of n ations and t he whaling dilemma

These experts involved in the preparatory work identified a dangerous

turning point in environmental history. Modern sailing and new whaling
technologies at the turn of the twentieth century had rapidly changed the
nature of marine hunting, posing a great threat to whales. Suárez was very
clear about this concern prior to the League’s circulation of the special
questionnaire. This is probably also one of the reasons why, following the
distribution of the questionnaire worldwide in March 1926, so many
states rushed to become involved in the developing international discus-
sion. Perhaps many of them pointed out the importance of whales in the
context of the 1920s because they had very quickly recognized what new
pelagic expeditions undertaken by nations such as Great Britain, Norway,
Argentina, and Canada would mean for the whale stocks of the Antarctic
seas. Given that backdrop, national and domestic means of enforcement,
practical as they might have been93 before the technological big bang of
whaling, became irrelevant, and it fell to international law to try to solve
this acute problem:
If [one of the former proposals for handling the whaling problem] as it
stood were limited to existing treaties, it would not cover the modern
whaling industry, which is rapidly exterminating the whale. To-day it is
carried out with the help of a perfected form of weapon and special craft;
but the great increase in its scope is due to the manner in which the animal
is treated once it has been killed. The extraction of the oil, which previ-
ously had to be done ashore, is now done in floating factories, which
accelerates the process of ten – or twenty – fold and renders national
control impossible, since no action can be taken in the open sea, and the
whalers have no need to touch land to extract the principal product from
their quarry.94

Indeed, while there were some transnational regulations that referred

to marine ecosystems, the Codification Committee recognized that none
of them was adequate to address the new situation on the high seas, due
to the industrial and commercial hunger for whale oil and other prod-
ucts. With these different agendas identified during the preparatory work
of the Codification Committee’s first initiative, it was ready to launch the
controversial legal questionnaire.
In early spring of 1926, the questionnaire was distributed to the capital
cities of a long list of states, both members of the League and nonmem-
bers alike. The different articles, which were presented as separate
93
Which they were not.
94
Communication to the Council, the Member of the League of Nations and other
Governments, Feb. 9, 1926, LoN Archives, 19/49113/47284, at 4 (emphasis added).
 2.3 interwar diplomacy 117

questions, were suggested as the basis for a future comprehensive inter-

national agreement, led entirely by the League.

2.3.2 Replying to the League: States and Different Organizations’

Responses to the Special Questionnaire
A long list of states replied to the special questionnaire. Maritime
superpowers such as Great Britain, Norway, and France, were quick
to assert their leadership in the matter; however, many other states,
some of whom were only indirectly involved in whaling, began to join
the developing discussion – something the British administration had
previously expressed concern about.95
Unlike other issues that the League had been “forced” to deal with, the
whaling dilemma was one of the initiatives that the League undertook
rather enthusiastically, employing the full scale of its diplomatic instru-
ments. Thanks to the framework of the institution, international whaling
law became pluralistic and democratic. Where, prior to the distribution
of the questionnaire, whaling had been limited to a (very) closed club of
whaling nations and maritime powers, other states with their own per-
spectives on and interests in the issue were now able to join this open
discussion, under the new auspices of the League.
According to Question No. 7, the last question of the document,
different parties were asked to ascertain what problems “appear to be
ripe for international action . . . and whether it is possible to establish by
way of international agreement rules regarding the exploitation of deep-
sea fauna against the danger of extermination caused by uneconomic
exploitation.”96 Just as the Codification Committee had predicted, a great
majority of the states that answered the League’s questionnaire had
focused on Question No. 7 and the issues related to the exploitation of
the products of the sea. The Committee received replies in support of
introducing a new international whaling regulation from all over the
globe, including from emerging states and some that had almost nothing

95
The Foreign Secretary, for instance, dismissed the early idea suggested by certain officials
at the Colonial Office, which called for severe restrictions on whaling on the British
imperial side. Indeed, Britain was expected to oppose the extinction of “rare and valuable
species,” but in the meantime (1912), the Empire should also have been satisfied with the
practical system of licensing. (L. Mallett, Foreign Office, to Colonial Office, 2 May 1912,
NAGB, FO, 371412/108, pt. I).
96
From the 23d Session of the League of Nations Council, Dec. 1927, LoN Archives,
19/62529/62529 (II).
118 the l eague of n ations and t he whaling dilemma

to do with whaling, but were nevertheless interested in the condition of

whales, such as Romania,97 Albania, Morocco, Iraq, Hungary, Sudan,
China, Poland, Egypt, and more. Just as the British feared, most of the
states that answered the questionnaire had paid specific attention to
Question No. 7. States that were very reluctant to allow international
law to dictate the course of whaling also replied to the League. All in all,
there were thirty replies covering a wide range of national legal interpret-
ations. Of the dozens of comments, a large majority voted in favor of
a whaling regulation to be established by the League. Only five govern-
ments explicitly opposed the initiative: the British, Japanese, German,
Dutch, and Norwegian governments.
So much attention was given to the legal future of marine fauna – and
whaling in particular – that many of the replying states actually sent their
responses on this matter in a separate file. One of the formal replies left
no room for doubt as to the necessity of making whaling subject to a new
international regulation, given the environmental and economic circum-
stances: “[T]here can be no longer any doubt as to the desirability of the
codification of international law” on that issue.98
In retrospect, the sheer range of actors from across the globe who were
eager to tackle this matter is quite remarkable. What other scholars might
dismiss as an “inexplicable footnote to the history of diplomacy,”99 can rather
be viewed as a true reflection of the evolution of international law – from
discussions and arguments to the actual sketching out of the law – right at its
institutional birth. The Codification Committee explicitly acknowledged this
in its own words, noting that “[t]he many valuable memoranda which we
have received from the Governments in replying . . .”100 drove it to further
discuss and develop the matter.
Although most of the states, members and nonmembers alike, had no
real involvement in the whaling dilemma until after the turn of the
century, it seems that almost every nation felt compelled to respond to
the experimental environmental balloon launched by the Codification
Committee. No fewer than twenty-nine states sent their agendas back to

97
When quoting relevant primary sources, I will try to use spelling as it appeared in the
historical texts themselves (such as in the case of Romania, which many of the original
sources handled by the League referred to as “Roumania”).
98
Reply by the Government of Brazil to the Questionnaire of the Committee of Experts for
the Progressive Codification of International Law, (undated), LoN Archives, 19/57699/
47284.
99
D O R S E Y , supra note 4, at 17.
100
Report of the Codification Committee, Mar. 28, 1927, LoN Archives, 19/58475/47284.
 2 . 3 i nt e r w a r d i p l o m a c y 119

Geneva.101 Some states could have skipped the questionnaire entirely –

and most certainly the oceans question – as the diplomatic procedure of
the 1920s enabled them to do, but many states decided that the time was
right to recruit governmental and legal energies, and to deliver their take
on the legal, economic, and environmental issue at stake
The dozens of official government documents received at the League’s
Secretariat reveal a few central parties in the escalating dilemma. In the
following section, I will present some of the key responses, divided into
two groups: those (unsurprisingly) from the well-established whaling
nations, such as Britain and Norway, which rushed to oppose the threat
this new global regulation posed to their obvious interests on the high
seas; and a second, rather larger group of parties that supported the
League’s initiative.
In their replies, most of the parties involved referred directly and
explicitly to whales and whaling, paying little attention (if any) to other
marine fauna. These voices from across the globe encouraged the League
to work toward a new whaling law that would stop – or at least control –
the brutal exploitation of whales.
Resistant whaling nations expressed their growing concern, specific-
ally about Question No. 7 and its future implications for possible restric-
tions on international law. Denmark, with its well-developed whaling
industry, sent the League a detailed and reasoned comment102 of no
fewer than eleven pages; Norway,103 Finland,104 and Estonia delivered
similarly detailed replies stretching over more than eleven pages.105 Great
Britain mobilized its full energy to limit the scope and authority of the
new body and its initiative. In a letter directed by Foreign Secretary Sir
Austen Chamberlain, Britain informed Secretary General Drummond
that His Majesty’s Government considered the subject of exploitation of
the sea as one which “is not a subject the regulation of which by general

101
Report by the Economic Committee on the Matter of Exploitation of the Products of the
Sea: Note by the Secretariat – History of the Question, Memorandum from Oct. 14, 1927,
LoN Archives, 19/62527/62527 (II).
102
19/56881/51535; also has been cataloged under 19/56888/47284.
103
19/54946/47284.
104
19/54740/47285.
105
Although Estonia could not be considered a power or a leading force in international
relations during the interwar period, it still played a role in the whaling industry; and its
geographical position on the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea contributed to its special
interest and expertise in whaling. See Estonia’s Reply to the League of Nations Experts
for the Progressive Codification of International Law, Oct. 14, 1926, LoN Archives,
19/54843/47284 (also can be located in File 19/54836/51535).
120 the l eag ue of n ations and t he whaling dilemm a

international agreement is feasible.”106 The League’s global approach (on

that matter) was clearly rejected in London. Rather, the British govern-
ment relied on tailor-made bilateral or multilateral solutions between
a few relevant countries, where the conditions could be influenced more
directly – “particular conventions relating to particular products and
special areas.” After all, it was a British tradition: in 1899, for example,
Britain had successfully concluded a convention with Japan, Russia, and
Canada on the protection of seal populations. Why broaden the circle of
participants unnecessarily?
Since the very notion of legal restrictions on the free use of the ocean as
a natural resource threatened Britain’s interests – both at home and abroad –
it strove to prevent any comprehensive move by the Codification Committee
(or the League as a whole) in that direction:
[F]or the reasons that the considerations upon which its [i.e., the issue of
exploitation of the sea] regulation must depend are of a technical rather
than a legal character and that the information at present in the possession
of His Majesty’s Government on the subject leads them to the conclusion
that the exploitation of the products of the sea cannot be made the subject
of any general convention . . . .107

As long as the Codification Committee targeted the whole marine

environment as a space that required the defense of international law,
Britain would try to gain control of the initiative. The British tried to
ensure that there would be no general marine regulation (led by foreign
powers and “irrelevant states” with regard to whaling interests), but
instead one that dealt specifically with the problem of whaling. “[It]
should be attempted rather by particular conventions relating to par-
ticular products and particular areas between the countries interested.”
In that case, Britain, like other whaling nations, would have the upper
hand.
The British also called on other states to support them, including those
who actually had a direct interest in whaling. The Dominion of New
Zealand took the issue to the highest authority. In a direct statement from
the Prime Minister’s Office,108 the state aligned itself promptly with the
British stance: “[A]nd in reply [I] have to say that the New Zealand
Government desire to associate themselves in this matter with the replies

106
A letter to the Secretary General, Nov. 11, 1926, LoN Archives, 19/55536/47284.
107
Id.
108
Joseph G. Coates at that time.
 2.3 interwar diplomacy 121

forward to the League of Nations on behalf of His Majesty’s Government

in Great Britain.”109
The League paid special attention to New Zealand, likely considering its
role on the whaling map. As discussions over the replies became more
intensive, an internal memorandum circulated between the Legal and the
Economic Sections of the League revealed the special (and from
a European view, distant) example of Oceania. In a document from
October 10, 1927 the Secretariat pointed out to the Legal Section that
“this question is of considerable interest of New Zealand, which, having
jurisdiction over the southern waters within an angle of 60 degrees from
the South Pole, has been much disturbed by the destruction of the whales
by foreign whalers in this area.” Given that the Codification Committee
and the League were planning for a conference (followed by a convention)
on this subject, “it would seem to be appropriate that a New Zealander
should be appointed to such body . . . .”110
In contrast to Britain’s expanding political and imperial influence on
the whaling dilemma, the Indian reply stands as another interesting
example. As an empire that had proclaimed its dominance of the seas,
the British understood all too well – as the League did – that interwar
whaling was no longer a game of privileged marine powers, but an
international issue – one that was now being handled by a new and
unfamiliar institution, whose agenda and growing authority was unlike
anything the Empire had ever seen. It seems likely that the British used
their authority, possibly by influencing India’s response, to discourage
the Codification Committee from advancing the League’s initiative the
way it wanted. The India Office replied to the Secretary General that
India, in fact, has no real notice to add to the discussion on whaling
regulation. “The Government of India have now stated . . . that there is no
intensive exploitation of such products in India and that they have no
observation to offer on the subject.”111
Norway, one of the most important maritime powers and a leading
whaling nation,112 observed the League’s progress with reluctance. Like

109
Letter of Prime Minister J. Coats to the Secretary-General of the League of Nations, Feb.
26, 1927, LoN Archives, 19/58822/47284.
110
A Notice by Joseph V. Wilson, a member of the LoN’s Secretariat from Oct. 10, 1927,
19/62453/61453 (I).
111
Letter from the Economic and Overseas Department at the India Office to Secretary-
General of the League of Nations, July 28, 1926, LoN Archives, 19/52899/47284.
112
The Codification Committee had mentioned that “[t]o such a pitch of perfection have
the Norwegian whalers brought their [whaling] trade that one of the conditions imposed
122 t h e l e a g u e of n a t i o n s a n d th e w h a l i n g d i l e m m a

Britain, in reaction to the League’s “dangerous” agenda, Norway and

other whaling powers put forward their best diplomatic efforts to min-
imize the scope of the ongoing initiative. Instead of a comprehensive and
full regime over the seas, Norway and Britain called to limit the scope of
the advancing international cooperation and appealed to the inter-
national community to turn from a general international agreement to
a more specific one. Both the British and their Scandinavian co-partners
claimed that “this is not a subject the regulation of which by a general
international agreement is feasible.” Since there were “various initiatives
pending” on the matter of the exploitation of the sea, Norway declined
the proposal. At the most, the Norwegian government agreed to organize
a conference113 to implement international rules for the exploitation of
the sea.114 In his official reply from March 21, 1927,115 the Minister of
Foreign Affairs explained that, as much as Norway was “interested to take
part of the international initiative,” the Codification Committee and the
League must also acknowledge the importance of the sea resources for the
Norwegian economy. As a sort of compromise that echoed principal
features of the League’s style of international governance, Norway sug-
gested first obtaining a full and detailed scientific study on the issue.
Among both camps, there was a subgroup of countries that either
opposed or supported the League’s initiative, but for reasons other than
whaling. Alongside those countries that were interested in whaling spe-
cifically and supported halting the hunting of whales for conservationist,
economic, or environmental reasons, several other countries seemed to
support the issue because of their interest in the sphere of international
law. Some of the states, including those who were not member states of
the League, identified the challenge of whaling as an opportunity to
advance international law and internationalism as a whole. In that
respect, they used the Codification Committee’s transmission as a way
to engage with the world of international law, although their role in the
world of whaling and their inclusion in the institution were unclear.
Alongside those countries that wanted to use the exploitation of the sea
as a test case for a new version of internationalism, there were those who,
for reasons unrelated to whaling, opposed regulation. In contrast to

by the majority of insurance policies for this class of craft is that the harpooner and some
of the crew should be Norwegian.”
113
What the League would eventually do once the replies had concluded.
114
See Communication to the Council, the Member of the League of Nations and other
Governments, Feb. 9, 1926, LoN Archives, 19/49113/47284, at 4.
115
Norway’s Reply appears also in 19/54946/47284.
 2.3 interwar diplomacy 123

whaling powers who resisted the whaling initiative to protect their obvi-
ous and continuing industrial and economic interests, China’s reply
reflected a different objection to the dilemma. According to the
Chinese, whales and whaling were not the central matter at hand, but
rather the League and its involvement in shaping the world of inter-
national law.
The Permanent Office of the Chinese Delegation to the League, the
official Chinese representative in Geneva, sent a detailed legal reply to the
Committee.116 A special Annex in this document was dedicated to the
Chinese stance on Question No. 7 and the whaling dilemma. In China’s
view, the issue entailed much broader questions of international law and
sovereignty. This is why China’s reply is the only one that made changes
to the wording of Question No. 7. While other states simply quoted it as it
was, the Chinese Annex introduced a slightly different perspective, and
right at the beginning:
In connection with the question of Exploitation of Products within the
territorial sea of any power, the Chinese Government is firmly of the
opinion that such right shall exclusively belong to the territorial sovereign
and shall in no wise be infringed upon by the nationals of any other
power.117

China, which played a supporting role in the international arena at that

time, was looking at the questionnaire holistically, as a base for negotiat-
ing the role of the sea in international law – rather than focusing
specifically on the future of the whale:
As to the special treaties by which one of the contracting parties grant
within its territorial water the national of the other the right of fishing etc.
it is a question of interest only to the contracting parties, and need not
form a subject for settlement by progressive codification of international
law.118

China, like leading whaling nations, was trying to prevent the whaling
dilemma from becoming “too” internationalist, but the opposition camp’s
collective efforts were in vain. They failed to minimize either the scope of
the future whaling regulation or the Codification Committee’s enthusiasm.
Both the wide range of states that supported the initiative and the
Codification Committee’s own agenda (and Suárez in particular) were in
116
Reply by the Permanent Office of the Chinese Delegation to the League of Nations, Aug.
8, 1927, LoN Archives, 19/61129/47284.
117
Id. (emphasis added).
118
(emphasis added).
124 t h e l e a g u e of n a t i o n s a n d th e w h a l i n g d i l e m m a

favor of using Question No. 7 as the foundation for a more substantial legal
arrangement.
The Codification Committee mentioned the French reply in this
regard. “Among the favorable replies, mention should be made of that
from the French Government, [which] emphasises the importance of an
immediate international measure to prevent the extinction of marine
animals in the near future, and put an end to the reckless slaughter
reported from different quarters.”119
Despite the many opponents, a long list of states decided that the
future of the whales deserved their attention, and special treatment by
international law. This included Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria,
Cuba, the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, Sweden, Poland, Portugal, and
Greece among others.120 Many of the replying states had no whaling fleet
at all. Others had access neither to an open sea, nor to an ocean. Some had
no serious involvement in whaling, while others (e.g., France) apparently
did. And yet, these states all offered their opinion on how the law should
be used to control the world of whaling. It should also be mentioned that
those states who had “delicate” or complex relations with the League (and
the international community at that time), such as Germany121 during
the Weimar Republic, were also eager to take part.

119
Economic Committee – Exploitation of the Products of the Sea: Note by the Secretariat –
the History of the Question, Oct. 14, 1927, LoN Archives, 19/62527/62527 (I), at 2.
120
Yugoslavia’s reply to be found in source 19/58351/47284; France’s – 19/57810/47284;
Czechoslovakia – 19/55697/51535; Bulgaria – 19/57481/51535; Cuba – 19/51535/51535;
the Netherlands – 19/57271/51535; Spain – 19/57162/51535; Belgium – 19/55792/51535;
Sweden – 19/55639/47284; Poland – 19/55868/47284; Portugal sent two replies, one
signed by the Minister of the Sea to the League of Nations (dated Sept. 15, 1926, 19/
54682/51535), and another letter from Lisbon on the same matter, from Oct. 7, 1926, 19/
54684/47284; and Greece’s reply – 19/5466/47284.
121
19/56117/47284; this document can also be located under File 19/56112/51535.
Putting aside the advanced environmental scientific and political views and initiatives
in German society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Germany had an
elusive relationship with the League, both before and after Hitler and the Nazis came to
power. After the war, and during the Weimar Republic, Germany was not allowed to be
a member state of the League. Germany applied to join the League, and after a long and
detailed process of international consultation with its member states on whether or not
Germany should be allowed to join the organization, the League approved its admission
in 1926. However, in October 1933, and once Hitler came to power, Nazi Germany
announced its withdrawal from both the Disarmament Conference and the League. On
early German environmentalism see, among others, F R A N K U E K Ö T T E R , T H E
G R E E N E S T N A T I O N ? A N E W H I S T O R Y O F G E R M A N E N V I R O N M E N T A L I S M (2014), or
BERNHARD GISSIBL, THE NATURE OF GERMAN IMPERIALISM: CONSERVATION AND
T H E P O L I T I C S O F W I L D L I F E I N C O L O N I A L E A S T A F R I C A (2016).
 2.3 interwar diplomacy 125

Roumania’s reply captured the crux of the whaling dilemma. Although

it was not involved in the whaling industry – either in the late nineteenth
or first decades of twentieth centuries – Roumania did have its own bitter
experience with exploitation of the products of the sea. The country felt
the burden of the tragedy of the commons in the absence of clear and firm
regulations. In its reply on whaling, Roumania referred to a parallel
phenomenon – the devastation of sturgeon populations as a result of
overfishing in the Black Sea. It provided a bitter account of the damage
inflicted on its local ecosystem and the sturgeon that inhabited it, and the
resulting economic losses sustained with the disappearance of caviar
from its (domestic territorial) waters. Perhaps it is precisely because
Roumania was not a whaling nation that it was able to assess the dilemma
objectively, using its similar experience as a reference.
The Roumanian reply was actually an open discussion about the
tension between the risks that modern whaling posed, and demand.
This reply used several terms and patterns that would seem familiar
today in light of contemporary environmental dilemmas relating to the
exploitation of natural resources, sustainability, nature conservation, and
the role of international law. “Our aim should be a wider one,” declared
the Roumanian government, “to preserve intact the whole productive
force of the riches of the sea, animal, vegetable and mineral, and by
a rational system of exploitation. To make the sea permanently provide
the human race with the quantity and quality of food and economic
products of which it is capable.”122
“Nature,” concluded the reply, was “sending a warning to the effect
that the vandalistic methods”123 used by the industry could no longer be
continued. Otherwise, extinction would be inevitable.
Spain, another supporter of a new whaling regulation, declared that it
had no objection to the initiative. The Spanish government supported the
call for an international conference, in which it would be able to contribute
and to suggest international regularization based on former experience and
study. The reply observed that, given the current situation on the high seas,
it would be happy to consider initiatives that seemed attainable.124
The Brazilian reply correlated with the Chinese interpretation of
Question No. 7 as having significant implications for international law.
However, unlike China it was in favor of the new initiative. Like China,
122
19/55517/47284 (emphasis added).
123
Committee of Experts for the Progressive Codification of International Law, Question
No. 7, C.196.M.70.1927.V, 223, LoN Archives.
124
19/57165/47284.
126 t h e l e a gue of n at i o n s an d the whaling d ilem m a

Brazil saw the move as a new step in internationalism, but also recognized
it as an opportunity to enter what, prior to 1919, was an exclusive club of
traditional powers.
The government of Brazil admitted that while it was no longer
a member of the League, “the fact that Brazil has withdrawn from the
League of Nations in no way implies that she [sic] should be held aloof
from the work of coordinate international relations. . . . [T]his should not
deter her from co-operating in the similar work now being undertaken in
Europe.”125 Moreover, despite not having a large-scale fleet or whaling
industry, as other powers did, Brazil insisted on having its opinion heard
on whaling and international law.
The same Brazilian government also did not hesitate to push the
Codification Committee, and the League, toward a strict and unmistak-
able set of rules for the ocean. The new regulation “must be founded on
justice embodied in definite, clear rules and its ultimate aim must be to
protect the major interests of civilization,” the reply from Rio de Janeiro
asserted.126 Moreover, the broad international discussion on these issues
also shows how early environmental law under the auspices of the
League – compared to other forms of institutional international cooper-
ation – enabled players that were not key states or historical powers per se
(like Brazil), to take part in shaping (environmental) international law:
The democratisation of the world, the equality of States . . . – these are the
constituent elements of a new international order which necessitates the
careful definition of reciprocal rights and duties. . . .
America has long been engaged in patient effort to solve this
problem. . . . These efforts have been continued at various conferences
and it is not too much to say that the ground is now ready for the final
work of construction.127

Brazil encouraged the Codification Committee, and the League, to

fulfill the call to regulate exploitation of the sea and establish an inter-
national whaling law: “The report of the distinguished . . . Professor
Suárez deals with this matter satisfactorily, without, however, preparing
any rules for its settlement. He nevertheless defines the problem and
indicates certain bases for its solution, which would be entirely
acceptable.”128
125
Opinion of Professor Clovis Bevilaqua, Legal Advisor to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
Received on Feb. 28, 1927, LoN Archives, 19/57699/47284, at 2–3.
126
Id. at 2 (emphasis added).
127
Id. (emphasis added).
128
Id. at 4.
 2.3 interwar diplomacy 127

Whether for fear of a future version of the tragedy of the commons on

the high seas, or wariness of the link between basic questions of inter-
national law and national sovereignty, from the mid-1920s many non-
whaling states thought it would be better to deliberate the questionnaire
not as a whole, but in parts and paragraphs. Many of these states also
ignored all the other parts of the original distributed document and wrote
to the Codification Committee specifically on the issue of exploitation of
the sea.
Reviewing their various replies, it seems that the League inspired in
them a strong belief in its ability to solve pressing problems across the
globe, and offered them a new means of participation in the international
arena. The whaling dilemma in general, and the questionnaire in par-
ticular, served as a mechanism through which different states, players,
and organizations could discuss the language of international law in
a way that was not available before. Some rushed to protect the whale
from extinction, while some strove to limit the race to the bottom in
order to make whaling more efficient and sustainable. And as these
several examples imply, some entered the discussion due to other, more
general, incentives relating to the framework of international law. The
diplomatic routine of the League also attracted commercial and indus-
trial consortiums and, as I will show later on, scientific boards of
museums and research centers. Some of these, like the International
Mercantile Marine Officers Association, replied directly to the 1926
Questionnaire and focused on Question No. 7. The association sent
a special reply from its Head Office in Antwerp, in which its secretary
suggested that the association’s members had a direct interest in the
evolving discussion on whaling and addressed the League in this regard.
In his application,129 the association’s secretary asked that its perspective
be included in the discussions and its conclusions.
To a large extent, it was in fact the reply that arrived from Venezuela
that eventually set the course of the initiative. The new stage of inter-
nationalism at the League enabled other, perhaps more objective voices,
to be represented. Dr. Pedro Itriago Charin, the Venezuelan Minister of
Foreign Affairs, replied in a very practical manner. Although Venezuela
was not one of the “maritime Powers,” as the Codification Committee’s
Suárez had observed almost one year earlier in his first report,130 the
129
Letter to Robert Hass, Director of the Communication and Transit Committee of the
League of Nations, Dec. 30, 1927, LoN Archives, 19/63331/63331 (III).
130
Report by the Committee of Experts for the Progressive Codification of International
Law (Questionnaire No. 7), from Feb. 9, 1926, 14/49113/47284, at 6.
128 the l eague of n ations and the whal ing dilemma

ministry had given “due consideration to these questions.” On the matter

of the marine dilemma, Venezuela reached the conclusion that there
existed a body of principles that had definitely secured international
acceptance. The introductory stage of the League’s whaling diplomacy
was now ready to move on to a more “concrete” practice of international
law. “These questions would therefore seem to be sufficiently ripe to be
considered by international conference.”131

2.3.3 The Codification Committee Summarizes the Replies with a Sense

of Urgency
After receiving dozens of different replies from states from all across the
globe, and seeing the urgency – according to an internal report from
January 24, 1927132 – they conveyed, the Codification Committee drew
up its conclusions and suggested steps for the future. The Committee
wrote quite a daring conclusion, which one editor (whose identity
remains unknown) tried to make more moderate. This document sheds
light on the struggle between the Committee’s progressive and enthusi-
astic agenda – armed with its belief in science and in the capability of
international law to overcome the environmental danger – on the one
hand, and on other commercial and conservative approaches to the
tension between states and international sovereignty in the interwar
period on the other hand.
First, according to the Codification Committee, the need for regulation
was obvious. It believed that this kind of regulation should and could be
achieved by an international legal agreement, which seemed to be both
“desirable and realisable.”133 Second, in addition to the need for an
international legal solution was the need for the kind of inquiry the
League had taken upon itself. Unfortunately, such a broad investigation
was not feasible prior to the birth of the League. But, this need for inquiry
“ha[d] long been manifest”: given the awful condition of the whale, and
following the technological improvements in the whaling industry, the
League was just the right institution to conduct a broad, comparative,
international inquiry of this nature, which began in March 1926.

131
Letter from P. Itriago Charin, Republic of Venezuela Ministry of Foreign Affairs to
Secretary-General, Oct. 6, 1926, LoN Archives, 19/55086/47284 I.
132
Report on the Questionnaire of the Committee of Experts for the Progressive
Codification of International Law, Jan. 24, 1927, LoN Archives, 19/55517/47284 [here-
inafter Report on the Questionnaire].
133
Id. at 101.
 2.3 interwar diplomacy 129

Third, the Codification Committee clearly articulated the complex

perspectives, interests, and conflicts embedded in the whaling problem.
The stark tension between the “rapacity” of commercial exploitation of
the sea; nature protection, preservation, and conservation; and conflict-
ing interests of whaling powers and other states, was explicitly reflected in
the report:
This is indeed a case in which action is necessary, for the problem is a vast
one, is of the largest importance for the future of mankind and can only be
solved by international agreement.
For certain countries, including some in a very advanced stage of
civilisation, the products of the sea constitute the main source of food
supplies and revenue, in that they exert a decisive influence on national
economy and general prosperity. In other cases, the products of the sea
constitute a great reserve of future food supplies.
Abundant though they are, these resources are in certain respects
threatened by man’s rapacity and the destructive methods employed.
Certain species of aquatic animals of great utility which provide the raw
material for great industries, have been almost entirely exterminated.134

In this respect, “the case of cetaceans,” which the Codification

Committee presented as the focal point of the discussion (and the
problem), “is a conclusive one,” and time was running out: “Of the ten
to twelve thousand whales alive today, fifteen hundred are being killed
annually. Consequently in ten135 years’ time they will have been com-
pletely exterminated.”136
It should also be noted that the report and the concern it expressed
were not restricted to the whale alone, but also to other creatures of the
sea as part of an ecosystem. In its initial pages, the report also discussed
the parallel, and disturbing, danger that threatened other species of
marine fauna. A fairly large part of the discussion dealt with the more
general version of the tragedy of the commons, this time in the case of the
herring (Clupea arengus) “tribe,”137 “which is also on the decrease owing
to modern fishery.”138 This report struck a balanced conclusion, with
a general overview of the current status of marine fauna in light of
fundamental technological improvements in fishing (and especially
134
Id. at 101.
135
Originally, the report declares (p. 101) that in ten years from that date (meaning, from
early 1927), there is a great and concrete danger that the whale will be extinct from the
oceans.
136
Report on the Questionnaire, supra note 132, at 101.
137
The report used this term, and not species (for instance).
138
Report on the Questionnaire, supra note 132, at 101.
130 t h e l ea gue of n at ion s a nd th e w hal i ng d il e mma

whaling) methods. Although the Codification Committee seems to have

been far more progressive (environmentally speaking) than other bodies
of the interwar period – including within the League itself – its members
did also consider other ideas, some of which competed with or contra-
dicted one other. Whereas other bodies seemed more inclined to defend
one view at the most and rarely took all aspects of the issue into consid-
eration (whether commercial, economic, legal-political or environmen-
tal), the Committee considered the dilemma in a more balanced way. The
report summarized the deep economic and commercial interests of
several states,139 while also drawing on increasingly valuable scientific
data and research (on the migration and the general conditions of
different migratory species),140 to address the growing fear of the extinc-
tion of marine species.
Indeed, some of the voices and claims that were heard with regard to
whales reflected clear conservationist patterns, too. However, unlike other
marine fauna, whales were the only case (and species) that the parties
involved discussed – the League and the Codification Committee in par-
ticular. The Codification Committee clearly distinguished between the
whale and all the other creatures of the sea, warning of “years of national
catastrophe,”141 “progressive diminution of production which . . . has
[caused] alarm,”142 or simply that the situation was “disastrous.”143 Any
concern for species other than whales was driven by commercial interests
alone, and no one urged protection of this wildlife. Even the scientists who
would later become part of the evolving discussion did not seem overly
concerned about the survival of other species, as they were with whales, due
to broad, historical, considerations. Science and scientists initially played
a leading role in the commercial-industrial race to increase the number of
successful catches, and they were working for the betterment of the harvest
(and did not advocate limiting or regulating it). As such, they
carefully studied the question of migration and the general conditions
under which these fish live, in order to ascertain the place and depth at
which they are to be found and direct the fishing fleets accordingly.
The progress of biological research, which, by studying the whole
migratory cycle of each species of aquatic animal, has made it possible

139
It refers, specifically, to the “national economy of the Northern European peoples”
(Report on the Questionnaire, supra note 132, at 102).
140
Such as various eels or sardines (Id. at 103).
141
Id. at 102.
142
Id. at 103.
143
Id. at 102.
 2.3 interwar diplomacy 131
to determine the locality in which it is to be found at any given time of
the year, so that it may be caught more easily.144

As will be described in the following sections, when it came to the

matter of the whaling dilemma, scientists (and science) would find
themselves in a very different position compared to the one they had
held over questions concerning (other) migratory marine fauna.
The changing role of science in regulating commercial activity in the
seas reflects the complexity of the issue. While the report, which drew
heavily on scientific data and discourse, acknowledged how important
successful fishing was to states that relied on it for their national econ-
omies, the report also highlighted the danger of using science to justify
commercial initiatives. The successful use of science supported these
states’ fishing industries on the one hand, but also allowed for the over-
exploitation of marine fauna on the other hand. “This intensive fishery,
assisted by biological research and continual improvements in fishing
apparatus, fishing-boats and the preparations of the products themselves,
has now begun to produce results which may well prove disastrous; in
any case, it is already causing a continual decrease in production.”145
Either way, science and scientists were gaining more and more atten-
tion in international environmental issues, and scientists’ concerns about
overfishing were quickly becoming central to the discussion. Scientific
discourse enabled more accurate observations and hence allowed for
better conclusions to be drawn. Moreover, given its institutional capabil-
ities, the League stood as a centralizing forum in which these kinds of
considerations could get proper treatment. In this way, the League and its
environmental regime marked a transition from earlier or parallel trans-
national and ad hoc frameworks to international and institutionalized
ones:
Most of these scientific data are already available. Some are being studied
by oceanographical institutes, biological stations and laboratories; they
have formed the subject of great scientific expeditions. Others are scat-
tered throughout the economic, legal, political and social bibliography of
the various countries. All available data must be prepared for such further
research . . . by a special institute created for the purpose by the League of
Nations. The problem is too vast and important a one to be treated
empirically; it demands careful collaboration between the leading scien-
tific institutes of all countries . . . .146

144
Id. at 102, 105 (respectively).
145
Id. at 102.
146
Id. at 108–09.
132 t h e l e a g u e of n a t i o n s a n d th e w h a l i n g d i l e m m a

This kind of comparative look demonstrates the difference in the way

the Codification Committee and the League discussed and dealt with the
subject of decreasing marine fauna in general, and the whaling problem
in particular. The issue of concern for other marine species, which raised
international alarm during that time, involved mostly economic and
commercial interests. However, when whales were discussed, the dis-
course shifted to include explicit environmental concerns regarding their
possible extinction, alongside conservationist considerations. In the case
of other species, when shoals of fish started suddenly to disappear from
the shores of Newfoundland, Iceland, and the banks of the North Sea, the
emphasis was almost entirely on the industry and its interests, and not
necessarily on the different species of endangered fish. All of the actors
involved, whether the Codification Committee, the League itself, or
scientists and biologists, did their best to protect the industry’s survival.
Once special measures had been taken, the fisheries industry would be
able to prosper once again:
As soon as these shoals make their appearance [again], great fishing
expeditions set out . . . in which all the fishing fleets of seafaring folk are
part. The preparation of the catch affords employment for a powerful
industry, with thousands of factories, cold-storage room and costly appar-
atus of every kind installed along the coasts of every continent. This
industry provides work for millions of workpeople and contributes to
the food supplies of populations in the interior, even in the remote
districts.147

Embracing this comparative perspective, it should also be noted that in

both cases – migratory fish and whales as well – at least some of the states
involved decided there was an urgent need to turn to international law for
help. While some made this decision based on the Committee’s conclud-
ing report, others did so based on their former experience. Roumania, in
that sense, stood as a successful example of a comparative case study that
justified international law as the applicable legal framework, instead of
local, national-domestic, and regional arrangements. In similar cases,
these kinds of legal frameworks failed to protect other species of marine
fauna. The report strengthened its focus on the need for international
regulation and used an almost personal recommendation from one of its
members, based on his nation’s experience. He suggested turning to
regional and transnational mechanisms (which were nevertheless in
vain, as environmental history has shown):

147
Id. at 103.
 2 . 3 in t e r w a r d i p l o m a c y 133
As a Roumanian, I cannot refrain from quoting the case of sturgeon in the
Black Sea . . . which, in spite of all the protective measures applied by
Roumania in and at the mouth of the Danube – measures which, by
special convantions [sic], made binding on the four other Danube riparian
states – nevertheless displayed an increasing tendency to disappear.148

The Codification Committee claimed that binding international regu-

lation, rather than any national, regional, or transnational environmen-
tal-legal cooperation, was the only real and lasting solution to the
problem. Certain states had already initiated previous campaigns that
had struggled to protect their fishery industries, despite the different
protective measures they attempted to implement “in their
legislation,”149 “including even artificial re-stocking.” However, all of
these solutions failed to protect marine fauna. Eventually, “these species
[were] rapidly decreasing.”150
It seems that the Danube experience, together with the difficulties and
entanglements it revealed regarding the international nature of this issue,
resulted in a better understanding of the policy needed to address the
problem:
The young sturgeon are exterminated, because the open seas are inter-
national water where there is no law to prohibit fishery. The result is that
the full-grown fish . . . are becoming increasingly rare, while the old-
established fishing colonies engaged in the sturgeon fishery are being
slowly ruined. Consequently, fishermen are everywhere complaining
that the number of sturgeon is decreasing, while whales, seals and several
other aquatic animals have already been exterminated.151

Once the Codification Committee had turned its attention to marine

fauna and whales, the League’s tone developed a sense of urgency. “The
same dangerous symptoms are now appearing among other migratory
species,” declared the Codification Committee on page 103 of its special
report, and continued further on: “[T]he path now being followed in
exploiting the products of the sea is a highly dangerous one and may soon
lead to the destruction of the greatest natural wealth placed by
Providence at the disposal of man . . . .”152 The Committee used the
same warnings when it explained that whales might suffer the same fate
as the herring: as a result of modern fishing technologies, its numbers had
148
Id. at 104 (emphasis added).
149
Id. at 103.
150
Id.
151
Id. at 105.
152
Id. at 105–06.
134 t h e l e a g u e of n a t i o n s a n d th e w h a l i n g d i l e m m a

been depleted so drastically that the countries that relied on this species
suffered from “years of national catastrophe.”
This sense of alarm and the urgent environmental discourse are also
exemplified by one of the concluding paragraphs of the report. It merged
several principles that echoed different missions undertaken by the
League: the severe situation of natural resources (some of which were
also considered to be raw materials);153 the need for rational, collective
global action under the auspices of the League and by means of inter-
national law; the inefficient and reckless exploitation of nature (mostly by
hungry industries); and the central role of science and scientists in the
measures to be taken. Given the urgency, the League made nature itself
a relevant player in the game of international law. Since nature was not
capable of advocating for itself, the League did so on its behalf through
the legal discourse:
Nature is therefore sending out a warning to the effect that the vandalistic
methods of fishing now being applied can no longer be continued, and
must be replaced as soon as possible by rational exploitation based on
a system of international protective measures dictated by science in
accordance with the results of oceanographical and biological research.154

The Codification Committee reflected on a variety of perspectives

relating to nature: from utilitarian conservationism to preservation-
ism. Some of these notions were direct and explicit, while others had to
be interpreted from the text and discourse. Revising the different
replies and preparing its conclusions, the Committee came to view
the ocean as one complete and vulnerable ecosystem. Therefore, the
Committee aimed not to limit its authority to the issue of whales alone,
but to promote a universal solution for the high seas – nothing more,
nothing less:

153
See the general discussion on raw materials as part of the League’s concern or interest in
Section 4.2.1 of Chapter 4.
154
Report on the Questionnaire, supra note 132, at 105. The progressive approach with
which the Codification Committee, one of many appointed to inspect international-
environmental aspects, handled these issues can be clearly identified by the study of these
different action-copy documents in the archives. As the Committee originally chose to
write “nature is therefore sending out a warning . . .,” the referee/s of the document
circled (for the first and only time in this report) the word “nature,” and put a bold
question mark in the middle of the page, almost as if to ask why “nature” had been given
a human role. For a similar (rather later) discussion on the role of nature and animals as
legal players see, e.g., D A V I D B O Y D , T H E R I G H T S O F N A T U R E : A L E G A L R E V O L U T I O N
T H A T C O U L D S A V E T H E P L A N E T (2 0 17 ) , in which Boys elaborates on legal discourses
and moves that aim to provide nature and species legal entities, as well as rights.
 2 . 3 in t e r w a r d i p l o m a c y 135
Above all, we must realise that our efforts cannot be directed solely to
preventing the destruction of certain species of animals – quite apart from
their relative importance – which man’s rapacity threatens with extermin-
ation, such as the cetaceans and pinnipeds (whales and seals). Our aim
should be a wider one – to preserve intact the whole productive force of
the riches of the sea, animal, vegetable and mineral, and by a rational system
of exploitation to make the sea permanently provide the human race with the
quantity and quality of food and economic products of which it is capable.155

Finalizing its report, the Codification Committee prepared a detailed road

map for the coming years to achieve the League’s goals. The Committee
did not limit its steps for action to a theoretical discussion, but recruited
both the institutional energies and the capabilities of the League for the
mission ahead. It recommended that the League carry out three specific
stages: first, it was to convene a conference of experts “in applied biology,
economists and international law experts of all States possessing maritime
interests.” Moreover, the discussion was not an abstract one and it did not
hold steadfastly to the realm of law alone, but related specifically to the
ways in which these necessary arrangements should be carried out with
regard to the open sea. The Committee completed its report by saying that
this special conference would establish “fundamental principles,”
a relevant program of “detailed inquiries” and “means of application,”
and the formation of a central research institute that would gather all the
relevant necessary data. Moreover, this research institute was to collaborate
with existing institutions of all countries such as zoological institutions,
fishery services, and institutes of the social economy. Second, the League
would need to support and inspect the work of this proposed central
research institute, which would collect and coordinate data, carry out
research, identify problems, and prepare “all material for the final solu-
tion.” Third, and finally, a new conference would then be convened, based
on the data gathered through the scientific work, in order to discuss and
adapt “the final solution for the new body of law.”156
The Codification Committee was setting quite a challenge for the
League with this road map. While both the suggested meeting of experts
and the international conference were achieved during the interwar
period,157 the objective research institution that the Committee had
155
Id. at 108.
156
Report of the Committee of Experts of the Exploitation of the Products of the Sea,
Jan. 24, 1927, LoN Archives, 19/55517/47284, at 111.
157
This meeting of experts took place in Paris in April 1927; the first international confer-
ence on whaling was held by the League in London in June 1931, and the second was also
in London, in June 1937.
136 t h e l e a g u e of n a t i o n s a n d th e w h a l i n g d i l e m m a

outlined turned out to be rather different than the one the Committee
initially had in mind. When it came to the whaling problem, the powerful
whaling nations, such as Norway, Britain, Finland, and Denmark pro-
moted the Copenhagen-based International Council for the Exploration
of the Seas, an international consortium of (mostly) whaling industries
and governmental officials of several nations.158 The Council served as
a research organization, providing the League and its expert committees
with necessary data and statistics. However, this Copenhagen Council
was also closely affiliated with several whaling nations. It could therefore
hardly be in the interests of the Council or its member states to open the
floor to institutions like the League, which had already begun to widen
the circle of participants. The Committee was intently focused on advan-
cing collective action within the world of international law, and saw the
need for a very precise practical solution to the crisis. In one of its
conclusions, the Committee laid out the dilemma in legal terms:
The aim of world legislation must be carefully determined. In the first
place, we have . . . the ‘mare liberum’, that is to say, the whole ocean apart
from those portions of the sea which constitute the territorial waters of
riparian State. But it is those portions of . . . water [the mare liberum]
which are often of decisive importance in the problem of protecting
aquatic animals.159

Therefore, the Committee concluded that another general convention

concerning marine fauna would not be enough. It understood its part in

158
The Conseil International de Copenhague was a transnational body of marine states with
central whaling industries, such as Norway, Great Britain, and Denmark. It worked on
the basis of an informal gentlemen’s agreement from 1902, and served as a forum for
exchange and correspondence between interested parties and states involved in com-
mercial fishing. Its main aim was to serve as a center for comparative biological and
hydrographic data for the fishing industry. As I will elaborate, the Copenhagen Council
took on a leading role in the whaling regulation negotiations, as a unique NGO, or as
a transnational organization affiliated with several Western states (though not necessar-
ily Western powers of that time). It was influenced by the spirit of internationalism in
nature sciences at the turn of the century, but was not an autonomous institution, and
persons that participated in its discussions represented the interests of their countries.
Generally speaking, and throughout the whaling regulation campaign, the Council’s
interests were determined by the economic interests of Western states that were exploit-
ing the sea. Besides the Copenhagen Council, the League also consulted and communi-
cated with several other NGOs (or non-state agencies) on that matter, such as the
International Mercantile Marine Officers Association (whose head office was located
in Antwerp, Belgium). For the Correspondence between the League and the Association
see 19/63331/63331 (III), dated Dec. 30, 1927.
159
Report on the Questionnaire, supra note 132, at 109.
 2 . 3 i nt e r w a r d i p l o m a c y 137

the context of an existing legal framework; however, it also recognized

the shortcomings of this framework given that it lacked the necessary
international reach (which the League seemed to be able to offer) to solve
the problem. Thus, there was an urgent need for collective (legal) action
specific to securing the whale: “[A] great many of the less migratory
species of the inhabitants of the sea are adequately protected by the many
bilateral and plurilateral conventions which exist and . . . it would be
a mistake to superimpose upon them a general convention relating to
such species.”
To the Committee, there was no doubt that whaling was a subject
suited to the mechanisms of international law; it was also certain that the
consideration of whaling should include not only whaling nations, but
also other bodies. At this stage, and given the environmental context, the
League exercised what one could call a deep interpretation of inter-
national law: it insisted that not only states but also other players, such
as nongovernmental and external or independent organizations, should
take part in the discussion. The League called explicitly to take scientific
knowledge into account and to summon experts and scientists to assist in
the creation of international law. The League intentionally promoted
a supranational framework on the question of whaling. A simple para-
graph (circulated by the League on behalf of the Codification Committee
in the spring of 1927) from one of the papers detailing preparations for
the special meeting of experts (held in Paris in April 1927), supports this
interpretation:
We therefore recommend that the Council should summon a Conference
of technical experts of the problems involved; that these experts should be
selected not upon a national basis but in such a way as to represent the
different regions involved and the different kinds of species involved; that
the assistance of the international organizations . . . should be
involved . . . .160

The Codification Committee specified exactly how this whaling regu-

lation should be advanced to achieve blanket protection for all species of
whale.161 In many ways, one can interpret the battlefield of whaling
within the world of international law as an ongoing campaign that
160
Action Copy of Proposed Conclusions submitted by M. McNair on behalf of the
Committee of Experts for the Progressive Codification of International Law,
Questionnaire No. 7. (Products of the Sea), Mar. 27, 1927, LoN Archives, 19/58475/
47284, at 2 [hereinafter Proposed Conclusions].
161
The Committee was rather reluctant at this stage to limit or minimize the scope of the
planned whaling regulation by making it specific to one species of whale.
138 t h e l e a g u e of n a t i o n s a n d th e w h a l i n g d i l e m m a

stretched throughout the 1920s and 1930s under the auspices of the
League. This campaign began with Question No. 7 and the numerous
replies received from interested states, and was followed by preparations
for the next step – summoning an international conference to deal
specifically with the problem as an issue of international law.
In this twisting story, the Codification Committee did all that it could
to widen the scope of international whaling law as far as the horizon
allowed. It aimed first to break free from transnational arrangements
(bilateral and multilateral) and, second, to move away from limited
protection for only specific species of whale. When other players, with
different interests and expectations of the future of whaling, struggled to
limit the number of different species of whale at stake, the Committee
deliberately suggested viewing the species as a whole:
We recommend . . . that by the terms of reference of the Conference thus
constituted the Conference should be requested . . . to give special atten-
tion to the case of whales of all kinds and . . . to draft a general convention
or a series of plurilateral conventions for its conservation, and to consider
and advise whether there are other species of the inhabitants of the sea
whose conservation would be fostered either by general or plurilateral
conventions, and, if so, upon the best method of achieving this result.162

In the case of whaling, the rule of international law differed from the
cases of “other” aquatic animals. A comparison between the creatures of
the sea, based on the League and the Committee’s deliberations, might
suggest that while other species were caught between jurisdictions, the
whale was a pure subject of international law and did not fall into the
domain of domestic law or national sovereignty at all. In the case of other
species of marine fauna, especially fish and seals, the principle of mare
liberum was often applied, with its promise that no national law would
apply on the high seas. There were also “portions” of territorial water that
were often of “decisive importance”163 because fishing or hunting took
place there. Great reserves and certain lakes along the sea coasts, lagoons,
and harbors were of “paramount importance,” particularly in the case of
salmon and sturgeon.164 Beyond the measures that the Codification
Committee took to protect the whale, it was much less eager to confront
sovereignty and the economic-political interest of other states: “These

162
Proposed conclusions, supra note 160, at 2.
163
Report on the Questionnaire, supra note 132, at 109.
164
Roumania had warned of a similar problem in the case of the whales. See the discussion
in Section 2.3.2 above.
 2.3 interwar diplomacy 139

measures will require careful consideration in order to avoid any action

derogatory to the great interest of the various countries and their sover-
eign rights.”165 The whale, however, remained almost completely beyond
the reach of any nation state’s jurisdiction, which made it the target for
other considerations and possible solutions.
Which measures ought to be adopted? After the Codification
Committee had analyzed the different replies and agendas and discussed
the implications of Question No. 7, its legal-environmental investigation
led to a visionary proposal – one that imposed some daring limitations on
a powerful industry that had been expanding almost completely without
external restrictions prior to the League. These measures included rotat-
ing sanctuaries, closed seasons for whaling, and the articulation of the
principle that all nations should be governed by a binding international
convention. Many of these measures would become more familiar in
later attempts to fight the threat against marine fauna and whales, and
would be developed after the League was dissolved.
The preliminary report166 also claimed that certain measures of the
legal proposal should, “in the first place,” supply certain definite require-
ments established by scientific investigation, such as encouraging repro-
duction amongst certain species, protecting fries, defining regions of
seasonal protection, absolute or temporary prohibition of catching
threatened species, and more.167
Although most of its focus was on what can be termed “law on the
books,” the League was both aware of and involved in concerns regarding
law in action, and how these kinds of solutions should be enforced on the
ground. The Codification Committee practically acknowledged that such
progressive measures, which were defining a new spectrum of international
law with regard to sovereignty and its limits, could not rely merely on
acceptance and ratification by the states. The Committee discussed ways
and tools that would enable the realization – and legal enforcement – of the
suggested global regulation. The Committee concluded that special per-
formative bodies would be established and made responsible for the effect-
ive application of these measures. However, fundamental difficulties with
this global marine regulation emerged and continue to be the subject of
contemporary discussions on international whaling law in the twenty-first
165
Report on the Questionnaire, supra note 132, at 109.
166
Meaning, the Report on the Questionnaire of the Committee of Experts for the
Progressive Codification of International Law, Jan. 24, 1927, LoN Archives, 19/55517/
47284.
167
Report on the Questionnaire, supra note 132, at 110.
140 the l eag ue o f n ati ons and t he whaling d ilemma

century. “What penalties could be levied on offenders, and in virtue of what

right?” asked the Committee out loud:
What are the obligations to which the various States could subscribe by
means of an international agreement without, by so doing, sacrificing
their legitimate interests, or without shouldering a burden too heavy for
them to bear? These . . . are the questions of principle which the League
must solve before any measures can be adopted for establishing a rational
exploitation of the products of the sea.

In other words, these environmental questions also raised general

considerations of international law per se. The environment, and the
dilemmas it revealed, stimulated macro-questions that moved beyond
the frame of a balance between preservation, conservation, and commer-
cial interests.
Based on the core issues that the Codification Committee included in
its concluding report, the League then moved on to presenting
a complete draft for an international whaling law. The Committee felt
at least some of the comments and replies accredited it with a mandate to
push forward a joint effort. As the report of January 1927 recommended,
the next step in the campaign was to convene a special meeting of a group
of experts in Paris in April 1927, in the hopes of reaching a consensus on
an advanced version that would form the basis for an international
convention.

2.3.4 Toward the April 1927 Experts Meeting in Paris, and the British
Interdepartmental Conference on the Question of International Control
of Whaling (October 1927)
The Codification Committee was overwhelmed by the variety of replies
and different interpretations of this question of environmental inter-
national law. Nevertheless, it maintained an optimistic view of the mat-
ter. Several of the Committee members saw the big bang over Question
No. 7 not as a problem, but rather as an opportunity to expand the
Committee’s role and, perhaps, also to strengthen its conclusions.
After one year of receiving, collecting, and reviewing the different
replies, the Codification Committee was satisfied that it had gathered
enough support to push forward its initiative. In one of its drafts for
proposed conclusions on Question No. 7 and the issue of the products
of the sea, M. McNair, one of the Committee’s members, concluded
that these replies “are definitely favourable to the summoning of an
 2 . 3 i nt e r w a r d i p l o m a c y 141

International Conference . . ., ” something that was not completely

true – at least as far as it depended on certain whaling powers, as
I will elaborate. The Committee was intent on drawing a very specific
picture from the replies – one that would support its conclusions and
(mostly) back up its planned follow-up steps, and assist it with mark-
ing its territory vis-à-vis other players that had their own agenda:
The many valuable memoranda which we have received from the
Governments in replying seem to us to point to the [following]
conclusions:
(a) that this is a . . . matter in which it is possible to subordinate particular
interests of a political and economic character to the world interest of
conserving the natural resources of the sea;
(b) that the case of the whale which by reason of its extensive migratory
habits seem to me more of an international animal than most of the
inhabitants of the sea demands special treatment.168

The Codification Committee left little room for a different interpretation

of the replies as a whole. “This Report shows,” the Committee decisively
asserted, “that, generally speaking, the replies from Governments approve
the conclusions of Professor Suárez, and nearly all the replies, even
some of those which are unfavourable, recognise the importance of the
question and the necessity of its regulation by means of agreement.”
The Committee also did not forget to include in its report to the
Secretariat, first and foremost, the support of the French: “Among the
favourable replies, mention should be made of that from the French
Government, which emphasises the importance of immediate inter-
national measures to prevent the extinction of marine animals in the
near future, and put an end to the reckless slaughter reported from
different quarters.”169
The fact that the French reply was the first mentioned in the
Codification Committee’s special concluding report was by no means
coincidental. This probably had something to do with the leading role of
France in the international alignment of the interwar period.170 But
besides that, the legal work of interpreting the replies and weaving
168
Action Copy of Proposed Conclusions submitted by M. McNair on behalf of the
Committee of Experts for the Progressive Codification of International Law,
Questionnaire No. 7. (Products of the Sea), Mar. 28, 1927, LoN Archives, 19/58475/
47284 (emphasis added).
169
Economic Committee – Exploitation of the Products of the Sea: Note by the Secretariat –
the History of the Question, Oct. 14, 1927, LoN Archives, 19/62527/62527 (I), at 2.
170
And as a Permanent Member of the League’s Council (see supra note 75).
142 t h e l e a g u e of n a t i o n s a n d th e w h a l i n g d i l e m m a

(some of) them into one coherent document with legal instructions and
implications, gave the Committee relative freedom to formulate
a document that reflected its own agenda. Therefore, the tone and
discourse that were used adopted – and echoed – Suárez’s perspective.
France, in that case, emphasized the importance of an “immediate”
international solution to the problem.
The Codification Committee seemed to sideline the more reluctant
approaches, such as those of Norway and Britain, with the “international
consciousness” it was striving to shape. Instead of engaging with all
aspects of the dilemma, the Committee preferred to draw a description
of the evolving diplomatic and legal dispute in a way that better suited its
agenda and goals: “Several Governments are of the opinion that prelim-
inary enquiries should be made.” Replies from states that were concerned
that the League would create a new authority by promoting and enfor-
cing a global whaling regulation, such as China for instance, were cau-
tiously woven into the concluding report to the Secretariat. As such,
strong objections, such as “requests for further inquiries,” became far
more muted in the report. Likewise, the report promoted replies that
supported the desire to establish a whaling regulation, such as the Polish
stance: “[T]he Polish representative stated that the question . . . was in
fact that of protecting the valuable fauna of the deep sea against extermin-
ation by uneconomic exploitation.”171
In April 1927, as recommended by the Codification Committee after it
had concluded studying the replies, the League organized a special forum
of experts, named the International Committee for the Protection of the
Great Cetaceans. This was a meeting of whaling experts that convened in
Paris to revise Suárez and his Committee’s reports and preliminary
proposals as a basis for international whaling law.
Thanks to Abel Gruvel, a French professor and government advisor,
a treaty proposal was put forward for discussion in Paris. Originally,
Gruvel had proposed a whaling regulation in 1913.172 Although the
French proposal forms part of a larger picture of early French involve-
ment in nature protection or imperial conservation,173 it seems that the

171
Report by the Economic Committee on the matter of Exploitation of the Products of the
Sea: Note by the Secretariat – History of the Question, Memorandum from Oct. 14, 1927,
19/62527/62527 (II), at 3 (emphasis in the original).
172
D O R S E Y , supra note 4, at 34.
173
The first campaign to restrict whaling had already begun in 1913 as it aimed to secure
whale stocks in the waters of France own colonies. It seems that the French general policy
had expressed a will to internationalize its own initiative. Hosting the 1927 experts
 2.3 interwar diplomacy 143

strong support for international law, which the Codification Committee

had introduced in the preliminary stages, was somehow replaced at the
Paris meeting by a gentleman’s agreement. Unlike the concrete (though
still preliminary) legal ideas the Codification Committee raised at the
Paris meeting, Gruvel’s proposal was based more on the concept of
“mutual understanding” of powers than on obligations and restrictions
governed by the new institutional authority (and energy) of the League.
Compared to the practical solutions of rotating sanctuaries and the like
that the Committee had proposed, those at the Paris meeting favored the
French proposal, which was less progressive and also less demanding of
whaling powers and their industries:
France has thought that all the naturalists of the world should join
together and come to an understanding, not to interfere with an interest-
ing industry but to try to regulate the destruction of the animal species in
the interest of Science in the first place and in the interest of the world
industry in the second place.174

In some ways, the far more assertive method of dealing with environ-
mental international law, which had been introduced only a short time
earlier during the first round of the Committee versus the whaling
nations, was replaced by a more cautious and hesitant one. Some might
argue that this cautious approach was more diplomatic and balanced.
Johan Hjort, the Norwegian representative at the experts meeting in
Paris, mentioned with some concern that certain whaling nations
might refuse to sign the new convention prepared by the League.
Gruvel replied that it would hence depend on “the honesty and good-
will of the powers.”175 It seems that the time was not yet ripe to introduce
a complete convention draft to the international committee; the Paris
meeting of experts had certainly discouraged some of the progressive

meeting in Paris was perhaps based on the fact that the Empire introduced conserva-
tionist patterns in transnational contexts prior to the whaling dilemma. The
International Convention for the Protection of Useful Birds was signed in Paris in
1902. In 1909, the first International Conference on Local Heritage and Landscape
Protection took place in the capital as well. In 1923, the first public international congress
for nature conservation was invited to France as a private initiative. See, among others,
Diana K. Davis, Eco-Governance in French Algeria: Environmental History, Policy, and
Colonial Administration, 32 J .W. S O C . F O R F R E N C H H I S T . 328 (2004).
174
Minutes of the International Committee for the Protection of the Great Cetaceans, Apr.
7, 1927, LoN Archives, 19/55517/47280.
175
Id. (emphasis added). Also appears in: Minutes of the International Committee for the
Protection of the Great Cetaceans, Apr. 7, 1927, NAC, RG 23, File 721–19-5[3].
144 the l eag ue of n ations and t he whaling dilemm a

solutions and the agenda that the Codification Committee was consider-
ing at that time.
After the Paris meeting in April, the Codification Committee continued
in its efforts. In a report to the Assembly from late September 1927,
M. Politis, the Greek representative to the Codification Committee, stated
that they had “carefully examined” different documents and had reached
several conclusions on the questionnaire as a whole. Politis noted that
several questions that had been introduced to the international community
in the original questionnaire “by now appear ripe for Regulation by
International Agreement,”176 such as those dealing with nationality, dip-
lomatic privileges and immunities, or piracy. However, given the deluge of
replies and different perspectives on the issue of whaling, the Committee
was firmly of the opinion that this issue “should be governed by a special
procedure.”177 Despite the discontent leading powers had expressed at the
Paris meeting, the Codification Committee seemed intent on pushing the
League – from within – toward a revolutionary whaling regulation. In the
process, the Committee dismissed opponents’ claims that there was no
danger threatening the survival of the whale, stating, “[t]here is no doubt
that marine fauna is exposed to the risk of early extermination by exploit-
ation which is opposed to economic principle.” Moreover, given that no
solution could be found in any domestic legislation, no matter how
advanced it might be, “[i]nternational protection would fill a real need
and at the same time meet the wish of all Governments concerned.” Hence,
with its legal mechanisms, the League was the most suitable and capable
forum by which this kind of environmental arrangement could be
delivered. “It would be well worth while to establish such protection by
means of an international agreement . . . .”178
The planned regulations were based on the questionnaire and
a comparative legal study of different maritime agreements. Suárez
analyzed sixteen treaties that dealt with local or transnational questions
relating to marine fauna.179 In a report to the Secretariat, he indicated as
the representative of the Codification Committee that it was possible to
establish an economic “rationale” for the use of marine resources, based

176
Report of the First Committee for the Progressive Codification of International Law to
the Assembly, Sept. 23, 1927, LoN Archives, 62453 A. 105. 1927. V., at 1.
177
Id. at 2.
178
Id.
179
Appendix to the Report on the Exploitation of the Products of the Sea: List of
International Treaties on the Regulation of Maritime Industries (Rapporteur: J. L.
Suárez), Jan. 8, 1928, LoN Archives, C.P.D.I.28.
 2.3 interwar diplomacy 145

on an appropriate legal framework. However, the existing multilateral

treaties were all too brief.180 Moreover, this partial legal framework was
insufficient to address the fact that “[t]he wealth constituted by the
creatures of the deep is not fixed in the sense of being confined to one
region or latitude but varies from year to year according to the biological,
physical and chemical circumstances affecting the plankton among
which they live.”181 Therefore, any whaling regulation presented by the
League would need to address four general principles: the establishment
of protected areas, which would be used only in a rotation system; the
development of protection periods and age limits for hunting; efficient
implementation and fixed international supervision of the regulation;
and agreement on how to ensure the accession of all maritime nations to
a common legal framework.
The preliminary proposal was also holistic in that it reflected the latest
findings in zoology. Suárez stressed the ecological importance of the
continental shelf for the regeneration of fish stocks, upon which whales
and other species were dependent. He pointed out that the disappearance
of certain species would “destroy the balance” in the ocean and would
bring about an “extinction of other species also.”182 The three-mile-wide
shelf was where the nurseries of future food fish were located, and this
basic physical condition had to set the framework for the new regulation.
According to Suárez, the legal regime not only had to react to the new
biological findings, but also had to be integrated into a humanistic
educational concept. Whales appeared to him as actors whose needs
had to be met through international law. Whales, in particular, were
“happier in this than men, are ignorant of jurisdiction and national
frontiers and observe not international law but internationalism; the
sea for them is a single realm.” The report interpreted international law
as a living organism that needed to keep evolving. As an aquatic animal,
the whale was essentially migratory and, given this characteristic, it
should find “its counterpart in a legal solidarity in the sphere of inter-
national law in which we are working.”
In a similar report, Suárez linked the need for legal solidarity to the
geopolitical circumstances of that period. He portrayed the whales as
“refugees” with an instinct for self-preservation, who were driven by
whalers across the oceans of the world. In doing so, he purposefully

180
Id.
181
Id. at 2.
182
Id. at 2.
146 the l eag ue o f n ations and t he whaling dilemma

established displaced individual rights, refugees, and peace as central

tasks for the League.183 During a time when central parts of the League
were committed to protecting minority groups and communities in need,
the Codification Committee, and Suárez in particular, deliberately staged
the whale as an icon of persecution and exploitation – one whose
protection depended on the League and its mechanisms of international
law.
As expressed in many other discussions throughout its environmental
regime,184 the League was not actually satisfied with diplomats alone, but
rather emphasized the role of experts – and of scientists in particular. The
case of whaling drew heavily on, and gave special expression to, their
expertise.
The Committee’s conclusions seemed to oppose whaling powers. The
conclusions appeared all the more daring since the Codification
Committee and the League both had a very young history, and question-
able authority compared to other nations sharing the same diplomatic
space and capacity. The Codification Committee, young and inexperi-
enced as it was, knew that in order to better promote the goal of whale
conservation, it would need to keep the picture as international – and as
professional – as it could. This meant not favoring competing commercial
and industrial (and national) interests instead. Alongside “regular” dip-
lomats, jurists, and statesmen, scientific experts were very welcome:
We therefore recommend that the Council should summon a Conference
of technical experts connected with both the economic and the scientific
aspects of the problems involved; that these experts should be selected not
upon a national basis but in such a way as to represent the different
regions involved and the different kinds of species involved.185

This mode of international investigation also encouraged Suárez to pro-

mote his visionary proposal for a new whaling regulation, the main
elements of which had been introduced in the concluding report as general
183
Report on the Exploitation of the Products of the Sea (Rapporteur: J.L. Suárez), Nov. 2,
1927, LoN Archives C.196.M.70.1927, at 124.
184
As well as others, including humanitarian and sociopolitical ones. See the discussion in
Chapter 5, in which I elaborate on the role of experts in the daily professional diplomatic
routine of the League. For a variety of studies on the central role of professional experts
in the institutional work of the League see, e.g., T H E L E A G U E O F N A T I O N S ’ W O R K O N
S O C I A L I S S U E S : V I S I O N S , E N D E A V O U R S A N D E X P E R I M E N T S , supra note 2.
185
Action Copy of Proposed Conclusions submitted by M. McNair on behalf of the
Committee of Experts for the Progressive Codification of International Law,
Questionnaire No. 7. (Products of the Sea), Mar. 28, 1928, LoN Archives, 19/58475/
47284, at 2 (emphasis added).
 2.3 interwar diplomacy 147

protection measures, which posed an almost direct threat to whaling

nations and the industry. It seems that Suárez’s role as an expert enabled
him to obtain a leading position in drafting the whaling regulation. One
can also assume that the tailwind of the previous round (with the support
Suárez had found in the replies and the international concern for the future
survival of the whale) served as a backdrop for introducing his advanced
ideas and suggestions for a complete draft of a revolutionary whaling
convention. After Suárez asked to dismiss all previous conventions as
insufficient or too commercial, these suggestions for conservationist and
preservationist solutions began to include ideas such as rotating sanctuar-
ies, closed seasons for any kind of whaling, and a diplomatic principle by
which all nations should be both involved in and subject to any new and
unprecedented regulation.
International diplomatic and legal activity continued after the Paris
meeting had concluded. At the time, whaling nations, and especially
Britain, watched not without a certain concern as the League’s initiative
gained momentum. The questionnaire, its special focus on the issue of
whales and whaling, the growing (and surprising) interest of so many
non-involved states and agencies, and the fragile period as a whole
required decisive action. The British government decided to call together
a special (and in some ways competing) body to better deal with the
emerging danger: not the danger threatening the survival of whales on
the high seas, but rather the one that threatened British and other
whaling nations’ interests in keeping the oceans – and the whales – as
a free, accessible common. Representatives186 from eleven different gov-
ernment agencies convened in London at the beginning of October
that year (1927), half a year after the Paris experts meeting was
adjourned, for a pan-British discussion on the way the League was
handling the question of whaling in terms of international law.
During the meetings and discussions of the Interdepartmental
Conference on the Question of International Control of Whaling,
a similarity emerged regarding the League’s reliance on scientific obser-
vations and the British conference’s use of data provided by professional
experts. Both forums based their arguments and conclusions on experts
and scientific discourse. Much of the British resistance to firm inter-
national regulations at that point was based on the support of different
scientists and experts. With this kind of science-based discourse, the

186
The special London committee assembled not only scientists and diplomats, but also
high-ranking officials.
148 t h e l e a gue of n at i o n s an d the whaling d ilem m a

British governmental gathering187 tried to promote and defend both

commercial and imperial interests, and to maintain a much more “bal-
anced” equation than the one sketched on behalf of the League with the
Codification Committee.
In one set of its minutes, the British Interdepartmental Conference
concluded that priority should be given to commercial needs and not to
the conservation cause, stating that “the object to be kept in view was to
safeguard the economic future of the industry, and ultimately to secure
that the annual destruction of the whales should not exceed the natural
annual increase.”188 As a counterattack to the dire forecast presented by
the League prior to the British move, Stanley Kemp, one of the British
officials, declared that fin and blue whales were actually “as numerous as
ever”; he also claimed that humpbacks might just have been migrating
differently on the high seas.189
Along with the Paris meeting of experts and the (British) London
Interdepartmental Conference, 1927 also brought another important
player to the whaling table. One of the important decisions made at the
Paris meeting was the formal collaboration with the International
Council at Copenhagen – the formal name of the consortium of leading
whaling industries and governmental agencies that was based in
Denmark.190 Like other pro-whaling players in the 1920s and 1930s,
the Copenhagen Council watched with great concern how the League’s
initiative was making its way toward what the Council saw as its oceans
around the world. It seems that the fact that the Council also managed to
obtain itself a formal role in the League’s routine had a certain effect on
narrowing the radius of the League’s authority with regard to promoting
relatively conservationist perspectives, and also regarding its chances of
succeeding in its mission.
Efforts to engage the Copenhagen Council in the whaling dilemma had
started prior to 1927. Throughout the long process of gathering replies to
the questionnaire, whaling nations were lobbying the Copenhagen Council
to come on board. Moreover, given the need for technical expertise,
economic experts, on behalf of the League’s Economic Committee (like

187
With officials of the Colonial Office, Foreign Office, India Office, Admiralty, Ministry of
Agriculture and Fisheries, as well as several other administrative agencies.
188
Minutes of the Interdepartmental Conference on the Question of International Control
of Whaling, Oct. 12, 1927, NAC, General Records of the Ministry of Fisheries, vol. 1081,
File 721–19-5[3].
189
Id.
190
See in Section 2.3.3 above.
 2.3 in t er wa r dip loma cy 149

their jurist peers on the Codification Committee), were looking to the

Copenhagen Council for assistance. In September 1927, the Assembly
officially approved this approach.191 In one of the following conclusions
prepared by the Codification Committee, it concluded that it was up to the
Assembly to determine that the Committee “study, in collaboration with
the International Council at Copenhagen and any other organization
specially interested in this matter, the question whether and in what
terms, for what species and in what areas, international protection of
marine fauna could be established.”192
Although the League had collaborated with a variety of non-state
actors throughout its two decades of activity, its cooperation with the
Copenhagen Council – which several members of the League encour-
aged – actually turned out to be a problematic decision from an envir-
onmentalist or pro-whale perspective. Although the League often
involved a variety of organizations (which sometimes had opposing
views to its leading member states) to contribute to its initiatives, it tied
its hands by recruiting the Copenhagen Council to its mission. Much of
the Codification Committee’s enthusiastic spirit to deliver change for
the devastating world of whales became limited and supervised by the
Copenhagen Council: indeed, though it was a non-state actor, which the
League often favored, the Copenhagen Council supported a framework
that decisively represented and promoted the interests of whaling
nations and industries.
Whether the Codification Committee’s initiative was progressive or not,
the League’s institutional framework and legal routine set a procedural
example for others to follow. Members of the Committee, as representa-
tives of the League, started to collaborate with the Copenhagen Council to
comply with a resolution adopted by the Assembly on September 23, 1927,
which additionally required them to reach an agreed international con-
vention. “I have been especially entrusted with the matter,” wrote Charles
Smets, an official of the League Secretariat, to Adolf Jensen, Chief of the
Department of Statistics in the Ministry of Finance in Denmark,
and I venture therefore to ask if you could . . . approach people from the
International Council . . . in order to find out if they have any ideas about
what might be done, i.e. on what lines they contemplate such collaboration

191
Work of the Committee of Experts for the Progressive Codification of International Law:
Resolution adopted by the Council on June 13, 1927, LoN Archives, A.18.1927, at 7.
192
Report of the First Committee for the Progressive Codification of International Law to
the Assembly, Sept. 23, 1927, LoN Archives, 62453 A. 105. 1927. V., at 5.
150 t h e l ea gue of n at ion s a nd th e w hal i ng d il e mma
and for what species of animals they think that some kind of international
protection is needed and could possibly be secured.193

In many ways, the League’s collaboration with the Copenhagen Council –

likely influenced by certain whaling powers’ attention and the League’s
reliance on scientific and professional diplomacy during the interwar
period – was akin to letting the fox guard the henhouse. The League –
and not the Codification Committee – allowed the Copenhagen Council,
a body with clear commercial interests and economic incentives, to supply
data and to define part of the planned international policy. The expertise
and cooperation the Copenhagen Council had to offer released the
Codification Committee from duty. With Resolution E 346 of its
September Session, the Assembly empowered the Economic Committee
to investigate the issue, and the legal experts of the Codification Committee
who had launched the initiative seemed to step aside. With them, Suárez’s
universal approach became weakened.
The late 1920s were a crucial time for the endeavor to protect the whale
through international law. The Codification Committee and its question-
naire; the vivid responses of key players and new voices in the inter-
national arena; the preliminary suggestions for legal restrictions and
limitations on whaling; the Paris meeting of experts and the London
Interdepartmental Conference – all this and more heralded a new kind of
internationalism. Suárez’s initiative to summon a conference including
experts in applied marine zoology, persons engaged in marine (and
whaling) industries, and jurists marked an opportunity to overcome the
powerful whaling and commercial lobby. Institutionalized as this move
was, in many ways it was driven by Suárez’s pioneering and Quixotic
spirit; with his death, the conservation lobby became vulnerable in the
tough world of interwar diplomacy. In 1929 Suárez passed away and, with
him, part of the progressive conservationist agenda faded too, which
removed the need for certain League departments.
In these uncertain times, the League, as a forum that aimed to promote
scientific expertise, opened the door to other bodies besides the
Copenhagen Council. As the Council continued to gain power in this
fierce match, another scientific body joined the discussion. Zoologists
from across the globe had been paying close attention to Suárez and the
progressive attitude he and the League were advocating. In 1929 another
scientist – this time from a non-member nation, the United States – wrote
193
Letter from Charles Smets to Adolf Jensen, Nov. 11, 1927, LoN Archives, 19/63036/
62524, at 1–2 (emphasis added).
 2.3 interwar diplomacy 151

to the League in the hopes of supporting the initiative. In the late 1920s, the
conservationist lobby’s loss of one of its main leaders194 seems to have been
offset by Remington Kellogg joining the discussion.
Kellogg was an American scientist and a doctor of zoology and paleon-
tology, and a member of the American Society of Mammalogists.195 As
a leading American naturalist, Kellogg had already been concerned with
conservationist ideas since the early 1920s, when he conducted the
Biological Survey of 1921 based in Washington. His scholarship focused
on marine mammals. When he compared databases that were created by
previous expeditions, Kellogg became – much like his late South American
colleague, Suárez – a true and passionate advocate of whale conservation.
His position as a scientist whose field of expertise was whales (and
whaling),196 and the growing importance of scientific expertise in the
work of the League, put him in an apt position to influence the institution’s
work to follow Suárez and the Codification Committee’s path.197
It should be noted that Kellogg was not the only American scientist
who watched the whaling scene with great concern. The fear of over-
exploitation was common among a small – but influential – group of
prominent experts, who joined a lobby calling for more public attention
to the environmental problem that humankind had created in the oceans.
Starting in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the American Society of
Mammalogists took up an important role in the League’s international
discussions.
Moreover, after addressing the League, Kellogg was invited by the
Institution to speak at the special conference the League would soon
assemble in 1931. During the second half of the short, but intensive,
chapter of the League, Kellogg was appointed as the United States
delegate to the International Conference on Whaling to be held in
London in 1937,198 which will be discussed later on.

194
Professor Suárez died in 1929. In retrospect, his death was likely one of the key reasons
for the lost battle to protect the whale during the interwar period.
195
Later on he was also known for his position as the Director of the United States National
Museum.
196
Kellogg’s PhD dissertation established him as an international authority on cetaceans.
197
For a more detailed description of Kellogg’s endeavors to protect whales in the open sea,
see Frank C. Whitmore, Jr. Remington Kellogg, in B I O G R A P H I C A L M E M O I R S :
N A T I O N A L A C A D E M Y O F S C I E N C E S O F T H E U N I T E D S T A T E S O F A M E R I C A (V O L .
4 6) 155–74 (1975).
198
Kellogg continued to serve the whale cause even after the LoN had collapsed. He was
head of the United States delegation in two further conferences in 1944 and 1945 (which
took place outside the League’s auspices). Moreover, his prominent role in American
152 t h e l e a g u e of n a t i o n s a n d th e w h a l i n g d i l e m m a

This specific American environmental advocacy played, at least to some

extent, a role in the evolution of the whaling dilemma. The external
involvement of nations such as the United States enabled engagement
with diplomacy and international law – and not necessarily through formal
and hierarchical channels. The League, with its in-transition framework,
which in different cases was also driven by grassroots movements and
initiatives from below, enabled – and even encouraged – this kind of
participatory and practical international law during the interwar period.
But whaling powers, with the assistance of the Copenhagen Council,
put up a persistent fight. With Suárez no longer around to courageously
promote conservation efforts, anti-overexploitation agents appeared to
be losing some of their hold on the campaign. As the 1930s arrived, the
issue was passed on to the Economic Section of the League, which sought
advice from the Copenhagen Council.

2.3.5 The Early 1930s and the First International

Whaling Convention
The second decade of the League opened with new suggestions for
solutions from the toolbox of international law. Some of Suárez and the
Codification Committee’s conservationist ideas managed to find their
way in after being discussed in the diplomatic routine of the League, and
were articulated in the legal documents that were eventually introduced
as a product of the institutional process, while others were left aside.
While the leading whaling nations, particularly Norway and Great
Britain,199 were set on putting a spoke in the wheels of whaling diplomacy
as they rushed to defend their industries, other forces – besides scientists
and dedicated conservationists – were advocating for the protection of

diplomacy on this issue can also be seen in his appointment as the Chairman of the 1946
Whaling Conference, after which he became the United States Commissioner of
International Whaling Commission between 1949 and 1967. He served as Vice
Chairman of the Commission between 1949 and 1951, and as its Chairman between
1952 and 1954.
199
Side by side with Japan and France, both of which had been whaling close to their home
shores and had commercial interests in expanding and developing their national whaling
industries. Although the Codification Committee extracted some relevant material from
the French reply to the questionnaire (see my discussion in section III.b. above) that fit
its pro-conservation agenda, both France and (especially) Japan eventually displayed
a growing reluctance toward the initiative of Suárez and the Codification Committee.
The fact that at least two of the nations central to the establishment of the League of
Nations – Great Britain and France – resisted the environmental aspects of the
Codification Committee had a lot to do with the final results of this move, as I will show.
 2 . 3 in t e r w a r d i p l o m a c y 153

the whale. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, besides the support from
non-involved states200 to revise the status quo, states such as New
Zealand and the United States – which had a direct interest and were
involved in international whaling – embraced scientific warnings in
support of the League’s whaling regulation campaign.
Shortly before the League’s Economic Committee took the next steps
in the process of international consultation, and convened another meet-
ing of experts in Berlin in the summer of 1930, the dilemma became more
complex. A formal report from the New Zealand government weighed up
the need to promote the conservation of the whale as a species against the
maintenance of whale oil stocks as a global natural resource.201 Almost
simultaneously, it seems that the efforts and scientific advocacy within
the American administration, which was carried out by the American
Society of Mammalogists, bore fruits: the State Department favorably
received anti-whaling petitions, as well as special public statements
submitted by a new scientific NGO, the Council for the Conservation
of Whales,202 which was led by the American Society. In one of its
reports, sent to the Secretary of State in the early 1930s, this environmen-
tal scientific-civilian organization urged the American leadership to take
a central role in whaling diplomacy efforts, which the League sought to
promote, and to save “these wonderfully adapted creatures, the greatest
mammals that have ever inhabited the globe.”203
New Zealand and the United States promoted a conservationist agenda
and supported international regulation; however, the fact that they were
not leading actors in the interwar diplomacy, and that the United States
was not a member state of the League, meant that like Suárez, some of
their influence and weight soon disappeared. This marked a certain shift
between the two sides of the whaling equation.

200
Such as Roumania or Venezuela (as I elaborate in Section 2.3.2 above).
201
Whaling Industry and Ross Dependency: Historical Sequel of Incidents (October 1929),
Archives of New Zealand, Records of the Ministry of External Affairs, ABHS 950/
W4627, File PM 104/6/9/1, pt. 2.
202
The American Society of Mammalogists, watching with great concern how the whale
faced the threat of extinction in the early twentieth century, established the Council for
the Conservation of Whales, a scientific organization founded and organized by biolo-
gists and other scientists. In the period under investigation, its main agenda was
conducting and promoting scientific studies, supporting quantitative databases, and
establishing channels of communication with the American administration, and relevant
regulation.
203
Clinton Abbott, Director, Natural History Museum of San Diego, to Secretary Stimson,
Mar. 2, 1932, United States National Archives [hereinafter USNA], RG 59, File 562.8Fi.
154 t h e l e a g u e of n a t i o n s a n d th e w h a l i n g d i l e m m a

Following the earlier discussions, the deliberations of experts, and the

preparatory institutional work of the Codification Committee and the
League, the second meeting of experts was organized by the Economic
Committee and gathered in June 1930 in Berlin in order to create the
whaling convention. At the meeting, representatives from most of the
whaling nations pieced together a draft for a convention that would later
be adopted in 1931, at the League’s final formal convention. One of the
reports from the Berlin meeting stated that the layout of the central
articles used Norway’s 1929 whaling law as a blueprint.204 Moreover,
although the meeting was meant to find ways to save the riches of the sea
and “to help the whaling industry,” the subtitle of the final report
additionally emphasized the “protection of whales.”205 As it was still no
more than a general layout for a complete convention, the preliminary
proposal suggested more research to determine whether it would be wise
to outlaw whaling, as planned, in tropical and subtropical waters.206 As
preliminary as the Berlin proposal was in legal terms, two of the British
officials that were involved in the June meeting explained that it marked
“the beginning of international regulation of whaling.”207
Based on a mandate given by the Assembly, the Economic Committee
had to investigate together with the Copenhagen Council “whether and
in what terms, for what species and in what areas international
protection . . . could be established.”208 The Economic Committee was
eager to present useful results, and quickly. The ambitious questionnaire
and the steps that followed turned into a draft that referred exclusively to
a single economically relevant species – baleen or whalebone whales – as
agreed in Article 2 of the draft convention.
Common support for the Berlin proposal209 paved the way for the full
official document. Following the Berlin meeting, the League convened
the London Whaling Conference in June 1931, which prepared the final

204
Report to the Economic Committee of the League of Nations on the Question of
Whaling, Berlin Meeting of Experts, June (undated) 1930, LoN Archives, RG 25, vol.
1543, File 455, pt. I [hereinafter Report to the Economic Committee].
205
Report (by the Economic Committee) to the Council on the Work of the 32d Session,
June 14, 1930, LoN Archives, C.353.M.146.1930.II, at 8.
206
Report to the Economic Committee, supra note 204.
207
P. A. Clutterbuck to A. W. Leeper, Nov. 27, 1930; and Leeper’s reply, Dec. 1, 1930,
NAGB, FO 371 14932 W382/50.
208
Extract from Minutes of the 1st Meeting of the 55th Session of the Council, June 10,
1929, LoN Archives 19/41260/10950.
209
Report (by the Economic Committee) to the Council on the Work of the 32d Session,
June 14, 1930, LoN Archives, C.353.M.146.1930.II, at 8.
 2 . 3 in t e r w a r di p l o m a c y 155

draft; and on September 24, 1931 it introduced its first full proposal for
a binding international convention: the Convention for the Regulation of
Whaling, 1931.
The 1931 Convention (or the “1931 Geneva Convention”) was actually
one of the first conventions achieved by the League. In legal terms, the
1931 Convention brought to the surface new and unfamiliar ideas
regarding nature and enforcement. For example, it covered “all waters
of the world,” including both the high seas and states’ territorial and
national waters (Article 1). Although the open sea was no-man’s-land
prior to the establishment of the League, now the League’s explicit
jurisdiction regarding whales according to the convention stretched
across all seas. Moreover, the 1931 Convention demanded that the
signing states take “appropriate measures” to ensure both the application
of its articles and the necessary “punishment” of their infractions.
The attempt to place the whaling industry under the supervision of
international law was an ambitious move in the early 1930s. Article 8
demanded that all whaling vessels be licensed. International law had the
chance, even if only on the books, as a legal source of authority to enforce
what seemed to be a practical licensing system to monitor hunters out in
the open sea.
Although Suárez was already gone, some of his ideas did prevail. At
large, and though it was far from being a perfect solution to the whaling
problem, the Geneva Convention aimed to protect the biological life
cycle of at least some of the whales. Article 5, for instance, banned the
killing of calves, immature whales, and female whales accompanied by
their calves, a practice that was common among whalers. The importance
of scientific expertise also continued to grow and it took on a central role
in discussions on the dilemma: according to Article 10, all signatory
states were obliged to create a quantitative statistical and scientific data-
base within a central organization.
The League also used the Geneva Convention to battle certain eco-
nomic incentives in whaling, which were sometimes more powerful than
any legal restriction. According to Article 7, whalers were no longer to be
paid solely based on the number of whales they caught. In this way, the
Geneva Convention aimed to disincentivize the indiscriminate hunting
of whales.
Moreover, the first whaling convention did not focusing on industrial
whaling alone, which was considered the only real threat to the survival of
whales. The Geneva Convention also took into account whaling carried
out by native peoples. These traditional methods, so far removed from the
156 t h e l e a g u e of n a t i o n s a n d th e w h a l i n g d i l e m m a

explosive new hunting technologies and titanic floating factories used in

commercial whaling, were exempted by Article 3. As long as coastal
aboriginal peoples utilized “canoes, pirogues or other exclusively native
craft propelled by oars or sails,” and on the condition that they did not use
firearms or employ non-aboriginal staff on their vessels, these traditional
and autarkic methods were exempted from the 1931 Convention.210
And yet, it was not as conservationist a regulation as the Codification
Committee would have liked to achieve. Despite the different restric-
tions, and apart from the species banned by Article 2, new international
whaling law still allowed the hunting of (adult) whales with almost no
restraint. New Zealand, for instance, complained about this very point
during the final stages of the draft, when the new convention was about to
impose “no restriction upon the number of whales that may be taken.”211
The 1931 Convention managed to secure only some of the dwindling
species.
The Geneva Convention was opened for signature on September 24,
1931. It was to be completed by April 1, 1932. The League’s initiative had
a degree of international influence given that major whaling powers, such
as Norway and Britain, had joined it (even though it contained several
restrictions that had the potential to limit their industries). Norway, for
instance, did not hesitate to sign. A few days earlier, King Haakon had
instructed Foreign Minister Birger Braadland to sign the agreement on
the day of the opening ceremony.212 However, in general, the League
found the whole process to be alarmingly slow. The Director of the
Economic Committee, Pietro Stoppani, wrote to the entire team of
experts who had advised the League on the draft convention. The experts
needed to act as diplomatic bridgeheads and influence their home gov-
ernments to sign the agreement quickly.213 Stoppani relied on their direct
influence, especially since the experts themselves had an interest in
ensuring that their work was successful.
Charles Smets, the coordinator of the League, was afraid of a possible
failure and moved to push the 1931 Convention forward. After three
210
For a discussion on the sources of the ways in which the international whaling regulation
acknowledged traditional and nonindustrial whaling, see Reeves, supra note 71.
211
Governor General Bledisloe to J. H. Thomas, Dominion Affairs, Apr. 22, 1931, Archives
of New Zealand, Records of the Ministry of External Affairs, File PM 104/6/9/I, pt. 2,
“Whaling General” (quoted by D O R S E Y , supra note 4, at 47–48).
212
Report to the League of Nations from the Government of Norway, Sept. 18, 1931, LoN
Archives, 3E/31390/31270.
213
Letters from Stoppani to the members of the Economic Committee, Oct. 12, 1931 and
Feb. 1, 1932, LoN Archives, 3E/33029/31270.
 2 . 3 i nt e r w a r d i p l o m a c y 157

months, only eleven countries – Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India,

France, Norway, South Africa, Britain, Spain, Colombia, and Greece –
had signed the agreement. Therefore, in November, Smets wrote to
Lucius Eastman, who had represented the United States as an expert,
about how important the Geneva Convention was for the United States
in scientific and economic terms.214 Smets referred to a March 1931
Senate hearing in which an initiative of American organizations called
for intervention to protect whales and other marine mammals, which
coincided with the convention’s restrictions. Smets claimed that the
convention directly served American domestic interests and offered
solutions to the whaling problem, as mentioned in the Senate’s statement:
a win-win situation. Smets needed the Americans as a key player. The
League needed another strong modern nation that would follow Britain,
France, and Norway, to demonstrate how international solidarity could
look beyond immediate commercial interests. International solidarity in
the early 1930s could have been built on environmental challenges: “I
hope that you will be able to convince your government that in signing
the above Convention it will be giving evidence of solidarity which I am
certain will not fail to constitute a most useful example.”215
Not only the Economic Committee, but also the Council and the
Assembly of the League repeatedly stressed that the convention had to
be signed by as many states as possible, including those not directly
involved in whaling. This was the precondition for preventing companies
or individuals from practicing illegal whaling under the flag of non-
contracting states. Soon afterwards, President Herbert Hoover had the
Geneva Convention signed.216
But Smet’s hope that the American accession influence other nations was
not so easily achieved. Despite the American approval, the signing process
stagnated and the Secretariat tried tirelessly to push the project forward.
Smets was anxious to use the institutional capabilities of the League. He
asked Gunnar Jahn, a Norwegian representative who had participated in
some of the experts meetings, whether he could suggest in Oslo that Norway
and Britain persuade those governments whose signature to the convention
was still pending.217 At the end of February 1932 – the end of the signing
period was approaching – Smets, again in collaboration with the Norwegian
214
A letter from Charles Smets to Lucius R. Eastman, Nov. 27, 1931, LoN Archives, 3E/
33029/31270.
215
Id.
216
Report to the League from Mar. 16, 1932, LoN Archives, 3E/33029/31270.
217
A Letter from Smets to Jahn, Dec. 14, 1931, LoN Archives, 3E/23031/466.
158 t h e l e a g u e of n a t i o n s a n d th e w h a l i n g d i l e m m a

delegation in Geneva, wrote an urgent letter (to be sent by Britain and

Norway) to the states which still had not acceded. The call stressed that the
parties were dismayed at the low number of signatories and that only
a universal recognition of the convention could prevent abuses of this source
of wealth, “which remains at the disposal of all but which is seriously
imperiled,”218 in the future. As with the Americans, the letter appealed to
the “sentiments of international solidarity” and urged nations to sign the
convention as soon as possible.
The laborious process continued. By 1935, twenty-six states had signed
the convention. International whaling regulation finally came into force
on January 16, 1935. The League did not miss the opportunity to prepare
a special press release and announce its success publicly. This was
something the entire world should know about, since the convention
was “a certain human interest.”219 At the same time, the League stressed
the unfinished nature of the agreement, stating that the project would
only be successful if all states signed it and that it “should be adopted by
every country in the world, whether maritime or not . . . .”220
In fact, it turned out that the Geneva Convention was generally not very
effective in reducing the overexploitation of whales either as a precious
natural resource, or as an endangered species. However, the League had
some success. Reaching an overall restriction on the number of whales that
could be caught, even of certain species, put a new kind of legal discourse on
the table. Certain parties who negotiated later whaling conventions or
arrangements would rush to remove all trace of this conservationist agenda.
The 1931 Convention, imperfect as it was, promised a protective shield
against intensive whaling – the first time such a thing had been imple-
mented through mechanisms of international law. One can argue that it
also had a macro effect in terms of external legal frameworks. A bilateral
agreement signed in 1936 between Britain and Norway, in which both
countries’ whaling companies agreed to restrictions on the length of the
whaling season of 1936–37, might have had something to do with the
intense dynamism of whaling diplomacy led by the League.221 If the 1931
218
Note Draft: Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, (no date; probably late
February), LoN Archives, 3E/35394/31270.
219
Note by the Information Section, Oct. 28, 1934, LoN Archives, 3E/14201/4483.
220
Communique No. 7240 by the Information Section, Jan. 22, 1935, LoN Archives, 3E/
14201/4483.
221
Excessive hunting in the Antarctic, and the intensification of whaling in the late 1920s,
emphasized the tragedy of the commons syndrome. The growing demand for margarine
in societies and industrial markets saw an increase in the number of vessels on the high
seas, which brought the whaling season of 1930–31 to an unprecedented (and
 2.3 interwar diplomacy 159

Convention failed to push nations into this new world of conservation,

the possibility of introducing the kinds of restrictions that these two
leading whaling nations (with their mighty fleets and industries) took
upon themselves was uncertain.222
And yet, these achievements that followed the 1931 Convention some-
how stood in the shadow of continuing reluctance by important whaling
powers. The Soviet Union, Japan, and Germany, all of which were prolific
whaling powers,223 refused to sign the convention. Germany was using
whale oil to reduce its need to import edible oil; whereas, Imperial Japan
was using the profits from exporting whale products to finance its
imperial goals and missions in China and Manchuria.224 Against this
backdrop, given the competing interests, the story of whaling regulation
certainly deserves the term “dilemma.” Politics, commercial incentives,
and ambitious scientific experts created a picture that could have ended
differently. The Germans, for instance, were deeply involved in the
whaling discussions, especially between the 1920s and 1930s. Berlin in
the Weimar Republic was actually the city that hosted the experts meet-
ing of summer 1930; however, Germany then decided to pursue its
industrial interests entirely.
This is not to suggest that the 1931 Convention was “a collective
failure” and “ineffective in its aims”;225 however, it does reflect the fact
that several key players were absent as a result of their clear economic and
commercial incentives. This is particularly relevant when taking into
account that these three powers together accounted for almost 30 percent
of international whale hunting in the period under investigation. The

dangerous) peak: no less than 3.6 million barrels of precious whale oil were produced by
the different fleets. However, this eco-commercial race to the bottom actually created an
oversupply in the markets, especially given the historical context of the Great
Depression. Some historians claim that this was the major reason behind the 1936
special bilateral whaling agreement between Britain and Norway (see, for instance,
D’Amato & Chopra, supra note 9, at 31). The fact is, it was actually the British-
Norwegian agreement that was the first of its kind to introduce noncompliance with
whaling regulation as an international offense. Further comparative research might
reveal the ties between the 1931 Convention’s spirit (and the Codification Committee’s
assertive agenda) and the progressive protectionist measures presented by such leading
whaling nations in the middle of the 1930s.
222
This agreement, negotiated after both countries joined the 1931 Convention, strength-
ened several conservationist legal measures. For the first time, an international penalty
was provided. In addition, the regulated area was increased and a sanctuary area between
the countries was also introduced.
223
Nagtzaam, supra note 7, at 394.
224
D E S O M B R E , supra note 26, at 151.
225
Id.
160 the l eague o f n ati ons and t he whaling d i l emma

problems of implementing and enforcing international legal mechan-

isms – particularly during a preliminary stage of institutionalized inter-
national law such as the one during the interwar period – did not skip the
complex and elusive issue of supervising a far-off activity on the high
seas. In fact, the databases and the reports reveal that in the first year
under the 1931 Convention, the number of whales caught worldwide was
the highest ever recorded.

2.3.6 Toward the 1937 Convention: The Media Picks a Side

In many respects, the 1931 Convention and the difficulties that came with
enforcing its new mechanisms led the League (and other bodies involved)
to search for a more suitable solution.
Indeed, several players tried to come up with alternative transnational
mechanisms. Some of the big whaling companies attempted to imple-
ment initiatives aimed at self-regulation in an effort to stabilize the
phenomenon of overexploitation. For the whaling seasons of 1933–34,
for instance, the major Antarctic whaling companies – which formed the
International Association of Whaling Companies226 – voluntarily agreed
to restrict their hunting expeditions, in what might be called a “regime of
mutual production restraint.”227
However, in the mid-1930s, the 1931 Convention proved to be
a problem in the whaling business. Not all of the parties involved were
satisfied with the legal results and capacity of the convention. Japan, for
instance, refused to sign it, and both Norway and Britain decided this act
should not go unnoticed. They made a formal diplomatic complaint in
Tokyo, urging Japan to join the treaty and to adjust its whaling law, just as
the European powers had. It was not very successful. The Japanese
Foreign Ministry formally refused to share the burden. Unlike its
European peers, Japan’s national whaling industry was still young and
underdeveloped, the letter from Tokyo explained.228 Hence, it still
needed time to catch up with the rest of the whaling states.
The implementation of the 1931 Convention caused several states to
revise their restrictions. The Japanese whaling expeditions (if not their

226
The Committee for Whaling Statistics, International Whaling Statistics VI, LoN
Archives, 1 (1935).
227
JOHN VOGLER, THE GLOBAL COMMONS: ENVIRONMENTAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL
G O V E R N A N C E 49 (2000).
228
A Letter from Gaimusho to Royal Norwegian Legation, Oct. 31, 1935, NAGB, FO 371
19625 246/50, 10730.
 2 . 3 i nt e r w a r d i p l o m a c y 161

entire industry) were best known in the West229 for their unique method
of extracting relatively little oil (compared to Western whaling tech-
niques); their crews were chiefly interested in whale meat, and not in
oil as the Europeans were. The result of this alleged culinary-cultural
difference was a horrible layer of whale carcasses scattered across the
surface of the oceans, especially in Antarctica. This was, in legal terms,
a violation of the 1931 Convention; the only problem was that Japan had
never joined it. A similar environmental and legal concern arose follow-
ing reports on Japanese whaling practices. Diplomats in the West230
presented evidence that Japanese whalers were hunting blue whales
with calves, and demanded that Japan ensure its fleets comply with
international standards and international law as articulated in the 1931
Convention.
In many ways, the 1931 Convention only strengthened the urgent need
to build a broader and more comprehensive global whaling regime –
especially in light of German and Japanese whaling fleets crossing the
oceans and exacerbating the ruthless competition of the 1930s. After
Suárez stepped down from international regulation, the League’s
Economic Committee picked up the baton. The period that followed
the first convention can also be told through the lens of the mass media
and increasing international public opinion on the issue of whales.
Western media picked the League’s side in the dilemma, identifying it
as a central player – and more than that, the most suitable and compe-
tent – in this game of interests on the high seas.
By 1936, two years after the 1931 Convention had gone into effect, more
than “just” scientists were concerned about what the future held for the
whales. The New York Herald Tribune231 wrote an investigative story about
the whaling problem and the potential extinction of the species. The
newspaper’s Editor in Chief wrote to the League, identifying it as the
most capable body to handle the dilemma and protect the whale. In this
letter, the Herald Tribune complained about a new whaling fleet that had
been built in Northern Europe, which seemed to be a violation of the 1931
Convention. In this way, the media gained a certain (noninstitutionalized)

229
Some scholars argue that some characteristics of the Japanese whaling technologies and
preferences would last and affect international whaling up until the late 1950s. See, for
instance, D O R S E Y , supra note 4, at 62–63.
230
Especially in Britain and Norway.
231
The New York Herald Tribune was a newspaper published between 1924 and 1966. It was
created in 1924 when the New York Tribune acquired the New York Herald. It was
relatively popular and competed with The New York Times in the daily morning market.
162 t h e l e a gue of n at i o n s an d the whaling d ilem m a

influence in the international battle on whaling, just as scientific expertise

and NGOs had in the interwar period. Under the headline The Passing of
the Whale, the popular American newspaper explicitly encouraged the
League to take the lead as it “would do industry and science a good service
if it were to interest itself in the future of an animal that has benefited men
so much in the past.”232
To the current staff of the Economic Committee, this was also a trigger
for positive international public relations for the League. The game of
establishing international law was, in many ways, mutually beneficial to
the parties involved. NGOs, scientific associations, devoted professional
experts, and even the media turned to the League for guidance, seeing the
possibilities and opportunities this new institution offered. At the same
time, as an institute literally under construction, the League was looking
for new pathways to legitimacy and authority. Environmental fears, and
the whaling concern in particular, called different agencies and voices to
join the evolving turbulent discussion. The League’s relatively flexible
institutional structure, with its committees, subcommittees, and fora
such as the Council and the Assembly (not to mention specific individ-
uals and officials, sometimes with their own private agendas), created
a broad base for taking part in crafting international law from scratch.
The League sought worldwide attention and wished to drive the global
public discussion. While it may not have initiated the many petitions,
letters, and applications it received from so many different bodies, or the
growing interest of the international media, it seems that at least in some
cases the League took into account the institutional benefits it could gain
from such involvement in environmental problems and discussions on
possible solutions.
In the small note below the newspaper’s petition, one of the Economic
Committee officials laconically mentioned to his colleagues in Geneva:
I think we might make a little propaganda by posting . . . our activities
regarding whales, and by sending him the text of the Convention. Besides,
as he says, doing humanity good, the whales might perhaps do us a bit of
good too, in the shape of inspiring a laudatory article.233

The Herald Tribune’s interest was not the only time the media became
involved in whaling and international law. Correspondence between

232
Extract from the article “The Passing of the Whale” from the New York Herald Tribune,
Nov. 10, 1935 sent to the League Secretariat on Jan. 9, 1936, LoN Archives, 3E/21971/
4483.
233
Id. (emphasis added).
 2 .3 in te r war dip lomac y 163

representatives from South Africa and the League during the early 1930s
also dealt with this issue. In November 1930, J. Willis wrote to the League
on behalf of the government of the Union of South Africa. The govern-
ment sent a letter from Durban with the title “Danger of Whale
Exterminations,”234 based on scientific data that it possessed. South
Africa referred the League to an article that was published in The Times
of London and warned of the coming danger. The South African official
addressed two bodies that the government perceived to be relevant and
competent: Initially, he wrote to the newspaper “for the purpose of
focusing public attention”; but then, he also approached the League,
sending a copy of the article235 for its review and consideration.
The role of the media and public relations in the whaling dilemma
became clear to diplomacy, and to those advocating for creating
a progressive international whaling law in particular:
Your Committee [the Economic Committee] will agree that this matter is
of international importance and it is hoped that when sufficient data has
been obtained, prompt action will be taken to prevent indiscriminate
slaughter. Legislation by International agreement is imperative if the
species are to be saved from extinction.236

Like the Herald Tribune, The Times was deeply concerned about the
hunting fleet that was being built in both Norway and Great Britain. The
South African government, collaborating with the League, approached
the editor in London and furnished him with further details (as a follow-
up to the article) taken from the Annual Report (1929) of the Principal
Fisheries Officer for Natal. The Times and its readers needed to be aware
of the danger of the “wiping out of certain species of whales,” the
diplomatic-media collaboration between South Africa and the League
warned.237 The increase in whaling throughout the late 1920s had set
alarm bells ringing; in the special letter, the newspaper’s editor revealed
that the catch and output of whale oil “eclipses all previous records of the
industry since operation on this Coast started in 1908.”238
Particular concern was expressed about the humpback species, which
was one of the main targets of the whaling industry and its vessels, owing
234
Letter to the Secretary, Economic Committee, League of Nations, from J. Willis, Durban,
Natal, Nov. 26, 1930, LoN Archives, 3E/24696/466 (I) [hereinafter Letter from Willis].
235
The Letter was addressed to Pietro Stoppani, the Italian Chair of the Economic
Committee during that time.
236
Letter from Willis, supra note 234, at 1 (emphasis added).
237
Id.
238
Id. at 1.
164 the l eag ue o f n ations and t he whaling dilemma

to the high yield and quality of the whale’s oil. The international media
was aware that this species in particular comprised nearly 90 percent of
the bulk of whales killed, “a fact that among protectionist circles [was]
causing much alarm.” As the industry turned its gaze on the new stocks in
the Ross Sea, and especially in the Antarctic regions, some “great fears”
were expressed regarding operations at the time set up by Norway and
Britain. To the media, at least in the 1930s, the pressing situation pre-
sented an opportunity. While there was much to be done to combat these
new threats using the tools of international law under the auspices of the
League, almost as important was the fact that this environmental cam-
paign would simultaneously rely on the internationalist media:
The fleet, which consists of 23 Norwegian and 1 British whaling exped-
itions, with crews totaling 6000 men, is the largest number of vessels yet
dispatched to hunt whales in these latitudes, that up to now have remained
immune from operations of whaling ships. In addition . . . there are
several factory ships of between 12,000 and 13,000 tonnage, including
the largest Transport afloat, the Kosmos, of 32,000 tons, which for scout-
ing purposes is equipped with an aeroplane.239

The tensions surrounding the whaling question now also became more
common within the whaling industry itself,240 especially among the
states. Despite some progressive solutions, the 1931 Convention did
not manage to solve the core problems of the dilemma. Further steps –
in terms of international law – had to be taken.
Ten leading states took part in the next whaling conference, held in
London in the early summer of 1937. In fact, besides the Soviet Union
and Japan241 (which explicitly refused to take part in the second confer-
ence), most of the whaling forces took part in this event. Portugal,
Canada, and South Africa sent their representatives as observers;

239
Id. at 1–2.
240
The whalers themselves had realized at this point that domestic measures, introduced by
several active states, were just not enough given the depth of the problem. Indeed,
Iceland (which despite its geographical size controlled a significant portion of global
whaling in the first decades of the twentieth century) was first to legislate; Norway
followed suit several years later with similar legislation. However, the databases and the
numbers reported to the Committee for Whaling Statistics have shown, in real time, that
these efforts did not change the overall picture.
241
Japan was doing more than not taking part in negotiating international regulations. In
early March, Japan’s Minister of Fisheries and Agriculture announced to the Diet
(Japan’s national bicameral legislature) a governmental plan to expand pelagic exped-
itions. Estimations in the West predicted that no less than four new floating factories
would sail toward the Antarctic, with eight planned expeditions for the 1938–39 season.
 2 .3 in te r war dip lomac y 165

Germany continued its intriguing and ambivalent policy, participating in

the 1937 Conference though it had never ratified the League’s first
convention. The issue was also important enough in the late 1930s for
the governments of Australia, Argentina, the Irish Free State, New
Zealand, and Britain to be involved. The Americans, it should be stressed,
maintained their special role within the environmental dilemma of
whaling242 and, although the United States chose not to join the League
itself, it did send an official delegation.
Continuing its role in the early 1930s, the United States even intensi-
fied its role in the international environmental issue. American scientists
and civilian associations (in what can be termed “civilian diplomacy”)
became more involved, and the federal delegation to the London
Conference of June 1937 officially declared America’s special role in the
matter.
The conclusions of the London Conference were articulated into
a second convention, the International Agreement for the Regulation of
Whaling, which was signed in London on June 8, 1937. In many ways, it
responded to the problems of the Geneva Convention. First, it aimed to
deal with the challenge of non-signing states, such as Japan and the Soviet
Union. Second, it was attempting to keep pace with the rapidly advancing
industry.
Using the momentum of international regulation, the pelagic whaling
states succeeded in persuading countries that relied on land stations to
additionally accept restrictions on waste, a minimum catch size, and
seasons similar to those applied to pelagic whalers under the first con-
vention. Just as the 1931 Convention had secured243 the safety of right
whales, the new 1937 Convention extended this protection to gray
whales.244 Other ideas, originally suggested by Suárez in the late 1920s,
finally managed to find their way into a new agreement. Among them was
the introduction of restricted hunting areas and limitations on the length
of the whaling season. Article 7 limited whaling to the period from the
eighth day of December to the seventh day of March. Moreover, the new
London Convention reclaimed the protection of mothers with calves

242
The United States was also the first nation to quickly and enthusiastically ratify the 1931
Convention (followed by Switzerland and Norway).
243
Even if one can critically argue that these species were secured by international law on
the books alone, but not in action. For a more general discussion on the question of the
gap between formal law and law in practice, see, among others, Jean-Louis Halpérin, Law
in Books and Law in Action: The Problem of Legal Change, 64 M E . L. R E V . 45 (2011).
244
See Article 4.
166 the l eag ue o f n ations and t he whaling dilemma

(Article 6), complete utilization of carcasses (Article 11), and mandatory

collection of data from whaling expeditions for scientific monitoring
(Article 17). A special professional inspector was allocated to each
(factory) ship to ensure that restrictions on the size of the catch were
adhered to for humpback, fin, sperm, and blue whales – the most hunted
and popular species.
Like its predecessor from 1931, the London Convention had its
achievements and failures. Its achievements, even if they were (for the
sake of discussion) merely formal,245 offered at least some legal protec-
tion for young and immature whales. The 1937 Convention also acknow-
ledged certain problems regarding its own implementation. Since some
whaling states were not part of the agreement, they enjoyed the unfair
advantages that not signing afforded them. As a result, the London
Convention aimed to ensure compliance as far as possible. For instance,
signatory states were to prevent the transfer of whaling ships to any
reluctant state that did not join the convention.
However, the second convention did not solve the problem. Far from
it. Given Japan’s absence, the whaling industry refused to accept the
quota principle and continued to catch as much as it was able (of the
nonrestricted species). One way or the other, during the murky years of
the late 1930s, when fascist and ultra-fascist powers were on the rise, the
League dedicated special attention and abundant institutional energy to
the restless whaling dilemma.
Neither the London Conference nor the improved 1937 Convention
was the final chord in the League’s campaign. One year later, in early
June 1938, a few months after Austria’s Anschluß (annexation) into Nazi
Germany246 and almost three months prior to the Munich Agreement (of
September that year), the League began to increase its pressure on the
environmental problem. Delegates from leading whaling nations met
(again) in London.247 Besides the clear call to make the 1937
Convention as global as possible, and the wish to see other nations join
and sign it, there was also an intention to fix the earlier agreements. On
the legal agenda this time was the Protocol on Regulation of Whaling,248

245
D’Amato & Chopra, supra note 9, at 31.
246
Austria was annexed by the Third Reich on Mar. 12, 1938.
247
The 1938 Conference had two parts: first, the delegations assembled in May in Oslo for
preparatory discussions, and then returned to their countries; they reconvened in
London in June.
248
Protocol on Regulation of Whaling, June 24, 1938.
 2.3 interwar diplomacy 167

which was set to amend the original agreement (of 1937) and to prepare it
for the future.
The short-term nature of the 1937 Convention made it unique: it came
into force in 1938 and was originally set to apply for one year.
Accordingly, the parties could then extend its duration and terms. They
did so in London one year later, while diplomats were actually working
on the next legal stage even before it had gone into effect, and before all
the states had fulfilled their commitment by ratifying it.
The accession of France and Australia to the 1937 Convention con-
tributed to the increasing momentum of international whaling law and
the campaign. Politically speaking, the main aim in that summer of 1938
was to bring Japan and other states into the circle and, above all, to bind
its whaling industry to the developing regulation. The partial enforce-
ment of the former convention indicated – both to the League and to
those parties that had studied its execution – that any whaling agreement
must include all whaling nations, otherwise its effectiveness would
remain in doubt. Many of the whalers who were bound by the 1931
Convention complained about their unfair situation: other whalers249
were taking advantage of the fact that the new, hard-line regulations
applied to their commercial opponents. Moreover, revising the earlier
whaling agreements resulted in whaling states claiming – as Japan was
doing – that they could not accept legal limitations that had not been
mutually accepted by other states. Japan had argued, for instance, with
regard to the North Pacific, that as long as the Soviets were not part of the
equation, they would be at a distinct disadvantage.
The Japanese stance gained center stage that summer. Akira Kodaki,
a formal official on behalf of the Embassy of Japan in London, attended
the discussion.250 At the time, Imperial Japan was building the whaling
vessel Tonan Maru 3, the largest commercial ship in Japanese history,
and two sister ships, which formed the backdrop of the international
discussions in Oslo and London. Moreover, a glimpse of the interaction
between environment and war can be seen in this issue.251 The growing

249
Mostly Japanese, but also industries of other states. South Africa, for instance, was still on
the fence in the summer 1937 and had not yet joined the 1937 Convention; other parties
claimed this was equally unfair.
250
International Whaling Commission [hereinafter ICW]/1938/13, Minutes of the 2d
Session, June 15, 1938, UNSA, RG 59, File 562.8F3, at 10.
251
For an example of studies that combine environmental history and military history see,
among others, N A T U R A L E N E M Y , N A T U R A L A L L Y : T O W A R D A N E N V I R O N M E N T A L
H I S T O R Y O F W A R (Richard P. Tucker & Edmund Russell eds., 2004).
168 the l eag ue of n ations and the whaling dilemma

concern and resentment over Japan’s lack of cooperation and its con-
tinued whaling activity intensified in the late 1930s: the threat of Japanese
whaling and naval power was very real as Japanese officials discussed the
possible military value of their whaling vessels.
From an institutional perspective, the League actually intended to
strengthen its hold in order to better supervise and control the world of
whaling. The new planned legal arrangement of summer 1938 was
supposed to implement changes that some states wished to see come
into effect, and to set the terms for the next whaling season of 1938–39.
The American, German, British, Argentinian, and Norwegian represen-
tatives decided to support an extension of the existing deal of 1937. This
intention probably had something to do with the sobering statistics:
compared to the relatively “reasonable” figure of 9572 whales hunted in
the season of 1931–32 that followed the first convention, the data of the
late 1930s were overwhelming – more than 46,000 whales were hunted in
the season of 1937–38.252 Even more concerning was the dangerous shift
in the species targeted: during the years of the first convention, the blue
whale was the main target of whaling ships (roughly two-thirds of the
1931–32 catch); however, the numbers showed that their share shrunk to
less than one-third during the 1937–38 season. Shrinking blue whale
populations in the oceans meant that whaling expeditions started to
chase other species instead, first and foremost the (smaller) fin whales.
The delegations at the two-part conference in Oslo and London were
aware of the economic-environmental implications of these data. “The
question is not purely an economic one,” noted one of the Norwegian
representatives, Birger Bergersen,
it is first and foremost . . . a biological question. [W]e have to think about
the next generation. What will they think if we take the last whale? . . .
I really think as a biologist that it is a shame, a terrible shame for our
generation and for our time, if this wonderful animal, one of the most
splendid existing, should disappear.253

The Protocol Amending the International Agreement of June 8th for the
Regulation of Whaling continued the progressive line throughout that
decade. Besides providing more accurate and precise legal definitions for
some of the terms of the 1937 Convention (like the definition of a land

252
Antarctic whaling: 1904/5–1938/9, Material in Connection with International Whaling
Conference 1939, USNA, RG 59, File 562.8F3.
253
Proceedings of the Morning Session, Preliminary Whaling Conference, Oslo, May 19,
1938, USNA, RG 59, File 562.8F3.
 2.3 in t er wa r dip loma cy 169

station in Article 18), the 1938 Protocol provided several additional

protective measures. New conservationist ideas found their way into
improved legal provisions. Other whale species received legal protection
from the League, such as humpbacks (Article 1). And the 1938 Protocol
expanded the basic concept of sanctuary that had previously been intro-
duced to include the far southern reaches of the Pacific Ocean (Article 2).
The intention behind these restrictions was to make the Antarctic waters
between longitudes 70° and 170° west as secure as possible. The scientific
observations introduced in the discussions admitted that there was still
not enough data on the condition of whales in the late 1930s in that vast
region.254 However, given the growing specific interest in whaling exped-
itions in the Antarctic, principles of caution had the upper hand.
Moreover, the diplomatic process between Oslo and London served as
an opportunity to bring other environmental ideas to the table, even
though they were not ultimately included in the 1938 Protocol. These
included fixed limits on the number of catcher boats per expedition and
a call to legally restrict whaling to the use of electric harpoons (instead of
explosive ones).255 All in all, it seems that the discussions reflected
a growing understanding that, besides the variety of proposed mechan-
isms, the effectiveness of any international whaling regime would rely on
the number of whales that could be hunted during the whaling season. The
global supervision of the number of barrels of oil produced was also
suggested, and relied on the League’s ability to uphold this kind of harsh
regulation. Above all, the idea of a global quota in summer 1938 seemed
inevitable, with the survival of the whale at stake. As Henry Maurice,
a British fisheries official active on whaling matters and who participated
in the discussions, asserted: “We all realize that ultimately if we are going to
save the . . . whales we have got to get down to quantitative restrictions.”256
More broadly, the 1937–38 discussions made room for the revolution-
ary idea of banning all whaling completely – perhaps the first time this was
done so publicly and on such a scale. The whaling operations in the second
half of the 1930s seemed to be somehow immune to the League’s legal
restraints – so much so that a radical (and controversial) idea was pro-
posed. With whaling operations so excessive, and with numerous
reports257 warning of the danger of complete destruction of the species,
254
ICW/1938/23, Report of the Sanctuary Committee, NSNA, RG 59, File 562.8F3.
255
ICW/1938/25, Minutes of the 4th Session (afternoon), June 17, 1938, NSNA, RG 59, File
562.8F3, at 14.
256
Id.
257
B I R N I E , supra note 28, at 129–30.
170 the l eag ue of n ations and the whaling dilemma

it was suggested that the League completely withdraw its legal restrictions.
This would allow “indiscriminate whaling” to continue until whale stocks
had become so depleted that whaling ceased to be remunerative.258
Although not too many states supported this last move, the League was
almost unstoppable; at least with regard to the whaling problem. Several
other states, such as Germany, eventually came on board too and acceded to
the 1937 Convention and the 1938 Protocol. Despite the turbulent atmos-
phere of the international arena in 1938, eight states ratified or complied259
with the latest agreement, while another twelve countries were invited to
join. International pressure, and perhaps a certain sense of urgency, resulted
in another important victory: Japan declared in June 1938 that it too would
accede to the convention in the following year.260
The campaign was not over yet. The officials and bodies striving for
whale conservation were aware that they had still not fulfilled their
promise of ensuring the future existence of whales. Like its legal prede-
cessor, the 1938 Protocol did not represent the finish line for the whaling
dilemma.
One year later, in August of 1939 – shortly before Hitler’s armies
would storm Poland – further modifications were made to the 1938
Protocol. Delegates met once again with the Japanese representative,
Kodaki, who officially reported that Japan would accede before the next
season started; Japan’s leading whaling companies, however, opposed the
move. During this (last) session, delegates extended the protection
offered by the 1937 and 1938 Conventions to include a ban on the
hunting of humpbacks, and the addition of a second inspector to each
factory ship, in an effort to strengthen compliance and enforcement.261
While these improvements may not seem that significant compared to
the milestones of the 1930s, the legal-environmental additions of 1939 –
along with legal measures promoted since the mid-1920s – emphasized
the League’s leading and pivotal role in the saga. Encouraged by Japan’s
positive response to its efforts, the League prepared for the next steps
a couple of weeks before September 1, 1939. Optimistic as whaling

258
J O H N S T O N , supra note 42, at 400.
259
Compared to the nine that signed the 1937 Convention, and twenty-six that signed the
1931 Convention.
260
Kodaki, the Japanese delegate, also mentioned that this acceptance relied on the agree-
ment of the other delegates to open whaling in the North Pacific. See ICW/1938/29,
Minutes of the 8th Session, June 23, 1938, UNSA, RG 59, File 562.8F3, at 4–5.
261
Minutes of International Whaling Conference, 2d Session, Aug. 17, 1939, NAC, RG 35,
vol. 1823, File 112, pt. 1.
 2 .4 c o n c l u s i o n 171

diplomacy was under the auspices of the League, the states agreed to meet
again in the new year.
However, the significant progress achieved since the Codification
Committee’s original initiative and the preliminary questionnaire of
March 22, 1926 was about to be put on hold.

2.4 Conclusion
The conclusions of this discussion are multifaceted. Regarding the effect-
iveness of the outcomes of the whaling legislation, it is true that the
various legal frameworks proposed by the League could neither save
the whale nor solve the problem. As some scholars have claimed, the
agreements of the 1930s largely failed to achieve their state objectives. As
Patricia Birnie summed up, this was due to the “inadequacy of the scope
of regulations; inadequate scientific data; non-cooperation by some
major whaling nations; poor enforcement of arrangements and no inter-
national supervision or control; and lack of global interest.”262
But putting aside relevant questions about the enforcement of inter-
national law and the problems this entails (including nowadays),263 it
seems that we can also view the role of the League in a broader context. In
order to better understand the evolving legal history of whaling regulation –
and the role of the League within the complex history of whaling – the
interwar whaling regime deserves special attention, whatever its practical
outcomes were. Even if, for the purpose of this discussion, all the League had
done was introduce an inadequate environmental-legal framework, at least
some of the ideas and solutions that were raised merit legal study and
analysis. After all, the very nature of legal discussions and considerations,
including those of our time, is based on the notion of a constant exchange of
ideas, mechanisms, and legal drafts.
Environmental ideas, and especially solutions – whether about redu-
cing carbon dioxide emissions in the late twentieth century, or drinking
reclaimed or recycled wastewater and sewage – do need, as environmen-
tal history shows us, a few dialectic moves before they can achieve at least
some of their aims. The League was doing much more than simply airing

262
B I R N I E , supra note 28, at 129–30.
263
For an examination of the mechanisms that currently exist to enforce international
environmental agreements (especially treaties), including a discussion and an illustra-
tion of various shortcomings of the current international legal framework, see, among
others, Andrew W. Samaan, Enforcement of International Environmental Treaties: An
Analysis, 5 F O R D H A M E N V T L . L. R E V . 261 (2011).
172 t h e l e a g u e of n a t i o n s a n d th e w h a l i n g d i l e m m a

differences of opinion and putting new ideas on the table. Its 1931
Convention reflects an evolving process in which different states, scien-
tific associations, and commercial bodies were able to engage with one
another on their competing interests. In legal terms, the convention
brought to the surface new and unfamiliar ideas. Article 9, for instance,
covered “all waters of the world,” including both the high seas and states’
territorial and national waters. This principle alone reflected the legal
notion China had completely rejected during the first round of the 1926
Questionnaire.264 Some of the articles marked an evolution in the world
of international law. Although the open sea was no-man’s-land prior to
the establishment of the League, now the League’s explicit jurisdiction
regarding whales stretched across all seas.
Not all of the ideas that the League gave a voice to were included in the
final drafts and legal arrangements. One such example was a total com-
mercial whaling ban,265 which was a revolutionary idea in the mid-1920s.
Another was the shift from protecting several species in a positive legal
manner (which both the 1931 and 1937 Conventions achieved for right
whales, baleen or whalebone whales,266 and grey whales),267 to a general
protection of whales in the 1946 Washington Convention; here, the law
explicitly named those specific species that from now on were allowed to
be hunted, and not vice versa.268 However, in many ways, the League’s
existence served as an opportunity, or a laboratory, to process these ideas
and present them to the international arena.
International law immanently needs time; and this seems to be par-
ticularly true of environmental international law. Thanks to the intensive
role taken on by the League, the interwar period marked an important
phase in the genealogy of whaling regulation, especially its layered struc-
ture. The League identified most of the central tensions in this dilemma
and at least some of the necessary solutions. Still, only a small portion of

264
See China’s resistance as I have discussed it in Section 2.3.2 above.
265
It was actually the International Whaling Commission that voted to introduce the
moratorium on commercial whaling in 1986, once it became apparent that the numbers
of whales being killed were unsustainable and jeopardized the whale population.
266
See Articles 2 and 4 of the 1931 Convention.
267
See Article 4 of the 1937 Convention.
268
One of the first opening remarks of the International Convention for the Regulation of
Whaling, signed in Washington on December 2, 1946, asserted “[r]ecognizing that in the
course of achieving these objectives, whaling operations should be confined to those
species best able to sustain exploitation in order to give an interval for recovery to certain
species of whales now depleted in numbers” (The Introduction to the 1946 Washington
Convention).
 2.4 c on c lus ion 173

these found their way through the obstacles of international law and
diplomacy. In addition to the usual difficulties involved in crafting
international law, these solutions also had to navigate international
relations, powerful commercial interests, and the growing fear – and
sometimes even resentment – of leading political forces, some of which
were actually the founding forces behind the establishment of the League
as a post–World War I international institution. The League played
a vital role in raising innovative ideas and progressive solutions, even if
some of these did not ultimately find their way into final drafts and
official agreements.
Moreover, almost the entire historiography of environmentalism
refused to interpret any noncommercial motivation or perspective in
an effort to face the challenge of whaling in the interwar period. John
Vogler, for instance, argued that the behavior of the whaling companies
was motivated “by the need to maintain and support oil prices in
a depressed market [of the Great Depression] rather than any concern
with long-term sustainable management.”269 Others have explained that
the regulation led by the League from 1918 to 1931 was actually an
initiative of the hunting and fishing industries. However, at least some
of the norms that were reflected during the complex negotiations
included preservationist ideas and calls for sustainability. Arguments
such as the claim that the negotiations were “limited to merely protecting
the long term viability of the whaling industry rather than the welfare of
whales,”270 seem inaccurate, to say the least.
Throughout these discussions, one encounters noncommercial envir-
onmental terms and definitions that featured strongly in the legal and
diplomatic discourse of the League. Of course, the powerful whaling
industry maintained a strong influence over the whaling problem and
its suggested solutions, and the early chapters of the dilemma reveal both
the measures the industry took and its involvement in the battle over
international environmental law. And yet, the industry, as powerful as it
was, was not the only significant player in this battle. Scientists joined
marine biologists; concerned states approached the League and asked
that the whales be rescued; and NGOs fiercely tried to convince the
League and its committees to recruit international law for the conserva-
tion of the whale.
269
V O G L E R , supra note 227, at 49.
270
G E R R Y J. N A G T Z A A M , T H E M A K I N G O F I N T E R N A T I O N A L E N V I R O N M E N T A L T R E A -
TIES: NEOLIBERAL AND CONSTRUCTIVIST ANALYSES OF NORMATIVE EVOLUTION
162 (2009) (emphasis in the original).
174 t h e l ea gue of n at ion s a nd th e w hal i ng d il e mma

The League played a significant role in unmasking many of the players.

Don Manuel Malbran, the Argentinean delegate to the June 1938 London
meeting concerning the 1938 Protocol, cynically stated, “I am inclined
to believe that each delegation is taking into consideration, above
everything else, the interests of each country . . . . We could not accept
any agreement limiting the activities of the existing land stations, nor
any commitment which could prevent us from establishing new land
stations.”271
As Britain suspected before the Great War, the League changed inter-
national whaling law not only in terms of routine, legal mechanisms, and
procedure, but also in terms of who got to play the game of international
law. Unlike earlier attempts to regulate whaling, the League shattered the
closed doors of the traditional diplomatic club – or at least enabled its
transformation. States, diplomats, scientists, jurists, whalers, and bureau-
crats all turned to the League as an institution with which they could
bargain and share their agenda.
The League also changed the framework of international environ-
mental law as it enabled nontraditional players to step in and participate
in crafting different arrangements. Instead of only traditional powers
making the decisions, the League opened the door to nations less
familiar, but no less relevant or legitimate, such as Roumania, China,
and Brazil, all of which took on an active role in the campaign and in the
legal discourse. In that sense, certain states used the whaling dilemma as
a way to establish a place for themselves in the discussion on inter-
nationalism in general, and not necessarily because they were con-
cerned for the survival of the whale (at least not in the long run).
Explicit declarations – such as those of Brazil, for instance – support
my claim that environmental concerns, such as whaling, actually
enabled these (relatively) new voices to get their foot in the door.
“The democratisation of the world, the equality of States,” mentioned
the government of Brazil as it dealt with the question, “are the constitu-
ent elements of a new international order which necessitates the careful
definition of reciprocal rights and duties.”272
Opening the issue of whaling to international discussion, as the League
had begun to do in the mid-1920s, invited new voices and different
perspectives – rather than favoring or protecting the obvious British,
271
International Committee of Whaling Archives, Cambridge, England, 1938/21, Minutes
of the 4th Session, June 17, 1938, at 15–16, UNSA, RG 59, File 562.8F3.
272
Opinion of Professor Clovis Bevilaqua, Legal Advisor to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
received on Feb. 28, 1927, LoN Archives, 19/57699/47284, at 2–3.
 2.4 c on c lus ion 175

Norwegian, Japanese,273 and other whaling nations’ interests in keeping

their industries intact and beyond any kind of international interference,
whatever its form. Given the League’s intensifying involvement, it seems
that the traditional whaling nations were slowly losing their grip on an
industry that they had dominated for a long time.274 The British, for
instance, concluded a short while before the introduction of the League
that a call for large-scale international involvement would simply invite
other states to develop their own whaling industries. Moreover, right
after the League had started to investigate this issue, the British govern-
ment argued that any agreement that did not include all the great
maritime powers would be “rendered futile” by those powers.275 Thus,
despite its eventual collaboration with the League, Britain – with its
special attitude toward whaling – was pretty cautious about any drive
toward international whaling regulation276 in the near future.
The structure of the League enabled the belief that it has the ability
both to solve different problems across the globe,277 and to literally shape
and create international law. The modes of operation and mechanisms
the League employed, such as open-for-discussion questionnaires and
legal documents, were unfamiliar to most of the players who took part in
the League’s new international, legal, and diplomatic activities.
Distributing a draft of what might become a relevant base for further
discussion – not to mention for legal articulation by a new convention (as
the Codification Committee promoted) – seemed to be an opportunity

273
Though Japan claimed all throughout the 1930s (probably intentionally and in order to
dodge any international limitation by regulation) that its whaling industry was still
“young” and underdeveloped in comparison to the Western nations (especially
Norway and Britain).
274
However, other scholars, such as Dorsey, have claimed it was the industries’ own
concern for the survival of “their” natural resource that stimulated the move toward
international regulation. See, D O R S E Y , supra note 4, at 58–59.
275
Minutes of Interdepartmental Conference on the Question of International Control of
Whaling, Oct. 12, 1927, NAC, RG 23, vol. 1081, File 721–19-5[3]. Perhaps one of the
reasons for Britain’s suspicion of any international action on the issue was the acknow-
ledgement that any conference on whaling would also have to include certain Latin
American states, especially rival Argentina, which would endeavor to make an issue out
of British control over the Falklands.
276
John W. Field, “Proposed International Action for the Protection of Whales,” Jan. 9,
1926, National Archives of Australia, MEA Records, Series A981/4, File WHA 9,
“Whaling and Sealing – Regulation International Measures. To 15.4.30.”
277
For a broad overview of the different tasks and missions the League took on (rather
enthusiastically), see The L E A G U E O F N A T I O N S ’ W O R K O N S O C I A L I S S U E S : V I S I O N S ,
E N D E A V O U R S A N D E X P E R I M E N T S , supra note 2.
176 t h e l e a g u e of n a t i o n s a n d th e w h a l i n g d i l e m m a

that almost none of the states wished to miss, regardless of their ties to the
matter at hand.
These new modes of operation, and the new world suggested by
institutionalized international law, also enabled other bodies to step in
and to influence international law directly and precisely. The “spectacular
gathering”278 of the world’s statesmen, jurists, experts, and scientists of
different fields revived and inspired the international engagement not
only of neutral non-state actors, but also of certain players that wisely
identified the new forum as a new opportunity for various kinds of
NGOs – from commercial and industrial consortiums to scientific boards
of museums and research centers. Many of these, like the International
Mercantile Marine Officers Association, felt that they were also a genuine
part of international law. The association’s secretary at the head office in
Antwerp believed that its members had a direct interest in the evolving
discussion on whaling, and wrote an application279 asking that their
perspective be heard and included in the discussions and conclusions.
Through this environmental discussion on the future of whales and
whaling, many of these NGOs and non-state actors280 “re-imagined
themselves as actors in global governance.”281
The replies of at least some of the states – most certainly those that
supported international interests over the commercial interests of whal-
ing nations – and the League’s new format, which for perhaps the first
time in modern history gave new states a voice equal to that of stronger
and richer powers, all backed up Suárez and “his” Codification
Committee. The international evidence, reaching to the League’s
Secretariat from different corners of the globe, supported the hope (at
least of some of the League’s officials) of achieving a new convention that
would save the whale from disaster. Given the involvement and concern
of member and nonmember states alike on the issue, the Codification
Committee developed a source of authority, in a sense, to further develop
this initiative.

278
Wöbse, supra note 18, at 521.
279
Letter to Robert Hass, Director of the Communication and Transit Committee of the
League of Nations, Dec. 30, 1927, LoN Archives, 19/63331/63331 (III).
280
In that sense, and while discussing nontraditional players, it seems that the media should
also further be studied as a new kind of non-state actor, but a rather different one than
NGOs. Just like scientific expertise and NGOs, the media gained a certain noninstitu-
tionalized stake in the international battle on whaling.
281
Steve Charnovitz, The Emergence of Democratic Participation in Global Governance
(Paris, 1919), 10 I N D . J. G L O B A L L E G A L S T U D . 45, 77 (2003).
 2 . 4 co n c l u s i o n 177

As whaling nations intently watched the League’s efforts to create an

international whaling law, most of them realized that this ship had
already sailed. No matter their reluctance to regulate whaling, they surely
did not wish for it to be subject to the League’s voices and agenda –
especially given that the League was using its new institutional power to
invite many new and unfamiliar players (all with their own perspectives,
interests, and ideas of how international regulation should look) to
become involved. Other powers and interest groups were almost “forced”
to become involved in the ongoing discussion. Otherwise, the new rules
would have left them behind.282
The League also served as a suitable space for some of the internal
discussions, and also controversies, among the whaling powers them-
selves. The discussions on the 1938 Protocol revealed this tension. As the
years went by, and as regulation moved ahead, the interests of pelagic
whaling powers on the one hand, and states with land stations on the
other hand, began – in a technological era of floating factories283 – to
conflict. Traditional whaling powers, such as France and Argentina,
complained bitterly to the League that their industries could not survive
with so few catches, particularly when Norway and Britain’s emerging
whaling fleets had enhanced their vessels and used floating factories to
process their whale products out on the open sea. In London, in the
early summer of 1938, the pelagic powers used international law as
a warning (and deterrent) that once new obligations had been placed on
whaling, they would demand new restrictions for land stations too,
given the fact that these sites disrupted the breeding of humpback
whales in particular. In any event, no more than a couple of months
before World War II, the League managed to convince most of the
players that whaling had the genuine ability not only to eliminate the
282
Indeed, one of the main problems – and failures – of the interwar whaling campaign was
the fact that some of the leading whaling powers were notably absent. Japan, for instance,
consistently refused to acknowledge any authority the League claimed to have on this
issue. But it seems this behavior was a response to the resilience the League had been
showing, and the role it had assumed, for more than a decade. In the period almost post
League of Nations, and actually in the midst of World War II, a series of legal agreements
were negotiated and also signed. The most prominent at the time was probably the 1945
Protocol, which was signed by a long list of whaling nations, such as Norway, Canada,
the United States, the Union of South Africa, the United Kingdom, Denmark, France,
Mexico, the Netherlands, and more. As the 1945 Protocol was about to come into force
in 1947, the Soviets saw the growing international awareness and joined as well. This
series of legal arrangements warrants, I believe, further study in the future.
283
Which obviated the need for regular factories to produce products out of the hunted
whales brought to the shore.
178 t h e l e a g u e of n a t i o n s a n d th e w h a l i n g d i l e m m a

shore stations and factories, but to destroy the worldwide whale popu-
lation rapidly, unless the industry and the different players were regu-
lated, supervised, and monitored.
Another concluding remark focuses on the central role of scientific
expertise throughout the different discussions and suggested solutions.
Scientists influenced early international agendas as a whole, and envir-
onmental aims and concerns in particular. They operated in the orbit of
international organizations, whether it be the American Association of
Mammalogists, urging the League to act due to the danger of the whale’s
coming extinction, or the International Conseil of Copenhagen, advan-
cing different data of the whaling industry. Scientific expertise was
therefore instrumental in constructing the intersection of the inter-
national, environmental, and industrial spheres.
It was the League that enabled scientific warnings to be heard. Other
scholars argued that although developments had been achieved in whal-
ing, it seemed impossible that “a few men on a remote speck of land could
affect the whale population of a vast ocean.”284 However, the discussions
this chapter uncovered show how and to what extent scientific experts,
and their alarming concerns, stimulated the interwar period discussions
over the dilemma.
It is true that scientists had long warned of the potential extinction of
whales. The Canadian scientist William Wakeham, for example, con-
cluded several years before the League’s establishment that whaling on
the North American east coast of Canada had maybe one more season
before the whales were all chased away or driven to extinction due to the
big bang in modern whaling.285 Moreover, in 1911, diplomats and
scientists discussing the status of the North Pacific fur seal agreed that
other sea creatures would be fruitful subjects,286 and relevant ones, of
diplomacy. Once these parties had reached a multilateral solution on
the seal dispute,287 some of them also made early suggestions regarding
the “maintenance” of whaling. Already at this point, ideas and recom-
mendations for legal measures – such as a ten-year closed season, or
a ban on the use of floating factories in the open sea –288 had been heard.

284
T Ø N N E S S E N & J O H N S E N , supra note 40, at 183–84.
285
William Wakeham to Fisheries Secretary, July 26, 1913, NAC, Records of the Ministry of
Fisheries, vol. 1081, File 721–19-5[1].
286
D O R S E Y , supra note 4, at 31.
287
For a discussion on the 1911 Sealing Convention, see Thomas A. Bailey, The North
Pacific Sealing Convention of 1911, 4 P A C . H I S T . R E V . 1 (1935).
288
On right and bowhead whales.
 2 . 4 co n c l u s i o n 179

However, these scientific and legal inspirations toward a binding

international law still needed a suitable and lasting institutional frame-
work. Already in the 1910s, for instance, the British had taken the lead on
collecting data on catches made by whaling ships under their jurisdiction.
In the meantime, early voices within the British administration overseas
started to express concern about problems that had begun to develop in
the case of whaling.289
With this comparative perspective, a double conclusion can be noted.
First, these earlier (mostly scientific) voices that had warned of
a coming extinction prior to the League also acknowledged the lack of
a practical or feasible solution to address this concern. The British
government understood that monitoring and controlling whaling on
such a large scale on the high seas posed a unique problem. The
Colonial Office mentioned that this issue was ultimately290 one that
would have to be solved internationally.291 However, at the turn of the
century, and during the first two decades, the farthest-reaching solution
that the British had in mind was an abstract transnational agreement
with their Dominions, Norway, and several whaling states from South
America.292
And second, the ongoing reluctance of certain parts of the scientific
community to support intensifying whaling, which can be traced during
the turn of the twentieth century, places the role of the League on
a developing historical timeline. The interwar period saw certain trends
develop, such as the growing awareness of the dangers of whaling; the
League bridged the gap between early ideas and preliminary solutions
from before 1919, and current institutional frameworks, which allowed
for these early ideas to be transformed into “real” international legal
agreements.

289
On South Georgia, for instance, J. Innes Wilson, the stipendiary local magistrate,
reported back to Lord Harcourt, the Secretary of State for the colonies, that the whalers
had a difficult time separating males from females out in the open sea. However, what is
even more interesting at this point in the discussion is Wilson’s rage against the British
whalers, who admitted in front of him that they are hunting calves in order to capture
their mothers, who rushed to protect their young. Wilson, far away from London
Metropolitan, was calling for (British) regulations to halt this practice (J. Innes Wilson
to Lord Harcourt, Apr. 8, 1912, NAGB, FO 371412/109, pt. 2, “Correspondence
Regarding the Preservation of Whales”).
290
D O R S E Y , supra note 4, at 32.
291
H. W. Just, Colonial Office, to Foreign Office, Apr. 20, 1912, NAGB, FO 371412/108,
pt. I.
292
Id.
180 the l eag ue o f n ations and t he whaling dilemma

Analyzing the role of scientific discourse during the whaling dilemma

invites additional ideas within that context. The role of Kellogg and the
American Society of Mammalogists illustrates the indirect ways in which
American involvement in the League’s activities became quite promin-
ent. Although the United States was not a member state, it seems that
scientific expertise in general – and environmental science in particular –
enabled both American individuals and associations to take part in the
new institutionalized internationalism the League was promoting.
This specific American environmental advocacy did play, at least to
some extent, a role in the evolution of the dilemma.293 The external
involvement of nations such as the United States enabled engagement
with diplomacy and international law – and not necessarily through
formal and hierarchic channels. The League, with its in-transition frame-
work, which in many cases was also driven by grassroots movements and
initiatives from below, enabled – and perhaps even encouraged – this
kind of practical and participatory international law. However, other
historians have so far tended to overlook this involvement, or refer to it
only laconically.294
Indeed, not all the scientific facts and claims that were presented in the
1920s and 1930s were accurate or complete. As a matter of fact, the
players who resented the League’s aspirations of creating a new and
promising international whaling law often pointed to the lack of useful
scientific knowledge,295 or accurate and reliable databases on which to
base such important decisions (especially when it came to their commer-
cial interests and their sovereignty). Perhaps these claims were true; and
maybe no scientist in the first decades of the twentieth century could have
known for sure how old or large a great whale had to be before it could
reproduce, for example, or what whales’ real migration patterns were like.
And yet, the rise of the League, and its leading role in trying to solve the
whaling dilemma, became possible thanks to the unique role of scientific
expertise in this institutionalized internationalism. Acting on behalf of
293
I take into account the continuing involvement of the United States in regional arrange-
ments of whaling regimes. Both the US and Canada already had a common history of
promoting the conservation of marine resources, starting with the 1911 North Pacific
Fur Seal Convention, and followed by the joint agreements with Canada on fisheries in
the 1920s.
294
Dorsey, for instance, mentions the American involvement very briefly, while other
historians such as Stoett or D’Amato and Chopra skip it altogether: “Because this was
a league effort, it also drew attention from nations with no direct stake and from some
that were not league members, like the United States.” (D O R S E Y , supra note 4, at 40).
295
Id. at 50.
 2.4 c onclusion 181

the League and its committees, and also on behalf of different scientific
associations and research institutions, scientists were instrumental in
navigating this dilemma during the interwar period. As a matter of fact,
one cannot tell the story of whaling under the auspices of the League
without describing the influential voice of science and its representatives
in interwar international law.
Though the League failed in the end (as those critics or historians who
dismiss its role tend to point out), it seems the history of the period owes
at least its sense of urgency to the League. It was the League, and no other
institution, that stirred the international community to action over the
future survival of the whale. Posing counterfactual assumptions is often
discouraged in history studies; nevertheless, it seems that without the
League’s leading role (and that of its committees in particular), the
discussions on whaling would have been conducted very differently,
and the solutions likely would have been similarly different. The sense
of urgency created by the intensive work of NGOs and non-state actors,
and scientific discourse as a reliable source of legitimacy, also had a lot to
do with the fact that the League managed to include considerations of
nature protection and conservation in the creation of international law at
its birth. Certainly, these moves were not always successful with regard to
the final, practical legal outcomes, but they did have an important influ-
ence on the future course that international environmental law – and
environmental diplomacy – would take in the years after the League was
dissolved.
Despite its obvious imperfections, the League wisely used its institu-
tional framework to overcome obstacles. Some of these obstacles were
tied up with the “natural” difficulties of applying (international) law on
the open sea; but at least some also had to do with the open political
suspicion of leading forces in the interwar period regarding any inter-
vention in “their” whaling businesses. The League had tried to use its own
institutional structure to meet these challenges by turning, for example,
to the more open stage of internationalism. In this dilemma in particular,
the League allowed players who were not as attached to commercial-
industrial interests as certain whaling nations were, to become involved;
however, it did not allow for any party’s reluctance toward the further
development of international law to hamper its activities.
Moreover, its institutional structure also responded to the constant
need for investigation, monitoring, and surveillance – something the
League’s committees and scientists fiercely argued about given the deteri-
oration of the ongoing whaling dilemma. Indeed, many of the problems
182 the l eague of n ations and the whal ing dilemma

the League had to deal with required immediate action and swift solu-
tions. While the League, as a complex institution, was not always able to
respond to issues immediately, it did manage to address them eventually.
In the ongoing case of whaling, the League relied on a systematic routine
and thorough methods to deal with various problems (using both its
committees and scientific databases to inform its decisions), to ensure
that the dilemma did not remain unresolved. Unlike with other initiatives
that preceded the establishment of the League, this time international law
was not entirely reliant upon the “good will” of the parties involved, and
did not rely on ad hoc initiatives. The new interwar international law had
a different foundation: a core institution in Geneva, devoted personnel
with a fixed routine, and an organized agenda. Simply put, the
Codification Committee set its own schedule and handled its missions
(almost) independently. To an extent it perhaps needed the cooperation
and the good will of the different states involved, but once the League was
assembled, it carried out at least some of its initiatives on its own.
All in all, the whaling diplomacy of the League, and its obvious use to
international law, also had other results on the ground, besides specific
legal articles. The intensity of the ongoing discourse on the dilemma
created other pressures besides explicit or formal agreements. When
Japan was considering its position on the 1938 Protocol, for instance, it
was caught between two positions. On the one hand, it was reluctant to
agree to any central international whaling regulation. But on the other
hand, Japanese manufacturers also feared possible boycotts of their
products in the West296 as a public response to their uncooperative
whaling policy, the same one led – successfully or not – by the League.
One of the most important conclusions of this retrospective of whaling
diplomacy, perhaps, relates to the fact that at least some of the tensions
concerning whales and whaling lasted after World War II, continuing
into the second half of the twentieth century and beyond. Some Western
powers hoped that the axis whaling vessels would be lost in the conflict,
but Japan got back into whaling, and international whaling regulation, as
soon as 1946;297 these tensions and rivalries influenced whaling diplo-
macy for the rest of the century.
Placing the interwar period on a broader timeline – rather than an
isolated one focusing on the interwar period alone – reveals that the
League engaged with earlier ideas for transnational solutions to marine

296
Id. at 79.
297
Id. at 69.
 2 . 4 co n c l u s i o n 183

problems concerning natural resources. This was also followed by later

international regulations concerning the oceans in that respect. At least
some of the legal ideas that were developed during the interwar period
laid the foundation for later arrangements post–World War II. As
a matter of fact, some of these also served as a basis for legal discussion
during the war.
In January 1944, a special conference was held in London to update the
1937 Convention – a sign that the League was revising its legal proced-
ures as part of its diplomatic routine. The London Conference of 1944
not only saw discussions intensify, but it also marked a shift in the central
conceptions on whaling. The catastrophic conflict and humanitarian
hardship had led to a general policy of austerity, and a shortage of raw
materials and food. The severe fat and oil crisis in particular pushed
many parties to ask the League to ease its restrictions on whaling. In
a broader perspective, this conference also marked a geopolitical shift: the
next stage of international law would be governed by the Americans with
the 1946 International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling. The
1946 ICRW was not signed in Europe, but in the American capital in
early December, 1946, in order to “provide for the proper conservation of
whale stocks and thus make possible the orderly development of the
whaling industry.”298 As earlier discussions under the auspices of the
League had indicated in the late 1930s, the post–World War II whaling
regime would be carried out by a special international organization that
would regulate whaling, relying on an international convention to give it
legitimacy and authority. The International Whaling Commission (IWC)
is a global agency set up by the terms of the ICRW (according to Article
III).299
One can also track some of the League’s proposed legal solutions at
several points in the post–World War II era. This is the case, for instance,
with the solution to place a global cap on the number of whales that could
be taken (instead of a closed season, as the conventions of the 1930s
asserted). Applying and enforcing this idea, which was known in the
interwar period as a global or Antarctic quota, as a legal mechanism was
not a simple task at all, especially given the huge distance between the
Antarctic and other regions. But it was seen during the 1930s as one of the
only possible and practical ways to ensure that only a set number of

298
Preamble to the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, with Schedule
of Whaling Regulations, Dec. 2, 1946, 62 Stat. 1716, 161 UNTS 72.
299
For a review of the Commission see, for instance, Nagtzaam’s discussion, supra note 7.
184 t h e l e a gue of n at i o n s an d the whaling d ilem m a

whales was caught. Other delegations rejected this legal solution in 1937,
but it would later reappear as one of the key elements in the postwar
regulation. Subparagraphs 8(a) and 8(b) of the Schedule of the 1946
International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, for instance,
set a fixed number of baleen whales that could be caught. According to
this arrangement, no more than sixteen thousand blue whale “units” were
to be hunted during the open season.300
However, some fundamental problems remained, such as the ongoing
resentment of certain whaling nations, which accepted – or had no choice
but to follow – the League’s restrictions in international law, particularly
regarding the “tricky” role of Japan.301 One might claim that the general
view of Japan as an irresponsible player in the game of whaling in the
early twenty-first century had its roots in the League’s intensive efforts.
A comparative analysis of the legal history reveals that several states
relied on a similar discourse to avoid restrictions introduced by inter-
national law. Japan, for instance, argued that its whaling industry – and
its whaling vessels in particular – deserved special treatment since it was
(allegedly) so far behind its Western peers in terms of whaling technolo-
gies and equipment. Given this gap, which unfairly benefitted whaling
nations in the West in exploiting the products of the sea, Japanese
whalers should not be expected – even with regard to the 1937
Convention – to abide by the same legal and technological standards as
the more developed whaling fleets. The legal implications of discrepan-
cies in development history, technologies, and environment are also
evident in the case of China. It rejected restrictions on emissions,
which were proposed by Western countries during early discussions
about creating an international industrial emissions policy as part of
the global climate regime. The fact that Western economies had com-
pleted “their” Industrial Revolution – at the expense of nature and the
environment – made the claim that China needed to restrain its indus-
trial development unjustified and biased.302
300
For the purpose of subparagraph 8(a), blue whale units were calculated on the basis that
one blue whale equals two fin whales, or two and a half humpback whales, or six sei
whales (see subparagraph 8 to the 1946 Convention).
301
In many ways, Japan saw no benefit in joining any international move that would result
in limitations on its fast-growing whaling industry. However, the interwar period also
tells of an ambivalent whaling politics, as Japan asked – and also acceded – to be
informed of the discussed legal mechanisms and arrangements, though it did not sign
them.
302
See T H O M A S L . F R I E D M A N , T H E W O R L D I S F L A T : A B R I E F H I S T O R Y O F T H E
T W E N T Y - F I R S T C E N T U R Y 411 (2005).
 2 . 4 co n c l u s i o n 185

Moreover, the League’s whaling diplomacy had also emphasized that

partial agreements, even if they applied to most of the central players on
the global map (as the 1937 Convention did), were just not good enough.
Since the agreements did not apply to the Japanese fleets, other whaling
industries, frustrated by their limited yields, felt that the League’s inter-
national law had unfairly restricted them. Hence, the post–World War II
legal arrangements in the field of whaling were based on the League’s
experience at the time. During and after the war, a different concept of
whaling regulation emerged: it was more important to achieve an overall
international agreement, even if this strategy involved agreeing to far less
progressive solutions.
Indeed, the League had many weak points from the outset. Some of
these, such as the problem of reaching a common solution in a polarized
world, or the huge obstacle of enforcing the legal arrangements the
League had finally managed to reach in the 1920s and 1930s, were also
projected over the course of the whaling dilemma. However, the unique
challenge of whaling, with its wide range of commercial, industrial,
national, legal, and environmental considerations, also highlighted
some of the League’s strengths. Whalers might have sailed far from any
source of authority, but they could not escape the League or its inter-
national law. It was the League that used an environmental challenge as
the basis for international collaboration. It strove to expand the circle of
states that would sign the 1937 Convention, to include the United States,
France, and Norway. Pro-regulation forces within the League believed
that this would demonstrate how international solidarity could look
beyond immediate commercial interests. International solidarity in the
early 1930s was built around environmental challenges: “I hope that you
will be able to convince your government that in signing the above
Convention it will be giving evidence of solidarity which I am certain
will not fail to constitute a most useful example.”303 One way or another,
the recorded discussions during the interwar period reflect much more
than a “comment” that “might compare to a modern environmentalist
position,” as had been said of the League’s whaling policy.304 The League
provided an innovative space in which to tackle this complex dilemma,
one that still troubles international environmental law today,305

303
A letter from Smets to Lucius R. Eastman, Nov. 27, 1931, LoN Archives, 3E/33029/31270.
304
See D O R S E Y , supra note 4, at 73.
305
In December 2018, for instance, Tokyo announced it will join Iceland and Norway and
quit the IWC next year, and resume commercial hunting of whales in its territorial
186 the l eag ue of n ations and the whaling dilemma

introducing an interpretation of international law that enabled a variety

of players to become involved in its creation in real time.

waters and exclusive economic zone starting in July of the following year. International
parties were furious. See Ahmet Salih & Sena Güler, Under Fire, Japan Joins Whalers
Iceland and Norway, A N A D O L U A G E N C Y (Dec. 30, 2018), https://www.aa.com.tr/en/
asia-pacific/under-fire-japan-joins-whalers-iceland-and-norway/1352052.
 3

Sanitation, Spreading Diseases, and

Environmental Concerns: The League of Nations’
Campaign for Rural Hygiene

“[W]e are not going to lay down rules and principles with a view of stabilizing
an existing state of things, but that we are going to change the existing state of
things is so far as we are able to do so and to promote progress.”1

3.1 Introduction
In the aftermath of World War I, the interwar world was facing a variety of
acute problems. Despite these pressing global challenges, the League of
Nations invested a huge amount of time, institutional energy, and effort in
tackling sanitation risks and environmental threats in rural areas. In fact,
throughout its activity, the League worked to combat a variety of “rural
hygiene” issues on an increasing scale during that period. Different organs
of the League2 were deeply involved in efforts to promote solutions for
sanitation and public health concerns, which concurrently raised environ-
mental questions and sought direct environmental outcomes.
In order to respond to the various aspects of sanitation that posed
local, national, and global public health risks, the League worked on
revising policies that could deal with these challenges. To do so, it relied
heavily on scientific and professional expertise and comparative data.
Although these suggested policies were discussed in terms of inter-
national law, the League did not necessarily intend to apply and enforce
them itself; instead, it meant for states and government authorities to take
charge of issues pertaining to “rural hygiene.” These issues focused
mainly on the eradication of a variety of environmental sanitary risks
and spreading diseases that the League believed to be plaguing the
countryside. The international community’s concerns included the
need to protect water resources from human and nonhuman pollution;
treating refuse; fighting the spread of disease, particularly in rural and
1
Gustavo Pittaluge, Opening Address of the European Conference on Rural Hygiene, Vol.
II, Minutes, C.473.M.202.1931.III, at 19 (emphasis added).
2
And especially the League of Nations Health Organisation.

187
188 spreading d is eases, and e nvironmental concerns

peripheral areas; controlling breeding flies and rats, and other pests; and
more. The League identified these concerns as threats to local, national,
and international communities in an attempt to justify the measures it
suggested: the League conceptualized agricultural peripheries in both
Europe and in Asia, as well as a rural frontier, from which humanity
could protect itself, using means such as sanitary engineering, special
medical services, and political awareness.
Exploring how the League, as the first institution of its kind, was
involved in trying to solve sanitation risks and environmental threats in
rural peripheries allows us to look into the different political and legal
layers that shaped policies concerning public health, nature, and sanita-
tion in the changing world of the 1920s and 1930s. The League’s con-
tinuing campaign for rural hygiene was entangled in the webs and
political structures of imperialism, colonialism, and early international
institutional law. Moreover, my analysis will show that this campaign was
one of the League’s most central missions, right until its bitter end.
Therefore, this chapter will study the rural hygiene campaign as a test
case with which the history of international law and environmental
history can be revised. Scientists, professional experts, jurists, diplomats,
and various representatives considered the periphery – both in terms of
rural areas and the East as a space – as a dangerous and important
challenge for the West, as well as for local communities. Since these
spaces posed both regional and international threats, the League treated
rural sanitation as a central brick in its efforts to create and enforce
a global system of security. The growing fear of the surrounding environ-
ment – first across the periphery, and then from this rural front into the
urban centers of these regions – did not stop at Eastern Europe or East
Asia alone: the League and the international community were concerned
that the pathogens present in the rural margins of the global village would
infiltrate the West as well. No need to be mentioned that the current
colossal impact of COVID-19, and the ways in which it spread from
(relative) peripheral areas in China to the rest of the world, shed a special
(comparative) light on the interwar campaign.
As this chapter will show, the sanitation campaign reflected a different
mode of internationalism and international law that the League was devel-
oping. Unlike the other routines in its environmental regime, it would be
rather difficult to identify concrete suggestions for formal conventions or
binding legal agreements with regard to this campaign. This phase of
international environmentalism relied mostly on international cooperation
that was triggered and promoted by the League. The League organized two
 3. 1 in t roduc tion 189

main international conferences at which delegations, League officials, scien-

tists, and professional experts discussed and revised different mechanisms to
solve rural hygiene and sanitary problems.
This chapter will explore these two conferences, which were keystones of
the League’s campaign for rural hygiene, and will also study their environ-
mental perspectives as they were developed. Moreover, in order to illustrate
the campaign as a developing story, the chapter will also analyze the
preparatory and the follow-up stages of each of these conferences.
Obviously, the interwar period was not the first time that humanity
had struggled with sanitary risks and crises. As I will elaborate in the
historical background I offer, the historical context might also have
played a role in the reasons for the intensive campaign. In the aftermath
of the Spanish flu, the epidemic that devastated the globe in the late 1910s
at the end of the Great War, awareness seems to have been heightened
about the danger that deteriorating environmental sanitary conditions
and the surrounding nature posed to population centers. Therefore, in
terms of the developing historical timeline, the chapter will place the
interwar discussions on spreading diseases and their environmental risk
factors alongside earlier steps that focused on lacking environmental
conditions as a source of sociodemographic danger.
In early summer of 1931, the League organized its first international
conference on the issue of “rural hygiene.” As most of the issues of the
first conference, the 1931 European Conference on Rural Hygiene dealt
with sanitation and environmental risks, it focused on Eastern European
countries, where these issues were prevalent. This conference was not
a singular event. The institutional capabilities and the diplomatic routine
of the League meant the first conference in 1931 did not function as an ad
hoc initiative. It was followed by another international joint cooperation,
even larger than its predecessor. In summer 1937, during one of the
tensest periods of the interwar period, dozens of delegations from differ-
ent countries convened under the auspices of the League for the special
Intergovernmental Conference for Rural Hygiene in Far Eastern
Countries (the second rural hygiene conference).
Like its predecessor, the second conference of 1937 also turned to tools
of international governance, information sharing, and other modes of
international law. By using these tools, the goal was to eradicate environ-
mental and sanitary risks. Similar medical, environmental, and social
concerns that occupied European minds had also become concerns
among policymakers and political elites in different countries in East
Asia. However, it should be noted that Java (in what is today Indonesia),
190 s pr ea d i n g d i se as es , and e nvironmental concerns

which hosted this second conference in the City of Bandoeng,3 was at that
time under Dutch rule. Moreover, most of the countries that took part in
the second conference were part of colonial and imperial networks of the
British, French, and Dutch. Within this context, discussions on breeding
flies and comparative studies on flea control took place alongside power
relations between hegemonic Western powers and “Far Eastern” coun-
tries. This chapter not only analyzes the different sanitary challenges and
rural hygiene problems across this huge geographical space, but also
tackles these political dimensions.
Moreover, I will show that the League considered the mission of sanita-
tion, especially in rural areas beyond the Western geocultural hemisphere, as
part of its broader ideological paradigm. Although the context was not
entirely colonial or imperial as it had been with regard to earlier trans-
national initiatives,4 there was something of the “White Man’s Burden”
narrative in discussions between the League and different delegations on
technological improvements and sanitary concerns. Indeed, the League’s
international cultural duty to spread the benefits of technological progress
cannot alone explain why it became so intensely involved in the rural
hygiene campaigns. Likely, the League’s involvement was also attributable
to growing fears over the environmental, social, and financial costs of disease
spreading across the new “Cordon Sanitaire” at a time when ships were
crossing international waters much faster than they were able to prior to the
jump forward in modern shipping. But it seems the there was also, at least to
a certain extent, an intention to promote general environmental-sanitary
conditions in rural areas that Western progress had not yet reached. While
exploring these two special international conferences, the chapter will dis-
cuss the different, and sometimes confusing, layers of colonialism, imperial-
ism, and modern progress alongside the role the League took upon itself.
In addition to environmental concerns, colonial influence, and scien-
tific endeavors, the study of the interwar period reveals unique historical
patterns. Both of these international conferences discussed problems that
were not only far beyond the scope of the core aims for which the League
was established, but which also reflected different concerns about the
danger that the environment and nature posed to humankind. As I move

3
Nowadays spelled Bandung, the Capital of West Java.
4
Besides the interest of colonial or imperial systems in sanitation, sanitation was also
a central aim of other transnational frameworks. The International Institute of
Agriculture, for instance, which was founded years before the League (in 1905), developed
an interest in rural health matters in the 1920s. See R A P L H W . P H I L L I P S , F AO : I T S
O R I G I N S , F O R M A T I O N A N D E V O L U T I O N 1 9 45 – 19 81 , 3–4 (1981).
 3 .1 int r oduct ion 191

toward the conclusion, I will compare how and to what extent this agenda
concerning nature and environment was different than other nature-
related initiatives the League promoted.
Moreover, one should also consider the historical context of the
campaign. The second conference in Bandoeng took place two years
before the outbreak of another global war, when the geopolitical situation
in East Asia was already in crisis after Imperial Japan invaded Chinese
Manchuria. This period was filled with conflict, from increasing fascist
threats in Southern Europe and Asia to the intensifying of ultra-fascist
powers in Germany, not to mention the long and difficult recovery from
the financial and economic crisis of 1929. Given these numerous chal-
lenges, it seems surprising, to say the least, that the League’s interest in
the link between polluted environments and sanitation was growing –
including in specific issues such as “the Fly Problem in the East,” which
the second rural hygiene conference addressed.
This chapter comprises three sections in addition to the introduction.
First, in order to place this analysis on a broader and continuing timeline
(rather than an “isolated” one), I will give a general background and
a historical survey, starting with a brief introduction to the main histori-
ography of the links between sanitation and environmental concerns. As
in the other chapters of this research, this survey will also demonstrate
that, despite the growing body of sanitation studies (including those
conducted in conjunction with environmental studies), a study focusing
on the role of the League with regard to environmental concerns and
sanitation has not yet been introduced.
In the second section (which provides the historical narrative), I will
trace the steps taken by the League to construct its campaign for rural
hygiene. This section mainly explores the two international conferences
that the League organized to tackle these issues: the first conference in
1931 (held at Geneva), and the second rural hygiene conference in 1937
(held in Bandoeng), which focused on East Asia. Delegations at both
conferences included a variety of professional delegates, including phys-
icians, engineers, public health experts, and officials. The various delega-
tions consulted with one other and compared policies, measurements,
and other relevant techniques, including the purification of sewer efflu-
ent and disposal of garbage for example, as key steps in fighting deterior-
ating sanitary conditions and the spread of diseases and plagues.5 This

5
League of Nations European Conference on Rural Hygiene, June 29–July 7, 1931, Geneva,
League of Nations Archives [hereinafter LoN Archives], C. 473. M. 202. 1931. III.
192 spreading d is eases, and e nvironmental concerns

section will discuss and compare the recommendations of these confer-

ences. The primary focus of this section is on the warnings and advice
provided by scientific observations, committees of experts, detailed
reports, and comparative information gathered from different countries
and authorities, Western and non-Western alike. Together, they show
that the League directly and explicitly addressed the outcomes of envir-
onmental flaws in peripheral areas, as well as the means to solve them. As
this story will show, the League had two aims: On the one hand, it strove
to prevent infectious diseases from spreading outwards from rural areas,
mostly as a result of poor environmental conditions. On the other hand,
the League also ascribed itself certain characteristics as an agency of
modernity and cultural and scientific progress. In that sense, overcoming
mass epidemics through an alliance between science and international
law became a central aim of the interwar period.
This chapter will conclude with the third section. Here, I will briefly
address the main arguments of the chapter. Moreover, in placing the
League’s environmental concerns about sanitation on a broader histor-
ical, timeline, I will also provide a current overview of the role of the
interwar period compared to later discussions and steps taken in the field
of sanitation within the sphere of international law and international
governance, including the second half of the twentieth century and recent
years.
Taking into account that the League’s cross-border campaign mostly
did not progress beyond being law on the books, this discussion’s main
argument is that the hidden story of the interwar period can nevertheless
also be viewed in terms of sanitation and environment. Whether the
sanitation campaign was successful or not, applicable or too naïve, the
institutional energy the League applied to it was quite significant com-
pared to other initiatives in the 1920s and 1930s.
This assessment also holds when one takes into account the League’s
involvement in the eclectic variety of humanitarian issues and progres-
sive aims during that period. Therefore, the primary focus of the histor-
ical narrative here is the different ways in which the League, the
international community, and the various players and parties involved
viewed the environment and nature. Unlike in the cases of the polluted
oceans, endangered whale, or shrinking forests, this time nature was the
cause of danger to society at a rural-peripheral, urban, and then a global
level. Here, the League, as a representative of the global greater good,
strove to mobilize different means of international law, not to conserve
the environment, natural resources, or species from extinction due to
 3 .2 b ackground and h istorical s urvey 193

human activity or expansion, but to defend society from the dangers that
lurked in water and on land.
“[F]rom the point of view of leprosy propagation, the part played [by
one’s] dwelling is no less important in Asia and Africa today than it was
in Medieval Europe. . . . [T]he resistance of exposed subjects must not be
weakened by diseases which chiefly occur in rural surroundings.”6

3.2 Background and Historical Survey: A Brief Introduction

to the Historiography of Sanitary Efforts
and Environmental Concerns
The shift from hunting and gathering to producing food around
10,000 BC marked a fundamental change in the ways human populations
were organized in terms of public hygiene. Permanent settlements chal-
lenged traditional patterns that had existed for thousands of years and led
to the need for improved technologies to adequately handle ancient
sanitary and waste disposal requirements. In certain rural areas, at least
until late modern times, on-site dumping and natural decomposition
were common disposal methods before public health concerns became
less tolerant of rural habits.7 In this section, I will give an overview of the
historiography of studies that have focused on the links between sanita-
tion and environmental factors.
In my examination of the main bodies of literature, I will show that
there are few studies that explore these links during the interwar period
in general, or during the role of the League in particular. Certain scholars
who have studied the dense history of the League’s Health Organisation
have dealt with some of the issues this chapter explores;8 however, the
lenses through which these analyses were carried out chiefly focused on
issues of public health, and medical and scientific concerns. Yet the
broad, intensive campaign that the League led in remote peripheral
areas can be analyzed not only as an important part of the League’s
international health governance, but also as part of the developing field

6
Preparatory Papers for the Intergovernmental Conference of Far Eastern Countries on
Rural Hygiene, LoN Archives, 6098/8A/29782/8855, at 101 [hereinafter Preparatory
Papers].
7
MARTIN V. MELOSI, GARBAGE IN THE CITIES: REFUSE, REFORM, AND THE
E N V I R O N M E N T 3 (Rev. ed., 2005).
8
IRIS BOROWY, COMING TO TERMS WITH WORLD HEALTH: THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS
H E A L T H O R G A N I S A T I O N : 19 2 1– 19 4 6 (2009).
194 s p r e a d i n g d i s ea s e s , a n d e n v i r o nm e n t a l c o n c e r n s

of environmental history. This shows that the sanitary challenge of the

interwar period can be studied as more than “just” a health issue.
As this chapter will reveal, the League’s Health Organisation took on
a central role during this campaign. Likewise, the organization’s first
manager, Dr. Ludvik Witold Rajchman,9 had an ongoing role as the
campaign developed. Rajchman was a Polish physician and bacteriolo-
gist, and the driving force behind the Polish National Institute of Hygiene
in Warsaw. Thanks to his active role in the fight against several waves of
the typhus epidemic, which was devastated East European countries in
the late 1910s and early 1920s, he was noticed by the professional
administration of the burgeoning League. In 1921, he was therefore
appointed to set up a special Health Organisation within the institutional
framework of the League.
However, that does not mean other departments and bodies within the
League were not involved in the discussion too (although they took on
a secondary role). The International Labour Organisation, for instance,
also participated in the discussion and stressed the importance of health
insurance funds in order to improve rural hygiene status and to over-
come sanitation problems.10
The following brief exposition will place the study of the environmen-
tal concerns, those that triggered the start of the League’s (rural) sanitary
campaign in the 1930s, in a historiographic context. In so doing, this
exposition will sketch a relevant timeline for the League’s efforts.
Within the interdisciplinary scholarship of environmental studies as
a whole, it seems that one can quite easily trace the development of the
history (or histories) of sanitation. In many ways, it stands as one of the
richest and most diverse fields in the world of environmental history. The
interplay between the ways in which human populations used to treat
their waste, sewage, and disposal with regard to surrounding nature has
been reflected and analyzed in a variety of studies.
These studies have focused on different periods across the Anthropocene
and on eclectic geographical areas. As Martin V. Melosi put it, compared to
other issues of environmental history, the history of sanitation, disposal, and
the environment is one of the first fields that environmental historians

9
See M A R T A A. B A L I N S K A , F O R T H E G O O D O F H U M A N I T Y : L U D W I K R A J C H M A N ,
M E D I C A L S T A T E S M A N (Rebecca Howell Trans., 1998).
10
See the resulting report “Sickness Insurance as a Factor in Rural Hygiene,” report
submitted to the European Conference on Rural Hygiene by the International Labour
Office, (undated), C.H. 1045, LoN Archives, European Conference on Rural Hygiene,
Vol. II, Minutes, C.473.M.202.1931.III., at 161–79 [hereinafter European Conference].
 3 .2 b ackground and h istorical s urvey 195

focused on both in antiquity and modern times. According to Melosi, the

reason for this special interest is the fact that, since “human beings have
inhabited the earth, they have generated, produced, manufactured, excreted,
secreted, discarded, and otherwise disposed of all manner of waste.”11
This might not be the right place to try to summarize the history of
sanitation. After all, sanitation and environmental fears have had differ-
ent impacts on human societies at different times – from ancient times12
to the Industrial Revolution – and in different circumstances: local,
regional, and national. Environmental historians have studied sanitary
concerns and technical methods with which ancient powers fought
against environmental threats.13 Both the Roman Republic and the
Roman Empire, for instance, had to overcome sanitation risks unheard
of by the Greeks. Given the geographical size and their much denser
population, the Romans developed impressive sanitation systems.14
Historians have also connected deteriorating sanitary conditions in
medieval times with the catastrophes of the period.15
The historic and the historiographic pictures change dramatically with
the start of the Industrial Revolution. This is probably also the reason
why such a large proportion of the scholarship on environment and
sanitation tends to focus on urban centers. With the end of medieval
times and the reemergence of populated cities during the Renaissance,
early modern Europe did not undergo a fundamental demographic,
urban-centered, transformation. All this changed in the late eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries, when the old order – mostly agrarian –
was dismantled by rapid new urbanization. Environmental history of the
Industrial Revolution tracks the tremendous environmental change in
cities as both residents and urban systems were forced to confront

11
M E L O S I , supra note 7, at 1.
12
See L E W I S M U M F O R D , T H E C I T Y I N H I S T O R Y : I T S O R I G I N S , I T S T R A N S F O R M A T I O N ,
A N D I T S P R O S P E C T S 75 (1961). It should be noted, however, that Mumford’s scholarship
is nowadays seen as controversial.
13
On ancient sanitary methods see G E O R G E R O S E N , A H I S T O R Y O F P U B L I C H E A L T H
(1938). Furthermore, scholars have also explored the Jewish laws of cleanliness as patterns
of early public sanitation. See E . S . S A V A S , T H E O R G A N I Z A T I O N A N D E F F I C I E N C Y O F
S O L I D W A S T E C O L L E C T I O N , 11–13 (1977).
14
As a matter of fact, most of the scholars argue that sanitation in ancient Rome was
a complex system similar in many ways to modern sanitation systems. See, e.g.,
Emily Gowers, The Anatomy of Rome from Capitol to Cloaca, 85 J. R O M A N S T U D . 23
(1995).
15
A variety of studies use the Black Death plague as a symbol for a failure of human
sanitation and medicine. See D. E. Davis, The Scarcity of Rats and the Black Death: An
Ecological History, 16 J. I N T E R D I S C . H I S T . 455 (1986).
196 s p r e a di n g di s eas es , an d e n vi ronm ental c onc erns

massive pollution in many forms – drinking water, sewerage, and living

conditions. Compared to earlier periods, these kinds of studies tracked
the ways in which sanitation, spreading diseases, refuse, and environ-
mental threats emerged as severe social and political problems.16 The
inability to house such a rapidly growing working-class population in
industrial centers led to severe overcrowding, as well as sanitary and
environmental problems. Different studies have added additional layers
to Charles Dickens’ dark description of industrialized England – they
have analyzed the period’s reflections on stinking water, spreading
“urban” diseases, ear-shattering noise, waste, filthy streets, and deterior-
ating sanitary conditions.17 Since then, with the unfamiliar difficulties
and accumulating waste that modern lifestyles have produced, the envir-
onmental living conditions of an average urban resident have formed the
focus of a variety of sanitary studies exploring neglected sanitation and
inadequate waste collection and disposal facilities.18
Sanitation studies, it should be emphasized, are primarily urban stud-
ies. Unlike cities and towns, which are limited by space and densely
populated, agrarian societies throughout history have successfully
avoided solid waste and sanitation pollution. Therefore, the different
ways in which cities and towns faced sanitation challenges and environ-
mental threats have been of interest to most scholars.
In trying to evaluate the various aspects of the rich historiography of
sanitation, it seems one can point to several general assumptions concern-
ing the existing scholarship. First, historians, including environmental
ones, have so far mostly been interested in the implications of lacking
sanitation systems, environmental risks, and spreading diseases for soci-
eties and their structures over a range of time periods, inasmuch as these
implications occurred in cities, towns, and urban centers in different
civilizations. Second, this kind of environmental historiography is less
interested in policy studies in terms of legal interpretations and discourse,

16
For a (partial) bibliography on the Industrial Revolution in terms of environmental
concerns, see P E T E R N . S T E A R N S & J O H N H . H I N S H A W , T H E ABC-CLIO W O R L D
H I S T O R Y C O M P A N I O N T O T H E I N D U S T R I A L R E V O L U T I O N 299–310 (1996).
17
See, e.g., A S A B R I G G S , V I C T O R I A N C I T I E S (1963); Eric E. Lampard, The Urbanizing
World, in T H E V I C T O R I A N C I T Y : I M A G E S A N D R E A L I T I E S 1, 19–22 (H. J. Dyos &
Michael Wolff eds., 1973).
18
On the emphasis on modern evolution of sanitary regimes and official policies see
R. M. Hartwell, The Services Revolution: The Growth of Services in Modern Economy, in
T H E I N D U S T R I A L R E V O L U T I O N : 17 0 0–1 91 4, 364 (Carol M. Cipolla ed., 1976);
A N T H O N Y S. W O H L , E N D A N G E R E D L I V E S : P U B L I C H E A L T H I N V I C T O R I A N
B R I T A I N (1983).
 3 .2 background and h istorical survey 197

and is generally closer to the disciplines of social sciences, engineering

studies, geography, and so on. Third, taking into account the neglected
realm of the interwar period and the contextual focus this study suggests,
viewing the 1920s and 1930s in terms of sanitation and international law
issues contributes to the existing literature by shifting the lens from urban
surroundings to rural landscapes and their environmental threats. Fourth,
though there are studies that focus on sanitary and environmental risks
and human surroundings in terms of policymaking and legal frameworks,
these works largely deal with regional, domestic, and national legal
arrangements, but overlook certain conjunctions of sanitary issues and
different modes of international law – such as those the League offered
throughout its campaign.
Moreover, the historiography of spreading diseases with regard to
inadequate public hygiene, insufficient sanitation, or environmental
risks is also relevant to colonial lands and imperial contexts. The study
on cholera in Colonial India, for instance, is a relatively rich field.19
However, although scholarly discussion on the changes in history in
terms of disappearing borders, floods of refugees, and problems of
sanitation is prolific, neither the role of international law nor the
League’s endeavors on the matter have been thoroughly studied. The
more familiar discussions exploring the protection from epidemic threats
by means of sanitation have focused on domestic and national levels, but
did not place sanitation (and rural sanitation in particular) at the center
of a study of international law. Moreover, as this chapter will detail, the
interwar period not only presents new territory for sanitation studies of
non-Western areas in between international law and national-domestic
dimensions of sovereignty and jurisdiction, but also provides a unique
opportunity to examine rural sanitation – and not urban – as a primary
focus.
In many ways, both in Europe and on other continents – at least with
regard to the countryside in remote areas – the interwar period marked
a turning point in the awareness of the need to introduce new means of
sanitation to rural areas. Western empires had already dealt with con-
cerns about populations and space either through direct control or
indirect influence, and these concerns were articulated in transnational
and imperial policies and legal regimes. However, these criteria were not
19
See, among others, Sheldon Watts, From Rapid Change to Stasis: Official Responses to
Cholera in British-Ruled India and Egypt 1860 to c. 1921, 12 J. W O R L D H I S T . 321 (2001);
M A R K H A R R I S O N , P U B L I C H E A L T H I N B R I T I S H I N D I A : A N G L O -I N D I A N P R E V E N T I V E
M E D I C I N E : 18 5 9– 1 91 3 (1 99 4 ).
198 spreading diseases, and e nvironmental concerns

yet international (at least not in the way that the League was working
toward) and did not cross, or intend to cross, national borders or imper-
ial territories per se.20
With this overview, it should also be noted that the sanitary regime the
League was promoting was not the first to consider environmental
concerns in transnational terms. Transnational cooperation on the mat-
ter of the links between deteriorating sanitary conditions and the out-
break of diseases had begun a (relatively) long time before the League was
announced.
The common history of (modern) transnational sanitary cooperation
can be divided into three different periods, as suggested by Iris Borowy.21
The first period is marked by the first International Sanitary Conference of
1851. This conference was organized by the French government in order to
standardize international quarantine regulations against the spread of
cholera, plague, and yellow fever. This collaboration symbolized the gen-
eral awareness of European and North American political, scientific, and
social elites that epidemic threats, in spite of their direct implications for
domestic national populations, were a challenge that had to be faced with
transnational cooperation. With faster and denser means of transportation
in the age of railways and transoceanic ships, and with the pollution of
shared water sources such as rivers and lakes as a result of lacking or
defective sanitation systems, national borders and customs checkpoints
were no longer efficient barriers against spreading epidemics.
The 1851 Sanitary Conference was the starting point of a series of
fourteen more conferences that followed its original agenda over the
years. During the second half of the nineteenth century, different official
governmental delegations discussed the possible means to address sanita-
tion threats.22 This series of conferences continued until 1938, and
20
See, e.g., Muhammad U. Mushtaq, Public Health in British India: A Brief Account of the
History of Medical Services and Disease Prevention in Colonial India, 34 I N D I A N
J . C O M M U N I T Y M E D . 6 (2009).
21
B O R O W Y , supra note 8, at 12.
22
This series of conferences was a reaction to the outbreak of the second cholera pandemic
in 1829. This pandemic encouraged several European governments to appoint joint
medical missions to investigate the causes of the plague. Different expert expeditions
were sent in June 1931 to Tsarist Russia, Prussia, and the Austrian Empire. Following
these expeditions, France also promoted a survey on the sanitary regulations of
Mediterranean countries. This survey (officially published in 1834) pointed to the differ-
ent types and policies of quarantine requirements among the countries, and called to
better organize and monitor national standards. The call to convene an international
conference that would eventually introduce border-crossing quarantine regulations
against “exotic diseases,” at least some of which were spreading because of insufficient
 3 . 2 ba c k g r o u n d a n d hi s t o r i c a l su r v e y 199

different scholars have argued that it played a major role in the formation
of the World Health Organization (the successor of the League of Nations
Health Organisation) in 1948,23 and also in the realization of a permanent
fixed institutional framework.24
According to this common periodization of international health
cooperation and its focus on sanitation, the second period starts in the
1910s and relates to the international sanitary conferences that continued
into the 1940s, and after the League was dissolved. This second wave
differed from the former by the growing awareness that ad hoc meetings
were too slow, too inflexible, and too amateurish to deal with recurrent
epidemics at a time of rapidly evolving scientific knowledge. This realiza-
tion of the early twentieth century motivated a preliminary institutional
shift, with the founding of a series of international health organizations.
Historians of international health and medicine tend to characterize
the second period as a transition phase between the early and global
phases of international cooperation. This second phase was terminated
by World War II, from which the World Health Organization emerged.
And the third period (starting with the establishment of the WHO
after World War II had ended) studies the endeavors of the current
international institution of the WHO, today one of the most powerful
agencies of the United Nations. These studies have explored different
issues related to the central role of the WHO as the leading institution for
all worldwide health concerns.
The focus this chapter suggests, however, revisits the traditional his-
toriography. Up until now, most historians have tended either to over-
look the story of the Health Organisation of the interwar period, or,
inasmuch as they have studied it in detail, to skip its environmental
aspects in terms of the meeting points and interplays between sanitation,
environment, and public health. Moreover, the interwar international
community expressed a growing sense of concern about sanitary crises
that emerged not from urban centers, but rather from the periphery and
rural areas where modern means of sanitation were lacking. As with the
rural hygiene campaign, the League dealt intently with numerous health

means of sanitation, became real in the form of the (first) 1851 Sanitation Conference in
Paris.
23
On the series of sanitary conferences see, e.g., Valeska Huber, The Unification of the Globe
by Disease? The International Sanitary Conferences on Cholera, 1851–1894, 49 H I S T . J.
453 (2006).
24
Norman Howard-Jones, The Scientific Background of the International Sanitary
Conferences: 1851–1938, 1 H I S T . I N T ’L P U B . H E A L T H (1975).
200 spreading diseases, an d e n v i ronm ent al c onc er ns

issues and (mostly medical) prevention protocols during this time.

However, its central conferences in Geneva and Bandoeng in the 1930s
were different, as they identified the countryside (both in Europe and
beyond) as a dangerous source of infection and pollution. Due to the
central involvement and leading practical role of scientists, experts,
engineers, and medical doctors, the League was able to establish a link
between serious outbreaks of disease, lacking sanitation, and environ-
mental conditions, all of which play part in the distribution of pathogens.
Here, one might recognize a similarity to the historical-environmental
“cordon sanitaire,” the geographical (and geopolitical) belt that repre-
sented a shield protecting Europe against the spread of diseases – or from
political ideologies. For instance, Georges Clemenceau, the French Prime
Minister, warned of the need to defend Western European borders from
Soviet Russia and Eastern Europe.25 Similarly, the Austro-Hungarian
Empire tried to “defend” its walls in Vienna against the epidemic threats
posed by the Ottoman Empire.
I am sure that this first European Conference on Rural Hygiene will mark
an epoch in the history of hygiene in agricultural and rural districts. For
the first time on so large a scale and with so much authority, practicing
physicians, health officers, administrators, agriculturists, engineers and
organizers of agricultural associations have met together for the thorough
study of those questions which are most important for the improvement
of conditions of life in rural districts from the standpoint of sanitation . . . .
It will not be the last time. There is still a long road to be travelled, but this
Geneva Conference, convened by the League of Nations, marks a starting
point on that road . . . .26

3.3 The League of Nations, Rural Hygiene, Sanitation,

and Environmental Threats
Prior to the establishment of the League, revolutionary improvements
had begun to emerge in mass transportation, such as trains and ships,
which connected global spaces more efficiently. However, as other issues
with environmental dimensions showed, such as modern whaling

25
In a formal public announcement in March 1919, he referred to the dangerous
(Communist) frontier beyond the border of Western Europe, and the danger posed by
its liberal-democratic regimes.
26
Technical Recommendations by the Preparatory Committee, Extracts from the Report of
the Preparatory Committee, C.H. 1045, LoN Archives, European Conference on Rural
Hygiene, Vol. II, Minutes, C.473.M.202.1931.III., at 71.
 3 . 3 l e a g u e o f n a t i o n s , ru r a l h y g i e n e , s a n i t a t i o n 201

technologies and evolving shipping and naval transportation,27 the

League’s period of activity intensified these phenomena. As the world
became smaller and closer thanks to new and faster means of transporta-
tion and communication, and with old borders changing dramatically
after World War I, spreading diseases also crept closer than in earlier
decades – at least in the public mind.
The transmission of diseases between non-Western areas and the West
(mostly in Europe) was not a new phenomenon either in the early
twentieth century or in the interwar period. The fact that the end of
World War I also marked the breaking down of old borders across vast
areas in Europe set new patterns of mass migration in motion all across
the Continent. In many cases, refugees and migratory populations car-
ried epidemic threats with them; or, at least, that was the common
impression.
Cholera, for instance, had already begun to threaten the West long
before the League had even been conceived of;28 but when the distance
between Eastern Europe and East Asia started to shrink in the 1920s and
1930s, other diseases – mostly those that spread through poor sanitation –
increased the perception of the West’s new fragility29 in a period when
technological improvements were increasingly changing the world (and
more dangerously).
Just like international trade, commodities, and ships, different diseases
profited from modern technologies, which made their geographic distri-
bution much easier and faster than ever before. The movement of trains,
steamships, and people across larger distances within much shorter times
made the League realize that sanitation and rural hygiene had suddenly –
unexpectedly – become one of its main international missions.

27
From a historical perspective, international trade grew remarkably in the second half of
the nineteenth century, especially around the turn of the twentieth century. After a long
period characterized by persistently low international trade, over the course of the
nineteenth century, technological advances triggered a period of marked growth in
world trade (what historians of economics usually refer to as the “first wave of
globalization”).
However, the interwar period is rather ambivalent. The golden years of the mid-1920s
gave way to a halt in growth, which was eventually reversed in the first half of the 1930s
following the Great Depression. See, among others, A. G . K E N W O O D & A . L. L O U G H E E D ,
T H E G R O W T H O F T H E I N T E R N A T I O N A L E C O N O M Y 1 8 20 – 20 00 (4th edition) (1999).
28
See, for instance, Anne Hardy’s assessment that in nineteenth-century British society,
cholera was perceived to be a dangerous invader moving toward the British Isles:
Anne Hardy, Cholera, Quarantine, and the English Preventive System, 37 M E D . H I S T .
250, 250 (1993).
29
Huber, supra note 23, at 455.
202 s p r e a d i ng di s e a s e s , a nd en v i r o n m e n t a l c o n c e r n s

To complete the historical context of the common fear of spreading

diseases in the first decades of the twentieth century, one should keep in
mind another threat that caused a deep sense of alarm: the Spanish flu.
Although this pandemic was not directly related to the Great War, the
unfavorable wartime conditions between 1914 and 1918, in which soldiers
spent extended periods in the dense trenches in close quarters, suffering
from malnourishment and poor hygiene, contributed to its overwhelming
reach. As a result, during the interwar period, an entire world was still
terrified by the enormous effect the pandemic had upon public health and
society. Thus, at least some of the reasons for the international interest, if not
paranoia, in improving sanitation, public health, and rural hygiene in the
1920s and 1930s can be traced back to this pandemic. The virus, or “La
Grippe,” was extremely violent and caused a death toll of biblical
proportions;30 it was undoubtedly a global disaster.31
Though the exact reasons for the outbreak are still unclear, some
historians have argued that “Patient Zero” can likely be traced back to
the overcrowded trenches of the Western front in World War
I. However, other scholars have claimed that since this virus was found
to be a mutation of avian flu, it is more likely that its geographical origin
was East Asia. Here, different species of domestic birds (mostly poultry)
and humans shared much closer quarters on a daily basis, thus creating
the ecological conditions that could allow the transmission of avian flu to
humans.32

30
Until the early 2000s, experts presented estimations of between twenty-five and
forty million deaths. However, a study from 2002 revised the recorded impression and
claimed the real numbers were much more severe: perhaps fifty million. However, these
scholars have also added that even this dramatic number could well fall short of the actual
death toll. One way or the other, the pandemic killed more people than all the battles of
the Great War together, and it was cited as the most devastating epidemic in recorded
history: more people died of influenza in a single year than in four years of the Black
Death (Bubonic Plague) from 1347 to 1351. See Niall Johnson & Juergen Mueller,
Updating the Accounts: Global Mortality of the 1918–1920 “Spanish” Influenza
Pandemic, 76 B U L L . H I S T . M E D . 105 (2002).
31
Several studies are: J O H N M. B A R R Y , T H E G R E A T I N F L U E N Z A : T H E E P I C S T O R Y O F
T H E D E A D L I E S T P L A G U E I N H I S T O R Y ( 2 00 4 ); R I C H A R D C O L L I E R , T H E P L A G U E O F
T H E S P A N I S H L A D Y : T H E I N F L U E N Z A P A N D E M I C O F 19 18 – 19 1 9 (1974); A L F R E D
W . C R O S B Y J R ., A M E R I C A ’ S F O R G O T T E N P A N D E M I C : T H E I N F L U E N Z A O F 1 9 18
( 1 97 6 ).
32
One can point to increasing interest from scholars, from social historians to historians of
medicine, in the study of the Influenza Pandemic. Several examples include J O H N
M. BARRY, THE GREAT INFLUENZA: THE EPIC STORY OF THE DEADLIEST PLAGUE
I N H I S T O R Y (2004); T H E S P A N I S H I N F L U E N Z A P A N D E M I C O F 1 91 8 –1 9 : N E W
P E R S P E C T I V E S (Howard Phillips & David Killingray eds., 2003).
 3.3 l eague of n ations, rural hygiene, sanitation 203

While the exact origin of the virus may be in question, what is certain is
that in a very short time, local cases of the epidemic dramatically trans-
formed into a worldwide pandemic. The League did not directly handle
the outcomes of that crisis, but it did understand that health and sanita-
tion issues posed a direct threat to the well-being of the entire inter-
national community. It was this realization that prompted its focus on
preventing future pandemics.
To citizens in the second half of twentieth century, and most certainly
those of the twenty-first century, the role of international law and of its
institutions – such as the UN and the WHO – in preventing and
confronting diseases seems almost obvious. However, to people during
the interwar period this evolving institutional cooperation was new and
unfamiliar. Besides the “conventional” threats of global security and the
dangers of another battle in Europe, both the turn of the twentieth
century and the interwar period reflected other causes for public concern.
The Spanish flu, which in fact was much deadlier and more extensive
than World War I, posed a huge threat to states and communities – in the
public mind, pathogens and poor sanitary conditions came to be seen as
being as dangerous as rifles. Given that another fatal wave of spreading
disease might be on the horizon, feasible actions based on international
cooperation and global governance had to be considered.
The following sections (3.3.1–3.3.4) will describe the keystones of the
League’s evolving campaign for sanitation and the fight against spreading
diseases. As the historical narrative will show, environmental perspec-
tives formed part of many of the central discussions and recommenda-
tions the League introduced by means of international law. First, Section
3.3.1 will focus on the first cooperation on rural hygiene that the League
promoted: the Interchange Program of 1928, which mostly studied and
compared different states’ procedures for treating public health in remote
and rural communities.
Then, the following sections will explore the more “organized” phase
of the campaign and the ways in which it evolved. Section 3.3.2 will
discuss the first rural hygiene conference assembled in Geneva in sum-
mer 1931. Sections 3.3.3 and 3.3.4, which make up the central part of the
chapter, will elaborate on the second international conference, the
Intergovernmental Conference on Far Eastern Countries on Rural
Hygiene, which convened in Bandoeng, Java, in summer 1937, and
which followed up on and responded to the first conference of 1931.
Both of these sections will also draw attention to the many subsequent
discussions that unfolded between the two conferences themselves. In
204 spreading diseases, and e nvironmental concer ns

particular, these sections will analyze the main environmental concerns

regarding public health and sanitation that were discussed in Geneva and
Bandoeng, as well as several parts of the special and detailed Preparatory
Papers – the official reports and surveys that were sent to the League
Secretariat in preparation for the conferences and different sessions.
Together Sections 3.3.1–3.3.4. will sketch the thread linking these sets
of professional recommendations, both of which tackled environmental
concerns alongside public health interests and goals. During this journey,
the League invested a great deal of effort into promoting international
standards of sanitation services in rural areas. This agenda was entangled
with environmental concerns – from waste collection to protective meas-
ures against pests, flies, and rats as generators of disease – particularly in
the countryside. These concerns and fears served as a common base for
international cooperation and information sharing, and engaged profes-
sional scientists, medical doctors, and different experts.
Although the League primarily developed mechanisms of inter-
national law to be used as practical tools on the ground, its efforts to
combat sanitation issues and environmental threats often relied on tools
other than conventions or official agreements, which characterized much
of its activity. For instance, when it came to tackling sewage concerns and
waste collection in rural areas, or deciding on the best way to handle the
problem of flies and rats in East Asia, the League turned to methods that
seemed even more lenient than what is usually referred to as “soft
international law.” The following sections will mainly explore other
interpretations of international law: instead of circulating drafts for an
international convention, or proposals for binding resolutions by the
Council or the Assembly, the rural hygiene campaign relied on elements
such as information sharing, distribution of knowledge, and comparative
study. In this way, the League appeared to be developing other techniques
of international governance as it expanded the reach of international law
during the interwar period.
Obviously, this is not the place to start an ongoing discussion on what
constitutes soft law – the domain of soft law is still tenuous (especially in
terms of international law), and scholars continue to argue about what
the generic term means. Finding a good, or even accepted, definition of
soft law remains difficult, since there are those who deny its existence as
a legitimate field of international law, and those who consider it a new
source of international law (as valid as any other common source).
Though its characteristics are variable, and (very) negotiable, it seems
that scholars tend to agree on at least some common features. The term
 3.3 l eague of n ations, rural hygiene, sanitation 205

encompasses “soft” reflections of international law that have not been

developed (if they were ever intended to) into formal binding treaties and
conventions. In that sense, soft international law covers nonbinding or
voluntary resolutions, recommendations, codes of conduct, and stand-
ards. Dinah Shelton, for instance, has defined it as “normative provisions
contained in non-binding text.”33
Although it was not called “soft law” during the interwar period, this
term refers to quasi-legal instruments that do not have any legally
binding force, or whose binding force is perceived to be weaker than
that of traditional law, which is often referred to as “hard law.”
The terminology of “soft law,” and perhaps even its definition, remains
somewhat controversial because certain (formalist) legal views (still)
reject its existence. Other views are still confused as to its exact status –
and role – in the realm of law. However, for most international practi-
tioners, the development of soft law instruments is an accepted part of the
practical routine of international legal systems. Because it usually takes
a relatively long time and a great deal of institutional resources to achieve
formal, binding hard law in international affairs, soft law mechanisms
facilitate and guide the routine work undertaken within the multilayered
world of international law.34
The sections that follow will trace the primary developments that took
place during the League’s rural hygiene campaign, dealing almost exclu-
sively with interpretations of soft international law35 with regard to these
issues.

3.3.1 Early Steps and Preparations: The Interchange Program (1928),

and the Budapest Conference (October 1930)
In order to deal with sanitation concerns, the League first focused on the
periphery in Eastern Europe, and only then dealt with farther areas in
East Asia. The 1930s were a feverish decade in terms of international law.
As mentioned in the historical background, the interwar period began
when the Spanish flu, and the fear of its reoccurrence had overwhelmed

33
COMMITMENT AND COMPLIANCE: THE ROLE OF NON-BINDING NORMS IN THE
I N T E R N A T I O N A L L E G A L S Y S T E M 2 92 (Dinah Shelton ed., 2000).
34
On the relations between these two branches of international law see Allison Christians,
Hard Law, Soft Law, and International Taxation, 25 W I S . I N T ’L L.J. 325 (2007).
35
For an overview of the basic questions of soft international law see, e.g., Jean D’Aspremont
& Tanja Aalberts, Symposium on Soft Law, 25 L E I D E N J. I N T ’L L . 3 09 (2012); I N F O R M A L
I N T E R N A T I O N A L L A W M A K I N G (Joost Pauwelyn et al. eds., 2012).
206 spreading diseases, and e nvironmental concer ns

the public. In this section, I will describe the initial steps the League took
to face the rural hygiene challenge.
As this section will show, while the idea to communicate sanitary
information and epidemiological data began before the establishment
of the League, and can be traced as early as the mid-nineteenth century,36
much of the rest of these data were discussed and developed by the
League between the two world wars.
This section begins with the early stages of the discussion on rural
hygiene in European countries, when the League started to address these
issues in its Interchange Program in 1928. The remaining parts of the
discussion will focus on the two special international intergovernmental
conferences organized by the League during the 1930s. These early
moves, which the League made in anticipation of its involvement in the
rural hygiene campaign, expressed a shift in the League’s and the interwar
period’s focus on public health. As the historical review above described,
prior to 1914, issues of public health, sanitation, and the prevention of
environmental risks were primarily addressed in the context of urban
surroundings. The League approached these issues from a different dir-
ection, which up to that point had not received much attention – cer-
tainly not in terms of transnational or international law. It identified the
rural periphery as a dangerous and challenging space in the battle on
public health: both in local communities and worldwide.
As this chapter will illustrate, what began as a modest internal program
offered by the League in 1928, quickly developed into a rich and detailed
international discussion on the ways in which environmental threats
could be handled. Indeed, some of the methods the League suggested –
for instance the joint international collaboration of statesmen and pro-
fessional experts – were similar to those that other transnational frame-
works (primarily the International Sanitary Conference, as previously
mentioned) had built. However, unlike these frameworks, the League had
already developed systems, routines, and procedures of information
production and sharing (not necessarily with regard to environmental
concerns, but rather as a general practice) that supported and encouraged
the evolution of the rural hygiene campaign.
Moreover, the League’s institutional framework also demonstrates
how and to what extent environmental sanitation issues developed
under the auspices of the institution. At first, the League addressed
these issues as part of its interchange program in the late 1920s. But

36
B O R O W Y , supra note 8, at 12.
 3.3 l eague of n ations, rur al h y gi ene, sani tation 207

then, thanks to the requests made by delegates of several countries (such

as Spain, India, and Portugal) at the Assembly,37 the League placed rural
hygiene at the center of two big international conferences that directly
tackled these concerns and engaged a variety of professionals and official
agencies.
The Interchange Program of 1928 started when the League (and the
international community) became aware of certain dangers in the coun-
tryside that threatened general public health. Although the political,
financial, cultural, and social centers of the West were located in urban
areas, according to interwar period demographic surveys, the majority of
the population in most countries still lived in a rural surrounding.38
However, compared to earlier generations, interwar rural life felt much
closer (alarmingly so, especially during sanitation crisis) to densely
populated cities. Villages, both in the West and in other regions, no
longer seemed like the isolated places they had tended to be during earlier
periods: easier to regulate – and also to place under different quarantine
regimes – in times of dangerous epidemic outbreaks. Rural populations
were now more physically connected to urban centers by railways,
accessible roads, automobiles, modern waterways, canals, and other
means of transportation.
At this time, the League began to discuss the changing impression of
the countryside in terms of international law. Typical romantic descrip-
tions of village life and the countryside as pure, quiet, open, and close to
nature contrasted with the foggy and industrial city. The interwar
period, however, offered alternative visions of the countryside.
Reports that reached the League’s Secretariat depicted rural areas also
as a source of dirt, disease, and pollution, particularly with regard to
water sources such as lakes and rivers that were contaminated with
untreated human sewage.
This was not the first time that rural areas had been identified as a source
of pollution and environmental threats. In the late nineteenth century,
sanitation studies, germ theory, and bacteriology had encouraged this
37
League of Nations Annual Report for 1928, A.8.1929.III (C.H. 788), Apr. 18, 1929, LoN
Archives, at 5.
38
A report written by the Health Organisation reviewed the proportion of rural populations
in different countries. These data have shown that in the 1930s, with the exception of
certain Western countries (such as England, with 20 percent rural population), the
proportion of agricultural-rural sectors was high. In Yugoslavia, Turkey, and
Roumania, for instance, the numbers pointed to approximately 80 percent of the entire
population. See Second General Report on Certain European Schools and Institutes of
Hygiene, C.H. 1247 (I), LoN Archives, Oct. 5, 1937, R 6099/8A/28718/8855, at 3.
208 s p r e a d i n g di s eas es , an d en vi ronm ental c onc erns

negative stereotype of the countryside.39 However, the League shed new

light on the discussion on rural hygiene as a source of danger, revealing it
to be an issue that also related to international governance. The fact that
these concerns were discussed at a forum based on international law,
rather than one that relied on local or national considerations, placed the
rural hygiene issue in a different context. Diseases, pollution, lack of water,
rat control, and inadequate sanitation in rural areas did not just present
a human or social tragedy;40 these were also issues of global security, given
that this was a time when environmental threats at the local level could
travel rapidly and over great distances.
When the Health Organisation started to focus on rural hygiene as one
of its interests, it used skills the League had already introduced and
developed during its institutional activity. As was typical, the League’s
involvement began with a professional review based on information
collected from various countries about their own national policies, proto-
cols, and the ways in which legal-sanitary regulations were carried out on
the ground. The Interchange Program of 1928 mostly aimed to learn
about and compare these different procedures.
At first, the League was mainly concerned about “clear” public health
concerns in the periphery. One of the first professional reports that paved
the League’s way into the complex field of rural hygiene was actually
a statistical study.41 The study targeted mortality rates in different rural
areas across Europe and reflected at least some of the humanitarian
motivations that triggered the interest of the state, and also of inter-
national community, in the birth rate and demographic stability42 in the
countryside. While the comparative survey did not mention sanitary
factors specifically, its general conclusion was that according to available
data, the rural mortality rate was higher than the urban mortality rate in
different states (such as Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Bulgaria, Norway,
and Switzerland). Moreover, infants and young children were the most

39
See, e.g., Steven Cherry, Medicine and Rural Health Care, in H E A L T H A N D M E D I C I N E I N
R U R A L E U R O P E : 1 85 0– 1 94 5 , 19, 21 (Steven Cherry & Josep Barona eds., 2005).
40
B O R O W Y , supra note 8, at 327.
41
Knud Stouman, Mortality Conditions in Rural Europe, (undated; probably July 1931),
LoN Archives, R 5917/8A/23882/22408.
42
For a study on the ways in which the devastating cost of human lives in World War I have
changed certain perceptions of public officials and politicians during the interwar period
with regard to the importance of demographic strength (including of rural populations),
see Iris Borowy, International Social Medicine Between the Wars: Positioning a Volatile
Concept, 6 H Y G I E A I N T E R N A T I O N A L I S , no. 2, 2007, at 13.
 3.3 l eague of n ations, r ural hygiene, sanitation 209

vulnerable age groups in rural populations, likely due to inadequate

medical services and sanitation in the countryside.
Following this report, in autumn 1930, two member states addressed
the Health Committee of the League, and proposed that the League
convene a conference for the study of rural hygiene in Europe. The
Spanish government wrote to the League in September 1930,43 followed
by Hungary, which sent a similar suggestion in October.44 From this
point on, the League, encouraged by formal appeals, would be robustly
engaged in rural hygiene issues.
The Health Committee did not need long to consider the proposal.
Before the autumn of 1930 had ended, the Sixteenth Session of the
Committee adopted the proposal and ordered two institutional steps:
a special European conference on rural45 hygiene,46 and a subcommittee
that would organize the international gathering. Moreover, as different
tasks carried out by the League had already shown, the rural hygiene
campaign was going to be a professional rather than a political campaign.
The League agreed that the conference should target experts from various
technical fields, such as physicians, engineers, hygienists, biologists, civil
servants of public health departments, and others. One of the main topics
the subcommittee handled was how to find effective and efficient
methods of improving rural districts through sanitation.
Though it did not focus entirely (or even chiefly) on sanitation, the
conference on health centers in rural areas – which was held in Budapest
at Hungary’s request in October 1930 – set up an institutional framework
that would serve as a basis not only in Europe, but also in other activities
organized by the League later on. Health centers – in essence, big rural
clinics that were smaller than a hospital but larger than a simple state-run
clinic – were the most efficient method of organizing health services in
43
Proposal by the Spanish Government, C.H. 917, Sept. 16, 1930, Annex 5 to Minutes of the
16th HC Session, 29 Sept. to 7 Oct. 1930, LoN Archives, C.527.M.248.1930.III, at 106.
44
The Hungarian Ministry of Health wanted the League to support its new health center,
and the Secretary for State of Health, Kornel Scholtz, suggested that the festive occasion
be accompanied by a special conference of professional experts, to be organized by the
League and thanks to its capacity. Letter from Kornal Scholtz to Ludwik Rajchman, Sept.
12, 1930, LoN Archives, R 5930/8A/23115/10183.
45
The League used a working definition for “rural”: “an area or district where agriculture is
the chief or even the sole industry, and where all other industries are of small importance,
and in the main dependent upon agriculture” (Memo for the 2d Session of the
Preparatory Committee, LoN Archives, C.H. 948, Nov. 29, 1930, at 5) [hereinafter
Memo for the 2d Session of the Preparatory Committee].
46
Minutes of the 16th Health Committee, 29 Sept. to 7 Oct. 1930, C.527.M.248.1930.III,
LoN Archives, at 9–10.
210 s p r e a d i n g d i s ea s e s , a n d e n v i r o nm e n t a l c o n c e r n s

rural districts. Moreover, the scheme that the League introduced for
a structured rural health system, to be offered in various parts of
the world including East Asia, would serve as prototype for interwar
sanitary regimes. This structure was based on a hierarchy of the
urban centers and periphery. At the top of this structure was an
institute of hygiene or central health administration, and a central
staff of sanitary engineer directing the secondary and local health
inspectors in the countryside. On the local level, in the village, the
proposed scheme placed sanitary inspectors, in charge of routine
rural hygiene supervision.
The Budapest Conference served as an introduction for the rest of
the rural hygiene campaign to follow. Although this institutional
scheme for rural health did not introduce any “practical” or tangible
legal outcomes, such as a convention,47 its importance lay in defining
sanitation as an international problem – and not just a local or national
one. One of the main conclusions of the Budapest Conference was the
need to introduce modern sanitary systems in rural areas. Moreover,
the League had identified water supply, housing, and sewage disposal
as principal issues of international cooperation.48 It seems that the
League’s international initiatives in the early 1930s secured it a place as
a key player in rural health and sanitary care. Unlike earlier and other
bodies, both on the national-domestic level as well as the transnational
level (such as the series of the International Sanitary Conferences), the
League was able to contribute its institutional framework to this issue.
Rather than relying on domestic forums alone, the Budapest Conference
started an international discussion on rural hygiene that encouraged
different reports from a variety of communities concerned about improper
sanitation. Different civil society groups used the conference and the
discussion to encourage the League to become involved in issues that
previously had typically been dealt with by national institutions. This
was the case, for instance, with the Austrian Association of Workers in
Agriculture and Forestry,49 which appealed to the League shortly after the
Budapest Conference. The association complained that its members were
suffering from poor sanitary and environmental working conditions: their

47
As did certain other interwar conferences, including in terms of environmental problems,
and as I will elaborate in Chapter 4 of the comparative discussion.
48
Memo for the 2d Session of the Preparatory Committee, supra note 45.
49
Die Wohnverhältnisse der landwirtschaftlichen Arbeiter Österreichs, Bericht des
österreichischen Land- und Forstarbeiterverbandes, Feb. 26, 1931, LoN Archives,
R 5927/8A/275438/26690.
 3.3 l eague of n ations, rur al h y gi ene, sani tation 211

sleeping quarters were too close to their livestock, and were plagued by
smoky air and vermin. The association asked the League to look into these
problems and to support its endeavors to promote a hygienic working
environment for its members.
A committee of experts within the League applied itself to this matter.
It understood that improved sanitary conditions in Austria depended,
first and foremost, on domestic political power and suitable legislation.
The international forum of the League considered and discussed the issue
as part of its own mandate, as an institution shaping international
governance.
Several other discussions by experts on rural hygiene under the aus-
pices of the League in the early 1930s focused on technical data (gathered
from different states) on drinking water, the dangers of polluted water
sources, waste, and on the advantages of different methods of water
purification. As it prepared the agenda for the first rural hygiene confer-
ence, the League identified these issues, including water supplies, sewage
disposal, and rural housing as principle topics.50
The parties involved, including both the League and the representa-
tives, were well aware of the complexity involved concerning the League’s
alleged authority and the national sovereignty of states with their domes-
tic laws. Interestingly, whereas in other areas, the League had come into
conflict with states in its attempts to achieve sovereignty and power, the
sanitary campaign actually allowed the League to strengthen national
sovereignty in this instance. When the experts acting on behalf of the
League discussed sanitation and how it might best be improved, the
Polish delegate, for instance, asserted that it would be rather disappoint-
ing if the League issued less severe (and demanding) sanitation standards
than his government back home.51
In May 1931, following an intensive period of deliberation by the
committee of experts, the League presented a report at a general meeting
of the Preparatory Committee, a body whose responsibility it was to
organize the next steps on the matter of rural hygiene, and to convene
an international conference on this issue. The way was now open for
another international conference on rural hygiene in the summer – this
one much bigger than the preliminary conference that had been held in
Budapest.

50
Memo for the 2d Session of the Preparatory Committee, supra note 45.
51
Minutes, Sous-Comité d’experts en matière d’assainissement des regions, May 12, 1931,
LoN Archives, R 5927/8A/58564/26690.
212 s p r e a d i n g d i s e a s e s , a n d e n v i r o n m en t a l c o n c e r n s

3.3.2 The 1931 European Conference on Rural Hygiene

The Preparatory Committee, setting the agenda and framework for the
(first) international conference scheduled for summer, saw sanitation as
a central concern that it – and different (at this point, European) govern-
ments – should be focusing on. One of the League’s first instructions to
governments, which had both the formal authority and ability on the
ground, was to introduce a sanitation system in the countryside. Sewage,
the League asserted, should be disposed of by means of water carriage
systems, piped from private households. Where installation of the mod-
ern sewage system was not possible, open drains could be used; but, it was
advised that these should not transport excreta for public health reasons.
The League’s recommendations warned against polluting water sources,
and explained that sewage could be permitted to flow into rivers and
lakes, “if necessary,” and only after a process of controlled purification.52
At any rate, the League warned that surface soil and subsoil water had to
be protected.53
The League, striving to improve sanitation systems on the ground,
understood that unlike in other fields where environmental issues were
discussed, its legal and practical capacity with regard to sanitation was
much more limited. It therefore focused on international legal discourse
to articulate its recommendations.
Other recommendations of this kind focused, for instance, on flies.
The League suspected that these insects were responsible for the spread of
epidemics and therefore posed a threat to the natural environment.
Hence, flies needed to be kept away from sewage, and the League sought
technical engineering means to ensure this. The committee also claimed
that manure needed to be stored in watertight pits so that flies could not
get to it. As the following sections will show, the fear of flies as an
environmental and sanitary threat can be found in future steps taken in
the rural hygiene campaign.
Solid waste and its disposal were also key issues handled by the
committee. In order to prevent pollution and environmental hazards, it
recommended implementing a garbage disposal protocol or policy in the

52
Other means of purification were also possible: leaching cesspools, subsoil or surface
irrigation, receptacles in fly-proof superstructures, pails or open pits.
53
Technical Recommendations by the Preparatory Committee, Extracts from the Report of
the Preparatory Committee, C.H. 1045, LoN Archives, European Conference on Rural
Hygiene, Vol. II, Minutes, C.473.M.202.1931.III., at 142–61 [hereinafter Technical
Recommendations].
 3.3 l eague of n ations, r ural hy giene, sanitation 213

countryside. Garbage was best handled through a systematic routine of

collection. The League considered other more conventional or traditional
methods, such as feeding garbage to pigs or dumping it, to be unsuitable
options.
Moreover, the committee, and the League as a whole, turned to
practical means of (international) law in action. For instance, the
League explicitly recommended the construction of new institutions
and technical systems. In order to prevent general water pollution
and the contamination of drinking water and soil by sewage, the
League asserted that rural communities should get their water supply
from a central, regulated, system. Water should only obtained from
natural sources such as lakes, springs, wells, or local cisterns as an
alternative if strictly necessary. The Preparatory Committee’s report
emphasized that all water had to be strictly supervised by the state.
This sanitation protocol did not stop there. The committee also iden-
tified poor conditions created by rural housing, and their effects on
lacking environmental sanitation. According to the preparatory report,
rural housing in particular was in urgent need of improvement and
required adequate means of sanitation. Besides overcrowding, lack of
sufficient ventilation, and exposure to the sun, sanitary facilities, damp-
ness, and protection from insects were major problems in the country-
side in different parts of Europe.
As the League discussed practical and technical means to prevent
sanitary dangers in the periphery, it was also doing something else,
essential to the role of the state. With its suggested policies, protocols,
and measures the League was pushing the state to exercise its authority
and to be more responsible about tackling sanitation in the countryside. In
this way, the League pushed a modernist, centralizing, state-based agenda.
Speaking of legal regimes, it should be also noted that although the
League was a forum of international governance, it most certainly did not
recommend decentralizing medical or sanitation services: both these
things had to be rationally planned, regulated, and coordinated by the
state and its agencies. In that sense, despite the tension over the question
of the self-proclaimed authority of international institutions (and the
League as a whole), the League explicitly supported reinforcing the state’s
authority, and rejected solutions that encouraged decentralization and
promoting local agencies.
The bonification of rural Europe, concluded the committee, depended
mostly on fixing sanitation – something that needed to happen in the
countryside as well as in urban spaces, both problematic areas that were
214 spreading dis eases, and e nvironmental concerns

likely to suffer from exposure to spreading diseases due to environmental

conditions. Existing conditions in too many parts of the continent posed
a threat – both to the local communities in the countryside, and to other
populations as well. In that sense, the first rural hygiene conference
expressed a discourse of a different type of global security. The League
had dedicated much of its institutional energy to peacekeeping and global
security. The ways in which sanitation was considered to be part of
securing international social welfare shed light on the League’s environ-
mental regime. This regime enabled the League to recruit other realms of
international law to promote global security. In that sense – along with
the framework of disarmament treaties, or enforcing and reinforcing new
borders in the post–World War I world – proper sanitation and fighting
hazardous flies and other pests were part of the new multilayered system
of security and stability.
So much had to be done, asserted the professional committee. When it
came to environmental and sanitary challenges, almost everything had to
be repaired. In addition to drainage, a solid general infrastructure had to
be established – including water supply systems for housing, and sewage
and solid waste disposal systems in particular. In addition, the betterment
of housing conditions, farming practices, and other daily systems and
routines primarily relied on the introduction of modern means of sani-
tation that had been adjusted to the rural landscape, its natural geograph-
ical features, and environmental characteristics. As a representative of
global security, the League was concerned about the possibility of the
further spread of disease and pushed governments to formulate, in the
midst of the Great Depression and economic and industrial pressures,
a “complete sanitary reconditioning of the land.”
Although the first (European) rural hygiene conference was chiefly
intended to focus on necessary improvements in health and medical
services in these regions, the experts who had studied the different
conditions on the ground understood that in order to introduce
a comprehensive, efficient, and practical regime in rural areas, environ-
mental and sanitary issues had to be fully explored.
The 1931 European Conference on Rural Hygiene, which was held for
eight days in Geneva, did not go far beyond these recommendations
suggested by the Preparatory Committee.54 This probably had a lot to do
with the diplomatic and institutional routine of the League: the fact that the

54
It should be noted, though, that the League distributed more than one hundred reports on
a variety of issues that served as the basis for the first conference.
 3.3 l eague of n ations, r ural hy giene, sanitation 215

intensive preparatory work that preceded the conference in Geneva lasted

nine months, made the work (and mostly recommendations) of the
conference much quicker and more efficient. On the ground, the 1931
conference mostly considered the recommendations and comments made
by the Preparatory Committee. The fact that these recommendations were
not particularly binding in nature – either in terms of international law or
national obligations – probably aided the fact that all the resolutions were
eventually adopted by the foreign delegations unanimously.
Most of the European countries (twenty-four in total) sent their delega-
tions. In addition to representatives from states such as France, Turkey,
Great Britain, Roumania, and Portugal – and although the conference
focused on European rural issues – the international framework of the
League also brought other countries to the table, all of which were interested
in ways to combat and overcome environmental threats too. Delegations
from Latin and Central America (Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, and Mexico),
North America (United States), and Asia (China and Japan) also attended.
The shift from transnational frameworks, which had dealt with the realm of
sanitation prior to the League,55 to international and institutional frame-
works can also be seen in the other participants who took part in this
collaboration. The conference brought together not only European and
non-European states, but also a range of NGOs and bodies that looked at
the League as the center of both international law and international govern-
ance. Several different associations and professional societies also took part
in the discussions, among them the International Labour Organisation
(ILO), the International Association of Medical Officers, and (of course)
the Health Committee of the Health Organisation itself.
Moreover, the overall format used to discuss sanitation and rural
hygiene was shaped by the variety of professional and technical expertise
the conference brought together. Public health officers, agricultural
experts, biologists, medical doctors, diplomats, and insurance experts
all saw rural hygiene as a central issue that both the League and inter-
national law needed to address. Gustavo Pittaluga for instance,
a professor from the National School of Health in Madrid and the
President of the first conference, recognized the legal, diplomatic, and
historical significance of the conference, and the League’s role and
contribution in making it happen:
I am sure that this first European Conference on Rural Hygiene will mark
an epoch in the history of hygiene in agricultural and rural districts. For
55
The series of the International Sanitary Conferences from 1851 to 1938, for example.
216 spreading diseases, and e nvironmental concerns
the first time on so large a scale and with so much authority, practicing
physicians, health officers, administrators, agriculturists, engineers and
organizers of agricultural associations have met together for the thorough
study of those questions which are most important for the improvement
of conditions of life in rural districts from the standpoint of sanitation . . . .
It will not be the last time. There is still a long road to be travelled, but this
Geneva Conference, convened by the League of Nations, marks a starting
point on that road . . . .56

3.3.3 Following Up the 1931 Conference and Preparing for the Second
Intergovernmental Conference on Rural Hygiene
The sense of optimism that guided the conveners and different partici-
pants who attended the 1931 European Conference on Rural Hygiene did
not fade away quickly. Already during the closing sessions, Dr. Witold
Chodźko (former Minister of Health), acting on behalf of the Polish
delegation, called explicitly and enthusiastically for another international
cooperation under the auspices of the League on these pressing chal-
lenges. According to his remark, another follow-up conference should be
convened in “some years’ time.”57
Moreover, as it revised the recommendations of the first conference,
the League’s Health Section urged researchers and experts to engage with
other bodies: peasants’ associations, media and press, agrarian coopera-
tives, and more.58 Once again, the League not only stepped beyond earlier
initiatives of rural hygiene and public health (including transnational
ones), but actually offered and positioned itself as a relevant institutional
partner to various groups beyond (their national) governments, some-
times effectively bypassing their domestic authority.
Thanks to the League’s efforts, sanitation and rural hygiene had
transcended domestic, national, and transnational frameworks (and pol-
icies) and gained an institutional and international dimension. Other
56
Technical Recommendations, supra note 53, at 71.
For a detailed chronicle of the conference see F. R. Morote, La Conferencia de Higiene
Rural en Budapest, in G U S T A V O P I T T A L U G A , L A C O N F E R E N C I A I N T E R N A C I O N A L D E
H I G I E N E R U R A L C O N V O C A D A P O R L A S O C I E D A D D E L A S N A C I O N E S ( 29 J U N I O 1931)
43 (1931). For a study from a history of medicine perspective, see Josep L. Barona, The
European Conference on Rural Hygiene (Geneva, 1931) and the Spanish Administration, in
H E A L T H A N D M E D I C I N E I N R U R A L E U R O P E : 1 85 0 –1 9 45 , 127 (Josep L. Barona &
Steven Cherry eds., 2005).
57
Technical Recommendations, supra note 53, at 68.
58
See Letter from Vacel to Ludwik Rajchman, Report on the Progress of the Rural Hygiene
in Czechoslovakia, (undated), LoN Archives, R5932/8A/30078/30078.
 3 . 3 l e a g u e of n a t i o n s , r u r a l hy g i e n e , s a n i t a t i o n 217

representatives and experts agreed that the first rural hygiene confer-
ence’s recommendations served as a test case in which international
cooperation between professionals, scientists, and experts could unite
different states and their respective national perspectives, policies, and
agendas.
In addition to the recommendations the League published and distrib-
uted when the conference had concluded, it suggested that the follow-up
conference deal with environmental concerns as well. In a report in the
first issue of its Bulletin in 1932, the Health Organisation identified
concerns such as the epidemiology of typhoid fever in rural districts
and the sanitary improvements needed to overcome it; methods of
treating garbage (and manure) to prevent fly breeding; and, in particular,
methods of testing and analyzing water and sewage with a view to
possible standardization in terms of international criteria.59
The League’s institutional framework, together with its emphasis on
information gathering and sharing, led the institution to not only
accept this invitation for further collaboration, but actually encouraged
it. Within weeks, the League received updates on planned sanitary
projects in different countries, including (local-national) data on
typhoid incidence,60 suggested studies on the sanitary system from
the hygiene school in Zagreb,61 or on water management in different
areas.62
When autumn of 1931 arrived, more than ten different institutions
that were involved in sanitation and public health issues joined the
League and engaged in its international campaign, following the summer
conference. The League took it upon itself to coordinate63 these different
initiatives and make them coherent.
Although there was a period of intense activity surrounding rural
hygiene in the wake of the first conference of 1931, this sense of urgency
seemed to dissipate in the mid-1930s and onwards. However, it should be
noted that the follow-up period’s focus on fly control did manage to
59
Report of the Health Organisation for the Period Jan. 1931 to Sept. 1932, Bulletin, Vol. I,
1932, LoN Archives, at 400–01.
60
Letter from Gustavo Pittaluga to Otto Olsen, Aug. 20, 1931, LoN Archvies, R5932/30087/
30078.
61
Letter from Andrija Stampar to Otto Olsen, Sept. 8, 1931, LoN Archvies, R5932/8A/
30088/30078.
62
Letter from Jacques Parisot to Otto Olsen, Aug. 26, 1931, LoN Archvies, R5932/8A/
30080/30078.
63
Letter from Otto Olsen to Jacques Parisot, July 23, 1931, LoN Archvies, R5932/8A/30080/
30078.
218 s p r e a d i n g d i s e a s e s , a n d e n v i r o n m en t a l c o n c e r n s

rekindle this urgency to an extent. The League, and most certainly the
different experts who provided it with scientific observations and warn-
ings, was particularly concerned by the environmental-sanitary threat
that flies posed to rural health.
This issue was discussed at a special meeting of entomologists that was
organized by the Health Organisation and held in London in 1935. The
purpose of the meeting was to discuss a plan of experimental research to
ascertain what part the housefly played in the epidemiology of diseases of
the intestinal tract. This difference in the aspect of the “fly question” in
Europe and in the East was emphasized and earmarked for attention by
the rural hygiene conference in Bandoeng, which would follow the
conference of 1931 several years later. Moreover, it seems that this special
focus was not mentioned merely as a general and nonbinding declaration
for the protocol. A program of research “appropriate for the East” was
then drawn up by a special expert64 and communicated to certain
entomologists of Asian countries, who agreed in principle to undertake
this research.
Flies were not the only insects being scrutinized by the League. During
their discussions on leprosy, in which delegates shared progress on the
current scientific research, they expressed particular concern about the
part played by the mosquito and the phelbotmus (the “sand fly”) in the
transition of the disease. They were also of the opinion65 that the sur-
rounding environment was a relevant object for discussion and recom-
mended measures.
On the ground, however, this burst of energy that followed the
conference suffered from institutional difficulties of its own. The stud-
ies that were supposed to be carried out all across Europe did not go as
planned. Often, the relevant preparations were more complex, expen-
sive, and time consuming than they had at first seemed. Professional
investigations suffered a lack of funds to support their research projects,
bureaucratic obstacles, and more.66 One formal report from summer
1934, for instance, complained that following the achievements of the
first conference, only a single institute had started investigations into

64
Professor B. A. R. Gater of Singapore.
65
F. R. Morote, La Conferencia de Higiene Rural en Budapest, in Gustavo Pittaluga, La
Conferencia internacional de Higiene rural convocada por la Sociedad de las Naciones
(29 Junio 1931) 96 (1931).
66
Letter from Bohumil Vaček to Ludwik Rajchman, Report on the Progress of the Rural
Hygiene in Czechoslovakia, (undated; probably Oct., 1932), LoN Archives, R5932/8A/
30078/30078.
 3 . 3 l e a g u e of n a t i o ns , ru r a l hy g i e n e , s a n i t a t i o n 219

the standardization of methods for testing water and sewage. However,

no attention at all had been paid to the training of sanitary engineers.67
This is not to suggest that the research completely ceased on the
ground; or that the League suddenly stopped receiving data from differ-
ent states68 as part of its information-sharing methodology. Several field
studies that were sent to the League focused, for instance, on the drastic
increase in typhoid in rural areas in Denmark, Roumania, Poland,
Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Yugoslavia. Though the epi-
demiology of typhoid plague was yet unclear in terms of full scientific
observation, the joint international campaign – under the auspices of the
League – had identified several environmental factors that were assumed
to be connected with the spread of the disease. Several of these reports
concluded that flies were among the main generators of disease, due to
field observations indicating the connection between their frequent visits
to manure heaps in the countryside and the spread of illness.69
But it seemed that the focus on Europe was about to be placed on hold.
The special International Exhibition on Rural Housing (and Hygiene) of
summer 1937, which was organized in Paris in June by the French
government (and supported by the League),70 marked the endpoint of
the League’s focus on the European countryside,71 which only regained
prominence at the next international intergovernmental conference the
League put together in August 1937. This time, however, attention had
shifted to a vast area stretching from Japan to the western parts of India –
this was the focus of the Intergovernmental Conference of Far Eastern
Countries on Rural Hygiene, held in August 1937.
67
Report to the Council on the Work of the 21st Session of the Health Committee, June 7,
1934, LoN Archives, C.233.M.97:1934.III, at 5.
68
Most of the data in the mid-1930s referred to different tools that various countries were
using to cope with typhoid fever, to handle the disposal of manure, or to fight against fly
breeding in their rural territories. Report to the Council on the Work of the 25th Session
of the Health Committee, May 1, 1937, LoN Archives, C.219.M.159.1937.III, at 10.
69
Typhoid Fever in Rural Areas: Results of the Enquiries So Far Effected in Pursuance of
Recommendations of the European Conference on Rural Hygiene, Oct. 25, 1937, LoN
Archives, C.H. 1276; or Draft Report of the Sub-Committee on Rural Typhoid, Nov. 26,
1937, LoN Archives C.H./Hyg.rur/Typh./13.
70
All participating governments used the 1937 Paris Exhibition to present their achieve-
ments and to give a purely positive description of rural life in their countries, sending
photos and plaster models of villages, farms, and rural health centers. See exhibit plans
and programs of participants, LoN Archives, R 6094/8A/26064/8855.
71
A letter from Parisot to Minister of Agriculture, Mar. 31, 1936, LoN Archives, R 6094/8A/
26064/8855. On the preparations for the June 1937 conference in Paris see Note on the
International Exhibition on Rural Housing, C.H. 1221, Nov. 20, 1936, LoN Archives,
R 6094/8A/26064/8855.
220 s p r e a d i ng di s e a s e s , a nd en v i r o n m e n t a l c o n c e r n s

3.3.4 The Intergovernmental Conference of Far Eastern Countries

on Rural Hygiene, Bandoeng (Java), August 1937
Concerns about different environmental and sanitary threats did not
only apply to Europe. These issues also affected regions beyond
Europe’s borders. East Asian countries, most of which were under the
direct rule or influence of European powers, were particularly relevant
destinations for international inquiry and cooperation, since they were
overwhelmingly rural and suffered from the same problems that the first
rural hygiene conference had identified.
The League had first started to view East Asia as another target of its
rural hygiene campaign in late 1930, in light of post–World War I large-
scale migration and intensive transportation between Europe and other
continents.72 At the 1932 Assembly, the Chinese and the Indian delega-
tions both proposed that the League also organize an intergovernmental
conference on rural hygiene for eastern countries, which encouraged the
League to push forward this initiative. A couple of years later, in spring
1936, the League accepted another invitation, this time from the Dutch
government, to hold a conference in the Netherland Indies in 1937.73 At
first, the focus was supposed to be chiefly on the availability of medical
services and professional staff in rural areas. A special questionnaire was
sent all around the world,74 proposing a draft agenda for the planned
conference.
Many governments expressed an interest in participating in the con-
ference, which was scheduled to take place the following summer in 1937.
The primary focus of the conference was to be on prevention methods,
such as proper sanitary systems and securing water resources, as these
were considered even more important in East Asia than in Europe, given
the demographic differences between the two continents. The League
reports, as previously mentioned, ascribed central importance to rural
hygiene particularly in Asia, since 90 percent of the population lived in
rural areas, and even urban or semi-urban centers were (according to the
League’s observations) often rural in character.75

72
Minutes of the 16th Health Commission Session, Sept. 29 to Oct. 7, 1930, LoN Archives,
C.527.M.248.1930.III, at 26–28.
73
Report to the Council on the Work of the 23d Session of the Health Committee, May 2,
1936, LoN Archives, C.198.M.124.1936.III, at 3–4.
74
As this was also the common technical procedure in other initiatives of the League.
75
C. D. de Langen reports to the Conference on Rural Hygiene in the Far East, Sept. 3, 1936,
LoN Archives, R 6095/8A/26762/855.
 3 . 3 l e a g u e of na t i o n s , r u ra l hy g i e n e , s a n i t a t i o n 221

The second rural hygiene conference took place within a largely

(though not solely) colonial context. The League used professional
and technical expertise as a foundation for international law and
governance, and it seems this general policy also guided the League
in this case. In order to prepare for the conference, the League asked
for reliable data, as it had also done in preparation for the first
conference. However this time, professional expertise and data were
a product of colonial knowledge and were part of the power relations
of imperial networks and frameworks. In other words, information
gathering, in the context of the second conference, was conducted
rather differently.
The League mobilized professional experts, most of whom came from
colonial backgrounds, to serve as commission members.76 Ludvik
Rajchman, for instance, in preparation for the conference, specifically
looked for “a prominent Britisher possessing wide experience in the
administration of rural regions and a thoroughly sympathetic attitude
towards the native population . . . .”77
The League also appointed experts with an obvious professional
background in colonial and imperial administration.78 However, des-
pite this imperial context, the conference also suggested drawing on
the expertise of parties whose observations were more neutral, and
not merely reflections of dichotomous relations between the hege-
monic West and subordinated Eastern populations. Prior to the
conference, a special tour across East Asia (held between April and
August 1936) was organized in order to establish contact with rele-
vant governmental departments that were directly or indirectly
involved in health and sanitation matters. The aim of this tour was
to motivate local Asian authorities to become involved in the League’s
campaign, and to spread the news on the upcoming conference.

76
The commission, which visited in different countries in South East Asia (such as the
Philippines or Ceylon) between spring and summer 1936, met local government officials
and gathered data and statistics on rural hygiene. On the expedition see Summary of the
Tour of the Commission in India, (undated; probably May–June 1936), LoN Archives,
R/6093/8A/15110/8855.
77
Letter from Ludkik Rajchman to Thorwald Madsen, Nov. 5, 1935, LoN Archives, R 6093/
8A/15110/8855.
78
This was the case, for instance, with A. S. Haynes, who was appointed as the Chairperson
of the special Health Committee for the second conference, after his service as (former)
Colonial Secretary of the Federated Malay States; and with Dr. Willem Theunissen, the
Deputy Director of the Health Services and a “tropical hygiene” expert from the Dutch
Indies.
222 s p r ea d i n g di s e a s es , a n d e n v i r o n m e n t a l c o n c e r n s

In most respects,79 the Asian conference followed its European prede-

cessor, and most of its issues were directly drawn from the first confer-
ence of 1931 – including water regulations in terms of purification and
supply, modern means of sanitation, and more. In a broader sense, most
of the conclusions of the second conference echoed those of the
European one. In the late 1930s, when the global geopolitical situation
had become significantly worse than in the early 1930s, the League
focused on ensuring rural hygiene in East Asia and recommended adopt-
ing those same principles that had proved to be beneficial in European
cases. Throughout the discussions and sessions, the League recom-
mended that governments focus on sanitary engineering, and strive to
overcome environmental threats such as those to housing and the drink-
ing water supply, as well as those threats posed by latrines, manure and
household refuse, fly control, and more. The League further asserted that
the implementation of modern improvements in these realms would
function as measures to combat dangerous diseases in rural districts,80
such as malaria, plague, yaws, and leprosy. Once again, the League used
the rural hygiene campaign to promote modernization and centralizing
tendencies, just as it had with the European delegates of the first
conference.
Although the second conference was obviously modeled on the previ-
ous conference and used comparative methods, it also served as an
opportunity to broaden the scope of the concept of rural hygiene in
general:
Rural hygiene, especially in Eastern countries, tends more and more to
become only one of the aspects of the wider program of rural reconstruc-
tion. Therefore the Commission endeavours to investigate nutrition,
agriculture, education, cooperative movements, for they are all factors
that cannot be overlooked in any scheme of rural improvement . . . .81

79
LoN Information Section: Far Eastern Rural Hygiene Conference, Aug. 1937, LoN
Archives, R 6098/8A/28718/8855. One of the central differences in the agendas of the
two conferences relates to the strong emphasis of the second conference on medical staff
and its training in rural medicine and rural hygiene. The need for local native personnel
was urgent, but also problematic in terms of colonial politics. Western colonialism did not
favor higher education among the local population and rejected the idea of creating and
supporting qualified intellectual and professional elites. These elites, apart from being
efficient and contributing to the everyday life of indigenous communities, also had the
potential to gain political power and eventually threaten Western rule.
80
League of Nations Information Section: Far Eastern Rural Hygiene Conference, Aug.
1937, LoN Archives, R 6098/8A/28718/8855.
81
Statement, (undated; probably Sept. 1936), LoN Archives, E 6093/8A/25509/8855.
 3 . 3 l e a g u e o f n a t i o n s , ru r a l h y g i e n e , s a n i t a t i o n 223

Once again, using its tools and institutional reputation, the League
organized an international forum that represented a variety of voices in
a way that was hard to imagine before the League came into being.
Almost all the political units of East Asia at that time sent their delega-
tions to Java for the ten-day conference in early August 1937: North
Borneo, Burma, Ceylon, China, Fiji, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands
Colony, the New Hebrides Condominium, Hong Kong, British India
(and four Indian States), the Netherlands East Indies, French Indo-
China, Japan, British Malaya, the Philippines, Siam, the British
Solomon Islands Protectorate, and Tonga. Among these countries, only
three were independent: Japan, China, and Siam.82
Like its European predecessor, the second conference relied (mainly)
on a variety of experts, including medical and health officers and doctors,
sanitary engineers, and experts in agricultural hygiene. Following the
aims that the first conference had declared, the delegations in Bandoeng
were completely aware of their historic mission.83 In one of the prepara-
tory documents, the Health Committee reported to the Council that this
kind of occasion also “[held] an opportunity to improve” living condi-
tions across the region, and to bring prosperity and progress by means of
better hygiene in the countryside.
The second conference also followed the recommendations of the first
conference by emphasizing the technical means needed to create a more
hygienic84 environment for rural people to live in. The conference
affirmed that rural hygiene policies should take into account the value
of preventive activities. Like the European conference, it realized that
these measures, such as modern means of sanitation, fly control, etc.,
were crucial to overcoming the environmental risks posed by pollution.
The recommendations pointed to the need for clean water, ensuring the
safety of water sources, and efficient waste disposal in rural areas, and
called for further intensive study on flies as suspicious generators of
disease in rural landscapes.
The analysis that follows will focus on several specific examples of rural
hygiene and environmental concerns targeted by the conference.
Moreover, these examples from the conference’s agenda will show how

82
Nevertheless, and despite their official independence, both China and Siam were at that
time subjected to powerful foreign (Western) political and economic influence.
83
Report to the Council on the Work of the 25th Session of the Health Committee, May 1,
1937, LoN Archives, C.219.M.159.1937.III.
84
Report of the Health and Medical Services to the plenary meeting of the Conference (by
Dr. J. L. Hydrick), Aug. 10, 1937, LoN Archives, R 6107/8A/37714/8855, at 4.
224 spreading diseases, and environmental concerns

and to what extent the technical and professional discourse on rural

hygiene in East Asian countries was based on security concerns. First,
I will describe the conference’s interest in protecting water resources as
a primary issue. Second, I will focus on the connection between the
disposal of human-organic waste, pollution, and environmental risks,
and examine how this connection was discussed by the League and the
delegations. Third, I will introduce the discussion on fly and rat control
(as part of the goal to improve rural housing). And fourth, I will provide
the example of ancylostomiasis and several other “rural East-Asian”
epidemics that were described by the second conference.
Protecting water sources and ensuring the supply of pure drinking
water, for instance, became one of the conference’s central concerns.
The 1937 conference studied the different methods of purifying water
in each of the represented countries. In many ways, protecting water
sources became a test case for addressing the interactions between
pollution, sanitation, and environmental risks as issues for inter-
national governance policies. The different reports that the League
received from these countries all identified water purification as
a problem that was worthy of the attention of state authorities: the
general government, the local governments, and different health
authorities.85
The League’s comparative study of these reports, which involved
different agencies of the state, revealed the complexity involved in imple-
menting water purification methods on a broad scale. To achieve this roll
out, different districts across the rural periphery demanded not only
financial support for their budgets, but also the collaboration of scientists,
government officials, public health experts, and medical doctors.
Whereas delegations did not always agree on the issues discussed at the
conference, they reached consensus on the matter of purified water given
the direct implication of water management and environment on the
(rural) public:
Indeed, contrary to certain opinions which are based on purely superficial
observations, the [ordinary individual] of the poor classes appreciates
water that is clear, limpid, fresh, tasteless and odourless. Though he
sometimes blames the water of the pipe system for hardening the rice,
for making it less white, for blackening the tea or for destroying its aroma
(when the water comes from deep-lying levels and contains iron), he
nevertheless very soon becomes accustomed to it and the throngs of

85
Preparatory Papers, supra note 6, at 51.
 3 . 3 l e a g u e o f n a t i o n s , ru r a l h y g i e n e , s a n i t a t i o n 225
water-carriers around the street hydrants furnish sufficient proof of the
success of the water-supply systems established.86

However, the conference emphasized the difference between urban cen-

ters and the rural periphery. In the villages, inhabitants still preferred
rainwater as their primary water source. Rainwater was stored in earth-
enware jars or in cisterns, or (in case these methods were not available)
drawn directly from shallow wells or rivers. However, changes in climate
and the surrounding environment made sanitary concerns increasingly
likely. During the dry season, water ran out frequently in these shallow
wells and other basins, becoming “nothing more than sheets of mud. This
water is used for bathing, for washing linen and for drinking purposes.”87
One report from Indo-China revealed that in some of the villages, a small
purifying plant with a reservoir of treated water had been set up – but
without any distributing system. In other villages, the League noted with
concern, rural communities were using unpurified water from wells,
rivers, or irrigation canals. Given that these were the major natural
sources of fresh water, particularly in rural areas,88 the conference
asserted that such water systems in the countryside urgently needed to
be improved.
The conference also understood that rural hygiene was essential for the
well-being of the environment. As water regimes changed due to pollu-
tion, unstable rural environments overwhelmingly began to affect the
everyday routines of both local inhabitants and livestock. Therefore,
proper water management and sanitation became clear and urgent
requirements for local populations: “Live-stock has then to be moved
elsewhere, and, when the family reserves in the jars are exhausted, the
householder must buy fresh water from the water-sellers . . . frequently
from great distances, from the fresh-water zone.”89
Though most of the recommendations pointed to (modern) European
techniques to improve rural hygiene conditions, the second conference
also recommended using methods that had been common before mod-
ern times. The duration of the dry season in certain areas in East Asia
(when brackish water affected the freshwater zone), for instance, tended
to vary according to the specific rural region, and generally lasted at least
fifteen days: “[T]his has made it possible to assist waterless districts by

86
Id. at 59.
87
Id.
88
Id. at 61–62.
89
Id. at 63.
226 s p r e a d i n g di s e a s es , a nd en v i r o n m e n t a l c o n c e r n s

means of a procedure which is merely a modernized form of the old

method of solving the problem by making ponds.” When fresh water was
obtainable, the reservoir was not used and the water needed for con-
sumption was pumped directly from the river and throughout the fresh-
water area. However, the conference emphasized, whenever water was
obtained – either from the river, or from the reservoir – it always had to
be treated before it was distributed. That way, the community was able to
remove the environmental-sanitary risk, or at least to minimize it.
The issue of brackish water became an important point in the discus-
sion. Although the duration of the brackish period changed from area to
area, it was considered a problem common to the (entire) region. Both
the League and other representatives were concerned that brackish water
would endanger other water resources if it seeped into the reservoirs. On
this issue, for instance, the experts recommended coating the reservoirs,
and other nonnatural methods, to cope with the problem.90 These
recommendations exemplified the League’s ability to serve as an infor-
mation center which, although in some cases did not produce any new
legal arrangements, did use its institutional capabilities and techniques to
gather information and to “export” it to other parties.
In this way, problematic rural environmental risks such as brackish
water allowed for the direct participation of locals, which challenged
imperial networks and power relations. The rural concerns in East Asia
show how fundamental the League’s mission was, given that it had to
change the conceptual thinking of that time. The campaign’s focus had
evolved from issues of colonial medical care systems to recommenda-
tions for the comprehensive development of Asian societies. These were
environmental issues that changed the original goal of developing strat-
egies to align subservient populations with European interests, to strat-
egies that developed local Asian societies according to their own needs
(just as European needs had been developed in Europe). In this way, the
discussion of sanitary problems in the countryside created a more equal
arena for a more pluralistic variety of voices.
The discussion on polluted water sources engaged sanitary and public
health concerns, as well as considerations that took into account the need

90
One of solutions recommended by the League was to build a special plant that would be
installed in all the rural centers affected by the problem. The so-called “Cochin-China
type” plant was installed in different agricultural areas, and the conference encouraged
large rural centers and towns in the provinces – both in the freshwater and brackish areas
beyond Cochin-China – to be equipped with a drinking-water system based on this
model.
 3 . 3 l e a g u e of n at i o n s , rur al h y g i ene, sanitation 227

for the involvement of the local population. In most cases, the water
supply in rural areas was distributed for consumption only after it had
been treated through a process of water chlorination; however, the
conference had identified risks posed by the margins of these regions.
Unlike chief towns in the rural provinces, the conference observed that
villagers generally obtained their water either from wells, ponds, or from
irrigation canals. In all cases, the problem was that “[t]his water is always
impure.”91
When it came to the issue of water supply, the conference explained
that the “most reasonable solution” would be to protect the safety and
sanitation of the wells. This could primarily be achieved by placing
a cover, fitted with a pump, on each well. However, “the purchase of
a pump involves expenditure which the peasant will often not be able – or
prepared – to afford not being convinced of the need for pure water.”92
The League was aware of this reality, and further acknowledged that rural
wells, which were a notoriously poor source of sanitation, were not soon
going to disappear from these parts of Asia. Still, the League did what it
could to improve the local conditions on the ground using tools and
discourses of international law and international governance. The con-
ference suggested certain practical ways in which rural wells could be
better treated, based on the typical model used in Annam.93 This model
required wells to be fitted with a reinforced concrete cover, which had
a manhole leading to a ladder. The concrete protected the well from the
immediate risk of contamination, and the well was further protected by
a fence that surrounded it.
The delegations also dealt with the connection between the disposal of
human-organic waste, pollution, and environmental risks. The confer-
ence suggested two sanitary solutions that could be used to decrease the
danger of polluted water in the countryside. Both solutions were intro-
duced based on the results of a comparative study and information
sharing. The first recommendation was the use of rectangular pits (as
latrines), such as those used in Antipolo.94 It was unlikely that the use of

91
Preparatory Papers, supra note 6, at 69.
92
Id. at 52.
93
Annam was a French protectorate encompassing the central region of what is today
Vietnam. Before the protectorate’s establishment, the name Annam was used in the West
to refer to Vietnam as a whole. The Protectorate of Annam became a part of French
Indochina in 1887.
94
Antipolo was a small town in the Philippines, where these latrines were in use at the time
of the conference.
228 s p r e a d i n g di s e a s e s , a nd e nv iron me n ta l co nc e rn s

these pits would lead to pollution of the subsoil water since, “according to
experiments made . . . in 1921, the vertical infiltration from latrines does
not exceed a depth of from 1–1.5 meters, while horizontal infiltration is
negligible.”95
The second solution that was suggested was a bored hole latrine, which
had a deep hole (between three to six meters) instead of a pit. The
conference observed that this option was “well known to all hygienists
thanks to the efforts made by the Rockefeller Foundation,96 which had
invested a large sum to ensure the standard use of this model of latrine
worldwide. “This type has a certain number of advantages,” the confer-
ence recommendations detailed, “such as long life, absence of smell and
of flies and the possibility in consequence of sinking the hole in the
immediate vicinity of dwelling.”97
These models that the League suggested, especially the second (the
bored hole latrine), were based on experiments98 and practical know-
ledge that had been gathered from other locations. They demonstrate
how and to what extent this mode of international governance relied on
methods such as information sharing and distributing.
Most of the contact with local inhabitants was conducted through the
colonial authorities. However, the preparations for the conference, and the
conference itself, made room for perspectives that reflected a different set
of needs in the geopolitical situation of East Asia, which at that time was
mostly controlled by Western imperial powers and colonial networks.
Local East Asian authorities were asked to provide information on these
topics to help shape the conference agenda,99 and a large number of papers
from these countries detailing their needs and problems arrived in Geneva.
The League also emphasized the importance of involving the local
peasant population in implementing the environmental-sanitary measures

95
Preparatory Papers, supra note 6, at 53. The conference conclusions state that this was
only true for soils of low porosity. Further research should be undertaken with regard to
infiltration in other types of soil such as sand, chalk, or marl, where infiltration could be
far more extensive.
96
On the involvement of the Rockefeller Foundation, see Josep L. Barona, The League of
Nations and the Rockefeller Foundation: International Activism in Public Health, in T H E
LEAGUE OF NATIONS’ WORK ON SOCIAL ISSUES: VISIONS, ENDEAVOURS AND
E X P E R I M E N T S 61 (Magaly Rodríguez García, Davide Rodogno & Liat Kozma eds., 2016).
97
Preparatory Papers, supra note 6, at 53.
98
Such as the experiment with the second model, which was carried out in Singapore in
1929.
99
Report to the Council on the Work of the 25th Session of the Health Committee, May 1,
1937, LoN Archives, C.219.M.159.1937.III, at 10.
 3.3 l eague of n ations, rural hygiene, sanitation 229

of the campaign. These two types of latrine “can be constructed by the

villagers themselves,” the conference recommended.100 Moreover, the
tools required to dig the holes “should be lent to them by the local
authorities or by the health centers,” so that the peasants would not be
burdened with the cost of purchasing them. Considering the magnitude of
the rural sanitation project that the conference was calling for, it was the
government and the imperial authorities that would need to bear most of
the financial burden. As I have mentioned earlier, the League displayed
centralizing tendencies in this matter and used the campaign not necessar-
ily to strengthen its own authority, but rather to support local authorities.
The League was thus aware of the delicate balance it needed to achieve
between sanitary-environmental needs and practical considerations.
Apart from environmental concerns, the discussions on relevant solu-
tions also emphasized the economic burden on the local population.
Therefore, the League’s experts also mentioned that the relevant models
had been decided on after “much thought,” “and are now produced on
a large scale at a low price.”101
In addition to the pollution of water sources, the problems of manure
and household refuse were considered acute problems in rural environ-
ments. Both conferences, and the second conference of 1937 in particu-
lar, focused on the study of this area of countryside hygiene. The second
conference particularly dealt with the ways in which “Eastern peoples”102
used to handle their different types of refuse. The diplomats’ and experts’
main concerns related to the environmental and sanitary effects of the
conventional uses of manure in different parts of the countryside in East
Asia.
While in some of these countries, the rural population tended to use
manure as a fertilizer, others used it as fuel. In either case, the League was
concerned about the sanitary and environmental risks posed by these
traditional methods of treating refuse, and it was especially concerned
that water resources would be polluted as a result:
In either case [using the manure as a fertilizer or as a fuel] the manure is
stacked in the immediate vicinity of the house, whereas it should be
dumped with the household refuse, in a pit some distance away from

100
Preparatory Papers, supra note 6, at 54.
101
Id. One can claim that the League expressed a progressive agenda in its environmental
effort. This early understanding took into account that there was a need not only to
incorporate with the local population, but also to introduce practical and above all
affordable environmental measures.
102
Preparatory Papers, supra note 6, at 54.
230 s p r e a d i n g di s e a s e s , a nd e nv iron me n ta l co nc e rn s
the house and the well. The health authorities and rural construction
officers should explain to the inhabitants how important this is.103

The League was well aware of the need to present practical solutions, and
not simply strategies that might be interpreted as being too “Western” in
nature. The compromise it encouraged (although it was not a perfect
method given the conditions in the countryside) was the use of inciner-
ators to destroy household refuse. In larger communities, however,
incinerators were less popular due to their environmental effects and
because of the agricultural value of manure as fertilizer, which is was lost
if the manure was burned. Therefore, “it might be more economical to
treat . . . household refuse together by the ‘compost’ method.”104
Like other sanitary concerns on the rural frontier, the problem of
manure did not involve public health or environmental aspects alone,
but also had an economic dimension, “which is of even greater import-
ance.” In countries such as India, for instance, where the soil had become
poor from a lack of sufficient nitrogenous fertilizer, stable manure should
be “spread on the fields instead of being used as fuel.”
Both conferences may have discussed the different environmental
risks separately, but that does not mean the League or the delegations
treated the issues as if they were isolated from one other. The discussions
reflected that these issues were part of a broader picture of the rural
environment, which had to be protected from different hygienic risks.
Flies and the risks they posed to public health also appeared repeatedly in
the discussions on the recommended improvements to rural housing,
and vice versa.
First, the delegations exchanged data on rural housing and how certain
features (such as the location of houses) contributed to the fly problem in
the rural periphery. This part of the second conference focused on an
observation introduced by one of the French geographers, who warned of
the “apparent illogicalities in the distribution of types of houses in Indo-
China.” According to this view, certain communities built their houses in
the damp deltas on the ground level, directly on the foundation of beaten
earth “where they are constantly befouled by the stagnant water.”105
There environmental aspect of rural housing served as a basis for
comparison by the League. The experts focused on the traditional
method of building houses on piles. This was, the report concluded, “a

103
Id.
104
Id.
105
Id., at 51.
 3.3 l eague of n ations, r ural hy giene, sanitation 231

hygienic type of dwelling for tropical countries.”106 The report did admit
that the stabling of animals underneath the house had certain (environ-
mental) disadvantages such as attracting flies, but stated that this seemed
to involve “no serious danger” – perhaps quite the opposite. “It may even
be some kind of safeguard against malaria.”107
Fly control was not the only issue to come up with regard to housing.
The conference raised the importance of housing (or rehousing) as a part
of an environmental and spatial redeployment while combating generators
of disease. Attention to (environmental) improvements was necessary as
part of the fight against diseases, “and should not be underestimated.”108
Rats, for instance, which constituted part of a larger rural-agrarian ecosys-
tem that threatened the human population, were also discussed: first in the
countryside, and later in urban centers.109
Given the vast undertaking ahead and the huge financial resources it
would require, the League acknowledged that international law or trans-
national cooperation alone would not provide sufficient solutions.
However, that does not mean the League disengaged from the problems
at hand. The optimism surrounding international law in the interwar
period was evident in the discussions on the possible solutions that legal
mechanisms could offer: “If the past cannot be obliterated, it may,
however, be possible to try by legislation to safeguard the future by, for
instance, requiring all new buildings to be rat-proofed.”110
The rat problem was of particular concern to the conference delegates,
and they saw a great need for environmental measures that could cope
with the severe threat of plague in rural areas and densely populated
cities. In some cases, the environmental measures were neither easy nor
practical, as it was not always possible to pull down and rebuild the rural
infrastructure, simple though this infrastructure was. “In such circum-
stances,” recommended the League, “the procedure . . . is to clean up the
‘desas.’111 The inhabitants have to build huts outside the village, and live
in them while the rats in their houses are being destroyed and the most
106
Id., at 58.
107
Id.
108
Id. at 92.
109
The conference proposed that the rat problem could be beaten in two ways: through
housing (and proper hygiene and sanitary) improvements, and through vaccination. In
both cases, and especially on the former, “gigantic efforts” had already being taken and
the League supported and promoted these methods long after the conference had
concluded. See Id. at 79.
110
Id. at 79.
111
The local villagers’ houses.
232 s p r e a d i n g d i s ea s e s , a n d e n v i r o nm e n t a l c o n c e r n s

urgent improvements made.”112 Using comparative data gathered by the

League, the experts mentioned that in Ceylon for instance, the villagers
temporarily had to relocate to the country, where they were fed for five
days free of charge.
Given the social aspects of the rat campaign in Asia, the League
encouraged governments to consider other areas that might be directly
or indirectly affected. On the one hand, the League recommended that
the state carry the economic burden of the different required tasks. But
on the other hand, local citizens in the countryside were also encouraged
to take action on the matter. In this way, international law acted – or
proclaimed to act – as a mediator and as a policy generator.113
Once again, information sharing proved to be crucial. The delegates
and experts compared the different measures that various countries had
taken as part of their own rat-control policies. One of the cases discussed
was that of Madagascar,114 which drew attention to the risk posed by the
rat, X. cheopis,115 as the primary vector for bubonic plague (and murine
typhus).
With its rural hygiene campaign, the League introduced a vertical or
three-dimensional perspective. Rural hygiene issues had to go through
three different layers of authority at the same time: the League itself, the
states, and local communities and authorities. Unlike other missions
(including environmental ones) that it promoted, the League used an
almost direct approach toward local residents when it prepared this
campaign. Some of the discussions and recommendations show that
the League wanted to extend its collaboration so it would include local
residents in these countries. The actions of locals were essential in
responding to the cross-border threat of plague carried by rats. Once
sanitary measures had been taken, rehousing had to be followed by
a “greater use of order and cleanliness on the part of the occupants”
themselves, and the League called for a special initiative aimed at educat-
ing rural populations. One might also interpret the League’s call as an
acknowledgement of its officials that international law, with its different
modes, was not omnipotent. In order to achieve common aims, inter-
national law had to rely on local cooperation and other domestic meas-
ures – legal and nonlegal alike.
112
Preparatory Papers, supra note 6, at 79–80.
113
The details of the proposed rat-control campaign were elaborated in Preparatory Papers,
supra note 6, at 81.
114
Id. at 80.
115
Or the Oriental rat flea (Xenopsylla cheopis).
 3 . 3 l e a g u e of na t i o ns , r u r a l hy g i e n e , s a n i t a t i o n 233

The discussions during the ten-day conference in summer 1937

brought together proposals on environment, sanitation, and medicine.
Both the League and the delegations were aware that medical and sani-
tary issues could not be considered in isolation, and environmental
measures also needed to be taken into account. This was evident in the
rat campaign, where a medical and scientific solution alone – that of
vaccination against bubonic plague – was not enough. It had to be
undertaken alongside environmental and sanitary actions. In the case
of combating ancylostomiasis,116 another issue that was raised through
information sharing at Bandoeng, the conference’s recommendations
expressed a similar perspective: “On the showing of past experience, it
may by asserted that ancylostomiasis cannot be eradicated by treatment
alone. The construction and utilisation of adequate latrines are the
essential corollary of treatment.”
The discussion on the dangers of ancylostomiasis is another example
of the different legal perspectives that shaped the campaign. The confer-
ence’s participants were uncertain as to which practical legal measures to
take. Should the special recommendations remain a nonbinding docu-
ment of international law? Or was there a need to translate them into
hard domestic legislation? In this case, unlike with other environmental
challenges the League struggled with, participants chose soft inter-
national law: “It remains to be decided whether such constructions
should be made compulsory or remain optional,” as “[b]oth systems117
have their adherents and it would be useful if they could state their
views . . . .”118
Nevertheless, the League strongly encouraged ongoing environmental
and sanitary supervision. In fact, the League itself offered to carry out this
supervision and to monitor national and local rural hygiene efforts. This
conclusion was based on certain countries’ experiences. In Ceylon for
instance, authorities were able to successfully treat ancylostomiasis
thanks to the League’s supervisory efforts. The local rural campaign,
which was initiated in 1916, reached peak success in 1934 with nearly
116
Ancylostomiasis is an infection caused by Ancylostoma hookworms. The parasite can
cause an iron deficiency by sucking blood from the host’s intestinal wall. In the West, it is
common in mine workers. Control of this parasite should be directed at reducing the
degree of the environmental risk posed by contamination, or improved access to sanita-
tion (especially regular toilets); efforts should also include convincing the local popula-
tion to maintain sanitation infrastructure so that it is clean and functional, and thereby
conducive to use.
117
Meaning both the compulsory and the optional solutions suggested.
118
Preparatory Papers, supra note 6, at 84.
234 s pr ea d i n g d i se as es , and e nvironmental concerns

two million cases treated. The conference did, however, acknowledge

that the success of the Ceylon campaign also relied in part on the
operation of a special ancylostomiasis control service “which [sent] its
squads119 all over the island to make microscopic examinations, apply
treatment and compile statistics.”120
The rural area as a whole, and the Asian village in particular, seemed to
be epidemiological ground zero: it needed to be handled with caution,
controlled and supervised. Leprosy was another “rural disease” that the
conference identified as a pressing issue. Urban centers and towns were
highlighted as “the places where lepers gather,” but were not “the foci of
the disease,” as lepers were seen to “come from the villages.”121 Hence, the
conference recommended specific legal measures: “[P]reventive activities
should be decentralized and that epidemiological work, prevention and
treatment should be directed to the promotion of rural hygiene.”122 Once
again, the League gave recommendations to local authorities, and
referred to the legal and procedural ways in which Asian countries should
carry out these missions. This time, however, it was not necessarily the
central government who would carry out these measures, but rather
other agencies and local authorities. The conference concluded that the
organization of ways to prevent rural and environmental dangers that
posed a risk to urban populations should extend into “the remotest
country districts like the capillaries into the tissues.”123
Historically speaking, after the second rural hygiene conference, the
League continued to promote its recommendations. Besides the “regular”
step of using its institutional capacity and means of communication to
distribute the recommendations worldwide,124 the League also mobilized
the Health Organisation to implement some of the assignments that had
been agreed on. The Organisation was ordered to supervise the international

119
Once the League began to address environmental-sanitary issues, it sometimes used
what can be interpreted as a military discourse. While fighting ancylostomiasis, the state
sent special squads across the infected area; relevant help (such as teachers who could
educate the population to better its habits) was enlisted for the mission.
120
Preparatory Papers, supra note 6, at 84. Next to ancylostomiasis, a long list of diseases
threatened “Far Eastern” countries, among them smallpox, cholera, malaria, typhoid,
and tuberculosis. All were treated as rural endemic diseases and, as such, the League
concluded that “the only hope of . . . eradication lies in a sanitation, housing and food
policy.” (Id. at 90).
121
Id. at 99 (emphasis added).
122
Id.
123
Id.
124
Which it had done in October 1937.
 3 . 4 co n c l u s i o n 235

study of malaria, plague, fly control, and other environmental threats that

had been discussed in Bandoeng, and to promote further international
collaboration.
But, as with other initiatives carried out by the League, including
environmental ones that dealt with challenges that knew no sovereign
borders, the instability of the late 1930s eventually affected this campaign
too. First, Imperial Japan’s aggression against China escalated in summer
1937 into a full-scale invasion, effectively ending the League’s rural
hygiene campaign in that country. And then, as the entire region sank
into chaos of World War II, the entire campaign was put on hold.

3.4 Conclusion
The conclusion of this chapter is multifaceted. With regard to its effective
outcomes on the ground, most of the rural hygiene recommendations
suggested by the League remained just that – recommendations. Or, they
were considered a reflection of soft (some might say too soft) international
law. However, today, and also throughout the COVID-19 pandemic,
international law is still attempting to navigate different environmental
sanitation crises using some of the same methods that the League used:
predominantly international frameworks to share information.
In a special poll taken in 2008 among readers of the British Medical
Journal, the sanitary revolution of introducing piped water and water-
borne sewerage to people’s homes in nineteenth-century Europe was
voted as the most important medical milestone since 1840, beating the
discovery of antibiotics and the development of anesthesia.125 According
to UNICEF and the World Health Organization, well over a century after
this breakthrough in modern sanitation, it is estimated that at least
two billion people – nearly 32 percent of the world’s population – were
still lacking access to basic sanitation in 2015.126
Just as the League encouraged all those years ago, international govern-
ance still works to promote proper sanitation as vital for health, and to
overcome environmental risks in the second decade of the twenty-first
century. Whether we consider the hygiene campaign successful or not, the
League identified sanitation, and especially sanitary threats transferred
through environmental means, as an essential part of global security. After
125
Quoted by Peter A. Harvey, Environmental Sanitation Crisis: More than Just a Health
Issue, 2 E N V T L . H E A L T H I N S I G H T S 77, 77 (2008).
126
UNICEF/WHO Progress on Drinking Water and Sanitation: Special Focus on Sanitation
(2008).
236 s p r ea d i n g di s e a s es , a n d e n v i r o n m e n t a l c o n c e r n s

all, in terms of periodization, it is also worth noting that the League started
its campaign in the midst of the Great Depression. While the world – and
the League – tried to cope with the effects of the crisis on the global
economy, the League simultaneously took on the task of securing wells
and other water resources from contamination in rural peripheries.
Moreover, at a time when international stability – both in central Europe,
and especially in East Asia – was deteriorating as tension rose with the
growing power of Imperial Japan, the League dedicated much of its atten-
tion to the control of rats and flies as prime factors of pollution and disease.
And perhaps this background also supports the following claim: all in
all, this campaign demonstrated the interwar period belief in inter-
national law and international governance.
When it focused on rural hygiene efforts in remote areas that suffered
from recurrent plagues, the League expressed a genuine belief in the
power and capacity of international law to overcome these dangers.
Indeed, one might argue that the campaign introduced another embodi-
ment of the narrative of the “white man’s burden.” However, as this
chapter claims, alongside other familiar expressions of Western hegem-
ony outside of Europe, when it came to this field of international law, the
campaign did not always match the portrayal of Western institutions as
subversive, or as the only power striving for progress. As different parts of
the campaign show, the League, the officials, and the experts all expressed
their own belief in international law, and they trusted in the League’s
ability to transform Asian societies for the better.
As early as the 1930s, the League considered the rural hygiene cam-
paign to be a bright, brave, and necessary humanitarian part of the
League’s agenda. The League did not act alone in this ongoing effort.
Other institutions and initiatives joined the wave of anti-epidemic cam-
paigns that focused on rural areas; for instance, the League emphasized
the founding of the International Center for Research on Leprosy in Rio
de Janeiro as part of a general international movement. This network of
different institutions, funds, and research centers, however, looked to the
League – and the Health Organisation in particular – as the institution
that was best suited to monitor and coordinate different tasks and aims –
something both the rural hygiene conferences (and the ongoing inter-
national and procedural work they entailed) showed.
As briefly mentioned, unlike the European part of the campaign, the
East Asian part should be placed (historically speaking) within a broader
perspective – one that takes into account that most of the Asian countries
who participated in the second conference were not fully independent.
 3.4 c onclusion 237

Imperial regimes that participated in the campaign127 reflected Western

powers’ interests, since they considered a variety of technological and
environmental tools with which sanitation threats could be tackled
within this huge region.
This is not to argue, however, that whenever the League advocated for
improving sanitation or striving to fight environmental dangers, it was
operating as part of an imperial or colonial network. Even as this chapter
explores the role of the League – and of international law – in the context
of Western hegemony in East Asia, it simultaneously shows that the
historical picture on the ground was more complex than that. Indeed,
colonialism and imperialism did not suddenly vanish – Western dele-
gates worked hand in hand with local representatives, experts, and
authorities, as discussions on the colonial medical care systems in rural
areas revealed.
The assimilation of colonial and imperialist tensions into this cam-
paign followed unique patterns. Some of these depict the imperial world
not as a simplistic bipolar or dichotomous system, but rather as
a multilayered universe. The environmental issues entangled with rural
hygiene in the remote Asian countryside portrayed a rather different
picture than the one we would usually expect to find in this kind of
context. The topics that the second conference of 1937 focused on were,
ultimately, quite similar to those that the first conference of 1931
tackled,128 and environmental and sanitary concerns in rural areas had
actually highlighted the similarities between East Asian and European
(rural) environments (though these could hardly be considered identi-
cal). At least to a certain extent, rural hygiene issues served as a common
ground between these two hemispheres.
This picture has two sides. On the one hand, the fact that the world was
growing at an unprecedented rate due to new means of transportation
enabled the West to establish and expand profitable colonial networks.
But on the other hand, colonialism was also increasing the vulnerability
of the West, since its merchant navy used remote ports to dock its ships,
which exposed crews to infection in the event of an epidemic. Sailors,
tourists, modern merchants, exporters and importers, and colonial offi-
cials traveling between different destinations and the metropolis all
became possible carriers of infectious diseases. Imperial powers spread
to vast regions and penetrated different countries; but this was not a one-

127
Such as the British Empire and Dutch rule.
128
Though the second conference also added nutrition and specific diseases to its agenda.
238 s p r e a d i n g di s eas es , an d e n vi ronm ental c onc erns

way street. Vulnerable countries in East Asia also posed environmental

and sanitary threats to the West, which raised concerns that these
dangers would harm Western sovereignty and put its metropolises at
risk.
These tensions, which reveal the complexity of the power relations
between Western countries and “their” protectorates in East Asia, were
also evident in earlier attempts to overcome spreading sanitary treats.129
However, the League’s tendency to favor a more open, democratic, and
pluralistic mode of international law shows that these unequal relations
were not entirely transplanted into the sanitation campaign.
Loyal to its own way of organizing international law, the League
seemed to turn away from traditional diplomacy in the discussion on
fighting the spread of diseases. Compared to earlier forums, it seems that
local problems in East Asian countries were not only viewed through
a Western lens. For instance, the League also appointed experts with an
obvious professional background in colonial administration.130
However, despite this political context, the second conference also sug-
gested some alternative options. A special tour across East Asia between
April and August of 1936 was organized to establish contact with relevant
governmental departments that were directly or indirectly involved in
health and sanitation matters. The aim was to encourage and motivate
Asian authorities to participate in the League’s campaign, and to spread
the news on the upcoming conference.
Indeed, the professional experts who were sent by the League seem to
fit the common (critical) description of Western ways in which the East
had been “explored” and subordinated.131 And yet, the bipolar model
that usually characterizes historical studies on the relations between
Western imperial powers and non-Western communities might some-
times miss the complexity of the historical picture. Yes, rural hygiene
issues exemplified power relations in the “Far East,” but they also showed
how and to what extent local communities were involved in health,
sanitation, and environmental concerns. These issues also describe how
129
See, e.g., Ira Klein, Death in India, 1871–1921, 32 J. A S I A N S T U D . 639 (1973).
130
This was the case, for instance, with A.S. Haynes, who was appointed the Chairperson of
the special Health Committee for the second rural hygiene conference after his service as
Colonial Secretary of the Federated Malay States; and with Dr. Willem Theunissen, the
Deputy Director of the Health Services and a “tropical hygiene” expert from the Dutch
Indies.
131
See, for instance, Edward Said’s theory – E D W A R D S A I D , O R I E N T A L I S M (1978); and/or
his huge community of scholars who have followed his arguments, as described in
D A N I E L M. V A R I S C O , R E A D I N G O R I E N T A L I S M : S A I D A N D T H E U N S A I D (2007).
 3 .4 c on clusi on 239

the League as an institution encouraged and motivated a variety of voices

to become involved in the international campaign, and to strive for
improvements of and within their agrarian societies. In that sense, it
was a more elusive context than the narrative of “The White Man’s
Burden.”
As in the case of the campaign, the discussion should be approached as
more complex and layered than “bad” or “good” colonialism, and other
familiar patterns of postcolonial studies. On the one hand, we can see
“familiar” descriptions of the difference between the Western world and
other parts of the globe, when rural hygiene served as a lens through
which this gap was reflected. For instance, one of the experts who traveled
to this region during the tour in April–August 1936 mentioned in his
report that rural areas in India appeared to have remained largely
“untouched by any western influence except the revenue collector and
the itinerant vaccinator.”132 However, perceiving Asian societies as dis-
tinct and separate from Europe, he pointed out the similarity between
Asian rural hygiene concerns, and European ones.133
Although this is not the place for a general discussion on the political
ways in which the League challenged Western hegemony in terms of
colonialism, at least some of the characteristics of the rural hygiene
campaign – especially in its Asian version – place the League as an
agent of change. It is true for instance, that for the most part, the West
continued to serve as a model for the entire non-Western world, includ-
ing in terms of sanitation and rural hygiene. But together with the
mandates system, Asian rural hygiene introduced more than merely
conventional patterns of Western hegemony. The mandates system
called colonialism134 into question by placing mandates under the tutel-
age of traditional European powers on the one hand; on the other, it
stipulated that these special legal regimes had to be strictly temporary,
and their intended aim was the eventual independence of those
mandates.135 The majority of delegations in Bandoeng opposed the
idea that Western principles and methods – with regard to the entire
132
Letter from Emilio J. Pampana to Ludvik Rajchman, Apr. 14, 1936, LoN Archvies,
R 6093/8A/25509/8855.
133
For a study on the imperialist character of international health campaigns in this vast
region see, e.g., S U N I L S . A M R I T H , D E C O L O N I Z I N G I N T E R N A T I O N A L H E A L T H : I N D I A
A N D S O U T H E A S T A S I A – 1 93 0 –6 5 (2006).
134
B O R O W Y , supra note 8, at 355.
135
On the concept of the interwar Mandate system see, e.g., Anthony Anghie, Colonialism
and the Birth of International Institutions: Sovereignty, Economy, and the Mandate
System of the League of Nations, 34 N .Y.U. J. I N T ’L L. & P O L . 513 (2002).
240 spreading diseases, and e nvironmental concer ns

rural culture – should be imposed onto Asian environments and nothing

more.
Revising familiar patterns of Western influence and Eastern subservi-
ence, the rural hygiene conferences challenged some of these perceptions.
On the one hand, the second rural hygiene conference’s recommenda-
tions emphasized the need for cooperation between different groups
within the country and the population. Not only the civil administration,
public health authorities, and the Public Works Department had to work
together, but the League was also in favor of a “close conjunction”136
between architects, engineers, and health specialists. On the other hand,
this “essential” collaboration was not always assured in every case, and
the environmental consequences were visible: “It is but necessary to
instance the case of irrigation works, which produced numberless mos-
quito-breeding sites.” The recommendations also warned of drawing
inspiration from overly simplistic Western systems, “which came under
our observation [and] may serve to strengthen the argument” against
a copy-paste pattern:
The schools in a certain tropical area were housed in buildings of the local
type, well lit, clean, ventilated and, above all, economical. The Public
Works Department, having decided to replace them by masonry build-
ings, erected structures ten times as expensive, where the light was daz-
zling and the temperature high, while the sanitary installations were done
cheaply, and the wells were not even sanitary.137

This is not to claim that the (familiar) tension between East and West was
absent from other parts of the League’s discussions. Some effort was
made to improve wells (and sanitation) and to fit them with curbs and
platforms, “but that is only a half-solution of the problem, so long as users
of the well draw the water in buckets of dubious cleanliness.”138
Whereas the Great Depression had a palpable influence on most other
environmental dilemmas on the League’s agenda – such as the issue of
whaling regulations, the campaign for the convention against the pollu-
tion of the sea by oil, and fears of deforestation – its presence was almost
entirely absent from the interwar sanitation campaign. As a matter of
fact, one of the only times the economic crisis is mentioned in the context
of the sanitation campaign is when the Health Organisation discussed the
need to accommodate improved sanitation in rural areas (in order to

136
Preparatory Papers, supra note 6, at 51.
137
Id.
138
Id.
 3 . 4 co n c l u s i o n 241

prevent diseases). A couple of months after the first conference of 1931

concluded, one report mentioned that the initiative had revealed the
extent to which rural hygiene had suffered during the economic crisis.
The report went on to say that the League therefore had a responsibility
to present reasonable and efficient (affordable) reform strategies.139
Even more important than the absence of the Depression is the role of
nature in this campaign. Throughout this intensive campaign, the League
viewed the environment in a completely different way than it had in other
environmental initiatives. Here, the League did not recruit international
law and international cooperation to save or protect certain landscapes
(such as forests) or endangered species (such as whales or migrating
seabirds). This time, the environment was viewed as a source danger,
a realm from which the global community had to protect itself. The
campaign depicted nature as inherently dangerous, though it also
acknowledged that nature needed to be protected from problems like
pollution. The discussions in Geneva and Bandoeng reveal that the
League and the Health Organisation explored ways to protect rivers,
lakes, and springs from harm so that these water sources did not become
a danger to the human community, not because they considered these
features to have intrinsic value.
To promote its cause, the League used a discourse of security. Unlike in
previous periods in modern times, as the historical background in this
chapter has briefly explained, it was the League that depicted the rural
periphery as a dangerous environmental and sanitary space and a source
of a global concern. The hope of both conferences, and of the whole
campaign, was to change rural sanitation and hygiene, first in Europe,
and then the rest of the world – as the broader geographical perspective of
the second conference showed. The League’s (and other agencies’) use of
the security discourse on the matter of sanitation bridged the gap
between its more conventional activities and its environmental initia-
tives. After all, when it came to peacekeeping in general and global
security in particular, the League was supposed to confront “real” threats,
not polluted water, rats, or breeding Asian flies.
There are several possible reasons for this kind of policy, some of
which likely have to do with the general spirit of the League.140 Others
are related to the assumption that discussing sanitary threats as part of

139
Allgemeine Betrachtung der zu untersuchenden Fragen d. Ländl. Hygiene, Sept. 8, 1931,
LoN Archives, R5932/8A/30088/30078.
140
Susan Pedersen, Back to the League of Nations, 112 A M . H I S T . R E V . 1091, 1113 (2007).
242 spreading diseases, and environmental concerns

a security framework was probably more convenient and efficient for

those who developed this ongoing discourse. This kind of framework and
its terms might also justify the mobilization of resources, energy, and
budget. Another possible reason is a rather simple one: the West used its
influence to mobilize the League because it was afraid of the East, and
viewed spreading diseases as a direct threat to entire populations and
their stability. Local East Asian urban centers were not the only sites
threatened by rural surroundings in this sanitary-environmental context,
the League argued. During the different sessions on water resource
protection, sanitation, fly control, and other means of prevention in the
countryside, another fear was made known: that the rural environment
and its diseases would soon spill over into the world beyond the borders
of Eastern countries. For instance, the second conference warned certain
countries of the danger of a leprosy revival: “China, whose Government
realises that it must make itself responsible for a task with which the
missions are no longer able to cope, has not only its own internal problem
but, owing to emigration, also an external problem to solve.”141
This view of the environment as a source of danger was all the more
challenging given that the League and the international community
were simultaneously dealing with other contemporary geopolitical
threats – and in the same (vast) geographical space of the Far East.
With Japan and China engaged in the bitter Second Sino-Japanese War,
the League invested much of its institutional energy in tackling water
supply problems in remote rural areas, the same regions that had been
affected by the bloody conflict between these two regional powers. The
League was naturally concerned about the regional geopolitical crisis,
but it was also aware of the necessity of protecting valuable water
sources.
Was this just a naïve policy on the League’s part? Was the control of
flies, rats, and fleas in East Asia in 1937 the right move in terms of
international law and international stability, given our historical retro-
spective? This issue remains open for discussion. Rural hygiene in gen-
eral and the measures human societies undertook to fight environmental-
sanitary risks in particular were by no means the main goals for which the
League was established. Rural hygiene does, however, appear to be the
largest – and most important142 – ongoing project of the League’s Health
Organisation. In many ways, one can also argue that the rural hygiene

141
Preparatory Papers, supra note 6, at 103 (emphasis added).
142
B O R O W Y , supra note 8, at 325.
 3 .4 c on clusi on 243

campaign determined the League’s institutional profile with regard to

public health concerns.
Indeed, based on the Covenant’s description of the League’s primary
aims, issues such as polluted water sources or inadequate sanitation
systems in rural areas were not supposed to gain as much attention as
they eventually did during the interwar period. Concerns that were
deemed to be peripheral or secondary by their nature eventually gained
so much traction that they resulted in two special international confer-
ences that were convened specifically to overcome them.
Moreover, although neither of the conferences concluded with
a binding legal document (such as a convention), or even with (legal)
articulation of the common environmental perceptions, these events
were still valuable. First, they enabled a thorough discussion by profes-
sional experts on rural hygiene and sanitation. Second, at least some of
the issues, recommendations, and possible solutions tackled at these
conferences would eventually find their way into later discussions and
international consultations on sanitation and prevention policies.
The campaign reflected different layers of soft law, and illustrated
several practical instances of law in action. For instance, in addition to
the recommendations the League published and distributed after the
first conference had concluded, it sent out further inquiries that focused
on environmental concerns. The Health Organisation reported on the
first of these concerns in 1932, outlining the epidemiology of typhoid
fever in rural districts and the sanitary improvements needed to over-
come it; methods of treating garbage (and manure) to prevent fly
breeding; and, in particular, methods of testing and analyzing water
and sewage with a view to possible standardization in terms of inter-
national criteria.143
Although neither of the League’s sanitary campaigns introduced many
practical solutions, this mode of international law should not be over-
looked. These campaigns relied on the expertise of professional experts,
and encouraged them to deliver their proposals, plans, and recommenda-
tions for the improvement of sanitation and public health. As I have
shown, this practice was not a solution that had been invented as
a professional reaction to epidemic crises (including the COVID-19
challenge) in the early twenty first century, but rather as an interwar
routine, led by the League.

143
Report of the Health Organisation for the Period Jan. 1931 to Sept. 1932, Bulletin, Vol. I,
1932, LoN Archives, at 400–01.
244 s p r e a d i ng di s e a s e s , a nd en v i r o n m e n t a l c o n c e r n s

When the World Health Organization, for instance, led the fight
against the SARS virus in 2003, one of the routines that allowed the
organization to overcome this global danger was the activation of its
special Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network protocol
(GORAN). GORAN had been established as a fixed protocol in
April 2000; it connected numerous institutes and professional laborator-
ies, scientists, and policymakers from a variety of states, all of whom
worked together to establish guidelines for a rapid and efficient response
to the epidemic.144 Although the professional committees and staff that
had convened back in the 1930s did not have the same technological tools
and means of communication, the basic logic and framework was the
same even then.
The League’s environmental and sanitary initiatives in the rural
peripheries were far more modest. Unlike the SARS experience, the
League did not have the means and resources, such as a vast network of
eleven professional laboratories in ten different countries (like Goran),
at its disposal; nevertheless, it did engage different experts from
a variety of fields – such as biology, chemistry, civil engineering, public
health, and sanitation – in an evolving and ongoing effort to identify the
flaws in the sanitary status of different countries in the 1930s. This
mode of information producing and sharing was also a feature of other
League initiatives, including environmental ones; however, given the
obvious technical and professional aspects of sanitation issues
addressed, the role of comparative data was particularly valuable in
this case. Like their much later historical equivalents, the League’s
networks introduced and shared their pooled data very openly: their
different policies, possible solutions, difficulties, and results. They used
all the mechanisms and institutional possibilities that international law
was able to offer, and they used the language of international law and
global governance to face threats.
Indeed, the degree to which international cooperation was able to
tackle environmental threats to public health is even more impressive
in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Both the speed and
the technological capabilities of the powerful professional bodies of the
UN were much more advanced than when the WHO, the successor of the
League’s Health Organisation, and the international community fought
against SARS. However, the cooperative approach and the belief in

144
For an overview of the GORAN protocol and program see http://www.who.int/ihr/
alert_and_response/outbreak-network/en/.
 3 .4 c on clusi on 245

international law as a tool with which to overcome common (in this case
environmental) problems were intensive and diligent.
After all, the League provided an opportunity to the international
community to bring together a range of scientists and experts and to
coordinate their efforts, instead of having them compete with one
another. Today, when it comes to threats to sanitation, environmental
concerns, and public health, we no longer underestimate the value of
joint efforts or take international initiatives for granted. The experiences
of the interwar period laid the institutional and conceptual foundations
in this regard. Each individual component can be tracked (with the
relevant differences) during this interwar campaign: the distribution of
sanitary information and practical knowledge and experience; the shar-
ing of laboratory findings and clinical experience; discussions on national
schemes to fight environmental dangers; public health initiatives on these
issues; and, above all, the coordination, monitoring, and supervision of
one central institution offered by the League.
Whether one considers the League’s endeavors to be successful or
completely in vain, one cannot deny the significant work the League
carried out in terms of dealing with rural hygiene and environmental
risks in Europe and Asia. Both conferences (and the intensive follow-up
institutional and interinstitutional work that continued once official
discussions had concluded) expressed a general commitment in Europe
and beyond to the improvement of rural hygiene and to the fight against
environmental risks as a fundamental part of international governance.
The League did not undertake this complex campaign because it was
forced to do so, but rather because it believed in international law as an
essential part of collective security, and that solving environmental chal-
lenges was key to achieving stability and prosperity.
This belief in international law alone, however, was not enough. As in
later periods, the League emphasized the need for cooperation with the
local civil population as well. Moreover, the shift from local to regional
approaches to these issues is intriguing. This is not just a contemporary
observation, but rather a perspective that was raised by figures of that
period: “The problem in this form is not purely a problem of individuals;
it is a collective problem.”145
The variety of issues that the League promoted to achieve stability
along the rural frontier is a clear indication of the connection it saw
between rural hygiene and international stability. Otherwise, it would not

145
Preparatory Papers, supra note 6, at 51.
246 s p r e a d i n g di s eas es , an d en vi ronm ental c onc erns

have invested so much energy in these concerns. And it did not just
address one or the other concern, such as sanitation, the installation of
latrines, or fly control – the League understood that the entire rural
environment acted as one system. Flood protection for the delta lands,
for instance, was also part of the broader picture, as were the issues of
water supply for agriculture, drainage and drying of low waterlogged
ground, and irrigation of high ground when the soil was too dry.
Understanding these concerns as part of ensuring security echoes
other perceptions of promoting security during the interwar period,
which had little (or nothing) to do with supervising the international
disarmament accords after World War I. As other studies have suggested,
some of the League’s activities focused on promoting international
cooperation as a whole – and more specifically in the wake of the Great
Depression and the uneasy international relations of the 1930s, when
fascism was gaining more and more power.146
The League promoted an early concept of environmental security
through tools of international law. In that context, this environmental-
sanitary discourse also corresponds with contemporary literature that
links other global environmental concerns and (broader or more elusive)
definitions of security, whether they relate to climate change,147 energy
security148 or water security,149 facing the ecological crisis.
In a broader perspective, this concept of linking natural hazards caused
by environmental factors with threats to local, national, and international
security drew on the idea of the need for a new “cordon sanitaire.” The
interwar period introduced another phase in the evolution of this historic
term. First, the use of “cordon sanitaire” to refer to a protective shield
started as a tool with which spreading diseases from the East could be
kept away from the West’s frontiers. Then, during the interwar period,
the French borrowed this term to describe their system of bilateral

146
Patricia Clavin, for instance, identified a link between supporting economic affairs in
general, and assisting states in financial crises, as another dimension in the League’s
commitment to global security. See P A T R I C I A C L A V I N , S E C U R I N G T H E W O R L D
E C O N O M Y : T H E R E I N V E N T I O N O F T H E L E A G U E O F N A T I O N S , 19 2 0– 1 94 6 (2013).
147
Jon Barnett, Security and Climate Change, 13 G L O B A L E N V T L . C H A N G E 7 (2003);
Matt McDonald, Discourses of Climate Security, 33 P O L . G E O G R A P H Y 42 (2013).
148
Marilyn A. Brown & Michael H. Dworkin, The Environmental Dimension of Energy
Security, in T H E R O U T L E D G E H A N D B O O K O F E N E R G Y S E C U R I T Y 176 (Benjamin
K. Sovacool ed., 2011).
149
Janos J. Bogardi et al., Water Security for a Planet under Pressure: Interconnected
Challenges of a Changing World Call for Sustainable Solutions, 4 C U R R E N T O P I N I O N
I N E N V T L . S U S T A I N A B I L I T Y 35 (2012).
 3.4 conclusion 247

alliances in the face of political dangers emerging from the (Soviet

Communist) East; finally, the League transcended the term, using its
connotations of security to portray severe problems of rural environment
and public health.
As the League wrapped up the first conference of 1931, it concluded
that the bonification of rural Europe depended mostly on fixing sanita-
tion, but also on adjusting it to suit the needs of the countryside (not only
urban spaces), as problematic areas that were more likely to suffer
exposure to spreading diseases due to difficulties of the environmental
conditions.
In that sense, the first rural hygiene conference expressed a discourse
of a different type of global security. The League had dedicated much of
its institutional energy to peacekeeping and global security. The fact that
sanitation was considered an important part of ensuring and securing
international social welfare sheds light on the League’s environmental
regime. This regime enabled the League to recruit other realms of
international law to promote global security. In this way, like frameworks
for disarmament treaties or reinforcing new borders in the post–World
War I world, the issues of proper sanitation and pest control were
important elements of international stability and prosperity.
 4

Raw Materials, the Timber Crisis, and Fears

of Deforestation during the Interwar Period

Deforestation was one of the perils threatening mankind, and it was all the
more to be feared because it always corresponded to a period of intense
civilisation.1

4.1 Introduction
This chapter will uncover the entanglements of timber trade and defor-
estation in the interwar period as seen through the lens of international
law and governance. As the chapter will explore the story of timber and
trees during the period, it will show how certain voices claimed that the
West (and other regions as well) had never experienced this scale of
deforestation prior to the establishment of the League, and to which
extent the League became concerned about the exploitation of forests.
As the chapter will show, forests and timber merged two intertwining
threads. First, as an international forum for industrial cooperation and
economic prosperity, the League, together with other bodies, was focused
on ensuring efficient global production of a variety of raw materials. In the
case of timber, the Great Depression of 1929, together with certain timber
export policies of the Soviet Union, put other national timber industries at
risk. Second, at that point, the interwar story of timber reflected a sort of
harmony between the League, other international industrial frameworks,
and Western nations’ commercial interests. With their profits severely
reduced, these players (including the League) wished to protect timber
industries and to stabilize dropping prices by means of international law
and international governance. The League, driven by certain agendas of
1
Records of the 19th Ordinary Session of the Assembly: Minutes of the 2d Committee
(Economic, Financial, and Transit Questions), Special Supplement No. 185, Sept. 22, 1938
League of Nations Official Journal (1938), League of Nations Archives [hereinafter LoN
Archives] Annex 1, A.64.1938.II.B., at 26–27.

248
 4 .1 in t roduc ti on 249

some of its own institutional bodies, first and foremost the Economic
Committee, wished to support and assist in managing the supply of the
timber market by restricting production in order to prop up prices and
thereby ensure the survival of the industry. With the merging of these
threads, environmental considerations were woven into the plot (even if
during its relatively late phases), adding another layer to the economic
incentives, and coloring the dilemma with urgent calls to limit forest
harvest in order to stop deforestation from expanding.
As I will show, the timber issue placed the League in a complex
position. Though it was primarily concerned about economic issues,
the League did allow for environmental considerations in its continued
process of discussion and consultation. In the timber story that I will tell,
these environmental considerations – for which the League had no
express or original mandate – were also expressed in the economic-
industrial realm, and through economic institutions: both those within
the League, as well as external independent ones.
As the independent organizations’ and the League’s economic-
industrial agenda intensified, another concern began to emerge and
added to this framework. This time, the concern was not about dropping
prices alone. Voices that warned of spreading deforestation were gaining
more and more attention in the League. Worried calls contended that
forests were disappearing from regions around the world at an alarming
rate, changing the landscape and causing dangerous erosion in vast regions
in Europe, Soviet Russia, North America, and other regions. These voices
found common ground with the desire of international bodies to govern
natural resources and curb the exploitation of forests by managing timber
trade with means pulled out of the toolbox of international law.
By the late 1930s, deforestation had become an issue for international
deliberation, largely due to technological, economic, and industrial
changes, and also because of the immense transformation in media and
other forms of human communication. Due to the rise of mass-printed
books and popular newspapers and their effect on landscapes, the dis-
cussion in the League painted deforestation in a very worrying light.
Timber, cellulose, and other industries were as eager to protect their own
natural resources as whaling companies were during the interwar
period.2 Like these industries, the League was “seriously concerned”
2
As Chapter 2 describes, and as the League was pushed by scientific calls that urged to
prevent the extinction of the whale, it developed in the 1930s the first international whaling
law. See K U R K P A T R I C K D O R S E Y , W H A L E S A N D N A T I O N S : E N V I R O N M E N T A L
D I P L O M A C Y O N T H E H I G H S E A S 2 0 13 .
250 f e a r s of d e f o r e s t a t i o n

about the “steady decline” of “their raw materials.”3 As with the case of
the increasing exploitation of different species of whale, counterefforts –
such as monitoring, regulation, and supervision – were far behind the
rapid consumption of trees by these industries.
Indeed, the timber campaign did not remove the threat of deforest-
ation. Still, by the end of that period, advocators for the cause motivated
the League to present deforestation as a global issue – one that needed to
be solved by international law. However, as I will demonstrate in my
conclusions, this was one of the last times in which international envir-
onmental law discussed deforestation as a problem that can be solved by
global legal actions. In 2020, for instance, data from Brazil’s national
space research institute INPE shows that 830 square kilometers of rain-
forest was cleared in the “Legal Amazon,” Earth’s largest rainforest,
during the month of May 2020 alone, bringing the total clearing since
August 1, 2019 to 6,437 square kilometers, an area larger than Delaware.4
Although a broad popular reaction across the globe against the actions or
failures of the Brazilian government, and even when the rise in deforest-
ation troubles scientists who fear that the combination of forest loss and
the effects of climate change could trigger the Amazon rainforest to tip
toward a drier ecosystem, international law – as a complex machine – was
not recruited for the mission. Most of the calls focused on “private”
domestic commercial actions (such as a ban on Brazilian timber), but
not using international law (both hard and soft) as a policy.
Some voices advocating in the League, however, identified a pressing
need for collective international environmental action to fight against
this outcome of industrialism and modernization. Therefore, any rele-
vant action had to turn away from domestic-national means in favor of
international law led by international organizations. As the League’s
official records put it, “reafforestation was not proceeding as rapidly as
the contrary process, and those industries alone consumed huge forests
every day. The problem was at once an economic, a social and a human
one.”5
As the timber question discussion evolved, the League was definitely
not the only agency involved. Different bodies, transnational commercial
(private or semiprivate) consortiums, and international organizations
3
Records of the 19th Ordinary Session of the Assembly, supra note 1, at 27.
4
Rhett A. Butler, 14 Straight Months of Rising Amazon Deforestation in Brazil, M O N G A B A Y ,
(June 12, 2020), https://news.mongabay.com/2020/06/14-straight-months-of-rising-
amazon-deforestation-in-brazil/.
5
Records of the 19th Ordinary Session of the Assembly, supra note 1, at 27.
 4 .1 in t ro duct ion 251

were also paying close attention to timber. However, the League played
a unique role in the diplomatic activities. During the interwar period, the
League served as one of the centers for international and legal consult-
ation. This was not a one-way street but rather an ongoing reciprocal
relationship, as the League cooperated with these organizations too, and
followed their work.
Throughout the chapter, I will track the interplay between the League
and other organizations that were involved in the timber question. First
and foremost, I will describe the role of the Comité International du Bois
(or the International Timber Committee). The Comité was an inter-
national consortium (founded in 1932) of private and semi-state central
timber-exporting organizations. The timber plot also includes the
involvement of the International Institute of Agriculture (IIA), which
was established before the League (in 1905), and worked from its head-
quarters in Rome. The main focus of the following sections will not be on
these bodies specifically; however, the story would not be complete
without taking into account their role and significance.6
Moreover, in addition to these external independent bodies, different
experts, diplomats, and committees of the League took part in the
discussion on a global timber regime. It should be noted however that
although the chapter refers from time to time to the League as a whole,
the institutional structure on the ground was obviously more complex.
The League was not, neither in the timber question nor in any other
mission of its environmental regime, a single, unified entity, seeming to
possess knowledge and will of its own. Therefore, in relevant places, the
chapter will differentiate the views of the League’s various organs (or
individuals or groups within those organs).
Despite the eclectic studies that have been carried out on forestation
and deforestation, these multiple endeavors – economic, industrial, and

6
Several studies dealt with the three organizations and their effort from different angles, e.g.,
Birgit Karlsson, Cartels in the Swedish and Finnish Forest Industries in the Interwar Period, in
M A N A G I N G C R I S E S A N D D E -G L O B A L I S A T I O N : N O R D I C F O R E I G N T R A D E A N D
E X C H A N G E , 19 1 9– 39 , 188 (Sven Olof Olsson ed., 2010); E L I N A K U O R E L A H T I , T H E
POLITICAL ECONOMY OF INTERNATIONAL COMMODITY CARTELS: AN ECONOMIC
H I S T O R Y O F T H E E U R O P E A N T I M B E R T R A D E I N T H E 19 30 S (2020); Martin Bemmann,
Das Chaos Beseitigen: Die internationale Standardisierung forst- und holzwirtschaftlicher
Statistiken in den 1920er und 1930er Jahren und der Völkerbund, 5 7 J A H R B U C H F Ü R
W I R T S C H A F T S G E S C H I C H T E / E C O N . H I S T . Y.B . 545 (2016); Martin Bemmann, Cartels,
Grossraumwirtschaft and Statistical Knowledge: International Organizations and Their Efforts
to Govern Europe’s Forest Resources in the 1930s and 1940s, in G O V E R N I N G T H E R U R A L I N
I N T E R W A R E U R O P E 23 3 (Liesbeth van de Grift & Amalia Ribi Forclaz eds., 2017).
252 f e a r s of d ef o r e s t a t i o n

environmental – have not yet been studied as part of the history of the
League. Furthermore, although timber issues have been studied at both
the domestic-national level as well as at the imperial level,7 it should be
noted that the League was the first international institution to turn to
legal mechanisms as solution. One way or the other, fear – either of
a wood shortage or of the global destruction of forests during the
interwar period – is missing from our textbooks. This absence is even
more intriguing when we turn to a comparative perspective. In compari-
son with other fields within the world of environmental history, it seems
that the scope of studies on forestation and deforestation is far broader,
richer, and more eclectic.8
Prior to the establishment of the League, there were already early
transnational discussions about cooperation between timber-producing
countries and parties. However, the League joined this discussion and
encouraged it thanks to its fixed diplomatic routine and relatively inten-
sive institutional mechanisms. Moreover, in the late 1930s, as the envir-
onmental costs of timber production started to become clear, the League
stepped forward, motivated by the French delegation to Geneva. As this
chapter will show, and side by side with the ambition to participate in the
discussions on a global timber policy, the League was asked to promote
an open and ongoing discussion to find an international solution to the
pressing problem of disappearing forests.

7
Scholars were also interested in the interplay between imperialism and forestry policies. As
different studies have argued, it is likely that French- and German-trained foresters, for
instance, had carried forestry policies with them as they traveled across the French and
German empires, and especially into the British imperial forestry-trained and professional
community. See Ravi Rajan, Imperial Environmentalism or Environmental Imperialism?
European Forestry, Colonial Foresters and the Agendas of Forest Management in British
India 1800–1900, in N A T U R E A N D T H E O R I E N T 324 (Richard H. Grove et al. eds., 1998).
In that sense, the richness of this part in historiography of deforestation does not focus
on modern imperialism alone. Christof March, for instance, outlined the role of forests in
different cultures across history (such as the Venetian empire’s hunger for wood) –
CHRISTOF MAUCH, THE GROWTH OF TREES: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON
S U S T A I N A B I L I T Y (Katie Ritson trans., 2014).
8
Forestation and deforestation are no strangers to environmental history. Environmental
historians are particularly interested in the ways in which human activities have damaged
nature, causing deforestation and other phenomena such as erosion and overgrazing over
vast areas since antiquity. See, e.g., J. Donald Hughes, Ancient Deforestation Revisited, 44
J. H I S T . B I O L O G Y 43 (2011); David Schorr, Forest Law in the Palestine Mandate: Colonial
Conservation in a Unique Context, in M A N A G I N G T H E U N K N O W N : E S S A Y S O N
E N V I R O N M E N T A L I G N O R A N C E 74 – 75 ( Frank Uekötter & Uwe Lübken eds., 2014);
Andrew K. Jorgenson, Structural Integration and the Trees: An Analysis of Deforestation
in Less-Developed Countries: 1990–2005, 49 S O C . Q . 5 0 3 ( 2008).
 4 . 1 in tr oduct ion 253

This chapter has four parts. Following this introduction, the second
part covers the question of timber in the interwar period. This second
part is further divided into several sections. In order to better situate the
discussion of the League within the issue of timber, Section 4.2.1 will give
a short introduction on the League’s special interest in the concept of
monitoring and coordinating the production and trade of different raw
materials. Section 4.2.2 will cover the ways in which the League and other
organizations started to handle the timber question, and how and to what
extent the League treated timber as an essential raw material during that
period. Compared to other raw materials, the League focused its atten-
tion on timber, examining policies to regulate timber production and
trade. The last Section, 4.2.3, explores what I call the timber wars of the
1930s, which echoed both the Great Depression and the dumping policy
of the Soviet Union in the late 1920s and early 1930s. During this stage,
and given the outcomes of the Depression and the Soviet reaction,
different leading timber-producing countries challenged the Soviet
Union’s timber policy.
Section 4.3 explores how the League was confronted with concerns of
deforestation in the late 1930s. This part is divided into two sections: 4.3.1
will examine the League’s (and the Economic Committee in particular)
campaign for international timber regulation, which supported the
industry. Section 4.3.2 reveals the ways in which environmental concerns
were added to the League’s discussion. The primary focus of Section 4.3,
and of the chapter as a whole, is the emergence of other environmental,
conservationist, and economic voices that joined interwar discussion on
global timber regime. These voices strove to draw the international
community’s attention not to the price of timber alone, but also to the
environmental cost of forest harvesting for development, industry, and
commerce. Through their advocacy, these parties wished to make the
League aware of the environmental outcomes of the timber industry, and
openly discussed the issue of producing timber as the primary cause of
deforestation that was sweeping the globe. This part of the chapter will
draw on discussions and correspondence that highlight the League’s role
as a central institution – one that led environmental challenges while
simultaneously supporting a certain economic agenda – in an unstable
world. Moreover, all of this shows how and to what extent environmental
concerns, like deforestation, were woven into the crafting of inter-
national law.
As I will further show, although the call for caution and action came
primarily from the French, the League continued the deliberations even
254 fe ar s of d efor e st atio n

after 1938. However, World War II put a swift end to this initiative
exactly one year later. Unlike other interwar environmental initiatives –
which had at least some expression in international environmental law in
the post–World War II era – it seems that the fear of spreading deforest-
ation had not had, at least up to that point, a chance to gain sufficient
international attention in terms of using international legal mechanisms,
as they did during the interwar period.
Indeed, compared to other concerns that involved environmental
aspects and were handled by the League, it seems that the timber question
tells us relatively little about the law that applied to timber trade and
deforestation in the interwar period. However, the discussions did reveal
a certain place that has been given to international law, preliminary and
not yet fully developed as it was during the 1930s. Moreover, the timber
and forests question illustrates the emergence of norms such as precau-
tionary principle or sustainable development, and therefore it justifies in
my view this kind of analysis.
In the conclusion, I will wrap up the discussion with a broad compari-
son of post-World War II policies, and identify those ideas that started to
emerge in the 1930s and which persist today.

4.2 Timber in the Interwar Period

The developments of modern civilisation and of the numerous uses to

which cellulose was put – newsprint in particular – constituted a terrible
danger to forests throughout the world.9

The following part will trace the main challenges that timber-producing
countries and the League experienced during the interwar period.
To better situate the interwar timber discussion, Section 4.2.1 will first
give a short introduction on the League’s involvement – and the
Economic Committee10 in particular – in trying to coordinate, monitor,
and modify the production and trade of different raw materials.

9
Supra note 1, at 27.
10
The Economic Committee was an internal unit of the Economic and Financial
Organisation, one of the League’s auxiliary bodies (next to the Permanent Court of
International Justice or the International Labour Organisation, for example). The
Covenant of the League specified that additional bodies should be established to deal
with questions of technical nature. The League created a group of such bodies, which
worked under its auspices and within its parameters, but also had a certain independence.
On the League’s multilayered institutional structure see, e.g., F. S . N O R T H E D G E , T H E
L E A G U E O F N A T I O N S : I T S L I F E A N D T I M E S – 19 2 0– 19 4 6 (1986).
 4.2 t imber in t he interwar period 255

Section 4.2.2 will then go on to address how the League and other
international organizations started to handle the timber question in
particular. This section will show how and to what extent the League
viewed timber as an essential raw material – more essential, in fact, than
other materials that were discussed during that period.
I will also claim that it might be that the main reason the League engaged
with the future of forests to begin with was its special interest in raw
materials. The League was engaged in the exploitation of natural resources
from its earliest stages. As research into the economic functions of the
League is only now emerging, scholars have recently suggested11 that the
League strove to facilitate an international governance and monitoring of
raw materials. The League’s predominant assumption was that recovering
industries’ access to raw materials was necessary to ensure international
recovery after the war. Stabilizing timber industries and keeping
a reasonable and efficient price will become central aims of this campaign.
Section 4.2.3 will briefly describe how the turbulent timber trade of the
1930s was shaped by two major intensive phenomena: the Great Depression,
and a Soviet dumping policy that followed it. I will discuss the economic and
political reactions of some of the timber-producing parties involved, and the
ways this tension was reflected in the League’s activity.

4.2.1 A Short Introduction to the Special Interest of the League

in Raw Materials
Before the League started to view the issue of timber trade and mostly its
difficulties, it was already busy with a task that would soon become one of
the main aims on its agenda. Although only a fraction of its formal legal
foundation, the Covenant of the League of Nations, referred to economic
matters,12 the League invested much of its energy into promoting the idea
of international supervision and monitoring of the production, trade,
and constant supply of precious raw materials that were needed for the
insatiable postwar global economy.13
11
See, e.g., Michael Fakhri, The 1937 International Sugar Agreement: Neo-Colonial Cuba
and Economic Aspects of the League of Nations, 24 L E I D E N J. I N T ’L L . 899 (2011).
12
Article 23 (e) of the Covenant called for equal treatment for the commerce of all the
members of the League.
13
In the center of the debates on timber markets stood the League’s economic bodies. As
Patricia Clavin has shown, these bodies had different members and sometimes they
followed different logics than “the” League (or other part of the League): P A T R I C I A
CLAVIN, SECURING THE WORLD ECONOMY: THE REINVENTION OF THE LEAGUE OF
N A T I O N S , 1 9 20 – 19 46 (2013).
256 f e a r s of de f o r e s t a t i o n

As the Allies suffered during the war from a severe shortage of raw
materials due to the difficulties of warfare and naval blockades, they
worked together to create a series of temporary legal-economic trans-
national agreements.14 Ad hoc organizations worked to secure shipping
purchases for the armed forces and (later) also tried to control commer-
cial supply for civilian needs at the rear.15
When the war was over, the League encouraged the regularization and
improvement of these temporary arrangements.16 Though the League
did not have the institutional power to fulfill that aim, the structure of the
League enabled its member states, and not only postwar powers, to better
coordinate their efforts to organize the constant supply of primary
commodities even during peacetime.
The League believed that rationalization of the production and trade of
these materials was needed to stabilize and control economic conditions
of distribution and consumption in a way that would ensure economic
efficiency.17 Two special trade agreements, articulated (later in the 1930s)
under the direct auspices of the League, subjected sugar and wheat, for
example, to international regulations.18 The League promoted the notion
that a stable market for global raw materials was a necessary part of
building a new peaceful international community.19

14
MARTIN HILL, THE ECONOMIC AND FINANCIAL ORGANIZATION OF THE LEAGUE OF
N A T I O N S : A S U R V E Y O F T W E N T Y -F I V E Y E A R S ’ E X P E R I E N C E 1 4 –1 8 ( 1 94 6 ).
15
For an analysis of these kinds of economic Cooperation under fire see J. A. S A L T E R ,
ALLIED SHIPPING CONTROL: AN EXPERIMENT IN INTERNATIONAL ADMINISTRATION
( 1 92 1 ).
16
See, for instance, the role of James Arthur Salter. Salter was in charge of the interallied
economic-industrial coordination activities, and appointed to carry out his mission under
the auspices of the League as the head of the Economic and Financial Section (1922–31).
See Susan Pedersen, Back to the League of Nations, 112 A M . H I S T . R E V . 1091, 1111
(2007); H I L L , supra note 14, at 109; W . M . M C C L U R E , W O R L D P R O S P E R I T Y A S
S O U G H T T H R O U G H T H E E C O N O M I C W O R K O F T H E L E A G U E O F N A T I O N S 66 –7 4
( 1 93 3 ).
17
For a discussion of this kind of rationalization as key to international stability in the
interwar period see Jo-Anne Pemberton, New Worlds for Old: The League of Nations and
the Age of Electricity, 28 R. I N T ’L S T U D . 311 (2002).
18
On the 1937 International Sugar Agreement and the 1938 Wheat Agreement see G E O R G E
W . B A E R , I N T E R N A T I O N A L O R G A N I Z A T I O N S 19 1 8– 19 4 5: A G U I D E T O R E S E A R C H
A N D R E S E A R C H M A T E R I A L S 159 (1981).
19
The World Economic Conference: Geneva, May 1927 Final Report, LoN Archives, 51.
Likewise, the assumption behind the League’s discussions on oil, coal, sugar, wheat, and
timber was that future postwar rapprochement depended on good and reliable economic
relations that were based on raw materials as a source of wealth (see Economic and
Financial Section, Report and Proceedings of the World Economic Conference, Vol.
I [1927], LoN Archives, 149). The access to these materials seemed as a central aim in
 4.2 t imber i n t he interwar peri od 257

The League supported a concept of control of production and distri-

bution through mechanisms that were far removed from the principles of
free trade and the laissez faire economy; for instance, quotas and the
granting of monopolies20 in relevant industries in order to best regulate
the flow21 of materials. As such, using various means of (mostly, soft)
international law and governance – such as committees, conferences,
information collecting and sharing, setting international standards – to
rationalize raw materials, a production quota system22 between importer
and exporter countries has been negotiated.23
The enthusiastic thought was that once the commerce of raw materials
during the transition stage after the war and the financial crises of the
1920s would be ensured and modified, then “regular” and unregulated
trade could occur normally between states around the world.24 Different
official reports and surveys arrived at the League’s headquarters from all
over the world,25 articulating the production quantities of a variety of raw
materials on different countries’ national soil.
In the context of recovery from the war in terms of infrastructures and
building, timber was essential, and everyday life was acutely affected by
fluctuating timber supply and prices. Therefore, one can understand some
of the reasons behind the international will and advocacy for securing
timber production. The following discussion will focus on timber as one
of the central indicators of the League’s involvement in environmental

ensuring peace, stability, and global recovery after 1918 (See, e.g., Preparatory Committee
for the International Conference, Report on the 1st Session of the Committee 7–9 [held at
Geneva from Apr. 26 to May 1, 1926] [1926], LoN Archives).
20
K. Wiedenfeld, Cartels and Combines: Memoranda Released for Publication for the
Preparatory Committee for the World Economic Conference 1927, LoN Archives.
21
G. Cassel, Recent Monopolistic Tendencies in Industry and Trade: Being an Analysis of
the Nature of Causes of the Poverty of Nations, Memorandum Released for Publication
for the Preparatory Committee for the World Economic Conference 1927, LoN Archives.
22
Fakhri, supra note 11, at 903.
23
On the importance of raw material commodities in the interwar period see, e.g.,
Patricia Clavin and Jens-Wilhelm Wessels, Transnationalism and the League of Nations:
Understanding the Work of Its Economic and Financial Organisation, 1 4 C O N T E M P . E U R .
H I S T . 465 (2005).
24
See, e.g., Secretariat of the League of Nations, Ten Years of World Cooperation (1930),
LoN Archives, 178–206; Arthur Salter, Contribution of the League of Nations to the
Recovery of Europe, 1 34 A N N . A M . A C A D . P O L . & S O C . S C I . 132 (1927).
25
See, for instance, the report of the Office of Census and Statistics, Union of South Africa,
from July 8, 1925, in which the Director of Census and Statistics wrote to the Economic
Intelligence Service of the League on the production of iron ore, copper, lead, and zinc:
Letter to the League Economic Intelligence Service, July 8, 1925, LoN Archives,
10.44366.44346.
258 fe ar s of defo re st ati on

junctions as it wished to see the establishment of a monitored international

economic regime.26

4.2.2 Striving for a Global Timber Regime: International Bodies Apply

Institutional Energy to International Timber Production and Trade
In this section I will introduce the main developments of the complex
timber market in the interwar period, and the intensive involvement of the
League, exporting and importing countries and other involved parties.
These various parties were concerned about the market’s unstable condi-
tion in the interwar period for several reasons, as I will further elaborate.
In the early 1930s, the Great Depression threatened to collapse the
Northern Hemisphere’s timber industry interests. At that point, a group
of bodies was working to coordinate and increase cooperation between
different timber industries and to support them during hard times. The
Comité International du Bois (or the International Timber Committee),
together with the International Institute of Agriculture (IIA), marked the
first steps in transnational cooperation in the field of forestry and timber
trade.27
The International Institute of Agriculture – an independent body that
was involved in the timber question – was established in June 1905 in
Rome, almost fifteen years before the League. As it was founded and
financed by governments, and based on cooperation between experts,
professionals, and nations, this professional institute in Italy worked to
create an international chamber of agriculture, an institution that would be
best suited to tackle agricultural crises that crossed borders and national
sovereignties. With the Depression affecting the global production and
commerce of raw materials – and timber in particular – the role of the IIA
became more essential in mapping timber trade and communicating
between industries and policymakers in different producing countries.

26
Moreover, while discussing timber, the League was also dealing with a tobacco inquiry
(See the documents relating to the League of Nations Tobacco Committee of Mar. 20,
1933, and to the Tobacco Inquiry [under the Economic Relations section] between the
years 1932–33, LoN Archives, 10A/362362). In this respect, further research, including
from an environmental perspective, might be relevant.
27
The knowledge on these organizations is still as rudimentary as it is on the timber related
debates within the League. Yet the economic situation of timber industries and trade in
the 1930s is analyzed by a number of studies, e.g., Egon Glesinger, Forest Products in
a World Economy, 35 A M . E C O N . R E V . 120 (1945); Martin Bemmann, Im Zentrum des
Markts. Zur Rolle Großbritanniens im internationalen Holzhandel der 1930er Jahre, 99
V I E R T E L J A H R S C H R I F T F Ü R S O Z I A L - U N D W I R T S C H A F T S G E S C H I C H T E 141 (2012).
 4.2 timber i n t he interwar period 259

In 1926, the IIA convened the International Forestry Congress in

Rome.28 The Congress recommended establishing a separate department
or international body that was to focus on forests and timber. During the
1930s, the IIA’s special bureau gathered information on forests, timber
production, and trade and distributed regular surveys on these matters
through its publications.29
Similarly, in spring 1932, as the interests of the timber industry neared
collapse, the League’s Economic Committee decided to convene an
international conference of timber experts in Geneva. Shortly afterwards,
the Comité International du Bois was created, with its headquarters in
Vienna. The Comité was a body of private and semiprivate central timber
exporting organizations of five central (though not the most important)
exporting countries. Originally, it gathered representatives from
Roumania, Yugoslavia, Poland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia.
Moreover, although the Comité was a separate institution, its members
still saw themselves as a co-organ of the League and part of its inter-
national agenda, at least to a certain extent; or, “a child of the League of
Nations,” as the Comité’s president himself, Krystyn Ostrowki, declared
in 1936.30
The main focus of the Comité was on economic and industrial data
relating to timber production. Its chief assignments were to collect and
disseminate statistics that dealt with timber supply and demand; to
coordinate technical research; and to collate and publish information
on the utilization of wood.31 Though organizations from the main
exporting countries such as Sweden, the Soviet Union, and Finland
never acceded (next to representatives of the biggest importing countries
Great Britain and Germany), they still used its data.
This momentum, led by the League, the Comité, and the IIA, is a sign
of the evolving international professional and bureaucratic community.

28
On the history of international forestry congresses see Christian Lotz, Expanding the
Space for Future Resource Management: Explorations of the Timber Frontier in Northern
Europe and the Rescaling of Sustainability During the Nineteenth Century, 21 E N V T L .
H I S T . 257 (2015).
29
Publications of the International Institute of Agriculture: International Trade of Wood –
Statistical Figures for the Years 1925 to 1939 (1944).
30
Anonymous, The Timber’s “League of Nations”: 21 Countries Represented at the London
Conference, 1 3 7 T I M B E R T R A D E S J. 8 (1936). It should be noted, however, that the
original quote also included the wording “but a very independent child.”
31
On the Comité’s history see E G O N G L E S I N G E R , N A Z I S I N T H E W O O D P I L E : H I T L E R ’ S
P L O T F O R E S S E N T I A L R A W M A T E R I A L (1942); or R O B E R T K. W I N T E R S , T H E F O R E S T
A N D M A N 30 2– 0 4 ( 1 97 4) .
260 fears of deforestation

This community of experts and commercial players sought to unify, or at

least modify, national and domestic modes of operation and manufac-
turing to become a much more coordinated and efficient economic-
industrial framework. In order to do so, both with regard to raw materials
in general, and timber in particular, the League and other bodies involved
turned to the discourse of international law and economic governance.
This policy also supported the later conception of the League as an
institution that formulated new modes of superstate professional
bureaucracy.32 In its own words, one year before its historical role
came to an end, the League assessed its contribution as follows:
The League of Nations was doing increasingly important work in such
questions . . . . Reference should also be made to the economic studies
made by the competent section of the Secretariat, as a result of which the
League . . . had become an information centre where the countries con-
cerned could exchange their observations and conclusions on economic
questions.33

Like wheat, coal, grain, cotton, and sugar, timber became an important
and sought-after commodity during the interwar period. The main
players were those countries producing timber as a core part of their
national industry: mostly Scandinavian states (Finland and Sweden in
particular) and Canada. Nevertheless, when Soviet Russia started to
recover from the devastating outcomes of the Civil War and Military
Communism, the USSR secured a key role in the global export of
timber.34
The demand for timber was not limited to Europe alone, but extended
further. Economic data from the interwar period actually show that
timber’s value exceeded that of oil or coal exports worldwide.35 At the
end of the 1920s, about forty million cubic meters of sawn timber – the

32
For a similar move on the role of experts, professional bureaucracy, and international
integration see the special volume in the series Making Europe: Technology and
Transformation: 1850–2000: W O L F R A M K A I S E R & J O H A N S C H O T , W R I T I N G T H E
RULES FOR EUROPE: EXPERTS, CARTELS, AND INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
(2014).
33
(Draft) Report on the 48th Session of the Economic Committees held at Geneva, July 4–9,
1938, Oct. 19, 1938, LoN Archives, 10A/34675/1952 (E.1046), at 17 (emphasis added).
34
On the capacity of the Soviet timber industry and forestation see P E T E R B L A N D O N ,
S O V I E T F O R E S T I N D U S T R I E S ( 19 8 3) ; B R I A N N O N G O M M E , F O R E S T S , P E A S A N T S , A N D
REVOLUTIONARIES: FOREST CONSERVATION AND ORGANIZATION IN SOVIET
R U S S I A , 19 17 – 19 2 9 ( 20 05 ) ; S T E P H E N B R A I N , T H E S O N G O F T H E F O R E S T :
R U S S I A N F O R E S T R Y A N D S T A L I N I S T E N V I R O N M E N T A L I S M , 1 9 05 – 19 53 ( 20 1 1) .
35
Comité International du Bois: Year-Book of World Timber Trade 1938, at 2.
 4.2 t imber in t he interwar period 261

most popular product at this time – were exported worldwide per year.36
The vast majority of this quantity came from the Northern Hemisphere.
The Scandinavian countries,37 Canada, France, and (after a decade of
absence) also the Soviet Union were the central exporting countries.
Before the Great Depression, international consumption was on the
rise, with different industries and markets using timber as a raw mater-
ial – such as for building infrastructure, and in the pulp and paper
industry (supporting the printed newspapers in a world of new means
of mass media). In times of mass production, such as when the League
was active, timber trade accelerated and distribution increased.38
A closer inspection of timber, and a comparison with other raw mater-
ials (which seem more essential in terms of food demands and industrial
needs) suggest that timber received special attention. In an Economic
Committee report from the mid-1930s addressing various aspects of
international economic collaboration, a central commodity like wheat
received no more than a single page of attention.39 Despite its importance
as a basic staple food, and although the League had experienced earlier in
the 1920s40 outbreaks of famine in Communist Russia, and Ukraine in

36
W A L T E R G R O T T I A N , D I E U M S A T Z M E N G E N I M W E L T H O L Z H A N D E L 1 92 5 –1 9 38 , 144
(1942).
37
Perhaps except Norway. But Sweden and Finland were key players.
38
Partial data from leading European industrial economies show that in both Britain and
Germany in particular, there was a growing demand for imported timber. In Britain, timber
imports per year rose from fewer than one million cubic meters in 1835 to more than
fourteen million in 1927 (see Thorsten Streyffert, Die Holzwirtschaft Europas, 52
F O R S T W I S S E N S C H A F T L I C H E S C E N T R A L B L A T T 825, 825–36, 869–78 (1930). In Germany,
the annual industrial consumption of timber dramatically expanded from almost five million
cubic meters between 1860 and 1862, to no less than thirty-five million cubic meters between
1925 and 1929 (see, e.g., K U R T MANTEL, H O L Z M A R K T L E H R E : E I N L E H R U N D
HANDBUCH DER HOLZMARKTÖKONOMIE UND HOLZWIRTSCHAFTSPOLITIK 73
[1973]). These European examples also correspond with changes in the American economy:
in the 1840s, the American timber consumption stood at no more than 10 million cubic
meters; whereas the statistics show consumption skyrocketing to 275 million cubic meters in
the mid-1920s. Even the Spanish economy, which was not considered to be a central
economy, showed numbers that point to a clear increase in timber trade at the peak of
industrialization (see Iñaki Iriarte-Goñia & María Isabel Ayudab, Wood and
Industrialization: Evidence and Hypotheses from the Case of Spain, 1860–1935, 6 5
E C O L O G I C A L E C O . 177, 179 [ 2008]) .
39
See the note of the Secretariat for the Economic Committee on international economic
collaboration (Regional Agreements, Various Manifestations, Producers’ Agreements),
June 5, 1936, LoN Archives, 10A/381/381/xv, at 15 (hereinafter Regional Agreements).
40
See the Report on Economic Conditions in Russia: with Special Reference to the Famine
of 1921–1922 and the State of Agriculture (1922), LoN Archives, C.705.M.451.1922. II,
at 1.
262 fear s of defor es ta tion

particular, the League and other parties involved seemed to afford this
basic cereal attention and concern almost as it did with timber.
Wheat was not alone in that regard. “Since August 31st, 1935, there has
been no international sugar agreement,”41 the Committee mentioned lacon-
ically in this report. There was also an International Tea Committee, which
was formed in 1933 and “aim[ed] at regulating exports.”42 Compared to
timber (half a page), however, the international tea trade discussion
amounted to no more than one-third of a page; coal had a page-long
survey;43 and the International Agreement for Restricting the Production
of Copper – accepted by producers and representing 75 percent of world
production – stretched over fewer than two pages.44
One simple letter sent to the League might also highlight the import-
ance of timber in the interwar period: “We consider that, inasmuch as
timber is a raw material of fundamental importance, closely lined with
agriculture, it is deserving of the special attention of the international
organizations, and should receive first consideration with a view to an
improvement in its position in the sphere of international trade.”45
The special importance that international bodies attributed to timber
went hand in hand with the legal mechanisms that were considered to
address the tension between international law and domestic-national law.
It seems that the international organizations that were involved in the
timber issue were aware of the possible obstacles on the ground when it
came to national policies. Therefore, they considered several means by
which international governance would be able to overcome local legal
barriers. The Comité, for instance, as it aimed to organize a timber
cartel,46 declared that it was fully aware of this legal tension and, in order
to reach an international agreement, it “devoted special attention to the
establishment of national organisations in all its member countries. The
national organisations must be in a position to conclude . . . any agreements
that may be thought necessary, and to give all the required guarantees.”47

41
Regional Agreements, supra note 39, at 16.
42
Id.
43
Id. at 17.
44
Id. at 18–19.
45
Letter to the League of Nations (Economic Committee) from the General Secretary of the
Permanent International Committee on Timber Production and the Timber Industry and
Trade, Feb. 9, 1933, LoN Archives, 10A/381/381 E.802, at 1 (emphasis added).
46
Which was one of its main aims at the beginning of its existence, but which it failed to reach.
47
Letter to the League of Nations (Economic Committee) from the General Secretary of the
Permanent International Committee on Timber Production and the Timber Industry and
Trade, Feb. 9, 1933, LoN Archives, 10A/381/381 E.802, at 4.
 4.2 timber in t he interwar period 263

4.2.3 The Timber Wars of the 1930s

This section will describe how the timber trade of the 1930s was shaped
by two major occurrences: the Great Depression and what major players
had described as a Soviet dumping policy that followed it. Both of these
had a double impact. First, they had a direct impact on timber on an
international scale. Second, as a result, they also had an environmental
effect, as people started to blame these economic patterns as the reason
for the increasing problem of deforestation.
Like other interwar issues, timber was influenced by certain economic
and environmental changes that took place during that time. For
instance, significant changes in the global economy were reflected in
whaling,48 and the same is true of the timber trade. At that time, the
League was called on by certain players to promote preliminary ideas of
international economic governance that could better respond to the
global challenges posed by the industrial crises of the 1930s.
As in other areas of international trade, the Great Depression affected
timber production and its demand in the markets. This put great pressure
on timber industries, which suffered from dropping prices and shrinking
trade as the crisis intensified. Economic data at the turn of the 1930s show
that trade of sawn timber had decreased by almost 50 percent between the
late 1920s and 1932, from approximately forty million cubic meters to
just twenty million. Though it recovered to about thirty million cubic
meters in 1937, this was still much less than the years before.49
Given the impact of the Depression on global demand, one might have
expected timber production to fall dramatically after 1929. However, the
timber reality of the 1930s was quite different and more complex than
that. The crisis did affect the global production and trade of timber, but
mostly to the extent that there were fears of overproduction as a result of
several key players’ economic-political decisions – first and foremost, the
Soviet Union.
The Soviets, however, chose to handle the Depression in their own
way. For the Soviet Union, aside from wheat, timber was the commodity
that it could export to finance its own industrialization. After the first
dramatic Five-Year-Plan, which overlapped with the Depression, the
Soviets sought to achieve their goal of massive industrialization by

48
For instance, an increase in the popularity of margarine as a cheap alternative to butter
made the world’s whale oil market an important energy stock. See William Cronon’s
introduction to D O R S E Y , supra note 2, at vii, x.
49
G R O T T I A N , supra note 36, at 144–45.
264 fears of d efores tation

exporting huge quantities of timber abroad in order to cover at least some

of the loss due to dropping prices.50 Given the decreasing prices of raw
materials, the Soviet timber industry increased its production. This
national policy, which followed the growing American crisis, rapidly
became a global problem.
The Soviets’ industrial campaign had two central impacts. First, the
Five-Year-Plan was responsible for the elimination of huge stretches of
forest across the Soviet Union.51 And second, the USSR’s dumping
policy seriously worried several timber-producing economies abroad,
and the Soviet timber industry’s stake in the international market was
essential.52
Following the double negative impact of both the Depression and the
Soviet policy, shrinking trade drove timber-producing countries to
action. Fearing an industrial collapse, some national industries des-
cended into bitter competition with one another; this pushed timber
industries and forests to a dangerous point. Increased production and
the Soviet race to the bottom had no real winners because all industries
had fallen on such hard times.53
Referring to the interwar period as the period of timber wars is not
arbitrary. Timber was significant to the national industries of several
countries, and the Soviet reaction to crashing prices did not go
unnoticed. In an effort to fight dropping prices and to regain their loss
of profits, some countries tried to tackle the double crisis of the
Depression and the dumping policy head on. The Canadians, for
instance, campaigned massively against Soviet timber, and so did the
Finnish, and the Swedish, and several more that were furious with the
USSR’s harvest policy. The Soviet Union was publicly accused of dump-
ing timber, and these voices pushed for an embargo against Soviet timber
exportation.54 These countries also turned to the Comité to help them

50
Next to other intensive coercive measures that changed the Soviet agriculture and
economy. See M A R K R. B E I S S I N G E R , S C I E N T I F I C M A N A G E M E N T , S O C I A L I S T
D I S C I P L I N E , A N D S O V I E T P O W E R (1988).
51
See A N E N V I R O N M E N T A L H I S T O R Y O F R U S S I A 71–135 (Paul Josephson et al. eds., 2013).
52
See the data noted by G R O T T I A N , supra note 36, at 144–45.
53
The collapse of the Finnish timber industry, due to falling prices and dropping demand,
alarmed other nations that were deeply concerned that they would share the same fate.
54
The main focus was on Britain. The British, lacking an independent timber industry of
their own, relied heavily on imported timber to support major branches of the industry,
such as their advanced shipping industry. Although this coalition tried to exert pressure
on Britain to join the ban, the British government ultimately refused to do so and
continued to import shipments from abroad.
 4 . 3 t i m b er c h a l l e n g e & c o n c er n s o f d e f o r e s t a t i o n 265

push back against the Soviets and to coordinate their timber policies,
trade, and – above all – the market price of timber.
In the face of decreasing global demand and consequent dropping
prices, different national timber industries struggled to remain afloat.
These interwar difficulties pushed timber-producing countries to turn to
international law for help. Most tried to create foreign, transregional, and
transnational trade mechanisms, such as cartels and consortiums (first
and foremost the Comité) to tackle the timber crisis and overproduction.
However, the large majority of these mechanisms, which were developed
outside the League, were far from successful.55
The concerns of timber industries intersected with the League’s own
political ambitions, as it had institutional aims of its own to gain support
and recognition worldwide. Together, they overlapped in the search for
an international solution. Unlike other kinds of transnational collabor-
ations that preceded the League or existed during its time, the League had
a greater number of applicable tools to offer. The League entered the
timber crisis against this backdrop, just as timber-producing countries
were introducing international export agreements in an effort to stabilize
the market.
The characteristic of timber, and its influence on the landscape, intro-
duced environmental considerations into the timber discussion. These
economic characteristics and historic circumstances overlapped with the
League’s own agenda to promote modes of international governance. The
timber issue was both an opportunity and a challenge to fulfill that. The
timber wars allowed for economic interests and industrial incentives to
be considered alongside environmental and conservationist agendas.
This supported the economic-driven demand to limit and control forest
harvest. In the battle to stabilize prices and ensure the survival of the
timber industry, the danger of deforestation gained prominence in the
timber discussion.

4.3 The Timber Challenge and Concerns of Deforestation:

The League Harmonizes Economic, Industrial, and
Environmental Perspectives
As the previous sections have shown, timber was a common problem for
the Soviet Union, Europe, and North America in the first half of the
twentieth century. When the League entered this complicated battlefield

55
See Kuorelahti, supra note 6.
266 fears of d efores tation

of conflicting national and industrial interests, it was acting as an inter-

national institution whose chief concern was the economic greater good
of the world. The recovery from the results of World War I in terms of
civilian and national infrastructures took its toll for several long years.
Together with the Soviet dumping policy, it all had a tangible effect on the
international trade of goods, and timber in particular. As a result, sup-
porting the global timber industry became a top international priority,
since the recovery of different nations’ economies also appeared to be
dependent on the stability of their timber industries.
This section will show how the timber wars, the resultant trade issues,
and the calls for an international timber regime intertwined with envir-
onmental concerns and added to the general economic-industrial frame-
work. Seeing how the crisis of 1929 had affected the global demand for
timber, some diplomats were also concerned in the 1930s about the
environmental outcomes of accelerating timber production on wooded
landscapes.
Because timber production was tied to increasing environmental phe-
nomena such as deforestation and erosion, the League eventually began
to address the relationship between economic interests regarding the
control of timber production, and a growing environmental awareness
of the impact of timber production on nature.
The issue of timber production across the world was a meeting point of
several different perspectives: economic, industrial, political-institutional,56
and environmental. In the case of deforestation, I will show that the contrast
was particularly stark in terms of timing. No more than one year separated
the League’s discussions on how to protect forests using international law,
and the termination of the League’s reign over internationalism. Though the
League fought intently to safeguard trees in the late 1930s, World War II
brought a swift end to its evolutionary legal process of crafting solutions out
of diplomacy.
Section 4.3 comprises two sections. Section 4.3.1 will focus on the
continuing efforts of the League (mostly through the Economic
Committee) and other international bodies to support the introduction
of a binding international timber regulation throughout the 1930s. I will
analyze the main events throughout the 1930s, including two inter-
national timber conferences that were organized in Berlin (1933) and
Vienna (1934) respectively. In Section 4.3.2, I will then address the

56
The League discussed the timber question as other institutions such as the Comité and the
IIA were considering the same tensions.
 4 . 3 ti m b er c h a l l en g e & c o n c er n s o f d ef o r e s t a t i o n 267

environmental concerns about the effect of timber production on forests

around the world. Here, I will argue that environmental calls were added
to the League’s existing economic-industrial framework, in which it
wished to protect timber industries around the world as well.

4.3.1 Regulation of the Timber Trade to Support the Industry

As previously mentioned, the League was already discussing raw mater-
ials when the timber trade met with the challenge of the Great Depression
and Soviet timber production.57 Prior to its focus on timber, the League
monitored international production and trade of a variety of materials
for industrial use and commerce.58 However, given the obstacles timber-
producing countries faced and the League’s (and some of its bodies’)
interests, the League added the timber challenge to its long list of respon-
sibilities in the turbulent 1930s.
Although timber trade had been a topic for some of the League’s bodies
since 1928–29, the main steps started in 1932. Moreover, the League was
using largely the same methods that characterized its legal and diplo-
matic-bureaucratic procedures in other inquiries, and not just in this
case. As the following section will show, these mechanisms included
information gathering and sharing, the distribution of formal technical
inquiries, and placing technical experts (such as economists) at the
forefront of international law and international governance, sometimes
ahead of political representatives. At this time, the Economic Committee
was primarily involved in tackling issues that reflected different eco-
nomic perspectives and environmental concerns.
As with other parallel environmental challenges, timber was a profes-
sional issue for professional experts. Following the IIA’s request for assist-
ance with forestry data a few years earlier in 1926, the Economic Committee
in January 1932 sent an invitation to experts from all member states to
attend a special professional conference. The conference was to focus on the
poor state of the international timber trade. Later that year, in April,
delegations of officials, and interest and advocacy groups from fourteen
states59 met in Geneva for a three-day conference. The delegations recon-
vened in Vienna two months later for another, larger international

57
K . W I L L I A M K A P P , T H E L E A G U E O F N A T I O N S A N D R A W M A T E R I A L S : 1 91 9– 1 93 9
(1941).
58
See the discussion in Section 4.2.1 above.
59
Mostly European, but Canada had also joined the initiative.
268 fear s of defor es ta tion

conference,60 in which they agreed to establish the Comité International du

Bois.
Although the League’s Economic Committee did not establish the
Comité, the moves and deliberations between these private actors and
semi-state organizations were followed by the League’s secretariat.61 As
the 1932 conference, for instance, was concluded, two main aims were
identified for the future. To achieve these aims, it was recommended that
the steady and efficient trade of timber worldwide should be maintained.
The first aim was to establish a joint collaboration between states to tackle
the dropping prices of timber. The second aim was to promote inter-
nationalization and institutionalized supervision of timber production
from that point on.
The delegations also specifically agreed – in a rather precedential
manner – to establish a central international bureau to monitor and
coordinate production, supply, exportation, and imports on an inter-
national scale. The Secretariat informed the Economic Committee that
these “steady effort[s],” beginning in 1932 “ha[d] been made to stabilise
the international timber market.”62
The conference recommendations called for an internal department or
office in Geneva to handle the issue of timber. However, the international
bureau of timber that was actually established in practice was an external,
and fairly independent, body, working for economic and commercial
interests of its members. The Comité was active as a professional inter-
national institute from 1932 in Vienna.63 Like other interwar concerns
with which the League was entangled, the timber issue had its own
headquarters, a forum, and a routine complete with professional experts,
national representatives, reports, and publications. Other departments
within the League relied on the Comité’s bureaucratic and legal output,

60
Economic Committee, Timber: International Conferences of Timber-Exporting
Countries (Berlin, Dec. 1933; Vienna, Oct. 1934) – Note by the Secretariat, Jan. 18,
1935, LoN Archives, 10A/381/381/E.871, at 1 (hereafter Economic Committee, Timber:
Note by the Secretariat).
61
Series of the League of Nations Publications, Economic Committee: The Timber
Problem – Its International Aspects (Series of League of Nations Publications, 1932.II.
B.6) (1932), LoN Archives, at 5–12.
62
Economic Committee, Timber: Note by the Secretariat, supra note 60, at 1.
63
The conceptual question of the possible ties and influence of the League on the Comité
might stand in the center of other studies. One can argue that without the security of
general internationalism, international frameworks, and legal-institutional mechanisms,
an institution like the Comité – an international organization to focus on timber supply
and trade concerns – would probably not have been created.
 4 . 3 ti m b e r c hal l eng e & co n cer n s o f d eforestation 269

such as papers, proposals for circulation, and drafts as part of an interwar

institutional routine.
The will to exert control over areas of law previously considered the
domain of sovereign states seems as a rather bold idea. In retrospect, it is
impressive that five countries – Roumania, Yugoslavia, Poland, Austria,
and Czechoslovakia (the countries that founded the Comité) – who were
not leading timber-producing powers, were daring enough to propose
the idea of a legally binding quota for timber. Moreover, this move
echoed other mechanisms the League discussed in parallel economic-
environmental problems: the whaling dilemma, for instance.64 These
legal mechanisms fit the League’s advocacy of international management
of common natural resources, especially in terms of supervising raw
materials.
The joint timber effort got more and more compelling. Although
Scandinavian countries were reluctant at first, tough market conditions
eventually brought them in. As the Economic Committee explained: “Yet
the evolution which has occurred in the international timber market has
increasingly lessened the weight of the latter [the Scandinavian coun-
tries’] objection.”65
Sharing the Economic Committee’s agenda, the League tried to
encourage an international legal-economic arrangement that would
overcome the difficulties of the timber trade. In summer 1933, the
League also advocated for timber in the World Economic Conference
in London (probably because of the lobbying of the Comité). The June–
July conference was an international gathering of representatives from
more than sixty-five states and lasted almost a month and a half. The
conference aimed to reach an agreement on the measures required to
overcome the global depression. Different delegations discussed the ways
in which international trade could be revived and which steps should be
taken to restore international markets and the global economy.66 In
preparation for the conference, the League declared that “the [inter-
national economic] settlement should relieve the world.”67 Moreover,
during the conference, a subcommittee of technical, economic, and
industrial experts further developed the principle of a fixed quota. This

64
The idea of global quota was fiercely discussed throughout the 1930s, especially concern-
ing the Antarctic waters.
65
Economic Committee, Timber: Note by the Secretariat, supra note 60, at 1.
66
See Rodney J. Morrison, The London Monetary and Economic Conference of 1933:
A Public Goods Analysis, 5 2 A M . J. E C O N . & S O C . 312 (1993).
67
Draft Annotated Agenda, C.48.M.18 (Conference M.E.1.) II, LoN Archives, at 7–9.
270 fear s of defor es ta tion

subcommittee also recommended that the Comité serve as a central

international office for timber trade and collaborate with the League’s
Committee of Statistical Experts and the International Institution of
Agriculture. Furthermore, the Comité was to draft relevant recom-
mendations for national-domestic timber production.
Following these preliminary discussions on the supervision of timber,
several timber-producing countries agreed to strengthen collaboration at
the first International Conference of Timber Exporters, which was con-
vened in Berlin on December 11, 1933. Following the exchange of
professional views between experts and representatives, the Berlin
Conference introduced a special timber deal based on statistical data.68
According to the 1933 deal, exports in 1934 were not to exceed those of
the previous year. The Economic Committee explained that these
arrangements were made based on mutual estimations between the
parties, and on an estimate of the world timber requirements that
importing countries provided for the year of 1934.69 In this way, the
Comité would be better able to secure stable timber prices globally,
control timber trends – and prices, too – and regain the confidence of
the international community, whose trust had been lost during the
Depression and the Soviet policy. As the Berlin Conference concluded,
it declared that it had succeeded “in adjusting supply to demand and that
prices could therefore be expected to remain steady during the following
season.”
In view of the “favourable results” of the Berlin Conference, as the
Economic Committee defined them, the participants of the Conference
expressed a “unanimous desire” in the summer of 1934 to resume the
negotiations and to deepen the modification of international trade.70 In
October, more countries joined the next international meeting, the
Vienna Timber Conference. Two important parties joined this timber
regime of the Comité. The Director of the Timber Section and the Senior
Vice-Chairman of the Export Office arrived from Moscow to represent
Soviet interests, which often conflicted with the interests of other timber-
producing countries. Moreover, several Baltic states joined the collabor-
ation, including Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which sent a tripartite
delegation to Austria consisting of State Forests and the private timber
industry.71 International interest in this timber regime encouraged the
68
Economic Committee, Timber: Note by the Secretariat, supra note 60, at 2.
69
Id.
70
Id.
71
Id. at 3.
 4.3 t imber challenge & concerns of deforestation 271

Canadian government, for instance, to take part too, and it sent the
Commissioner for Timber to the conference.72
The efforts seemed to be successful, having gained global attention.
The League pointed out that Vienna Conference had gathered represen-
tatives from almost “all the countries of the world”73 who were involved
in timber exports. Moreover, the League noted that even states that were
absent either followed or were influenced by the international timber
regime, and understood that the rules had changed as a result of the
ambitious campaign. “In the United States as in Canada, efforts are now
being made to set up a central organisation of timber exporters; this
would facilitate future participation in international activities.”74
Generally speaking, the Vienna Conference continued the general line
of the Berlin Conference of gaining international control over timber
production, as the delegates were of the “unanimous opinion” that the
1933 deal should be updated: exports would need to be 10 percent below
the quota of sawn timber, and quantities would need to be reduced in
1935 accordingly.75
Some of the subsequent steps in this monitoring policy did not actually
take place under the formal auspices of the League, such as the timber
exporters’ organizations agreement of November 1935, signed in
Copenhagen.76 However, the League’s international and procedural rou-
tines reflected a certain pattern that we can trace, as it might influenced
other neighboring frameworks that were working toward ad hoc cooper-
ation. Some of the ways in which the League practiced its legal arrange-
ments are reflected in the Copenhagen trade agreement of 1935. The
central articles of the agreement were to be renewed and reapproved
annually by the signing parties, just as the League used to revise formal
arrangements after a certain period when it addressed economic-
environmental issues.77

72
Id.
73
Id. With the exception of Norway, Yugoslavia, and the United States. As for the
Americans, the memorandum mentioned that they nevertheless “showed their interest
by proposing to send a Government representative as observer.” (Id. at 3).
74
Id.
75
Id. at 4.
76
The European Timber Exporters’ Convention (ETEC) – and its predecessors, the gentle-
men’s agreements of 1933 and 1934 – provided for export quotas and voluntary production
restrictions of Europe’s softwood and lumber industry. See S . V . C I R I A C Y -W A N T R U P ,
R E S O U R C E C O N S E R V A T I O N : E C O N O M I C S A N D P O L I T I C S 3 25 ( 19 5 2) .
77
Such as in the case of the international whaling regulations of the 1930s (both the 1931
Convention and that of 1937). See the discussion in Chapter 2.
272 fe ar s of d efor e st atio n

The supervision of timber – and the binding quota in particular – is an

example of how and to what extent the interwar world turned away from
ad hoc initiatives and procedures, which had characterized earlier inter-
national campaigns, including environmental ones. The League explicitly
pointed out this principle of continuity after the conferences in Berlin
and Vienna had concluded. The League distanced the new proposed
regime from earlier attempts to regulate timber production through
international law:
Mention should be made of a final – perhaps the most important – result
of the Conference: it was unanimously resolved that meetings of the same
kind should be held at least once a year . . . . This resolution should prevent
a repetition of the slumps which occurred so often . . . . and should help to
reinforce confidence. Under this advisory agreement, the various compe-
tent organisations will be able to take speedy and energetic action when the
situation requires . . . a common line of policy . . . . It will therefore be
possible . . . to discuss the international problems connected with timber
on the widest scale and with the assistance of all the competent
organisations.78

Was is the League’s daily work as an institution that triggered and

reignited the discussion on timber and did not let it become obscured
or marginalized by other pressing problems? Perhaps. One way of the
other, this procedural legal mechanism of the Copenhagen agreement,
which is an interwar example, would last until World War II.79
In summer 1936, the Economic Committee concluded the implica-
tions of the Depression and the Soviet dumping policy: “The forestry
industry has suffered for some years from over-production, while, at the
same time, consumption has been restricted.”80 Despite the international
ongoing efforts, the dumping still posed a very real threat. According to
that report, prices in 1935 dropped by 25 percent on average compared
with 1934 but improved thereafter, mainly as a result of the Copenhagen
agreement. The League concluded at that stage that although prices were
“extremely low,” thanks to international cooperation (simply put, trade
control), these prices had “risen steadily since the conclusion of the
78
Economic Committee, Timber: Note by the Secretariat, supra note 60, at 5 (emphasis
added).
79
On the history of the European Timber Exporters’ Convention see Jorma Ahvenainen,
The Competitive Position of the Finnish Sawmill Industry in the 1920s and 1930s, 33
S C A N D I N A V I A N E C O N . H I S T . R E V . 173 (1985).
80
Report by the Economic Committee on International Economic Collaboration: Regional
Agreements, Various Manifestations, Producers’ Agreements, June 5, 1936, LoN
Archives, 10A/381/381/xv, at 18 (hereafter Report by the Economic Committee, June 5).
 4 . 3 t i m b e r ch a l l e n g e & c o n c e r ns o f d e f o r e s t a t i o n 273

[Copenhagen] Agreement, and [were] now approaching a fairly satisfac-

tory level . . . .”81
The League continued to deal with timber regulation in the years that
followed. As I will elaborate in the next section, the Nineteenth Ordinary
Session of the League Assembly, held in September 1938, focused on the
issues of timber production and deforestation and brought together
economic-industrial interests and environmental goals. Whereas other
environmental discussions at the League reveal tensions caused by com-
peting economic and environmental perspectives, in the case of timber,
calls for an international regime (even if an external one, led by the
Comité) and fears of deforestation went hand in hand – an interwar
example of economic-environmental harmony. The Depression’s impact
on timber production and forestation was raised in the minutes of the
Economic Committee during the September Session of the Assembly.
This discussion might be linked to parallel discussions on international
economic policy at the time and the role the League could and should
play in it. “There is no need . . . to stress the importance of the discussions
we shall have on the general economic situation. It is quite possible that
the general framework of our society would not survive another crisis
equal in severity to what we call ‘The Great Depression.’”82 In order to
fight dumping and decreasing prices, harvest or exploitation of natural
resources had to be placed under a global trade regime:
Therefore, whatever concerted action we may be able to take . . . . whether
with regard to setting up buffer stocks to reduce the extreme variability of
raw materials prices, or whether with regard to the avoidance of mutually
harmful policies, in so far as we are successful, there will be no measuring
our reward in human happiness and content.83

Eventually, the timber question resulted in the entanglement of mass

production, forest overexploitation, and deforestation with international
law and governance. Instead of the free movement of goods and classic
ideas of liberal capitalism, the League supported a much more systematic
and regulated environment of trade through the issue of timber. “The

81
Id. at 18.
82
Records of the 19th Ordinary Session of the Assembly, Meetings of the Committees,
Minutes of the 2d Committee (Economic, Financial, and Transit Questions), Special
Supplement No. 185, League of Nations Official Journal (1938), Annex 1, A.64.1938.II.B,
LoN Archives, at 24 (hereafter Records of the 19th Ordinary Session). This quote is taken
out of a speck of the former Australian Prime Minister Stanley M. Bruce (read by his
substitute, F. L. McDougall).
83
Id.
274 f e a r s of d e f o r e s t a t i o n

scientific investigations carried out in the Economic Intelligence

Service . . . have paved the way for this enquiry into the practical meas-
ures which . . . prevent or mitigate trade depressions.” The League con-
cluded that this kind of (deep) institutional involvement “will prove
a most striking example of the value of international consultation and
collaboration.”84
The turbulence of timber production and the bitter national-economic
rivalries of the 1930s seemed to push aside other general and more
acceptable economic conventions. To the League, the crisis of raw mater-
ials, particularly timber, justified turning to other means of dealing with
international (economic) relations. “The appropriate policies for mitigat-
ing depressions may vary from country to country,” the League admitted
in late 1938. But it was clear that “unless we have an effective inter-
national centre for the joint consideration of such methods and their
repercussions, we can hardly hope to find means of bringing the phe-
nomena of the trade cycle under control.”85
Moreover, in the case of international concern over raw materials other
than timber, the League was actually advocating for bilateral negotiations
and it encouraged states to reach any relevant agreement amongst them-
selves. In fact, one of the League’s publications mentioned that the
Economic Committee “insists”86 that sight should not be lost of the object
of restoring a greater degree of freedom and economic liberalism in the
international exchange of goods that were not timber. In the case of other
raw materials, these modes of operating international law and governance
were, at that time, “perhaps the most promising method that can be used to
realise the objects set out in the resolutions of recent Assemblies.” Control,
supervision, and coordination seemed to be specific only to the issue of
timber: “In particular, is it important that all Governments should refrain
at the present time from any measures which are likely to depress still
further the prices . . . on world markets . . . .”87
Furthermore, the ways in which the League pushed to introduce
a regulated regime for timber trade is intriguing when one takes into
84
Id.
85
Id. at 25.
86
Draft Report of the Economic Committee, May 20, 1939, LoN Archives, 10A/37915/1952
(E.1081), at 1.
87
Records of the 19th Ordinary Session of the Assembly, Meetings of the Committees,
Minutes of the 2d Committee (Economic, Financial, and Transit Questions), Special
Supplement No. 185, Annex 1: Economic and Financial Questions: Report of the Second
Committee to the Assembly, A.64.1938.II.B., League of Nations Official Journal (1938),
at 64.
 4 . 3 t i m b e r ch a l l e n g e & c o n c e r ns o f d e f o r e s t a t i o n 275

account the worsening geopolitical context. Times were tough, especially

in the late 1930s with tensions increasing among the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo
Axis as their respective powers grew, which dramatically endangered
collective security and peacekeeping – the original assignments for
which the League was established.88
Zooming out, both primary economic aims and environmental con-
cerns widened the stage of institutional internationalism and enabled
other, noninvolved states to participate in the creation of international
law. The League itself emphasized the need to expand its political frame-
work. The role and contribution of these economic-environmental
dimensions were central to such action:
[W]e shall all recognize that, while the absence of certain great nations
from our counsels is a serious handicap to our work, it need not prevent us
from making great progress in the economic field. Here we have the co-
operation of the United States . . . and of certain other nations who are not
members of the League. We shall be fortified by the realisation that
effective progress towards greater . . . stability and human betterment
cannot be without beneficial repercussions in the political field.89

Giving this backdrop, the Nineteenth Session of the Assembly (also) on

the matter of deforestation allowed for broader considerations that
included not only economic and industrial aspects, but also obvious
environmental ones. In these times of severe international problems,
the League decided to address the challenge of timber and deforestation
as an issue.

4.3.2 Environmental Concerns Added to the General

Economic-Industrial Framework
As briefly discussed earlier, the League encouraged the development of
an ambitious timber regime in the 1930s to ensure the survival of the
timber industry. This campaign was mostly promoted by other inter-
national organizations that were active during the interwar period. The
League was focused on the Depression’s economic impact on timber as
a priority raw material; however, the protection of forests from rapid,
88
On the other hand, one could argue that the oncoming war should have increased the
League’s motivation to deal with raw materials that were crucial to war and economic
resilience during times of expected hardship.
89
Records of the 19th Ordinary Session of the Assembly: Minutes of the 2d Committee
(Economic, Financial, and Transit Questions), Special Supplement No. 185, Sept. 22, 1938
League of Nations Official Journal (1938), Annex 1, A.64.1938.II.B., at 26.
276 fear s of defor es ta tion

intensive, or inefficient industrial timber production entailed other con-

siderations. The League realized that it was not only dropping prices that
were of concern, but also the natural landscape, which had been suffering
from rapid development and industrial activity. These environmental
concerns added a new dimension to the economic-industrial framework
and the voices that aimed to stabilize the timber industries.
Certain bodies and representatives within the League encouraged it to
focus on the environmental effects of timber production on wooded
landscapes. This environmental and conservationist awareness evolved
gradually until it reached a peak in the late 1930s. However, the League
was not of one mind on how to tackle this aspect of the timber issue.
Some bodies, primarily the Economic Committee, enthusiastically sup-
ported international cooperation in timber trade in order to secure
profitable prices and to protect the industry. Other voices, and mostly
certain delegations, had suddenly realized that the cost of a full-scale
industrial and economic initiative – not to mention the alleged rapid
Soviet forest harvest – could have devastating impacts on nature.
The first time we can identify the link between timber production and
deforestation in the League’s discussions is during the preparations and
preliminary discussions of the Economic Committee between 1937 and
1938. In a summary of one of the Economic Committee’s discussions in
December 1937 on the difficulties of timber trade, the Committee identi-
fied the need to protect forests from overexploitation. The summary went
on to describe how, at its third meeting, the Committee examined
a document about the development of natural resources with regard to
forest preservation in different mandated lands. Pietro Stoppani, the
Director of the Economic Relations Section of the Economic
Committee at that time, pointed out that “certain activities were reserved
for nationals, while the development of forestry was subject to certain
restrictions connected with their preservation irrespective of the nation-
ality of the persons developing them.”90 Following that, the French
representative to the discussion, Paul Elbel91 (with whom we shall soon
become more closely acquainted), noted that in the case of the exploit-
ation of forests as a natural resource, certain guarantees should be
provided “against any intensive and abusive exploitation by foreigners
90
Summary of the Discussions of the Economic Committee at its 47th Session held at
Geneva (Dec. 6–9, 1937), Mar. 7, 1937, LoN Archives, 10A/31956/1952, at 4 (hereafter
Summary of the Discussions of the Economic Committee at its 47th Session).
91
P. Elbel, Deputy, Honorary Director of Agreements, French Ministry of Commerce, and
a member of the Economic Committee during the 1930s.
 4 . 3 t i m b er ch a l l e n g e & c o n ce r n s of de for es ta tion 277

of the resources of a colonial territory to the detriment of the present or

future interests of the natives.”92
As they discussed the need for the international regulation of timber
trade, Elbel – and later the Economic Committee – became aware of the
environmental costs of industrial timber activity. I will show, however,
that these economic and environmental considerations did not conflict
with each other as they had in other issues the League handled, such as in
the case of whaling or oil pollution of the sea. On the contrary, these
concerns complemented the Comité’s endeavors (and the League’s sup-
port) to assist the timber industry during hard times, when dropping
prices, dumping, and overproduction were rife. These belated environ-
mental or conservationist concerns of disappearance of forests93 became
enmeshed with industrial and commercial restrictions, which inter-
national organizations (including the League) wish to use in order to
control the timber trade.
In July 1938, the Economic Committee decided to refer the issue of
nature protection to the Assembly, the League’s broadest international
forum. In a draft of the Report of the Forty-Eighth Session of the
Economic Committee, the Director mentioned that “Monsieur Elbel . . .
[has] drawn the Committee’s attention to the danger of deforestation in
several parts of the world . . . .”94 Moreover, unlike the timber report from
the Nineteenth Ordinary Session of the Assembly (which would be held
in September later that year), this report did not express nearly as much
concern for other raw materials, such as oil, silver, cotton, or sugar, as it
did for timber and forests. “Finally, the attention of the Committee was

92
Summary of the Discussions of the Economic Committee at its 47th Session, supra note
90, at 5.
93
One might argue that the French warnings of advancing deforestation did not match the
reality on the ground. However, the question of whether or not there was a (real)
deforestation problem in certain regions in the 1930s is not the main focus of this
study. At any rate, reflections on this concern attended the League’s ongoing discussion
on deforestation as an international problem, and as a challenge for international law.
James Webb, for instance, has studied the gap between the impression of deforestation as
a result of industrial campaign and the reality on the ground. In his study on the clearing
of the highlands of Sri Lanka, Webb argued that this is the largest case of tropical
deforestation in the nineteenth-century British Empire. Owing to the difficulty of the
mountainous terrain, the trees were simply burned on site. However, no tropical woods
entered the international market. J A M E S L. A. W E B B , T R O P I C A L P I O N E E R S : H U M A N
A G E N C Y A N D E C O L O G I C A L C H A N G E I N T H E H I G H L A N D S O F S R I L A N K A , 1 80 0 –1 90 0
(2002).
94
(Draft) Report on the 48th Session of the Economic Committees held at Geneva, July 4–9,
1938, Oct. 19, 1938, LoN Archives, 10A/34675/1952 (E.1046), at 25 (emphasis added).
278 f e a r s of de f o r e s t a t i o n

drawn to the dangers of deforestation and soil erosion in various parts of

the world and the Committee decided to request the Economic and
Financial Organisation95 to study this question in collaboration with
the International Institute of Agriculture.”96
The preliminary discussions of the Economic Committee laid the
foundation for the general discussion on the problem of deforestation
that was to be held at the Assembly. The report declared: “[I]t was
decided that the Economic Committee should draw the Assembly’s
attention to the advisability of investigation of the problem, and of
conducting the investigation in collaboration with the International
Institute of Agriculture.”97
The Economic Committee did indeed draw the Assembly’s attention to
the question of deforestation and how it was entangled with the international
timber regime. A couple of months after the Economic Committee’s
95
See note 10.
96
Records of the 19th Ordinary Session of the Assembly, Meetings of the Committees,
Minutes of the 2d Committee (Economic, Financial, and Transit Questions), Special
Supplement No. 185, Annex 1: Economic and Financial Questions: Report of the Second
Committee to the Assembly, A.64.1938.II.B., League of Nations Official Journal (1938),
at 65.
97
(Draft) Report on the 48th Session of the Economic Committees held at Geneva, July 4–9,
1938, Oct. 19, 1938, LoN Archives, 10A/34675/1952 (E.1046), at 25.
One can notice certain differences between the Economic Committee (which in this
case represented Elbel’s environmental concerns) and the Assembly, as they were
reflected in the work of the editor who prepared the draft report. This analysis offers
some insights into the layers of legal texts and possible meanings of their geology.
A comparison of the texts prepared for the formal published conclusion of the
Economic Committee’s recommendations to the Assembly (and the League as a whole)
could reveal the hidden agenda of certain officials who tried to downplay some of the
environmental concerns.
The first draft of the report on the 48th Session of the Committee, handed in to the
Committee’s Chairman (F. van Langenhove), summarized Elbel’s environmental warn-
ing reluctantly. The original minutes used the word “however” before presenting Elbel’s
argument against the outcome of increasing timber production around the world.
Chairman van Langenhove, however, seems to have been more supportive of Elbel than
the original drafter. He removed the wary tone of the first draft by dropping the word
“however,” which somehow strengthened Elbel’s call to immediately recruit the League.
But on the other hand, the Chairman was also more cautious than the original drafter
(and Elbel himself, probably) in other parts of the discussion. While the original report
declared that the Economic Committee “would draw the Assembly’s attention” to the
concern of deforestation and encourage it to conduct a special investigation, the
Chairman preferred to articulate the conclusion with more (legal) room for interpretation
and possible action (if any) in the future; he replaced the word “would” with “should.”
Publication, Report (Economic Committee) to the Council on the Work of its 48th
Session (Held in Geneva from July 4–9, 1938), July 11, 1938, LoN Archives, C.233.
M.132.1938.II.B., at 5.
 4 . 3 t i m b er c h a l l en g e & c o n c er n s o f d e f o r e s t a t i o n 279

preparations, the Nineteenth Ordinary Session of the Assembly was held in

September 1938. It followed up on the Committee’s recommendations and
dealt also with the problem of deforestation. The discussion in the Assembly
shows that the League used as a forum in which certain voices publicly
started to acknowledge that the timber question merged the international
community’s industrial-economic aims with environmental concerns over
rapidly advancing deforestation and erosion worldwide. In this way, the
environmental concerns that the League discussed supported the original
mission to regulate international timber trade and protect the industry.
Almost six years after the League had first begun to discuss the timber
issue – at the meeting of experts in January 1932 in Geneva – the League
now began to consider the environmental impact of industrial timber
activity, and not merely as a side effect of timber production. Elbel, the
French diplomat, asked for an inquiry into the state of global deforest-
ation, given the increasing production of timber.
As the Assembly discussed the issue of worsening deforestation, it took
the opportunity to align the international situation of trees with environ-
mental history. According to that discussion, this “period of intense
[economic] civilisation” was not the first time humanity had faced this
kind of challenge:
In antiquity also, great civilisations had been destroyers of forests. . . . [In]
the case of China, where vast regions were a prey to soil erosion as the
result of the disappearance of trees, and that of the Tigris and Euphrates
had caused those rivers to silt up, and would perhaps mark the close of
civilisation already thousands of years old.98

The Assembly also discussed the ways in which both Europe and
Northern Africa had suffered from “similar devastations” in the matter
of diminishing forests and wooded landscapes. At that time, there was
awareness of the conflicting human interests this entailed:
That was a problem that could not fail to interest the League both from the
human point of view and from the commercial standpoint, which was the
special province of the [Economic] Committee. Forests were not merely
valuable agents in regulating climates and protecting rivers; they also
constituted an immense reservoir for raw materials which was being
depleted with alarming rapidity.99

98
Records of the 19th Ordinary Session of the Assembly: Minutes of the 2d Committee
(Economic, Financial, and Transit Questions), Special Supplement No. 185, Sept. 22, 1938
League of Nations Official Journal (1938), Annex 1, A.64.1938.II.B., at 27.
99
Id.
280 fears of d efores tation

As in the (parallel) case of whales and whaling, the interwar discussion

was focused on the tensions and interests of a powerful industry that was
in need of a constant supply of a shrinking natural resource. This
particular case substituted whales for forests, but the core problem was
the same. Instead of large marine mammals, this time trees were being
depleted across the West and elsewhere. “The cellulose industries . . .
were amongst those to which the future seemed to offer ever greater
possibilities. Cellulose could not be replaced as a raw material, and trees
would be difficult to replace as a vehicle for the production of
cellulose.”100 Moreover, an increase in industrialized processes and
mass production raised the value and demand for trees as a natural
resource: “The developments of modern civilisation and of the numerous
uses to which cellulose was put – newsprint in particular – constituted
a terrible danger to forests throughout the world.”101
According to the discussion in the Assembly, the global situation of
the survival of forests was urgent – and not just in Europe. The reported
data revealed a terrible reality: the Assembly’s Session records claimed
that two-thirds of forests in the United States had already
“disappeared.”102 Similarly, though vast reserves still existed in neigh-
boring Canada, the Canadian government was alarmed at the steady
rate of decline of forests. According to that warning, Scandinavian
countries were also suffering from a rapid and dangerous industrial
hunger that had led to severe deforestation: no less than “fifty per cent
of the former wooded areas had ceased to exist.” Additional records of
the Assembly concluded that the situation “was no less alarming” in
Central Europe.
The French delegation recommended that the League take up the fight
against deforestation. France further argued that the issue should be
brought to the Economic Committee’s notice, since its mechanisms
and legal-diplomatic routine were better suited to handle the issue than
anything the League as a whole was able to offer. In September 1938, the
Assembly also noted that forestation and deforestation were indeed
relevant for international regulations and solutions, such as the fixed
timber-quota mechanism for annual production in 1934 and 1935 (to
which each timber-producing country would commit to produce or
export no more than its annual reported yield of that year). Therefore,

100
Id.
101
Id.
102
Id.
 4.3 t imber challenge & concerns of deforestation 281

additional cooperation between international institutions was needed.

“Obviously . . . the investigation should be undertaken in co-operation
with the International Institute of Agriculture,” the Report concluded.
By calling for further investigation, the League not only induced other
relevant and professional international institutions to join a mutual
campaign to save forests around the world, but also promised – for the
sake of humanity – that it would “be rendering a service to every one of
the countries represented . . . and indeed to mankind . . . .”103
The French government was anxious to see an international investiga-
tion of the consequences of these measures of supporting industrial
production of timber on the condition of forests around the world. The
Nineteenth Ordinary Session of the Assembly also emphasized that one
of the most troubling resulting problems of this economic progress in the
field of timber was the phenomenon of deforestation. According to the
French delegation, the League had been notified of these evolving prob-
lems “prior to that point . . . .” Moreover, the delegation pointed to the
“question of deforestation” as one of the “certain great problems to which
Governments could not remain indifferent.”104
The League was certainly not indifferent to deforestation. Some parties
urged it to work on a solution to deforestation as part of the timber
question. As an institution seeking to strengthen its own authority and
legitimacy worldwide, the League was interested in placing the issue of
deforestation on its agenda, and was even motivated to solve it. The
Assembly, in that sense, served as a forum for promoting this question in
a most explicit and direct manner: “Deforestation was one of the perils
threatening mankind, and it was all the more to be feared because it
always corresponded to a period of intense civilisation.”105 War was
definitely on the horizon, and the fragile future was tangible even during
the League’s discussions on deforestation. Whereas raw materials (and
timber too, of course) were considered necessary goods to support the
state economy during difficult times, concern for nature in times of war
seemed to be a secondary consideration.
In its report to the Assembly from September 1938, as the Economic
Committee considered possible recommended actions concerning

103
Records of the 19th Ordinary Session of the Assembly: Minutes of the 2d Committee
(Economic, Financial, and Transit Questions), Special Supplement No. 185, Sept. 22,
1938 League of Nations Official Journal (1938), Annex 1, A.64.1938.II.B., at 27 (emphasis
added).
104
Id. at 26.
105
Id. at 26–27.
282 f e a r s of de f o r e s t a t i o n

deforestation,106 it explicitly referred to the unstable geopolitical context.

The Swedish rapporteur, M. B. Ohlin, explained that the Committee
should focus on questions relating to international economic collabor-
ation and the present world economic situation of the late 1930s.
However, the Committee claimed that the reports it possessed on the
issue of raw materials control showed that
in the present state of political tension and economic instability, it is not
possible to take any joint action in these matters along the lines contem-
plated in the resolution of the last Assembly . . . . [C]oncerted inter-
national action could not be fruitfully undertaken with regard either to
exchange control or to raw materials at the present time.107

In spite of widespread global tension, the French delegation and the

Assembly encouraged the League not to dismiss the issue of deforestation
just because war was looming. Deforestation was once again placed on
the agenda for the following general Session of the Assembly, set for early
spring 1939. In preparation for the next discussion, the Economic
Committee worked on the dangers of both deforestation and soil
erosion.108
Moreover, in the 105th meeting of the League’s Council that followed
in May 1939, the Economic Committee was encouraged to sketch out
a plan for a joint international effort to control timber production with
the aim of stopping deforestation. However, in light of the geopolitical
tension of the late 1930s, the Committee declined. The Committee
explained that the political context and lack of stability made it impos-
sible to create any joint effort in the matter of deforestation and to
restrain timber production and trade, which had slowly been recovering
from the economic crises of the early 1930s.
Unlike 1938, when the League was relatively deeply involved in trying
to solve the problem of deforestation, 1939 marked a shift in that
willingness to accept the challenge. Perhaps it was the sound of swords
being honed, or perhaps the League preferred to better invest its energy
and power before they were compromised by the threat of Nazi
Germany. And perhaps there were other reasons for that. The final stages
of the deforestation issue were not very optimistic. The League did
106
Records of the 19th Ordinary Session of the Assembly: Minutes of the 2d Committee
(Economic, Financial, and Transit Questions), League of Nations Official Journal,
Special Supplement No. 184, Annex 1, A.64.1938.II.B., at 62.
107
Id. 62.
108
Agenda for the 49th Session of the Economic Committee (Mar. 27, 1939), Mar. 8, 1939,
LoN Archives, 10A/35687/1952 (E.1066), at 7–8.
 4 . 3 t i m b e r ch a l l e n g e & c o n c e r n s o f d e f o r es t a t i o n 283

generally support an international solution to fight increasing deforest-

ation. Moreover, the discussion was starting to move toward sketching
international legal measures to address deforestation, such as strength-
ening the binding timber quotas.109 However, war broke out and dis-
rupted these relatively early plans to handle the crisis of shrinking
forests.
Following the Assembly’s Nineteenth Ordinary Session in 1939, the
Economic Committee continued, on the one hand, to discuss the
problem. However, and on the other hand, it seems as it tried to bury
the new initiative. Similarly, the Assembly did not seem to be as
motivated as before, even attempting to remove itself from the anti-
deforestation initiative. Under the fifth subtitle of its summary, “Soil
Erosion, Deforestation and Reafforestation,” the Committee concluded
the ways in which it would carry out the recommendations of the last
Assembly.110 This time however, the involvement of other organiza-
tions did not serve as a basis for mutual cooperation – as it did in many
of the League’s other interwar endeavors – but rather as a justification
for leaving the table. The draft of the final report to the League’s Council
concluded:
In the course of the investigation undertaken by the Secretariat, it was
revealed that various organisations throughout the world are engaged in
far-reaching enquiries into the problem . . . . The Imperial Bureau of Soil
Science in England is showing particular activity in this field, and keeps
the appropriate authorities in various countries regularly informed of
action taken.111

The Economic Committee also mentioned Elbel, the driving force behind
the League’s developing awareness of the link between timber production
and its environmental outcomes. Perhaps it did so to justify its with-
drawal from the fight against deforestation. The Committee asked Elbel

109
Based on the 1933–34 national yield. Unfortunately, these preliminary solutions for
possible global timber regulation did not develop as the special conferences in Berlin
(1933) and Vienna (1934) had hoped. Although the double quota decision was articu-
lated in each of the timber conferences’ resolutions, it was not obligatory. (See Report by
the Economic Committee: International Conference of Timber–Exporting Countries,
Jan. 18, 1935, LoN Archives, 10A/381/381/E.871, at 4).
110
Summary of the Discussions Held and Decisions Taken at the Economic Committee’s
49th Session (Mar. 27–29, 1939), Apr. 24, 1939, LoN Archives, 10A/3784/1952 (E.1080),
at 3.
111
Drafts of the Economic Committee’s Report to the Council on the Work of its 49th
Session (Held at Geneva from Mar. 27–30, 1939), Apr. 3, 1939, LoN Archives, C.116.
M.70.1939.II.B, at 7.
284 fear s of defor es ta tion

himself “to indicate the direction to be pursued by the Secretariat’s

investigation.”
As the Economic Committee prepared to adjourn the ongoing discus-
sion on deforestation, it composed three consecutive drafts of a report
and intended to publish the final version. The differences between the
drafts are clear. The first (internal) preliminary draft discussed the status
quo of forests using stronger language than the drafts that followed. This
draft focused mainly on the worrying problems associated with deforest-
ation, and on suggested solutions: “Elbel points out that one of the most
effective remedies for deterioration of the soil is the cessation of defor-
estation, followed by reafforestation.”112 The first draft also mentioned
the importance of the support of professional experts in this regard:
“Expert authorities all agree that erosion is greater wherever the soil’s
covering of vegetation, especially trees, shrinks or disappears. This phe-
nomenon seems to be common wherever erosion occurs, even if any
other protective measure than that of reafforestation be employed.”
Moreover, in the first version, Elbel further pointed out that in view of
the “rapid exhaustion” of those forests that provide the material for paper
pulp, “it is in the economic interest of the States not merely to discourage
deforestation, but to increase their forest resources and to select with care
those kinds of timber to plant.”113
Whereas in the first draft, states and experts specifically were calling
for the need to stop deforestation and erosion, the second draft114 was
more general, stating only that “several members” had drawn attention to
these issues. Moreover, rather than using the term “danger,”115 the
Committee instead described the great “damage” that was caused by
large-scale deforestation when it was not followed by reafforestation.
The Institute of Agriculture, as the League suggested, seemed to
provide a perfect solution at that problematic unstable time. The
League recommended that the IIA deal with the issue of deforestation
instead of the League. Perhaps the League’s desire to relinquish its
responsibility for deforestation is also evident in the final draft of the
Committee’s report. This version stated that “the great damage caused by

112
Id.
113
Id. at 7–8.
114
Drafts of the Economic Committee’s Report to the Council on the Work of its 49th
Session (Held at Geneva from Mar. 27–30, 1939), Apr. 3, 1939, LoN Archives, C.116.
M.70.1939.II.B (all three drafts are included in the same dossier).
115
This time, the Committee did not use the term “danger,” as the Assembly had during its
Nineteenth Ordinary Session.
 4 . 3 t i m b e r ch a l l e n g e & c o n c e r n s o f d e f o r es t a t i o n 285

soil erosion” was not entirely or necessarily ascribed to the phenomenon

of deforestation alone. Perhaps, as the Committee suggested on page
three, there were also “other causes” of the problem.
This time, the parallel involvement of multiple other international
organizations led the League to withdraw from the discussion. The
League preferred to allow other bodies to take the lead.
Given what we know of parallel environmental challenges, it seems
likely that had this been another time, and had the League not been on the
brink of collapse in the middle of 1939, things might have been different.
Dramatic periods like the late 1930s highlight the ambivalence of institu-
tional internationalism at the time. When it came to other dilemmas that
the League was entangled in, it seemed determined to maintain its
superiority over the other parties (and institutions) involved; however,
trying times had affected its resilience. Whereas the League’s rise
reflected a shift from transnationalism to intense internationalism –
governed from its headquarters in Geneva – its fall marked a retreat to
“traditional” transnationalism in favor of other institutions, which were
encouraged to take the lead instead of the League. “Several national
institutions, public or private, are keeping information on this subject
up to date and are continually revising it.” The League withdrew from the
problem of deforestation, pointing out:
During recent years, the particular question of the prevention of deforest-
ation and the encouragement of reafforestation has been discussed at
several international congresses . . . . [I]n these circumstances, the
[Economic] Committee is inclined to think that any enquiries or studies
on this subject that it undertook might, for the moment at any rate,
duplicate others which are already completed or are still in progress.116

Who knows? With an alternative hypothetical history of the League of

Nations – one that did not have to become “the interwar period” and
whose existence would have extended beyond September 1, 1939 – per-
haps the history of deforestation (and the crisis of timber prices) in the
world of international law could have ended differently. If Germany had
not started World War II that summer, would Elbel – like his contem-
porary colleague Professor José Léon Suarez, who fiercely advocated for
the restriction of the whaling industry to prevent the extinction of whale
species – have allowed the Economic Committee and the League to dodge

116
Economic Committee’s Report to the Council on the Work of its 49th Session (Held at
Geneva from Mar. 27–30, 1939), Apr. 3, 1939, LoN Archives, 10A/37843/37843, C.116.
M.70.1939.II.B, at 3 (emphasis added).
286 fear s of defor es ta tion

his persistent demands to combat deforestation with tools of inter-

national law? This kind of question cannot, of course, be answered.
However, what we have is the history as it was and as it unfolded, on
record. The summary of March 1939 stated, “An exchange of views took
place to ascertain in what directions the Committee could usefully take
action in this field,” showing that the Economic Committee was not as
willing to pursue the mission against deforestation. However, though the
League tended to respond to other missions ahead of deforestation, it did not
abandon forests entirely. International law was still being used, to an extent,
to address environmental concerns. The future looked bleak, but the League
still thought it would prevail and made plans for summer/autumn 1939:
It feels, however, that the question might usefully be taken up again as
a part of the work of the European Conference on Rural Life planned for
the autumn. Some of the countries participating in that Conference are
experiencing . . . the harmful effects of erosion, due mainly to deforest-
ation. Their attention might with advantage be drawn to the experiments
made in other countries to check this adverse development.117

History, however, had other plans. Regretfully, neither the Conference on

Rural Life – to which the Economic Committee happily handed over the
task of protecting the forests – nor the general global interest in stopping
deforestation, became a reality that year. Hitler’s armies stormed Europe,
driving the world into chaos.

4.4 Conclusions: A (Comparative) Glimpse of the post-1945

Period, Forest Conservation, and International Law
As I have shown, forests gained substantial attention during the interwar
period. The League’s involvement in the discussion on international
timber trade and the ways in which it discussed international deforest-
ation provide ground for new discoveries. Even if they have eventually
failed, these attempts – and especially the will – to put timber trade under
supervision, and the need to fight deforestation, seemed to found com-
mon ground. These two aspects can assist us in two ways.
First, they can contribute to the mapping of those ideas that shaped the
League’s environmental regime as a whole. And second, they can assist us in
better understanding the historical evolution of international environmental
law and environmentalism in general. As mentioned previously, scholars
have studied many different chapters of forestation and deforestation, both
117
Id.
 4. 4 c o n cl us i o n s 287

prior to the interwar period and after. Nevertheless, the history of deforest-
ation during the interwar period – like the study of other interwar environ-
mental issues – has remained mostly untouched.
Nature and the environment in the interwar period were, to a certain
extent, a secondary aspect of a broader – and more urgent – economic
campaign. The focus on economic-industrial problems in a time of global
financial crisis revealed interconnected environmental concerns, which
then became part of the League’s developing agenda.
Nevertheless, it must be stressed that this study does not aim to “color”
the discussions, reports, and diplomatic activity as more environmental
than they really were. In my analysis, I distinguish between the commer-
cial-industrial and the environmental aspects of interwar forestry policy.
According to the recorded discussions, it was the economic agenda that
took precedence. Environmental and conservationist perspectives played
only a supporting role. In some cases that I have examined, these voices
were mostly concerned with the future implications of the overexploitation
of forests as a source of timber; others feared overproduction and dump-
ing. The interwar discourse was rather different than our own. Indeed, the
unexpected harmony between supporting the timber trade and protecting
the future of forests was not always discussed as an environmental concern.
The League, as well as the independent bodies involved, primarily talked in
terms of sustainability and economic support in its efforts to ensure the
efficient trade of timber – particularly when it was dealing with the Great
Depression and the claimed Soviet dumping policy.
Moreover, the relations between intensive (but inefficient) timber pro-
duction and deforestation were seldom discussed as a necessary consider-
ation to balance economic growth and the protection of nature. Compared
with other interwar environmental problems, such as the whaling dilemma
or oil pollution of the sea, the tension between competing interests in
timber was not as overt. The League became aware of the outcomes of
uncontrolled forest harvest for industrial reasons, not because of a clash
between interests. Unlike other economic-environmental challenges of
that period, where industry (such as whaling companies and shipping
lobbies that advocated for industrial interests on the matter of inter-
national whaling law or antipollution of sea by oil convention) and the pro-
environment missionaries often came into conflict, in the matter of timber,
these parties were on the same side.118

118
Such as P. Elbel, the French representative to the discussion of the Economic Committee,
and one of the leading characters in the timber story.
288 f e a r s of d e f o r e s t a t i o n

While exploring the role of the League – and that of other bodies that
were involved in the timber issue – one might be tempted to question the
League’s “practical” involvement. In other words, did the League have
some kind of impact on the ground and on forests in particular? Did it
influence international law of that time?
This retrospective of the interwar period does not point to changes and
reactions at the national-domestic level. Moreover, its aim is not to focus
entirely on the legal (and practical, if any) outcomes of the increasingly
scientific, economic, technical, and professional discourse on the com-
bined issues of timber, deforestation, and erosion. The bottom line is that
no new binding legal solutions were finalized during the interwar period
to tackle the timber and deforestation crisis. In contrast, in the parallel
dilemmas of whaling and oil pollution of the sea, relatively developed
legal mechanisms were employed. In the case of timber, the League never
reached the same stage in legal terms, such as through treaties and
conventions. All in all, apart from the preliminary idea for a timber
quota based on the annual yield of 1933–34, the League did not introduce
any “practical” solutions or legally articulated instruments to solve the
problem. Possible critique of my analysis might claim that the agree-
ments and the more formal export cartel had been made between private
or semi-state commercial actors to regulate production and trade, and
that they were not legally binding in the sense to which traditional
international lawyers refer. However, history, (legal) discourse, primary
sources, and historical context as well are up for our cautious interpret-
ation – or several competing interpretations.
Influence, however, does not necessarily mean success. Our current
study of the role of the League should also focus on the failures of legal
arrangements, and on ways to better understand and interpret them. An
evaluation of the League’s actions in terms of international law reveals
another claim. A comparative analysis of later, and even current, devel-
opments sheds a different light on the interwar period. After the fall of
the League119 and the rise of later more developed international
119
On the one hand, one might claim that WWII was a high time of international activity in
the field of forest products. In 1939, an international forestry organization was founded
(which officially was a sub-institution of the IIA). But on the other hand, it was in fact an
instrument of Nazi efforts to gain control over European forest resources and timber
industry. This Berlin-based organization developed a most intense research activity in
forestry and wood utilization, including the establishment of sophisticated techniques to
measure and eventually control timber flows internationally. During the war, little
“authentic” international activity took place in the field. The Comité found kind of
exile in the United States in 1941. Its Secretary-General, Egon Glesinger, tried to
 4. 4 c o n cl us i o n s 289

organizations, the problem of deforestation seemed to stay locked mainly

within the realm of international education and publicity, and did not
lead to concrete binding legal measures120 – at least none that the
interwar international bodies were trying to introduce, even if only in
a preliminary way.
Perhaps the League’s failure to fight deforestation with tools of inter-
national law had an effect on international environmental law, at least to
an extent. Today, the certain absence of international law from the fight
over trees and forests continues to be a feature of global environmental-
ism. An analysis of the development of a possible international forest law,
or timber regulations, for instance, following the dissolution of the
League reveals that later campaigns failed to achieve these kinds of
solutions. At the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and
Development, for instance, some parties assumed that the creation of an
international forest treaty would secure wooded landscapes and lead to
the global aim of sustainable forest management. Powerful opposition,
however, meant this initiative was largely in vain and the suggested treaty
eventually failed. Since then, a variety of nonbinding legal instruments
has been introduced instead of international regulation, and a list of
bodies worldwide are still working to reduce deforestation – so far, rather
unsuccessfully as far as practical results are concerned.121 Moreover, the
international activity against deforestation of central institutions such as
the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO) largely focuses on encouraging international awareness of
the problem or educational advocacy, and does not really promote legal
regulations.122
A general comparative perspective shows that legal and practical
difficulties that emerged as a result of international endeavors to

convince the American government to engage in the field on the international level.
Both, the Comité and the Berlin-based organization were taken over by the newly
founded Food and Agriculture Organization in 1946.
120
Compare the (relatively) far-reaching preliminary solution of international timber
regulation based on binding quotas, which the League discussed as a way to fight
spreading deforestation (see the discussion in Sections 4.3.1 and 4.3.2 above).
121
See, e.g., C. P. Mackenzie, Future Prospects for International Forest Law, 14
I N T ’L F O R E S T R Y R E V . 249 (2012).
122
See, for instance, one of UNESCO’s current international environmental campaigns
against global deforestation. The campaign is titled “Educating to Slow Deforestation,”
and on its public agenda, it mentions themes such as (formal and informal) education
and knowledge transmission: http://en.unesco.org/greencitizens/stories/educating-slow
-deforestation.
290 fears of deforestation

introduce a global forest treaty also exist in the early twenty-first century.
In one of the recent responses to the global problem, the relative absence
of firm international law (such as a interwar quota mechanism) can be
noticed. Policymakers have developed a family of policies – collectively
known as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation
(REDD+) – to provide a financial incentive to governments, agribusi-
nesses, and communities to maintain and possibly increase, rather than
reduce forest cover. Under REDD+, incentives for forest protection are
offered to countries, communities, and individual landowners in
exchange for slowing deforestation, and carrying out activities that pro-
mote reforestation and sustainable forest management. However, current
alarming results also provide a certain estimation as for the success of
REDD+ on the ground, especially in developing countries (in which most
of the tropical forests are located), as alternative land uses (such as palm
oil) can offer more immediate and guaranteed cash returns.123 Moreover,
given current pro-forest advocacy calls to find means other than inter-
national legal mechanisms to better protect forests around the globe –
such as the creation and support of regional initiatives on the ground,
and the strengthening of existing domestic-national institutions working
on forest preservation – the League’s failure almost eighty years ago
deserves to be revisited.

123
See Danilo Mollicone et al., Elements for the Expected Mechanisms on ‘Reduced
Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, REDD’ under UNFCCC, 2 E N V T L .
R E S . L E T T E R S 1 (2007).
 5

Evaluating the Environmental Regime

of the League of Nations:
Comparative Discussion

The following comparative discussion will offer an evaluation of the

League’s environmental regime. As the discussion unfolds, it will compare
different parts of this regime and track differences, common ground, and
repeating patterns throughout the 1920s and 1930s. In order to provide
a more profound analysis of the League’s environmental regime, I will
highlight similarities and common ideas in the way that the League handled
the issues of oil pollution of the sea and ocean, rural hygiene and sanitation,
endangered whales and whaling regulations, and views of timber produc-
tion that were woven with fears of deforestation.
I will discuss how these different challenges merged a variety of
economic and environmental considerations and aims. This evaluation
relies on parallel elements that characterize the League’s initiatives in
terms of international law.
It should first be noted that most of the interwar environmental prob-
lems that I have addressed – if not all of them – came about as a result of
fundamental technological, economic, or industrial changes. As each
chapter has shown, this period overlapped major changes in modern
industry and manufacturing, economy, and popular culture too. Each
chapter shows that in terms of periodization, the League was established
at a time when technical improvements had already changed – or were
literally changing – the surrounding environment: the sea, the shore, rural
peripheries, and sea ports, as well as wooded landscapes around the globe.
The problem of oil pollution of the sea, for example, was a direct conse-
quence of the discharge of oil from ships, which was in turn attributable to
increasing marine transportation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries – an increase that did not cease after the war had ended.
Commercial fleets and leisure culture brought about the need for relatively
intensive marine transportation, which caused oil discharge along shores

291
292 the e nvironmental regime of the lea gue of n ations

in different countries as an environmental side effect.1 Similarly, new,

faster whaling fleets equipped with explosive harpoons and enhanced
means of hunting, introduced in the last third of the nineteenth century
by Norwegian ship crews, put several species of whale at risk.2 In fact, each
of the environmental problems the League tried to solve was a result of
technological advances, or similar phenomena. In that sense, most of the
League’s environmental regime was a reaction either to technological
developments, or to economic changes.
However, in addition to the obvious overlaps I have found between the
rise of the League, technological and industrial changes, and emerging
resulting environmental challenges, the discussion that follows presents
further similarities that I have identified in my study of the League’s
environmental regime.

5.1 Environmental Challenges and Problems As an Accelerator

for Collective International Action
In this section, I will provide a general comparative overview of how
different environmental problems served as a motive for collective inter-
national action during the interwar period. My analysis will offer an
explanation for why these environmental challenges, which seemed to
be secondary concerns – or even marginal at first sight, generated inten-
sive campaigns that involved the League, a variety of states, and different
bodies that were not part of an official bureaucracy (such as NGOs,
scientists, and the media) or completely independent.
This general evaluation of the League and its collective environmental
actions is not a given. Scholars who study the interwar period in general,
and those who focus on specific humanitarian challenges of that time in
particular, usually claim that despite the variety of pressing problems the
world of the 1920s and 1930s was facing, real collective action was not
possible during that time.
This assumption is also reflected in discussions on environmental
dilemmas as a whole. With regard to the whaling case, for instance,
historians have argued that “in a world of big problems, it was nearly

1
See my introductory discussion in Section 1.1.1 of Chapter 1, in which I elaborate on
concerns of oil pollution (mostly in Britain and the United States) in the period under
examination.
2
See Section 2.2 of Chapter 2, in which I focus on the impact of modern new technologies in
the fields of marine transportation and whaling, which changed this industry in the last
third of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century.
 5. 1 e n v i r o n men t al ch al l en g es a nd p rob lem s 293

impossible to generate action to regulate whaling, especially when whal-

ing took place so far from civilization . . . .”3
Whether we believe that the League was successful in generating
collective action, the interwar period does show that environmental
concerns prompted many in the international community to turn to the
League as joint collaborator to solve these issues using international
law. As I have shown, the League was not incompetent in this regard;
after all, international law today faces many of the same difficulties in
terms of enforcement and coercion that the League had do lead with in
the interwar period. The League worked intensively to introduce
a variety of legal mechanisms that aimed to move states and govern-
ments towards feasible solutions (whether they were ultimately success-
ful or not).
In all of the cases that I have discussed – from the pollution of the sea
by oil to the rural hygiene campaign, to the whaling dilemma and the
problem of timber production and warnings of spreading deforestation –
the League was not only involved, but instrumental, in leading the
interwar world to collective environmental actions and the forming of
an environmental regime. This is not to suggest, however, that the League
was the only player in town. As I have demonstrated, the League served as
driver of these different endeavors, surrounded and encouraged by
NGOs, scientific associations, commercial and industrial consortiums,
civil society groups, and others. However, all in all, the League was the
central forum to which all bodies ultimately turned, and the one that
organized and articulated these initiatives in legal terms.
Moreover, apart from the institutional relevancy of the League as an
international forum, there was something about these different subjects
that the League saw as vital to the formation of the interwar environmen-
tal regime. The characteristics of these issues made them a focus of
international legal arrangements, which worked to promote collective
global actions. Apart from the trees growing in the ground, all of these
interwar challenges had something in common: their international char-
acter. Migratory animals and other transnational subjects frequently
moved across borders, which encouraged collective action and made
them obvious subjects for international law. The behavior of wild birds,
spreading diseases, and the whales’ disregard for territorial jurisdictions
placed concerns about them on an international scale.

3
KURKPATRICK DORSEY, WHALES AND NATIONS: ENVIRONMENTAL DIPLOMACY ON
THEH I G H S E A S 9 (2013).
294 t he e n vir on me nt al re gime of t he le ag ue of n at ion s

Despite their clear differences, at the heart of (most of)4 these envir-
onmental campaigns stood either migrating species as international
creatures, or spreading epidemics as common threats. Migratory species
of birds, such as Audubon’s Shearwater or Waxwings, and blue whales as
well, challenged the notion (and capability) of national or domestic
sovereignty. Epidemics advancing in rural peripheries due to poor sani-
tation or environmental risks were a mission that states, and even
empires, could not face alone. Similarly, the campaign against pollution
of the seas was both a “common” part of international law but was also
used by states to dodge or escape national domestic obstacles. A central
institution that was able to negotiate and develop international law in
these matters was certainly a valuable asset. The League was not only
capable of solving international problems, but also served as a way for
NGOs, concerned scientists, and in this case also for the British govern-
ment to overcome political pressure and interest groups at home. As
environmental awareness was rising in Britain, and as political pressure
increased accordingly in London, the government decided to turn –
perhaps strategically – to an international framework in order to avoid
confrontation with its powerful shipping industry in Britain. In this case,
however, compared to the whaling dilemma, it was a sovereign state, and
not organizations, that asked international law for rescue.
Any measure taken by an individual state, no matter how progressive it
might be, was not enough to solve threats to the survival of endangered
species or suffering animals, since migrating seabirds and whales constantly
crossed national borders and sovereign territories. The very existence of
these species in the world of internationalism and the inability of domestic
law to adequately protect them, made birds and whales obvious subjects for
international law. This backdrop invited the League to step in, as the only
relevant power that was able to discuss and grasp the supranational iden-
tities of these species and to sketch relevant legal solutions to assist them.
Indeed, endangered wild animals also gained international attention prior
to the establishment of the League. Colonial frameworks, mostly British,
French, and German, tried to protect “their” lions, elephants, zebras, tigers,
and other exotic species and developed legal mechanisms that reflected
cross-border patterns.5 However, the range and scale of the institutional
procedures the League shaped during the 1920s and 1930s, not to mention

4
Except the timber trade and fears of deforestation.
5
See R E C H E L L E A D A M , E L E P H A N T T R E A T I E S : T H E C O L O N I A L L E G A C Y OF THE
B I O D I V E R S I T Y C R I S I S ( 20 1 4) .
 5. 1 e n v i r o n men t al ch al l en g es a nd p rob lem s 295

the much broader international scope the interwar legal arrangements

covered (since the League strove to be as universal as possible), were different
than former (and also parallel) legal attempts to regulate nature.
Whales, birds, oil pollution, and spreading dangerous epidemics do
not respect national borders.6 Because they were not confined within
states’ borders, most of these environmental concerns escalated as col-
lective tasks of international law. Due to the economic and industrial
interests of powers such as Norway and Japan in the whaling dilemma, or
Britain in the case of oil pollution of the sea, it became obvious that any
feasible legal solution aimed at preserving these dwindling lucrative
resources would have to be carried out by international regulation. The
uncertainties about the effectiveness of states’ power to safeguard nature
led different players to shift their discussions to the international arena.
The sea, in particular, became a turbulent site of common problems
and international law at the same time. Oil fueled not only global
mobilization and the acceleration of traffic, trade, and industry, but the
globalization of environmental awareness too.7 In that sense, the sea
served as a common environmental space for migratory and sea birds,
for oil pollution drifting towards the shore, and for whales and whalers –
all of which constantly and inherently crossed borders again and again.
This challenged the very notion of national sovereignty and threatened
different interests and local communities.8 These diving, flying, and
floating elements – sea creatures and natural resources – reflected an
early environmental awareness of some of the interwar players.9 As the
case of the League shows, these different environmental concerns were
not only shared by a variety of political and social circles during the
interwar period, but also climbed all the way up the ladder of the
framework of (institutional) international law.
6
William Cronon, Foreword to D O R S E Y , supra note 3, at vii, viii.
7
Anna-Katharina Wöbse, Oil on Troubled Water? Environmental Diplomacy in the League
of Nations, 32 D I P L O M A T I C H I S T . 519, 528 (2008).
8
The international characteristic of the oil problem and its effects upon nature and society
brought together several interest groups who were concerned about the deteriorating
situation. As I have shown, the coalition of this campaign was much more diverse than
in other environmental challenges: the petitions of NGOs and birds lovers were discussed
alongside claims of sea resorts (complaining about the effect oil pollution had on their
business), public health officials, and other interests groups that were harmed by the
techno-environmental problem.
9
See, e.g., Richard Grove’s discussion on certain similar (earlier than the interwar period)
environmental awareness. R I C H A R D G R O V E , G R E E N I M P E R I A L I S M : C O L O N I A L
EXPANSION, TROPICAL ISLAND EDENS AND THE ORIGINS OF ENVIRONMENTALISM,
1 6 00 – 18 60 (1995).
296 t he e n vir on me nt al r e gime of t he le ag ue of n at ion s

Stopping oil pollution of the sea,10 improving rural hygiene and

sanitation,11 fighting spreading infectious diseases,12 and regulating
whaling in the oceans13 were all part of legal discussions that had evolved
from domestic attempts to handle these issues. However, the emergence
of the League made it the center of international negotiations and collab-
oration. Transnational frameworks and other initiatives for cooperation
no longer seemed suitable for these missions.
In the case of oil pollution, for instance, neither of the interwar
international conventions that aimed to solve the disturbing problem
(one was introduced without the League’s involvement in Washington in
June 1926, and the second was introduced by the League in 1935) was
ever ratified. However, the fact that Washington saw a collaboration
between the delegations of twelve industrialized maritime states, whereas
the League’s convention involved no less than twenty-eight countries –
including a variety of maritime states and states that did not have a direct
interest in shipping (such as China or Austria)14 – points to the League’s
growing influence as a driver of international law.
All in all, although these different examples point to an eclectic variety
of environmental problems – from the conservation of wild animals to
coping with spreading diseases due to poor rural sanitation – they also
show how environmental challenges mobilized the League to consider
comprehensive initiatives in order to solve these problems.

5.2 Legal and Procedural Ways in Which the League Handled the
Environmental Questions As Evolving Complex Dilemmas
The following cross-cutting argument focuses on the legal and proced-
ural ways in which the League operated its environmental regime, as part
of its general institutional routine.

10
See my discussion in Sections 1.1.1 (on the domestic steps) and 1.1.2 (on the transnational
steps) in Chapter 1.
11
See my discussion in the first part of Chapter 3, in which I describe the sanitary initiatives
in the period before the establishment of the League.
12
See my discussion in the first part of Chapter 3, in which I describe the sanitary initiatives
in the period before the establishment of the League.
13
See my discussion in the second section of Chapter 2, in which I give a historical
background on whaling arrangements in the period before the establishment of the
League.
14
Report of the Organisation for Communication and Transit: Pollution of the Sea by Oil
(Replies of Governments Relating to the Draft Convention and Draft Final Act), Aug. 18,
1936, League of Nations Archives [hereinafter LoN Archives], A.18.1936.VIII, at 3.
 5.2 e nvironmental questions a s e volving complex 297

As each chapter has shown, the League was neither the first body to
discuss these environmental challenges, nor did it offer the first oppor-
tunity to address them. When one considers earlier conservation and
nature-protection initiatives during the shift from the nineteenth to the
twentieth century, one sees that such ideas and preliminary suggestions
had already been articulated before 1919. However, as earlier parts of this
study have demonstrated, the interwar environmental regime was differ-
ent – certainly more advanced – than earlier attempts to cope with the
variety of problems that troubled states and communities.
As I have already shown, preventing oil pollution of the sea and
protecting the marine environment were both discussed at least two
transnational conferences – including in Paris (in 1923) and in
Washington (in 1926).15 Rural hygiene issues, however, were addressed
by a series of international conferences throughout the second half of the
nineteenth century.16 Similarly, conservationists who were concerned
about whales had been advocating for this cause since before World
War I, and the problem was discussed as a transnational issue years
before the League was born.17 As noted, during the years that preceded
World War I, certain officials in Great Britain, for example, raised explicit
warnings of the severe danger perceived to the whale population, and of
the reluctance of whalers to halt their exploitation, even in the face of
a catastrophe.18
Whaling was considered a problem that existed within the international
arena and could not be solved either by national action or domestic
15
See Section 1.1.2 in Chapter 1, in which I introduce the transnational phase that preceded
the League in terms of trying to solve the problem of oil pollution of the sea and the lethal
effect on seabirds. As I elaborate there, both the 1923 Paris nongovernmental inter-
national conference of the Congress on the Protection of Flora, Fauna, and Natural Sites
and Monuments, and more vigorously the 1926 Washington Preliminary Conference on
Oil Pollution of Navigable Waters, dealt with similar concerns.
16
See my discussion in Chapter 3 on the series of International Sanitary Conferences, which
started to convene in 1851 in order to cope with concerns that the League would also
become concerned about in the 1930s.
17
See the general summary of the historical background of whaling in the second section of
Chapter 2.
18
See, for instance, the Sir Sidney Harmer’s warning (as I quote it in Section 2.2 of
Chapter 2) of a coming “destruction of whales” in certain parts of the globe. According
to Harmer’s observation from 1913 (while serving as keeper of zoology for the British
Museum), this nearby future would take place due to the “deadly nature of modern
whaler’s weapons.” (Untitled excerpt, source unknown, Nov. 7, 1913, presumably tran-
scribed by Remington Kellogg, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, International
Whaling Conference and International Whaling Commission, 1930–1968, [Record Unit
7165], Box 8, Folder I).
298 t h e e n v ir o n men t al r egi me o f the leagu e of n ations

regulation alone. Imperial or transnational endeavors, in that sense, were

not sufficient. A vivid example of this is the International Fisheries
Commission, a regional economic framework formed between the
United States and Canada in 1918 to solve the problem of the overexploi-
tation of marine fauna. Although both countries agreed that whaling was
a problem common to both of them, the international characteristics of the
whale made any solution or regulation that was not international in scope,
irrelevant. The joint commission concluded that whales’ natural migration
patterns, and the ax ante legal inability of any state to achieve authority
beyond its territorial waters, left any action that did not draw on inter-
national means doomed to failure. The commission called for a convention
of maritime nations once the war had ended, in which a future convention
would secure the future of the industry by preventing extinction.19
There was quite a difference between the official calls for an inter-
national legal solution before and during the war, and governments’
thinking on this issue often varied substantially – at least in some central
ministries. While the Canadians and Americans proclaimed their inten-
tion to convene a special whaling conference right after the war, other
parts of the whaling community thought differently. The official British
statement suggested that bilateral treaties covering specific problems
were acceptable, but that scientific data on whales at that time were
insufficient to support the creation of an international convention to
rein in whaling. Actually, it seems that the British – like the Norwegians
and other whaling nations – viewed the idea of such a conference with
reluctance.20 Any move towards putting responsibility (or supervision)
for whaling in the open seas in the hands of an unfamiliar international
body raised great concern – even at this early stage – from Anglo-Norse
whaling industries.21
As I have shown in the case of oil pollution, the League addressed
largely the same problems and tensions that earlier legal attempts had
(just as in the case of whaling).22 The Paris nongovernmental conference
for nature protection, and the 1926 Washington Preliminary Conference
on Oil Pollution of Navigable Waters in particular, tried to fight oil
pollution with similar legal mechanisms. However, the League managed

19
See my discussion on the joint committee in Section 2.2 of Chapter 2.
20
See the examples of states’ reluctance in my analysis in Section 2.3.2 of Chapter 2.
21
D O R S E Y , supra note 3, at 33.
22
See Section 1.1.2 in Chapter 1, in which I elaborate on the transnational phase of the
antipollution campaign, and discuss the preliminary phase of the 1923 Paris Conference
and the 1926 Washington Convention.
 5.2 e nvironmental questions a s e volving complex 299

to revive the unratified 1926 Washington antipollution convention, given

its technical and procedural toolbox. As the interwar environmental
regime’s procedural methods unfolded, the role of the League’s commit-
tees, as well as its scheduled sessions, circulated documents, and draft
conventions became central. In many ways, as I have described for
instance in Chapter 1, the broad feedback to the special questionnaire
that the committee of experts distributed enabled the Assembly to even-
tually introduce a tougher convention, one that included the mandatory
installation of (relatively expensive) separators, about which the shipping
industry was so concerned.
Certain parts of this institutional routine produced different modes of
international law that the League practiced during its environmental
regime. These several modes are also exemplified by the rural hygiene
campaign. As the historical background briefly sketched earlier, the
League revived the international sanitary discussion, but did not invent
it. The international sanitation campaign was on the move throughout
the second half of the nineteenth century, and it moved from one city to
another (mostly in the West).23
As with the idea of separators as a tool to prevent oil pollution (and the
awful poisoning and subsequent death of birds), at least some of the
central notions for improving sanitation by removing environmental
threats already existed – especially with regard to certain epidemics
that had the international community on high alert in the post-Spanish
influenza period of the 1920s and 1930s. The League, however, offered its
rich and expert scientific collaboration on these matters and contributed
to the magnitude and the scope of its two special international confer-
ences. Moreover, it seems that despite the continuing endeavors of pre-
League sanitation campaigns and the recurrence of sanitary conferences
from 1851 onwards, the scope of detailed professional, scientific, and
expert preparatory work that was carried out before each of the two
conferences24 is incomparable.
As in other tasks the League had taken upon itself, this procedural
routine kept the sanitation campaign alive and kicking. As the Health
Organisation concluded the first rural hygiene conference of 1931, dele-
gates and officials approached the League once again, asking it to use its
institutional framework to prevent this initiative from becoming ad hoc

23
See the introduction to the historical background of the sanitation campaign in Section
3.1 of Chapter 3.
24
See my discussion in Section 3.2.2 and 3.2.3 in Chapter 3.
300 t h e e n v i r o n men t al r eg i me o f the leagu e o f n ations

in nature. They implored the League to instead fix it as an ongoing

routine. Dr. Chodźko, acting on behalf of the Polish government, did
not wait long. A short time after the first conference of 1931 had
concluded, he initiated another professional committee.25 Its mission
was to translate or transform the conference results, decisions, and
(mostly) recommendations into a list of questions for future studies
and inquiries, to be conducted by the League.26
However, as with other evolving environmental issues, World War
I brought a stop to the early vibrant transnational discussion on sanita-
tion. The League’s role, however, involved more than “merely” discus-
sion, and it did more than simply assume institutional responsibility for
environmental sanitary concerns once the war had ended. The League’s
fixed routine and the direct focus of the Health Organisation on the issue
of rural hygiene enabled a concentrated and constant effort. As I have
exemplified in Chapter 3, the preparatory work carried out by special
committees of experts before and after the two main conferences, kept
the ongoing international campaign – led directly by the League – on the
international agenda. The recommendations and solutions offered by the
League constituted feasible protocols that states and countries could use
to handle common environmental risks, such as pollution of water
sources, fly breeding, and lacking sanitation. The League’s institutional-
ized procedures organized and compared relevant policies of different
states, and made these more easily accessible than its predecessors and
former frameworks, which had handled similar problems.27
The League’s constant procedure transformed some of these ideas,
solutions, and discussions from ad hoc transnational initiatives into
a regular institutional routine. As with other tasks it promoted,28 the
professional and technical frameworks that the League (and the
Economic Committee in particular) used to handle these challenges

25
See the beginning of Section 3.2.3 of Chapter 3.
26
See the discussion in Section 3.2.3 in Chapter 3, in which I describe the follow-up to the
first Rural Hygiene Conference that was held in Geneva in 1931.
27
See Sections 3.2.3 (in which I describe the steps taken as a follow-up to the 1931
Conference on Rural Hygiene in preparation for the second intergovernmental confer-
ence of 1937), and 3.2.4 (in which I elaborate on the 1937 Intergovernmental Conference
of Far Eastern Countries on Rural Hygiene in Bandoeng) in Chapter 3.
28
Such as the professional committees that discussed possible legal solutions to the prob-
lems of drug trafficking (see Liat Kozma, The League of Nations and the Debate over
Cannabis Prohibition, 9 H I S T . C O M P A S S 61 [2011]) or trafficking of women (see Magaly
Rodríguez García, The League of Nations and the Moral Recruitment of Women, 57 I N T ’ L .
R E V . S O C . H I S T . 97 [2012]).
 5.2 envi ronmental questi ons as evolving c omplex 301

were intensely dynamic and, to an extent, more efficient. The League’s

fixed schedule of meetings, committees, preparatory work by experts and
professionals, recurring sessions, and official publications strengthened
and supported a variety of international missions. The intensive work of
the committee of experts in late 1934 to combat pollution of the sea, for
instance, in which they deliberated on possible technical-environmental
solutions, enabled the League to introduce an improved version of the
1926 Washington Convention. Another notable committee of experts
was the one led by Professor José Léon Suárez, which encouraged not just
the League but the entire international community of that period to take
part in the evolving discussion on the future of whales and whaling.
Despite the League’s busy schedule, its bureaucratic and technical nature
ensured that environmental issues were tackled head on, and not allowed
to fade away.
The legal instruments that were in use during that period not only
show that the League understood and interpreted the issues of birds, oil
pollution, rural hygiene, whales, timber, and deforestation as problems of
international law; these instruments, which moved between hard and soft
law, also speak to the many procedural and functional mechanisms that
interwar international law used to tackle environmental challenges.
A number of important elements kept the environmental regime alive:
committees, special sessions and discussions, scientific reports, confer-
ences, recommendations for protocols to deal with spreading diseases
and other issues of rural hygiene, official standards, and of course binding
legal agreements and conventions along with other means of the diplo-
matic toolkit. The League’s choice to invest so much of its power, budget,
and institutional energy in different expressions of law relating to com-
plex environmental issues should not be overlooked or taken for granted
in a historical interpretation.
Nevertheless, in terms of procedures and institutional structure, com-
pared to its predecessors, the League’s framework brought something
new and unfamiliar to the complex world of international relations that
existed prior to the League. This assessment is useful in efforts to unpack
the evolution of international law. As mentioned, certain basic notions
were already part of a transnational and diplomatic discussion before the
rise of the League: such as the belief that oil pollution in the sea posed
a threat to different countries, that sanitary failures and spreading dis-
eases put other societies in danger, or that the riches of the sea were an
international common. However, during the interwar period and under
the auspices of the League, the same discourses and goals did not
302 t h e en vir on me n tal re gime of t h e lea gue of n at ion s

necessarily apply – and certainly not the same routine. These case
studies29 show how and to what extent the League marked a period of
turning away from ad hoc initiatives and procedures that characterized
earlier international campaigns, many of which tried to cope with some
of these same concerns. Often throughout the routine of the League’s
special committees of experts, which discussed these issues frequently, it
was the daily, almost bureaucratic, work of the League and its fixed
schedule that triggered and reignited these environmental discussions.
On the matters of oil pollution of the sea and whaling regulation, various
committees of experts – along with preparatory committees working to
coordinate an international effort to improve rural hygiene – joined the
institutional routine work of the Economic Committee as it revised
different policies with which international bodies could supervise and
monitor timber production, and bring it under control. Along with the
important subject matter of these environmental issues, it was primarily
the routine as an institutional praxis that ensured these issues were not
eclipsed by other pressing problems that occupied interwar diplomacy.
These environmental issues had a place and a forum within the League,
with the attention of officials, national representatives, professional
experts, scientists, continuous reports, and publications. As I have high-
lighted in each chapter, internal bodies, departments, and professional
forums within the League all worked hard to develop these issues. Of
particular importance to this work was the central role played by the
committee of experts in distributing the special questionnaire in
January 1935, and the preparations of the antipollution convention
carried out by the League’s Communications and Transit Organisation,
not to mention the preparatory committees who organized the inter-
national conferences on rural hygiene. Similarly, it seems that without
the Committee of Experts for the Progressive Codification of
International Law, the League would have had serious difficulty in
introducing any of the international whaling conventions it had prepared
in the 1930s. Following the ongoing discussion on possible means of
regulating a variety of raw materials – including timber – the Economic
Committee was the first to discuss the spreading problem of deforest-
ation. The French representative to the Committee, Paul Elbel, also
pushed for further action at the Assembly, which later ordered the
Committee to further investigate the question in the late 1930s.30

29
Except for that of timber production and deforestation in particular.
30
See the different subsections in Section 3.3 of Chapter 4.
 5.2 e nvironmental questions as e volving c omplex 303
In each of these cases, other bodies and departments within (and in some
cases also outside) the League were waiting on these committees’ bureau-
cratic and legal products, such as preparatory papers, proposals for circu-
lation, and drafts before international distribution or publication. This
routine was not a unique scenario in matters concerning nature and the
environment, but rather a regular part of the League’s institutional
routine.31

The procedural routine of the League’s daily work, which marked

a shift from the ways in which international law was previously per-
formed, influenced and shaped the substance of some of the issues at
stake. For instance, as I have shown, starting as early as 1851, inter-
national conferences were held every few years as part of several trans-
national attempts32 to promote collective action to combat the discharge
of oil into the sea, and to develop common concern on the matter of rural
hygiene. Indeed, some of the issues that were revised during this con-
tinuing cooperation were similar to the ones covered by both the first
rural hygiene conference of 1931 (held in Geneva) and the second rural
hygiene conference of 1937 (held in Bandgoeng). However, what distin-
guished the League from other international efforts to tackle these same
problems was the fact that previously, there was no central institution
with its own permanent personnel, regularly working to implement and
follow up on former decisions. Likewise, earlier parallel transnational
attempts to regulate whaling, for instance, or to modify timber produc-
tion, also used some of the same mechanisms as the League, such as
conferences, special conventions, and scheduled meetings; however, the
League offered an overall experience of ongoing international law and
international governance.
Once the Codification Committee, the Economic Committee, and
other departments within the League began to hold repeat sessions, or
to revise different documents, recommendations, and proposals for other
bodies of the League – whether the Council, the Assembly, or Secretary
General himself – issues such as oil pollution, rural hygiene and sanita-
tion, whaling, and timber got their own continuing routine. As I have
demonstrated, many of the interwar campaigns introduced legal tools

31
See, for instance, Susan Pedersen’s account on the general institutional framework of the
League: Susan Pedersen, Back to the League of Nations, 112 A M . H I S T . R E V . 1091, 1108
(2007).
32
See my description of the 1923 Paris Congress on the Protection of Flora, Fauna, and
Natural Sites and Monuments, and the 1926 Washington Preliminary Conference on Oil
Pollution of Navigable Water in Section 1.1.2 of Chapter 1.
304 the e nvironmental regime of the l eague of n ations

and achieved positive results thanks to the League’s institutional frame-

work. This framework supported the continuing and evolving effort
surrounding environmental issues. No matter whether these issues
ultimately succeeded or failed, various departments and officials within
the League remained committed to supervising and monitoring the legal
arrangements that other parts of the League (and sometimes those of
external bodies – such as in the case of timber production) had prepared.
Unlike earlier or parallel transnational initiatives that tried to achieve
similar goals, such as the 1926 Washington antipollution convention, or
the management of marine fauna (between the United States and
Canada), the League supervised and kept track of its own activities,
maintaining them as developing campaigns.
The League carried with it not just a strong faith in its ability to solve
different problems across the globe,33 but also in its new means of
participating – and literally shaping and creating – international law
right at its core in Geneva. The modes of operation and mechanisms in
play, such as open-for-discussion questionnaires and draft conventions,
were unfamiliar to most of the players that took part in the League’s new
international, legal, and diplomatic game. As the timber and deforest-
ation question shows, the League also offered new procedural opportun-
ities, through which professional diplomacy developed a different type of
routine: one with a fix procedure, and committed and professional
diplomatic staff and experts who leaned on an ambitious institution. As
in the whaling dilemma, in which the forum involved the Copenhagen
Council,34 the League worked with several other international organiza-
tions and interested parties who had expressed concern on the issue of
raw materials in general, and timber in particular. I have traced the
interplay between the League and the Comité International du Bois (or
the International Timber Committee). Moreover, the timber plot also
included the involvement of the International Institute of Agriculture
(IIA), whose role I discussed in Chapter 4. Besides states, as obvious
“natural” parties in the process of international policymaking, the
League’s diplomatic and legal activity also integrated other types of
bodies into its schedule. The League consulted with various governments,

33
For an overview of the different missions for which the League took enthusiastic respon-
sibility, see T H E L E A G U E O F N A T I O N S ’ W O R K O N S O C I A L I S S U E S : V I S I O N S ,
E N D E A V O R S A N D E X P E R I M E N T S 75 (Davide Rodogno, Magaly Rodríguez García &
Liat Kozma eds., 2016).
34
See my discussion on the entry of the Council as a (powerful) advisory body in Section
2.3.3 of Chapter 2.
 5 . 3 d i f f e r e n t m o d e s o f i n t e r na t i o n a l l a w 305

experts, technical professionals, and relevant bodies who were involved

in shipping, whaling, and the international timber trade. Moreover, in
the timber case for instance, the involvement of these (independent)
bodies allowed35 for a broader scope of discussion and consultation,
becoming international per se.36
It seems that none of the states, regardless of their ties to the matter at
hand, wished to miss out on the opportunity to distribute the draft of
what might become a relevant basis for further discussion – not to
mention for legal articulation, as the Economic Committee had managed
to do in the matter of oil pollution of the sea, and the Codification
Committee had done in the case of whaling regulation.
As I have demonstrated in the comparative analysis, I conclude this
section with the argument that it was not only the environmental cause
itself in each case study that was central to the intensifying environmental
regime, but also the technical and procedural ways in which the League
and its bodies discussed and handled these issues as part of its institu-
tional framework and routine.

5.3 The League Practiced Different Modes of International Law

through Its Environmental Regime
The League’s environmental regime covered different modes of inter-
national law: traditional hard law, as well as soft law. As I argue in this
section, this regime did not only include conventions and official agree-
ments. Chapter 3 in particular has shown that the environmental regime
enabled the League to practice different modes of international law that were
not intended to be articulated into conventional legal products; the environ-
mental regime also promoted information sharing and its distribution.
Most of the campaigns I have explored ultimately aimed to introduce
a concrete legal result. The endeavors of the parties involved in the

35
Or gave the League a possible excuse to drop the timber and deforestation questions. See
my concluding remark in Section 4.3.2 of Chapter 4, in which I describe the justifications
the Economic Committee introduced in its final reports from April 1939 on the problem
of deforestation.
36
See, for instance, Section 4.3.1 of Chapter 4, in which I demonstrate the role of “external”
(and independent) bodies in the timber problem as it was handled by the League. The
League, as I have mentioned, was not the only international organization to study the
timber issue in that period. The Comité also conducted its own surveys as early as 1934; it
published monthly and annual timber trade statistics and information. These formal
publications served as a common ground for negotiations and means of coordination
between parties involved in timber trade (producing countries, industry, and others).
306 t he e n vir on me nt al re gime of t he le ag ue of n at ion s

campaign against sea pollution, and of NGOs in particular, called for

strict and binding legal measures achieved by means of an international
convention, such as the one that was globally introduced by the League in
1935.37 In its efforts to control and regulate international whaling, the
Codification Committee prepared different legal agreements throughout
the 1930s, such as the 1931 Geneva Convention,38 or the 1937
Convention and the 1938 Protocol.39
The case of the rural hygiene campaign in particular stands out as an
example in which the League practiced and developed other means of soft
international law. The League’s role in rural hygiene and sanitation was
rather different than in the other test cases I have covered. Here, the
League did not practice “hard” international law: there no conventions,
no agreements, and no continuing discussions on what constituted the
“right” legal terms in a particular circulated draft. In contrast, one can
easily trace such elements in the case of the international agreement
against the pollution of the sea by oil, whaling conventions, and also in
the preliminary discussion on the limited timber quota.40
In retrospect, the sanitation campaign revealed the full capacity of the
League in terms of international law and international governance. The
League’s environmental regime included different modes of the practice
of international law: the issues of the pollution of the sea by oil and the
whaling dilemma introduced, among others, concrete and feasible
features of international law such as special conventions; whereas, the
fears of deforestation were mainly discussed in the Assembly and
“translated” into the formal publications of the institution, but nothing
further. The sanitation campaign, with its unique focus on rural
hygiene, introduced other procedural directions to which the League
turned during the 1920s and 1930s. However, one can still identify
defining characteristics of the environmental regime, such as the central
role of experts and professional technocrats, as well as the institutional
routine of committees that frequently convened to discuss these mat-
ters. And yet of the way in which recommendations were decided on
differed across the League’s parallel discussions on environmental
concerns.
Although the various recommendations on rural hygiene matters did
not enjoy the legal power and authority of a convention or a treaty, these
37
See my discussion on the final legal result of the campaign in Section 1.3.4 of Chapter 1.
38
See Section 2.3.5 of Chapter 2.
39
See Section 2.3.6 of Chapter 2.
40
See the discussion on that preliminary proposal in Section 4.3.1 of Chapter 4.
 5.3 d ifferent modes of international law 307

formal texts exerted a strong normative force.41 At the end of the day, the
recommendations were part of the legal spectrum that the League was
committed to making a reality. Moreover, they were also legally signifi-
cant, since states referred to these recommendations as relevant sources
or examples of sanitary policy. Modes of reporting, collecting, sharing,
and producing information between states, agencies, experts, commit-
tees, and the international forum exemplify how the League created soft
international law on its own. The fact that the League gathered so many
different voices – Western powers, and lands under colonial rule –
indicates that it intended to bring about a new kind of international
standardization.
This is not only a retrospective conclusion. Even at that time, the
League was aware of the inadequacies of “compulsory” law, even when
such law was based on international cooperation. In the opening remarks
of Chapter Number 3 on Sanitation to the Preparatory Papers (of
the second rural hygiene conference) during a discussion on the need
for compulsory latrines to be installed in villages and other improve-
ments necessary to defeat sanitary risks, the League’s diplomats identified
the relevance of a bottom-up legal change in international law:
Modern hygienic habits are often difficult to inculcate in the East because
of customs of long standing. Thus, peasants may be driven by compulsion
to construct latrines, to make openings in their dwellings, or to protect
their wells; but, unless they can be convinced that these measures are
useful, or at any rate shown evidence that they have been adopted with
satisfactory results by their neighbours, the latrines they have constructed
will frequently remain unused, the openings will be blocked up, and
despite the fact that a hygienic well is available, water will continue to be
drawn from the river.42

An evaluation of the rural hygiene campaign as a form of soft inter-

national law further reveals that the League’s decision to use this mode of
international law enabled it to overcome other legal, diplomatic, and
mostly political and commercial obstacles it had to face in its other
campaigns. In other words, instead of turning to conventions, agree-
ments, and binding legal arrangements, which seemed impossible in the
complex rural reality on the ground of such vast territories, it might be

41
IRIS BOROWY, COMING TO TERMS WITH WORLD HEALTH: THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS
H E A L T H O R G A N I S A T I O N 1 9 21 – 1946, 338 (2009).
42
Preparatory Papers for the Intergovernmental Conference of Far Eastern Countries on
Rural Hygiene, LoN Archives, 6098/8A/29782/8855, at 49–50 [hereinafter Preparatory
Papers] (emphasis added).
308 the e nvironmental regime of the lea gue of n ations

possible that the League relied on soft law to accommodate the fact that
multiple countries shared the same environmental concerns, and there-
fore would likely use similar sanitation policy to respond to them.
The difficult entanglements surrounding the convention against the
pollution of the sea by oil, or the whaling law crusade, were for the most
part avoided in the sanitary campaign. Perhaps this was because the
League treated sanitation as a technical issue that required professional
solutions and policies that had been tested in different countries, which
allowed it to dodge those conflicts that characterized other environmen-
tal initiatives. One should remember that the League used soft law in this
campaign since it knew that proposing any binding conclusion would
mean the involvement of other authorities (not to mention interfering
with their jurisdiction), the building of new (and expensive) infrastruc-
tures across the countryside and so on, which would doubtless be met
with opposition.
Moreover, the League responded to the rural hygiene problem effi-
ciently. At both the first and second special conferences, the League
enjoyed the facade of being the only relevant and legitimate forum for
international law and international governance. European governments
and Asian authorities were first asked to provide information on their
rural hygiene policies and issues. Then, these data were shared, com-
pared, and distributed at the conferences.
This was a facade, but one with very real results. The League was
furnished with detailed reports and special scientific surveys all through-
out the 1930s: both in preparation of the special conferences, and after. In
the case of the second rural hygiene conference of 1937, for instance, the
British Government furnished the League’s Health Committee with
a comprehensive report on rural hygiene issues in Colonial India: it
was 400 pages long.43
Therefore, the case of rural hygiene stands as a real-time example of
the interwar environmental regime’s focus on these dimensions of inter-
national law:
In order to establish a rational plan of campaign against tuberculosis, and
especially of protection for districts hitherto largely immune, it is essential
to have full information as to the situation, not only in each country, but
also in each province and to consider separately towns and rural districts,

43
Intergovernmental Conference of Far-Eastern Countries on Rural Hygiene: Preparatory
Papers Relating to British India, Apr. 1937, LoN Archives, C.H. 1235 (b), R 6098/8A/
29782/8855.
5.4 w ho gets to play the g ame of i nternational la w 309
distinguishing, among the latter, between those which do or do not
provide labour for industry and agriculture.44

5.4 Who Gets to Play the Game of International Law:

New States and NGOs
As Britain suspected in 1927, the League changed international whaling
law not only in terms of routine, legal mechanisms, and procedures, but
also in terms of who got to play the game of international law. The special
British Interdepartmental Conference on the Question of International
Control of Whaling of 1927, for instance, concluded that all possible
diplomatic means should to be used to stall any drive towards inter-
national whaling regulation that would remove control over whaling
from Britain and other marine powers.45 In this section I will introduce
how the League indeed “met” Britain’s expectations by including
a variety of new players and voices in the process of creating and shaping
international law.
This section will be divided into two subsections. The first will discuss
the different participants: “minor” states (as I choose to call them) or less
powerful ones, as well as states who were not directly involved in the
environmental issues the League was tackling, but did participate later
on. The second subsection will introduce the growing role of NGOs who
strove in the 1920s and 1930s to promote their agenda and turned to the
League as a forum that could help them to achieve success.
Unlike earlier attempts to regulate marine navigation and transporta-
tion in order to fight oil pollution, to fight rural sanitary risks in the
countryside, or to regulate whaling, the League, loyal to its belief in
internationalism, shattered the closed doors of the traditional diplomatic
club. Even the most negative evaluation of the interwar environmental
regime would probably agree with the claim that the League changed the
rules of the game. States, diplomats, scientists, industrial lobbies and

44
Preparatory Papers, supra note 42, at 86 (emphasis added).
45
See the description of the British Interdepartmental Conference on the Question of
International Control of Whaling (held in October 1927) in Section 2.3.4 of Chapter 2.
Despite its central role in the creation of what would become the international forum of
the League, Britain – with its role in the whaling dilemma – was cautious (certainly at
first) of any drive towards international whaling regulation. Minutes of
Interdepartmental Conference on the Question of International Control of Whaling,
Oct. 12, 1927, National Archives of Canada, RG 32, vol. 1081, File 721–19-5[3] (quoted by
D O R S E Y , supra note 3, at 34).
310 th e e n viron me n t al r egi me o f th e le ague of n a tion s

commercial companies, professional unions, conservationist associ-

ations – all turned to the League as an institution, and a place, where
they negotiate and share their agendas.

5.4.1 Minor States Practicing International Law

The League changed the framework of international environmental law
by enabling nontraditional players to step in and participate in crafting
different arrangements. This was particularly true for “minor states.”
Rather than relying on traditional powers to make the decisions, the
League opened the floor to less familiar nations that it nevertheless
believed to be relevant and legitimate players such as Roumania, China,
or Brazil, all of which took an active role in the different environmental
campaigns and shaped their legal discourse. As the whaling example
demonstrates, certain states used or turned to the environmental discus-
sion to gain some sort of hold on internationalism in general, not
necessarily because they were concerned for the survival of the whale
(or at least, not for that reason alone). Explicit declarations such as those
of Brazil, for instance, support my claim that environmental concerns
actually helped these (relatively) new voices to get their foot in the door.
In its reply to the 1926 Questionnaire, the government of Brazil men-
tioned, “The democratisation of the world, the equality of States . . . are
the constituent elements of a new international order which necessitates
the careful definition of reciprocal rights and duties.”46
Both Brazil and China took on an important and mostly influential
role in the whaling dilemma. As I have elaborated in Chapter 2 in my
analysis of states’ and different organizations’ responses to the League’s
initiative, the Chinese reply also related to broader reflections on
a planned international whaling law. Although it did not support
a progressive codification concerning the exploitation of marine fauna
in general, and whales in particular, China also interpreted whaling
regulation as an important concern. However, unlike Brazil, the
Chinese government saw possible regulation as a direct threat to its –
and other states’ – sovereignty. Roumania also influenced international
environmental governance, though to a lesser degree. It submitted
a scientific report that warned of the dangers of overexploitation (as the
country too had suffered as a result of its unsustainable management of

46
See Section 2.3.2 of Chapter 2, in which I analyze both the Brazilian and the Chinese
replies to the special questionnaire.
 5 . 4 wh o g et s t o p l a y t he ga m e of in t er n a t i o n a l l a w 311

marine exploitation under its jurisdiction), which served as a relevant

source for the Codification Committee to refer to.
Moreover, some of the environmental concerns made it possible
for different players to dodge or overcome broader political global
power relations. As I have claimed in the discussion on the whaling
dilemma, although Wilsonian America refused to become a member
state of the League, certain environmental issues47 allowed for offi-
cial American positions and policies to shape international law.48
A similar observation can be made with regard to Japanese involve-
ment in the environmental regime. Although Imperial Japan had
withdrawn from the League in 1933, it nevertheless participated in
the rural hygiene joint effort, and collaborated both with the League
and the international community on these (environmental) concerns.
This was not, it should be emphasized, merely a move to fulfill
a formal duty: Japan organized its preparatory papers prior to
the second rural hygiene conference (of 1937) and sent its formal
delegation to Java, perhaps because it believed in international law as
a way to overcome (environmental) challenges that put vast regions
at risk.
The League’s international focus turned some of these environmental
issues into common concerns for all peoples – they did not remain
conflicts between only those states that had a direct interest in these issues.
It seems that in this way, the institutional aspects of the League led to new
conceptions of the environment. Opening up the issues of oil pollution and
whaling to international discussion, as the League had begun to do,
brought new voices and perspectives that did not necessarily favor or
protect certain nations’ – notably the Dutch, British, Norwegians, and

47
This was also the case in certain interwar social and humanitarian issues, in which
American experts and officials were moderately involved. See, among others, Paul
Knepper’s discussion on Americans and American perspectives in interwar period
Geneva: Paul Knepper, The Investigation into the Traffic in Women by the League of
Nations: Sociological Jurisprudence as an International Social Project, 34 L. & H I S T . R E V .
45 (2015).
48
One can also see similar American involvement under the same separatist Wilsonian
administration on the matter of oil pollution of the sea. The United States, for instance,
sent an official representative to the special committee of experts that had been formed to
study the question: Commander Chester H. G. Keppler, Naval Attaché to the American
Embassy in Berlin. The United States, it should be mentioned, obtained a seat on the
professional committee, though no more than seven experts were appointed to the
mission and as many different member states were not invited to send a delegate to
represent them. See my description on the formatting of the committee in Section 1.3.1 of
Chapter 1.
312 t he e n vir on men t al r e gime of t he le ague o f n ati on s

Japanese49 – obvious desire to keep their shipping and whaling indus-

tries intact and free of international interference. On the matter of
whaling, I have shown that dozens of states became involved in the
discussion, some of which – like Switzerland – were landlocked and did
not have a whaling fleet at all.50 Similarly, in the matter of oil pollution
and dying birds, the government of the Netherlands claimed in its reply
to the Transit and Communications Organisation’s questionnaire of
January 1935, that there were no deleterious effects of oil pollution.
However, other states – such as Spain, Canada, and Egypt – notified the
League of their numerous observations on the implications of pollution
for birds.51 With the League’s intensifying involvement, and its efforts
to make environmental challenges more democratic and accessible to
(almost) every interested party, traditional shipping and whaling
nations appeared to be slowly losing their grip on an industry that
they had dominated for a long time.
In that sense, early concerns that international law would negatively
affect dominant nations and their industries came true. A short while
before the introduction of the League, the British concluded that a call for
international involvement on a large scale would simply invite other
states to join and develop their own whaling industries. Moreover,
right after the League took the lead on the whaling issue, the British
government argued that any agreement that did not include all the great
maritime powers would be “rendered futile” by those powers.52
However, the relatively broad international involvement in environ-
mental concerns was not typical in all of the issues the League dealt with.
States did not reply to all the initiatives, legal documents, and special
questionnaires promoted by the League. While studies focusing on par-
allel international challenges, such as the trafficking of women and
children53 or the transnational illicit trade or distribution of drugs

49
Though Japan claimed throughout the 1930s (probably intentionally and in order to
dodge any international limitation by regulation) that its whaling industry was still
“young” and underdeveloped in comparison to that of Western nations (especially
Norway and Great Britain).
50
See my discussion on the variety of states that replied to the 1926 Questionnaire in Section
2.3.2 of Chapter 2.
51
See Section 1.3.3 in Chapter 1, in which I analyze states’ and organizations’ replies to the
special questionnaire the League distributed in January 1935.
52
See my concluding remarks in Chapter 2.
53
See, among others, Knepper, supra note 47, or Keith David Watenpaugh, The League of
Nations’ Rescue of Armenian Genocide Survivors and the Making of Modern
Humanitarianism: 1920–1927, 115 A M . H I S T . R E V . 1315 (2010).
 5. 4 w ho gets to pla y t h e g ame of int ernat ional la w 313

(mostly opium),54 do show a growing interest among states and experts

in discussions and cooperation, the number of states and other bodies
involved was much smaller and more concentrated.55
The invitation to reply to the League’s initiatives to regulate or track oil
pollution, rural hygiene, whaling, and timber production enabled states to
express their interpretation of international law. This way, states could
elevate common international interests over the commercial interests of
either states themselves (such as Japan or Norway in the whaling dilemma)
or industries (shipping and whaling). The new format of the League, for
perhaps the first time in modern history, gave states a voice in international
matters, putting them on an equal footing with stronger and richer powers.
The new format also encouraged the launch of many of the campaigns. The
states that supported introducing international whaling law backed up
Professor Suárez and “his” Codification Committee. International evi-
dence reached the League’s Secretariat from across the globe, reinforcing
the hope of a possible new convention that would save the whale from
disaster. Given the involvement of member and nonmember states alike in
the issue, and the great concern they expressed, the Codification
Committee gave the League a source of legitimacy – and perhaps also of
authority – to further develop its initiative.
The League’s routine, together with its new sense of internationalism
and international law, promised these new players equality and partner-
ship with leading nations who had controlled traditional diplomacy in
the times preceding the League. This, the antipollution campaign shows,
was not “only” on the books but is reflected in the law in action too.
Whereas during the deliberations of the special committee of experts the
attitude of (mostly Western industrialized) states’ representatives
towards the solution of obligatory separators was fairly reluctant, the
more general, pluralistic, and perhaps even democratic bodies of the
League, such as the Assembly, presented a more progressive, open, and
welcoming attitude of a variety of states who were not necessarily
involved in the shipping industry, by which obligatory installation of
separators became one of the central articles of the final version of the
antipollution convention of 1935.56

54
Kozma, supra note 28.
55
In the case of fighting the trafficking of women, Knepper has shown, for instance, that the
United States (or American professional experts) were mainly in the campaign led by the
League. See Knepper, supra note 47, at 47.
56
See my discussion in Sections 1.3.2 and 1.3.3 in Chapter 1, in which I describe the (mostly)
pro-industrial affiliation of the committee of experts, which was followed by a more
314 th e e n vi ro nme n t al r eg i me of t he l e agu e of na ti o ns

The test case of the antipollution campaign serves as an example of an

almost “combined” environmental move from below. The original ini-
tiative started its journey with the grassroots agendas of NGOs, where it
managed to find its way to the highest levels of institutional international
law, overcoming national barriers and challenging conventional inter-
national frameworks of state-to-state mechanisms and rationalities.57
And then, as traditional and marine powers attempted to bury this
threatening action in “their” committee of experts, early international
law – secured by the mechanisms and agenda of interwar international-
ism – managed to break the chains of hegemonic power and to promise,
at least at this stage, democratic progress and the introduction of
a progressive new antipollution convention.
This argument, it should be noted, demonstrates and revalidates
several claims that have been suggested in recent literature on the
League. Both a close reading of the ways in which states that were not
hegemonic actors during the interwar period used the capacity of the
League to take part in setting international relations through environ-
mental case studies and parallel studies that looked into other realms the
League handled are helpful in sustaining this contention. Susan
Pedersen’s recent work on the Permanent Mandate Commission
(PMC),58 for instance, appears especially relevant to such claim that the
League was dominated by imperial dynamics and Great Powers domin-
ance, but at the same time – as a new and in-transition institution – used
by new and peripheral states to further their interests and affirm their
presence in international affairs.
Pedersen focuses there on the PMC and the legal routine of the
supervising the mandate system from Geneva, but some of her claims
are relevant to the interplays (that I have identified in the environmental
case studies) between the geopolitical atmosphere of the interwar period
and the unfamiliar options the new structure of the League had to offer to
states which were not powers.59

balanced policy of the Assembly, when the League distributed the antipollution question-
naire and a draft convention in early 1935.
57
See Section 1.3.1 in Chapter 1, in which I describe how the Save-the-Seabirds campaign
reached the League after the domestic civil-society activity (led by the RSPB and RSPCA)
in Britain, and how the League put the antipollution issue on its agenda.
58
SUSAN PEDERSEN, THE GUARDIANS: THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS AND THE CRISIS OF
E M P I R E S (2015).
59
The PMC was, on the one hand, a complex innovative mechanism of international law
and governance, set mostly to enable the (imperial) powers to practice their control and
influence overseas in the Middle East, Africa, and Pacific. However, on the other hand,
 5. 4 w ho gets to pla y t h e g ame of int ernat ional la w 315

Likewise, and as another example to the ways in which my general

arguments on the League’s environmental regime echo resemble conclu-
sions made by other scholars, I shall mention Patricia Clavin’s research
on the role of the League’s Economic and Financial Organisation (EFO),
that gives similar ideas in that respect.60 Clavin’s approach as
a practitioner of the “new diplomatic history” emphasizes the multiplicity
of actors and forms of power that were operating above, beyond, and
across traditional powers and nations states throughout the 1920s and
1930s. There was, as Clavin writes, no “single [L]eague at Geneva.”61
Rather, there were multiple actors, new states, old powers, and a variety
of agendas, all working together and often also competing with each
other at the same time in the complex structure of the institution and its
international milieu.
The League was, in that sense, and as the environmental regime
demonstrates as well, a “multiverse”; a body that constantly spawned
“new universes” and which was therefore subject to constant reinvention.
As certain economic aims of the EFO, side by side with the wide involve-
ment in environmental challenges indicate together, the League was
a defining feature of their national identity for states which were not
Western empires or European powers. With the internationalism
enshrined in its bureaucratic routine, the League enables their voices to
be heard on terms of nominal quality62 with great powers that had
heretofore determined and shaped international law, relations, and
politics.
Yet, it should be noted that these observations with regard to those of
Pedersen, Clavin, and other new scholars of the League do not mean that
the League deviated from the common, perennial, Western-Eurocentric
narrative of modern history. The League was never a truly global body in
a sense that post-colonial interpretations would use in the late twentieth
and early twenty-first centuries. The League comprised or reflected parts
of the globe, and never the whole. In that sense, and although the
environmental regime I have uncovered brought to the surface non-

Pedersen’s legal-history analysis shows this was not in no way homogeneous and that the
Wilsonian moment was rather real, as a non-European world and new emerging voices
started to gain their attention, thanks to the opportunities and tools the League had to
offer.
60
PATRICIA CLAVIN, SECURING THE WORLD ECONOMY: THE REINVENTION OF THE
L E A G U E O F N A T I O N S , 1 9 20 – 19 46 (2013).
61
Id. at 7.
62
Id.
316 th e e n vi ro nme n t al r eg i me of th e l e agu e of na ti on s

Western voices, such as those of Asian countries under colonial and

imperialist rule (as the rural hygiene campaign has demonstrated), for
instance, or those of Brazil, Japan, and China (as in the whaling
dilemma), the absence of African voices63 prevails also during this
chapter of the interwar period and history of international law. Africa,
in that sense, is an important example, as it was an object of the League
but not as an actor in its own right.
Moreover, the environmental regime also changed other political
patterns of that period regarding minor states, countries, lands, and
peoples that were not considered equal players in terms of international
relations. As I have shown, the concern about infectious diseases that
spread from vast rural areas in the global periphery, East Asia in particu-
lar, and put Western population centers at risk made the picture of
colonial and imperialist power relations much more complex. The ways
in which the League framed parts of the discussions on sanitary dangers
in these peripheries as a threat to collective security enabled and invited
other parties, some of which were still subjected to Western powers in
East Asia, to participate in and share methods on how to handle the issue
of rural hygiene.
The League, with its developing environmental expertise, should be
considered a force in the changing world of the new century. True, full-
scale decolonization had not yet been achieved; but the fact that states
including Burma, China, Egypt, and Brazil were participating – in an
(almost) equal fashion – in the everyday diplomatic routine of discussing
and shaping international law shows that an important step had been
taken towards a new historical era – at least in terms of formal inter-
national law, diplomacy, and international relations.
Recent revisionist descriptions of the story of environmentalism tend
to look into the historical long process and explore the early modern
roots of international environmental thought –64 and relevant legal
arrangements that followed it – only in the late imperial time.65 The

63
Though Ethiopia and Liberia were member states of the League (next to the Union of
South Africa).
64
See, among others, A D A M , supra note 5; Mario Prost & Yoriko Otomo, British Influences
on International Environmental Law: The Case of Wildlife Conservation, in B R I T I S H
I N F L U E N C E S O N I N T E R N A T I O N A L L A W : 19 1 5– 2 01 5, 192 (Robert McCorquodale &
Jean-Pierre Gauci eds., 2015); G R O V E , supra note 9.
65
See, among others, the discussion of Hairudin bin Harun, Colonialism and Medicine in
Malaysia, in E N C Y C L O P E D I A O F T H E H I S T O R Y O F S C I E N C E , T E C H N O L O G Y A N D
M E D I C I N E I N N O N -W E S T E R N C U L T U R E S 211 (Helaine Selin ed., 1997).
 5 .4 w ho gets to pla y t h e game of int ernat ional la w 317

chapter of the League, however, enables us to trace the ways in which

imperial environmentalism started to lose its outposts.66
The League’s second rural hygiene conference of 1937, for instance,
gave room to a variety of voices to present their different reflections on
sanitation problems and environmental concerns, which touched on
issues of policy-making, at an international forum. It was the League
that very deliberately opened the floor of international law and inter-
national governance to new and unfamiliar players and perspectives,67
just as it had in most of the missions in its environmental regime. As
I describe in Chapter 3,68 the procedures of the second rural hygiene
conference revealed that different representatives in charge of lands
under Western colonial or imperial rule (such as Burma, India, or
Indonesia) worked alongside official representatives of the League, sci-
entifically and professionally comparing, discussing, and sharing possible
means to overcome environmental risks, such as rats and pollution of
water sources. The diverse environmental regime the League developed
was an opportunity to challenge the idea of one universal, hegemonic,
Western model for international law during discussions on sanitation, fly
control in rural areas, and refuse treatment in East Asian countryside
areas.
As different parts of my study explore, particularly the complex rural
hygiene campaign, the League’s environmental regime serves as a unique
lens through which to examine the different legal, historical, and political
layers that made up imperialism. While delegations and experts dis-
cussed public health and sanitation in the changing world of the interwar
period, certain conventional or common notions of the imperial world

66
When Rachel Adam, for instance, studied the earliest treaties for territorial species and for
saving world (and mostly, African) biodiversity, she revealed that much later conven-
tions – such as those that created by the International Union for Conservation of Nature
(IUCN) – actually “predated IUCN itself by almost fifty years” ( A D A M , supra note 5, at 4),
meaning the early 1920s. Going back to last third of the nineteenth century and the early
1900s, such scholars focused on Imperial India and Africa at the peak of Western
colonialism, revealing the untold story of environmental history through the lenses of
imperialist and colonialist expertise, knowledge, and networks. The environmental story
of the League contributes another angle to this scholarship.
67
Some of the participants, including on behalf of the League, who also complained about
the diversity of viewpoints and experiences in different countries and even regions in East
Asia made it difficult to reach agreed conclusions on the matters discussed. See the Report
of the Health and Medical Services to the plenary meeting of the Conference (by
Dr. J. L. Hydrick), Aug. 10, 1937, LoN Archives, R 6107/8A/37714/8855.
68
See Section 3.2.4 of Chapter 3, in which I explore the second rural hygiene conference of
1937, which focused on East Asia.
318 t he e n vi r on men t al r eg i me of t he l e agu e of n ati o ns

can be revised, such as the need to promote professional education of

local Asian medical staff. Imperial powers expanded their control over
regions beyond European borders to combat the environmental and
sanitary threats posed by East Asian countries. Western powers were
concerned that such threats would place their metropolises at risk.
Colonialism in East Asia also created tension between the West and its
colonial spaces. After all, cholera, for instance, spread in modern Europe
from its origin in India, carried by busy trade routes and waterways
between Asia and the West. These “imported Eastern” dangers were
understood by policymakers and experts to be side effects of the
Industrial Revolution – including, most certainly, inadequate sanitation.
However, the League’s own sanitation campaign, especially the one that
focused on the “Far East,” expressed other reflections of (and attitudes
toward) this tension. Although imperial and colonial power relations did
not just suddenly disappear, the structure the League was offering marked
a different practical and procedural approach to the Eastern dangers about
which the West was so concerned. Unlike other transnational frameworks,
mostly colonial ones, which already focused on sanitation at a regional
(and not “only” domestic) level, the League offered institutional opportun-
ities to discuss and handle colonial and imperial concerns and “local”
concerns in an almost equal fashion, suggesting different examples of
information sharing, consultation, and comparing a variety of policies.
The turn to a scientific and professional discourse enabled colonial power
relations to be surmounted, at least to a certain (and maybe temporary)
extent. Therefore, when the League discussed different sanitation con-
cerns, such as water purification and fly control, this interwar discussion
actually introduced a picture that is rather different from certain conven-
tional depictions of colonial relations.69

69
See, for instance, my discussion on the example of training local medical staff in rural East
Asian communities in Section 3.2.4 of Chapter 3. Rural hygiene issues showed how and to
what extent concerns relating to local communities were part of the discussions on health,
sanitation, and environmental problems. These issues also describe how the League – as
an institution – encouraged and motivated efforts that aimed to improve the living
conditions of agrarian societies. In that sense, it was a more elusive context than the
pattern of the “white man’s burden.” The discussion should be viewed, as in the case of
this campaign, as more complex and layered than polarized “bad” or “good” colonialism
and other systematic and familiar patterns of postcolonial studies. We can find, on the
one hand, “familiar” descriptions of the difference between the Western world and other
parts of the globe, where rural hygiene and sanitation serve as a lens through which this
gap is reflected. On the other hand, however, concerns relating to local populations were
also involved in a genuine process of crafting international law.
 5 . 4 w h o g e t s t o p l ay th e game of i nt ernational law 319

Similarly, on the matter of whaling, it seems the League was the only
power that was able to generate a collective action between nations – both
major powers and minor states – from Asia (such as Japan), Oceania,
Europe, and the Americas that would be able to regulate the hunt for
whales far off in the ocean. Unlike the problem of wildlife in northern
America, Africa,70 or Europe,71 the League enabled solutions – or at least
discussions on possible ones – that aimed to overcome the constraints of
local, regional, and imperial arrangements.72 Until the establishment of
the League, most of the early environmental legal or diplomatic develop-
ments were stymied by such barriers, and could not expand into a broad
and global spectrum.73

5.4.2 NGOs and Non-state Actors’ Involvement in the

Environmental Regime
Other than minor or emerging countries that got their chance to partici-
pate in the game of international law, the new modes of operation also
enabled other bodies to step in and to directly influence international law
in real time. The “spectacular gathering”74 of the world’s statesmen, jurists,
experts, and scientists from different fields also inspired the international
engagement of NGOs. As I have elaborated in the variety of case studies
I have presented, many of these participants identified the new forum as an
opportunity for non-state actors of different kinds – from commercial
organizations and industrial consortiums to scientific boards of museums
and research centers – to take part in the making of global governance.
Through the environmental discussions on stopping oil pollution of the

70
For a discussion on the colonial influence on biodiversity conventions in the late
nineteenth and the twentieth centuries see A D A M , supra note 5.
71
Raf de Bont, Extinct in the Wild: Finding a Place for the European Bison – 1919–1932, in
S P A T I A L I Z I N G T H E H I S T O R Y O F E C O L O G Y : S I T E S , J O U R N E Y S , M A P P I N G S 165 (Raf de
Bont & Jens Lachmund eds., 2017).
72
For a discussion on certain imperial perspectives that influenced transnational environ-
mental-legal regimes, see, among others, see Prost & Otomo, supra note 64.
73
Some of the environmental historians, however, argue that one can identify early trans-
national or international characteristics in environmental initiatives taken by colonial
powers beyond the metropoles such as those of London or Paris. These conservationist
and legal norms record a Eurocentric view of nature that meant excluding colonized
populations in order to preserve nature and natural heritage. See David Anderson and
Richard Grove, The Scramble for Eden: Past, Present and Future in Africa Conservation, in
C O N S E R V A T I O N I N A F R I C A : P E O P L E , P O L I C I E S , P R A C T I C E 1 (David Anderson &
Richard Grove eds., 1987); Prost & Otomo, supra note 64.
74
Wöbse, supra note 7, at 521.
320 t h e en vir on me n tal re gime of t h e lea gue of n at ion s

sea, overcoming spreading diseases, or saving the whales and their future,
many of these NGOs and non-state actors “re-imagined themselves as
actors in global governance,”75 thanks to the League and its diverse
toolbox. Although these parties did not constitute a formal part of the
League, the interwar period was, at least with regard to their activity as
a new developing type of agency, a golden age for NGOs.
The campaign for the Convention on Pollution of the Sea by Oil was led
by devoted persons of external organizations such as the Royal Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (hereinafter RSPCA) and the Royal
Society for the Protection of Birds (hereinafter RSPB).76 These civil society
organizations and scientific professional associations were advocating for
environmental and nature-protection initiatives, and they challenged states
who were reluctant to join the antipollution initiative. Hence, their role in
the antipollution campaign was essential. After all, the NGOs and non-state
actors interpreted post–World War I international law as an open game,
especially for themselves. The unfamiliar framework of the new forum,
which was literally under construction, was particularly convenient in the
case of environmental issues that disregarded national sovereignty and
borders. Even when these kinds of bodies did not take a leading role in
environmental challenges, their voices were nevertheless heard: examples
include the case of the Austrian Association of Workers in Agriculture and
Forestry,77 which complained to the League that its members were suffering
from poor sanitary and environmental conditions in the workplace, or the
case of the International Mercantile Marine Officers Association, which
wrote to the League after the distribution of the questionnaire concerning
the exploitation of the products of the sea, and whaling in particular.78
Moreover, NGOs strove for conservationist and preservationist causes
even when the exact facts and details were yet not completely clear (such
as in the early 1920s and the beginning of the pollution and whaling

75
Steve Charnovitz, The Emergence of Democratic Participation in Global Governance
(Paris, 1919), 10 I N D . J. G L O B A L L E G A L S T U D . 45, 77 (2003).
76
See, for instance, the discussion in Section 1.2.1 (in Chapter 1), in which I elaborate on the
involvement of these British organizations in the campaign against pollution and for the
protection of birds. First, they fought against oil pollution as a domestic problem; and
then (as I show in Section 1.3.3) their calls and petitions became part of the League’s
discussion (mostly through its committee of experts).
77
The Austrian Association of Workers in Agriculture and Forestry (die Wohnverhältnisse der
landwirtschaftlichen Arbeiter Österreichs, Bericht des österreichischen Land- und
Forstarbeiterverbandes), Feb. 26, 1931, LoN Archives, R 5927/8A/275438/26690.
78
See my discussion also on the association’s reply, next to the variety of replies from all
around the world, in Section 2.3.2 of Chapter 2.
 5 .4 w ho gets to pla y t h e game of i nt ernat i onal la w 321

sagas). Devoted NGOs quickly identified a connection between increas-

ing marine transportation and the disturbing number of seabird car-
casses covering European shores, but the common knowledge at that
time still did not fully realize the hazardous chemical effects of oil on
aquatic life-forms. It would take some time, and several intensive cam-
paigns led by ambitious NGOs,79 to raise awareness among the public
and media about the lethal effects of oil on birds. But it ultimately became
clear, even without proved scientific data (during the early stages of the
antipollution campaign), that it took no more than just a small amount of
oil to cause lethal consequences to both to birds and their eggs.80
These NGOs – such as the RSPB and the RSPCA (in the oil pollution
case), and the American Society of Mammalogists (in the case of whaling) –
encouraged different states and representatives towards collective actions of
international law. These NGOs were quick enough to identify political
vacuums in certain issues, and managed to set the tone before other players
came along: especially in the cases of the antipollution convention and the
whaling regulation. These campaigns illustrate the role of non-state actors
in the interwar period as a whole. Once the League was established, it served
as a greenhouse for diplomatic and international law initiatives that chal-
lenged states’ interests and motivations. Until more “conventional” agen-
cies, primarily state officials and governmental representatives, stepped in
to take their part in the discussion (whether on oil pollution, or on the
whaling dilemma), NGOs – sometimes together with scientists81 – made
the most of their relative freedom to shape these initiates.82
79
As I have elaborated in Chapter 1, these were primarily British-led campaigns, but Dutch,
French, German, and American NGOs also eventually became involved.
80
See my preliminary discussion on the developing awareness about the reasons for the
marine phenomenon in Section 1.2.1 of Chapter 1.
81
In recent years, environmental scholars have pointed out the evolving popular involve-
ment of individuals (who are not professional scientists) in what is called citizen science,
a variety of environmental efforts, initiatives, and campaigns. The increase in community
science or volunteer monitoring of environmental issues is becoming a significant part of
the study of the Anthropocene.
Some parts of the interwar environmental regime, especially in the case of regulating
the marine environment, also showed a civil network of bird lovers, for instance, gathered
around the RSPB and RSPCA’s activity. See, e.g., A L A N I R W I N , C I T I Z E N S C I E N C E :
A S T U D Y O F P E O P L E , E X P E R T I S E , A N D S U S T A I N A B L E D E V E L O P M E N T (1995); Trisha
Gura, Citizen Science: Amateur Experts 496 N A T U R E 259 (2013); Hauke Riesch & Clive
Potter, Citizen Science as Seen by Scientists: Methodological, Epistemological, and Ethical
Dimensions, 23 P U B . U N D E R S T A N D I N G O F S C I . 107 (2014).
82
In the antipollution case, for instance, it was the RSPB and the RSPCA, and not official
representatives, who suggested specific tort law mechanisms in order to drive the ship-
ping industry to install separators on board ships.
322 th e e nv iron me n ta l re gime of th e le ague of n at ion s

Indeed, compared to devoted nature-protection associations striving

to save migratory birds from polluted waters, or to scientific societies
appealing to the League on the possible extinction of the whale, rural
hygiene issues did not involve “independent” organizations and NGOs,
or at least not to the same degree that these other issues did. Most of the
bodies that accepted the League’s invitation to become involved in
improving water management, diseases control, preventing fly breeding
and so on were state agencies or official institutions. And yet, as it revised
the recommendations of the first rural hygiene conference of 1931, the
Health Section of the League urged researchers and experts to engage
with other institutions and bodies: peasants’ associations, media and
press, agrarian cooperatives, and more.83 Once again, the League not
only stepped beyond earlier initiatives on rural hygiene and public health
(including transnational ones), but actually offered and positioned itself
as a relevant institutional partner to various groups beyond their national
governments, sometimes effectively bypassing their domestic authority.
As I have shown, the League’s environmental regime saw an institu-
tional shift: interwar diplomacy was much less strict than traditional
bilateral frameworks of pre-WWI diplomacy, which was based on states
and international organizations alone. The interwar regime, in contrast,
was based on a triangle structure of member states, the League, and
a variety of NGOs taking part in international governance. These
NGOs pushed the League to introduce international environmental
regulations and initiatives.
All in all, the role of new and minor states, along with NGOs, should be
acknowledged in discussions on the League’s institutional shift. All of
these parties turned to the League to help them shape international law
and international governance, and used the unpaved road of environ-
mental law to promote their agendas.

5.5 The Central Role of Scientific Expertise

Next to unfamiliar actors such as minor states and NGOs, the League’s
environmental regime leaned on another type of non-state agent. This
main argument focuses on the central role of scientific expertise in almost
83
See Section 3.2.3 of Chapter 3, in which I discuss the steps that followed the first rural
hygiene conference of 1931, and the preparations for the second rural hygiene conference
of 1937; or the specific example to which I refer on this matter: Letter from Vacel to
Ludwik Rajchman, Report on the Progress of the Rural Hygiene in Czechoslovakia,
(undated), LoN Archives, R5932/8A/30078/30078.
 5. 5 t he c e n tr al r ol e of sc i en t i f i c e xp er ti s e 323

each of the environmental case studies of the interwar period. Scientists

and scientific-based discourse were a genuine part of the League’s different
discussions as it tried to regulate the relations between humans and nature.
The League’s institutional framework was not just open and accessible
to representatives of science – it literally invited them to take an active
part in its everyday activities. Together with its routine procedures of
regular and special committees, circulated reports, and methods of infor-
mation producing and sharing, the League encouraged the discourse of
professionals and experts throughout its daily schedule. The “spirit of the
League”84 was nourished and supported by this kind of civilian-scientific
diplomacy, and the environmental campaigns relied on scientific argu-
mentations and calls for (collective) action.
Scientific experts and NGOs, and not states or governmental agencies,
were the ones who initiated and led the campaigns against oil pollution
and poisoned birds. Experts were the first to connect industrial and
technological developments and their considerable impact on nature.
At first, and in the aftermath of World War I, ornithologists had assumed
that sunken submarines and naval wrecks lost during battle were to
blame for oil pollution, and they mistakenly believed that the oil would
quickly disappear from the shores. However, in its Annual Report bul-
letin four years after the war had ended, the RSPB reported that instead of
fading away slowly with the ocean waves, oil not only remained present
in the oceans, but had actually become even worse – “developed with
alarming rapidity until now the cry is heard from all round our shores.”85
As I have shown in the case of rural hygiene, for instance, most of the
preparatory work and the sessions of the international conferences leaned on
professional experts: biologists, physicians, engineers, medical doctors, and
public health experts.86 Furthermore, the whaling dilemma gave center stage
to scientific observations, warnings, and recommendations.87 In many ways,

84
See Pedersen, supra note 31, at 1113.
85
A N N U A L R E P O R T O F T H E R O Y A L S O C I E T Y F O R T H E P R O T E C T I O N O F B I R D S (Presented
at the Annual General Meeting, Mar. 7, 1923) 8 (London; 1922). See my introductory
discussion on concerns about oil pollution in Britain and the United States in Section
1.2.1 of Chapter 1.
86
The Interchange Program of 1928, one of the first steps in the rural hygiene campaign of
the League, was based on a professional scientific report that paved the League’s way into
the field of rural hygiene. See my discussion in Section 3.2.1 of Chapter 3.
87
See, for instance, the discussion in Section 2.3.4 of Chapter 2, in which I elaborate on the
role of the biologist Remington Kellogg, who joined the discussion on whaling regulations
and promoted the conservationist lobby within the League; or the role of the American
Society of Mammalogists.
324 t h e en v iron me n ta l re gime of t h e lea gue of n at ion s

this campaign was triggered by scientists and scientific observations, and also
actively brought biologists and marine experts to the forefront of inter-
national law. In the issue of timber and deforestation, some of the parties
involved used scientific data in order to strengthen their arguments.88
In all of these environmental battles, the League and other parties
emphasized the importance of scientific knowledge to strengthen their
respective positions. In many ways, the need for international law to be
seen as a source of legitimacy, especially during its formative period,
reflects the increased use of scientific databases by the League and its
personnel, as well as by states and other bodies that were negotiating with
the League.89 This characteristic was not unique to the environmental
regime alone: scientific experts made different professional contributions
during much of the League’s deliberations and considerations. Between
the wars, expertise grew in importance not only in the administration and
politics of nation-states, but in the international handling of a variety of
international matters as well. For example, scholars have recently focused
on the scientific features of the League’s campaign against the trafficking
of women, in which organs of the League collaborated with experts of
different disciplines.90
This fundamental role of scientists and professional experts worked in
both directions. First, as I have shown, the League built its environmental
campaigns on scientific rationalization and justification. When the
League’s Organisation of Communications and Transit, for instance,
distributed the special questionnaire on the matter of pollution of the
sea by oil in January 1935, the states were asked to reply by supporting
their answers with scientific facts and data. The eight-question document
specifically asked replying states to supply scientific evidence regarding
the extent of oil pollution at sea. The final question91 asked replying states
to supply any evidence, based on scientific or other observations made in
their country that might have a bearing on this question.92 Likewise, the

88
See, for instance, the emphasis the French delegate placed on scientific expertise as an
essential part of the international discussion on the timber question, as I elaborate in
Section 4.3.2 of Chapter 4.
89
See, e.g., the role of expert economists in interwar international law, as described by
C L A V I N , supra note 60.
90
See, e.g., Knepper, supra note 47.
91
In which states were asked to provide their observations on the effect of oil discharge and
oily mixtures from ships on marine and coastal environments (including information on
the distance of oil discharge from the shore).
92
See Section 1.3.3 of Chapter 1, in which I elaborate on the scientific discourse used in the
inquiry on behalf of the League (and in the questionnaire in particular).
 5. 5 t he c e n tr al r ol e of sc i en t i f i c e xp er ti s e 325

role of professional experts from public health services, as well as the

fields of biology or civil engineering, was central to the preparations and
running of the special rural hygiene conferences the League organized in
the 1930s. In reports on the problem of deforestation, in which matter the
French plea was able to push the League to investigate the issue further in
the late 1930s, it was agreed that collaboration with the International
Institute of Agriculture would provide much-needed objective data that
would assist the League in facilitating future possible steps.93
Second, science and professional output were also the basis of com-
munication between other bodies and the League. When different asso-
ciations and societies approached the League on the matter of dying
migratory birds due to oil pollution of the sea,94 or when the American
Society of Mammalogists warned the international community of the
impending extinction of the whale, they articulated their negotiations
and correspondence with the League by using scientific discourse.95 It
seems that in order to place an issue on the agenda of interwar inter-
national law, one had to use the language of science.
Scientists influenced early international agendas as a whole, and envir-
onmental aims and concerns in particular. On the one hand, they oper-
ated within the orbit of national institutes such as the American Society
of Mammalogists and the Natural History Museum of San Diego, urging
their national governments and the League to take up a central role in
whaling diplomacy efforts, and to save “these wonderfully adapted crea-
tures, the greatest mammals that have ever inhabited the globe”;96 and on
the other hand, also within the orbit of international (independent)
organizations – such as the International Conseil of Copenhagen, the
industrial consortium of whaling states – furnishing the League with
different data on the whaling industry.97 Scientific expertise was there-
fore instrumental in connecting the international, environmental, and
industrial spheres.

93
See my discussion on the collaboration between the International Institute of Agriculture
and the League in Sections 4.3.1 and 4.3.2 of Chapter 4.
94
See my analysis of different petitions sent to the League by nature-protection societies in
Section 1.3.3 of Chapter 1.
95
See, for instance, my discussion on the role of the society in Section 2.3.5 of Chapter 2.
96
Clinton Abbott, Director, Natural History Museum of San Diego, to Secretary Stimson,
Mar. 2, 1932, United States National Archives, RG 59, File 562.8Fi.
97
See, for instance, my discussion on the involvement of the pro-whaling consortium in
Section 2.3.3 of Chapter 2, in which I present how the Codification Committee summar-
ized the replies of the 1926 Questionnaire on the matter of the exploitation of the
products of the sea.
326 t h e en vi ron me n ta l re gime of t h e lea gue of n at ion s

It was the League that enabled scientific warnings to gain a foothold in

and (to an extent) set the course of international law. Given the fast
technological and industrial developments in terms of oil pollution,
transportation (carrying infectious diseases much more easily than in
the past), whaling, and timber production, it seemed impossible that “a
few men on a remote speck of land could affect the whale population of
a vast ocean.”98 However, the League’s environmental regime shows how
and to what extent scientific experts, and their alarming concerns,
formed part of and stimulated the interwar period discussions on these
dilemmas, and sometimes (as in the case of whaling, for instance),
literally changed the course of international law.
True, scientists had warned of the devastating outcomes of discharge
of oil in the sea, the link between polluted water resources and spreading
diseases in rural areas, and the possible extinction of whales even before
the birth of the League. The Canadian scientist William Wakeham, for
example, concluded several years before the League’s establishment that
whaling on the North American east coast of Canada had maybe one
more season before the whales were all chased away or driven to extinc-
tion due to the big bang in modern whaling.99 Moreover, in 1911,
scientists and diplomats discussing the status of the North Pacific fur
seal agreed that other sea creatures would be fruitful, and relevant,
subjects,100 for diplomacy. However, as I have argued earlier with regard
to NGOs, the League provided a practical focus for the scientists’ and
activists’ activism. Before the League was born, this scientific discourse
was mostly articulated as warnings. The League enabled scientists’ alarm-
ing predictions to become a regular consideration in possible legal
solutions.
With this comparative perspective, two conclusions can be drawn.
First, even though earlier scientific calls had warned of environmental
threats to fauna and flora in the sea and on land, these worried calls at the
same time acknowledged the lack of practical or feasible solutions to beat
these concerns. The British government, for instance, understood that
the unique problems on the high seas could only be solved by monitoring
and controlling whaling on a much broader scale. Based on scientific
warnings, the Colonial Office mentioned that this issue was ultimately
98
J. N. T Ø N N E S S E N & A. O . J O H N S E N , T H E H I S T O R Y O F M O D E R N W H A L I N G , 167,
183–84 (1982).
99
William Wakeham to Fisheries Secretary, July 26, 1913, National Archives of Canada,
Records of the Ministry of Fisheries, vol. 1081, File 721–19-5[1].
100
D O R S E Y , supra note 3, at 31.
 5. 5 t h e c e n tr al r ol e of sc i e nt i f i c e xp er t i se 327

one that would have to be solved internationally. However, at the turn of

the century, and during the first two decades, the farthest-reaching
solution that the British could conceive of was an abstract transnational
agreement with their dominions, Norway, and several whaling states
from South America.101
Second, scientific expertise also allowed both official and unofficial
American views to influence the directions in which the League was
heading.102 We can find other examples of American influence managing
to find its way into the League’s diplomatic routine,103 chiefly by using
scientific discourse and studies in areas that seemed to be secondary
missions that the League handled in addition to the tremendous social
and economic challenges of the postwar period. Furthermore, although
the United States stubbornly refused to become a member state, scientific
and professional American involvement can be seen in almost every
environmental discussion: in the antipollution campaign,104 when
American experts participated in the preparations for the rural hygiene

101
See my concluding remarks in Chapter 2, where I discuss these British observations.
102
In Paul Knepper’s analysis of the League’s worldwide investigation of different patterns
of trafficking of women and children, he argued that the League strove to build an
international legal regime based on a foundation of professional “sociological jurispru-
dence,” as he called it. Throughout this socio-legal campaign, the role of American social
scientists was significant, if not what actually prompted the League to focus on this
campaign. Knepper’s study also analyzed the role of the American Social Hygiene
Association (ASHA), the American Sociological Society, and trained social scientists.
See Knepper, supra note 47.
103
Erez Manila, on the other hand, focused on different patterns in which interwar diplo-
macy and international relations were shaped, or at least very much influenced, by
American attitudes and statesmanship that came from the White House and the State
Department in Washington (and not just from NGOs, civil society associations, and
committed individuals). President Wilson’s promise of self-determination proved to be
the genie that was let out of the bottle: the Poles and Serbs, Armenians in the Turkish
new state, Jews and Arabs in Mandatory Palestine, all were thrilled by the American
declaration. Although the United States insisted that it did not want to become a member
state, its decisions and policies nevertheless impacted on the routine of the League. See
E R E Z M A N E L A , T H E W I L S O N I A N M O M E N T : S E L F -D E T E R M I N A T I O N A N D T H E
I N T E R N A T I O N A L O R I G I N S O F A N T I C O L O N I A L N A T I O N A L I S M (2007).
104
See, for instance, the pioneering involvement of the American biologist, Dr. George
Wilton Field (as I elaborate in Section 1.3.1 of Chapter 1, in which I describe how the
campaign for the protection of seabirds reached the League). In 1931, Field introduced
his petition to the League, which urged them to fight against oil pollution in the ocean.
Moreover, one can also focus on the role of scientific American organizations (such as
the American Humane Association or the Audubon Society of Illinois) that wrote to the
League on this matter in the mid-1930s (see also my analysis of some of these petitions in
Section 1.3.3 of that chapter).
328 th e e nv iron me n ta l re gime of th e le ague of n at ion s

conferences,105 and throughout the whaling dilemma with the significant

role of Kellogg and the American Society of Mammalogists. Scientific
expertise revealed the indirect ways in which American policies gained
a central position in the League’s environmental regime. These were not
only “private” crusader individuals, reaching out to Geneva in order to
take part in the making of international environmental law, and to
protect birds, mammals, oceans, and nature. Different American scien-
tific associations and NGOs literally diverted some of the directions and
actions of the League on these matters.
The League, with its in-transition framework, enabled and even
encouraged this kind of practical and participatory international law.
However, other historians have so far tended to overlook this involve-
ment, or refer to it only laconically.106
The American involvement represented a certain desire for rationality
that was reflected in interwar diplomacy as part of a broader sociopoliti-
cal agenda. Science was also part of the language of international law or
jargon. The League’s interest in ensuring the international supply of raw
materials such as cotton, sugar, coal, and timber, and of supporting their
industries during a time of crisis, were based on statistical information
received from bureaus, ministries of economic affairs, and official experts
from different countries.107 Provided with this data on the current
production of these materials, and expectations of future production,
the League encouraged to establish international institutional mechan-
isms of cooperation and supervision to improve management of the
international economy.
The League’s – and other bodies’ – focus on information, data, and
statistics sharing as a mode of international governance also dominated
the timber issue.108 The League used this mode as a basis for international
105
As I discuss, for instance, in Section 3.2.2 of Chapter 3 (in which I analyze the prepar-
ations for the first rural hygiene conference (1931), the United States sent an official
delegation of professional experts and scientists to the conference.
106
Dorsey, for instance, mentions the American involvement very briefly, while other
historians (on which I elaborate in Section 2.2 of Chapter 2) skip it altogether:
“Because this was a league effort, it also drew attention from nations with no direct
stake and from some that were not league members, like the United States.” (D O R S E Y ,
supra note 3, at 40).
107
See the preliminary discussion in Section 4.2.1 in Chapter 4, which introduces the special
interest of the League in raw materials in general.
108
See, for instance, my discussion on the ways in which the League (and other independent
organizations involved) was looking for assistance with forestry and timber data, as
I explain in Section 4.3.1 (covering the interest in timber trade, which intended to
support the timber industry) in Chapter 4. Moreover, I return to some of these methods
 5. 5 t h e ce n tr al r ol e of sc i e n ti f i c e xp e rt i se 329

discourse that was clearly industrial and economic. In this sense, one can
study the timber case as an issue that exemplifies the increasing import-
ance of economic data and statistics, and the role of information-sharing
culture, in the international commercial trade in general,109 especially in
the post–World War I world.
This mode of science-based international discourse characterized dif-
ferent realms that troubled the international community during that
time: from pressing humanitarian social problems, such as fighting
narcotics and their distribution beyond national borders,110 to environ-
mental challenges. The League, together with other transnational organ-
izations and bodies (such as the Comité), contributed to the international
scientific observations and studies on wood and timber, which at that
point were not as developed as they had been under the (pro-scientific)
auspices of the League.
The notion of a knowledge society in the context of the League is
a fairly new concept in the research.111 Nevertheless, as far as it was used
in international relations studies, it usually applied to sociological and
humanitarian discussions rather than environmental perspectives. By the
end of the nineteenth century, the belief in scientific data had become
widespread across Western Europe and beyond. The European elite
believed that the continent had to build a technological, scientific, and
professional foundation for peace, prosperity, and stability. Thus, in that
respect, the League continued to develop preceding notions and socio-
political phenomena. In this sense, the League joined other newly created
international organizations112 that were working to improve different
universal realms.
The League, however, was different from the institutions that preceded
it as well as those working during its active period. Unlike these other
turn-of-the-twentieth-century transnational organizations, it did not

in Section 4.2.2, which deals with the institutional energy the League applied to inter-
national timber production and trade.
109
A D A M T O O Z E , S T A T I S T I C S A N D T H E G E R M A N S T A T E , 1 90 0 –1 9 45 : T H E M A K I N G O F
M O D E R N E C O N O M I C K N O W L E D G E (2001).
110
Philippe Bourmand, Turf Wars at the League of Nations: International Anti-Cannabis
Policies and Oversight in Syria and Lebanon, 1919–1939, in T H E L E A G U E O F N A T I O N S ’
W O R K O N S O C I A L I S S U E S , supra note 33, at 75.
111
See, among others, T H E K N O W L E D G E S O C I E T Y : T H E G R O W I N G I M P A C T O F
S C I E N T I F I C K N O W L E D G E O N S O C I A L R E L A T I O N S (Gernot Böhme & Nico Stehr eds.,
1986).
112
WOLFRAM KAISER & JOHAN SCHOT, WRITING THE RULES FOR EUROPE: EXPERTS,
C A R T E L S , A N D I N T E R N A T I O N A L O R G A N I Z A T I O N S 16 (2014).
330 th e en v iron me n ta l re gime of th e lea gue of n at ion s

focus on one specific or coherent aspect (such as setting standards for an

industrializing world), but aimed to serve the international community
in all matters that reflected and shaped international relations.
That desire, based on scientific conclusions, was emphasized more
vigorously in the environmental realm, and therefore strengthened the
role of scientists. The fear of the extinction of wild birds and whales, or of
losing control over environmental risks in the rural periphery, had
intensified not only the involvement, but also the importance, of scien-
tific discourse in environmental matters.

5.6 Devoted Individual Pioneers

This argument relates to the role taken by figures such as Professor José
Léon Suárez, the Argentinian scholar113 who served as the Chair of the
Committee of Experts for the Progressive Codification of International
Law, and led an intensive campaign to regulate whaling through inter-
national law.
Professor Suárez was an example of a group of professional experts and
representatives whom I described as pioneers and dedicated visionaries
that shaped central parts of the League’s environmental regime. Working
alongside him was Dr. Remington Kellogg, an American doctor of
zoology and paleontology and a member of the American Society of
Mammalogists. Like his Argentinean colleague Suárez, Kellogg also
became a true and passionate advocate for whale conservation, promot-
ing progressive whaling regulation under the auspices of the League.114
Other examples of such individuals who shaped interwar international
environmental law were experts such as Dr. George W. Field, who
encouraged the League to save migratory birds from oil pollution of the
sea. Like his American peer Kellogg, Dr. Field was also a trained biologist,
who presented a petition in 1931 urging the League and the international
community to fight against oil pollution in the oceans. Like Suárez, Field
approached the League (and the Economic Committee in particular),
sharing and furnishing it with his “private” scientific findings on the
pollution problem.115 This group of pioneers also includes diplomats

113
See, among other examples, my discussion on his role in the whaling dilemma in Section
2.3.1 (on the preparations led by Suárez to launch the special questionnaire) in
Chapter 2.
114
See my discussion on the role of Kellogg in Section 2.3.4 of Chapter 2.
115
See my discussion on Field’s involvement in the antipollution campaign in Section 1.1.1
of Chapter 1.
 5.6 devoted individual pioneers 331

such as the French statesman, Paul Elbel, who single-handedly alerted the
League to the problem of deforestation in the second half of the 1930s.116
Field, Suárez, Kellogg, Elbel, and other conservationists or preserva-
tionists were unsatisfied with some aspects of the interwar environmental
regime: and they expressed that in certain notes, diplomatic memoranda,
and official petitions. As I have shown, their legal environmental efforts
can be viewed as “private” crusades in the turbulent and complex world
of interwar international law. Although the League viewed these pioneers
as representatives of their homelands, and mentioned their national
affiliation whenever it discussed their role in various environmental
issues – protecting migratory birds, keeping the seas and oceans clean
of oil, regulating whaling and protecting the whale from extinction, and
defending forests and landscapes from spreading deforestation around
the globe – these different pioneers frequently acted as interwar lone
rangers, detached from their nations’ policies and formal views, instead
choosing to advocate for the sake of nature and its creatures.
In fact, the challenges these individuals worked so hard to solve would
probably not have received such institutional and international attention
without the efforts of these individuals. As I have explained in each
chapter, it was Suárez – and not the Codification Committee – who led
the League towards the idea of international whaling regulation, when
most maritime powers (such as Britain, Norway, Japan, and Denmark)
were reluctant to support the international management of whaling. And
it was Elbel who managed to persuade the Assembly in 1938 to order
a special investigation into the spreading problem of deforestation and
erosion, and who encouraged the Economic Committee to further con-
sider possible legal solutions with which the international community
could overcome this challenge and the environmental costs that increas-
ing timber production had created.
This is not to argue that the League would not have promoted these
environmental aims at all without the involvement of these pioneers.
However, the fact that several environmental problems became such
central issues in the interwar period should be at least partially attributed
to these individuals. While this certainly had something to do with their
personal involvement and agendas, it was also because of the institutional,
technical, and procedural opportunities that the League – with its commit-
tees of experts and special bodies – was able to offer these individuals. The

116
On Elbel’s involvement and warnings, which stood alone against the League and
spreading deforestation, see my discussion in Section 4.3.2 of Chapter 4.
332 th e e n viron me n t al r egi me o f th e le ague of n a tion s

committee of Experts, acting on behalf of the League’s Communication

and Transit Organisation, was a forum in which persons such as Dr. Field
could promote their own agendas, regardless of their homelands’ official
agendas. Similarly, the Committee of Experts for the Progressive
Codification of International Law, for which the League appointed
Professor Suárez as the Chairman, enabled Professor Suárez to guide
central parts of the interwar international legal agenda towards solving
the whaling dilemma. Moreover, the general open forum of the Assembly
gave Elbel a platform through which he could address the problem of
deforestation in front of the entire international community. As the
environmental missions were carried out at a time when the League (and
international law in general) was in transition, the impact of these individ-
uals and their role appears to have grown. In that sense, the League
attracted, facilitated, and encouraged these individuals’ efforts and their
belief in the ability of the League to find solutions to these environmental
challenges.

5.7 The League Did Not Suddenly Become

an Environmental Shrine
Last but not least, my final concluding argument tries to place the evalu-
ation of the League’s environmental regime in a more balanced context.
All of the abovementioned does not mean, however, that the League had
suddenly become a global institute of environmentalism. Indeed, although
several bodies that were involved in the different campaigns prioritized
concern for nature or animals, the League and other bodies did necessarily
make nature the priority of every case, whether the discussion focused on
dying migratory birds, polluted rivers and water sources, hunted whales, or
shrinking forests. As I have demonstrated, the different dilemmas the
League was working to solve integrated both conservationist and preser-
vationist perspectives almost simultaneously.117 But the League and other
117
Scholars tend to divide early environmentalism into two central approaches: conserva-
tion (which preceded preservation on the historical timeline), and preservation. The idea
of conservation is based on the belief that public land and natural resources should be
managed by methods of conservation, meaning that the environment and its resources
should be used by humans and managed in a responsible manner. According to this
notion, the value of the environment depends on the goods and services that it can
provide to humans. This viewpoint requires that the environment be used in a way that is
sustainable, and it ensures that the natural resources will be used in a manner that will
meet present-day needs for the resource without jeopardizing the supply of the natural
resource for future generations.
 5 . 7 su d d e nl y beco me an e n v i r o n mental shrine 333

bodies were sometimes more concerned about economic, industrial,

and political interests when they acted on these matters. The preserva-
tionist agenda was sometimes only as a secondary consideration, if any
at all.
When the League and other bodies became involved in the whaling
dilemma, they mostly treated whales as a lucrative source of raw mater-
ials. The special Codification Committee’s report from February 9, 1926
outlined its conclusions and stated that “it is possible, by means of
adequate regulation, to secure the economical exploitation of the prod-
ucts of the sea.”118 There, the Committee touched on a core environmen-
tal and commercial-materialist dilemma: economic exploitation versus
nature protection. The whaling case exemplifies the conflict between
environmental considerations and the economic interests of whaling
nations and the mighty whaling industry.
In many ways, the interwar discussions on oil pollution of the sea,
dangerous epidemics due to lacking sanitation in rural areas, possible
extinction of the whale, and rapid deforestation worldwide reflected the
basic dilemma of environmentalism in the early twentieth century. The
League was simply facing a tension between conservation and preserva-
tion in many of these matters. Looking at the internal discussion of the
Codification Committee as it reviewed the dozens of replies to the 1926
Questionnaire, one can sense the tension the League had identified
between different possible aims of its initiative:
Above all, we must realize that our efforts cannot be directed solely to
preventing the destruction of certain species of animals – quite apart

On the other side of the dilemma is the notion of preservation. The method of
preservation is much stricter than the conservationist approach. Under preservation of
the environment, the land and its natural resources should not be consumed by human-
kind and should instead be maintained in their pristine form. Nature and land have an
intrinsic value – each is valuable in itself, simply by existing.
These two views (conservation and preservation) have been at the center of many
historical environmental debates. See, for instance, the debate over the Hetch Hetchy
water project of the Hetch Hetchy Valley. In the early 1880s, the valley was being
considered as a potential site for a reservoir. At the same time, the city of San
Francisco was facing a water shortage. With the damming of the river and the creation
of a reservoir in the valley, it would be possible to supply ample drinking water to the
people of the city and its metropolis. However, this caused historical damage to nature in
the valley. See, for instance, J O H N W . S I M P S O N , D A M !: W A T E R , P O W E R , P O L I T I C S ,
AND PRESERVATION IN HETCH HETCHY AND YOSEMITE NATIONAL
P A R K H A R D C O V E R (2005).
118
Communication to the Council, the Member of the League of Nations and other
Governments, Feb. 9, 1926, LoN Archives, 19/49113/47284, at 6. See my discussion in
Section 2.3.1 of Chapter 2.
334 th e e nv iron me n ta l re gime of th e le ague of n at ion s

from their relative importance – which man’s rapacity threatens with

extermination, such as the cetaceans and pinnipeds (whales and seals).
Our aim should be a wider one – to preserve intact the whole productive
force of the riches of the sea, animal, vegetable and mineral, and by
a rational system of exploitation to make the sea permanently provide
the human race with the quantity and quality of food and economic
products of which it is capable.119
The Codification Committee relied on both conservationist and pres-
ervationist approaches. On the one hand, it put the blame on humans; the
Codification Committee specifically declared there was no purpose in
dedicating effort to preventing the destruction of only certain species,
and called to defend all120 marine fauna. But on the other hand, it did not
go the extra mile to choose preservation. Indeed, it also announced that
the League’s aim should be much wider in scope: to protect all of the
creatures and inhabitants of the sea. However, this agenda of favoring
preservation meant that “the whole productive force of the riches of the
sea” would be kept intact. This meant that nature was not necessarily
being protected because it was thought to have intrinsic value, but
because it was viewed as a reservoir of marine treasures that belonged
to humankind and its prosperity.
Similarly, in the case of deforestation, the League first discussed timber
as part of its interest in raw materials.121 As the Great Depression
deepened into a global crisis, the League supported the involvement of
other independent bodies that worked to save timber industries from
collapse, especially in the face of the claims arguing against Soviet
dumping. It was only then that the timber question evolved into
a problem of deforestation, revealing an alignment of the commercial
interests of Western nations – controlling the timber market and
119
Report of the Committee of Experts of the Exploitation of the Products of the Sea, Jan.
24, 1927, LoN Archives, 19/55517/47284, at 108 (emphasis added). See my analysis in
Section 2.3.2 of Chapter 2.
120
Compare with the suggestion mentioned in the later Conclusion Report of the Economic
Committee – Exploitation of the Products of the Sea: Note by the Secretariat – the
History of the Question, Oct. 14, 1927, LoN Archives, 19/62527/62527 (I), at 2, and more
specifically the reference the Economic Committee made (on p. 2) to “several
Governments,” which were of opinion that, “in any case,” protection measures should
be adopted for “certain species.” (See my discussion in Sections 2.3.2 and 2.3.4 of
Chapter 2).
121
See, for instance, my discussion in Section 4.2.2 (in which I elaborate on the institutional
energy the League applied to timber production and trade) and 4.3.1 (in which I describe
the League’s will to see regulation of timber trade in order to support the industry) in
Chapter 4.
 5 . 7 su d d e nl y beco me an e n v i r o n mental shrine 335

restraining production in order to prop up prices – with environmental

considerations – which promoted the idea of limitations on forest harvest
and timber production to prevent deforestation.122
Following this careful argument, it seems the League understood that
environmental protection was an important part of fortifying inter-
national security and building a new defense system in a rapidly changing
new world. In the case of rural hygiene, the League viewed the environ-
ment in a completely different way than it did in the other cases it
handled. Here, the environment – such as polluted water sources – was
considered to be danger threat from which the global community had to
protect itself.123 In Geneva and Bandoeng, when the League and the
Health Organisation were discussing different ways to protect rivers,
lakes, and springs, they did so not because they believed these water
sources had intrinsic value, but for other reasons: they wished to prevent
polluted water sources from becoming a sanitary-environmental danger
that might pose a threat to the (surrounding) human community.
In these discussions, the League used a discourse of security. The
growing fear about the surrounding environment – first across the
periphery, and then from the rural front into the urban centers of these
regions – did not stop in Eastern Europe or in East Asia: the League was
concerned the rural villages would find ways to transfer their pathogens
to the West.
As opposed to previous periods in modern times, as the historical
background briefly explained earlier, it was the League that depicted the
rural periphery as a dangerous environmental and sanitary space. Instead
of the common perspective that sanitary threats originated in densely
populated cities, it was the environment of the agrarian, remote, and
backward periphery in Europe and beyond that was highlighted as the
source of this global concern. Both conferences, and the campaign as
a whole, hoped to improve rural sanitation and hygiene: first in Europe,
and then – as the broader geographical perspective of the second rural
hygiene conference of 1937 had shown – around the world. The sanitary
security discourse the League and the other agencies used during the
campaign might actually have bridged the League’s more conventional
activities and its unexpected environmental initiatives. After all, when it
comes to peacekeeping in general and global security in particular, the

122
See Section 4.3.2 in Chapter 4.
123
See, for instance, my discussion in Section 3.2.2 (which covers the preparations for the
first rural hygiene conference of 1931) of Chapter 3.
336 th e e nv iron me n ta l re gime of th e le ague of n at ion s

League was supposed to confront other threats, and not polluted water,
rats, or breeding Asian flies.
To conclude this comparative discussion, the interwar environmental
regime was on many occasions depicted as a story of the tension between
clear economic, commercial, and industrial incentives on the one hand,
and environmental concerns on the other hand – just as it is sometimes
described today. As in the interwar period, conflicting interests of this kind
are still evident in our current discussions on the need for joint inter-
national campaigns to save nature. In most of the case studies that were
analyzed, we see the same fundamental tension between development
(powerful industries) and environmentalism (devoted NGOs and scientific
associations) that exists today. In the antipollution campaign and in the
whaling dilemma, there were those who refused to acknowledge the
warnings of NGOs and scientists, because these industries were trying to
dodge suggested initiatives. One can trace, for instance, the powerful
influence of industrial, commercial, and governmental corporations on
discussions for an international agreement to install separators on board
ships. The shipping industry claimed that the financial burden of obliga-
tory separators would lead to its collapse.124 Shipping and whaling125
industries clashed with the League and other bodies that tried to limit
these industries’ exploitation of natural resources. In many instances, these
industries claimed that the legal restrictions were not feasible in terms of
keeping the industry stable and businesses running.
As part of the general discussion on the exploitation of natural raw
materials, the issues of sea pollution, sanitary entanglements, whaling
diplomacy, and timber production and deforestation were all brought to
the attention of international law through a variety of national sover-
eignty dilemmas. This expanded scientific research and databases, and
increased the involvement of different NGOs, but it also heightened
institutional-political tensions between the League, these NGOs, and
scientific associations, and other states and bodies with their own indus-
trial and economic motivations.
As in other discussions, many states were reluctant to consider any
intervention in their national interests or domestic policies. In many of

124
See, for instance, the remarks made by the Chairman of the committee of experts,
C. H. Grimshaw, as I elaborate in Section 1.3.2 of Chapter 1.
125
In the case of timber, the will to regulate and control timber production and trade went
hand with hand with the warnings of the French delegation about spreading deforest-
ation due to timber trade.
 5 . 7 su d d e n l y be c o m e an e n v i r o nm e n t a l s h r i ne 337

these environmental concerns, as well as other humanitarian campaigns

that faded away as a result of political pressure within the League,126
different nations feared that international institutions, indifferent to their
interests, would interfere in their national interests and affect their
policies as a result. These patterns were reflected in other environmental
test cases handled by the League.

126
For example: refugees, women’s political rights, drug trafficking, and minorities –
problems that concerned both the newborn states in the aftermath of the Great War,
and the more stable nations of Europe. See, among others, T H E L E A G U E O F
NATIONS’ WORK ON SOCIAL ISSUES: VISIONS, ENDEAVOURS AND EXPERIMENTS
(supra note 33).
 u

Conclusion

The League of Nations failed in many of its actions, initiatives, and its
performance of international law. The renaissance that has been flour-
ishing in the old chambers of the Art Deco Palais des Nations and its
archives cannot create an alternative history that did not occur. Scholars
should study the League – something too few of them did in the second
half of the twentieth century – but like us, they should not attempt to
sketch a different history than the one that occurred.
As I have elaborated in each previous chapter, most of the League’s
environmental regime ended up as an apparent failure: none of the
conventions (in the case of polluted oceans and beaches, or the case of
the endangered whales),1 or the soft law mechanisms and other tech-
niques of international law and governance (like those used in the matter
of rural hygiene and fighting deforestation), ultimately succeeded in
protecting the surrounding nature.
Some might continue to dismiss the League’s role or significance in the
evolution of international environmental law, even if we manage to
convince them that such an environmental chapter in the interwar
chronicles existed. Since none of the League’s endeavors achieved any
real measurable success, the League’s contribution to the development
(and to the history) of environmentalism might continue to be viewed in
a minimal, almost skeptical, way.
Perhaps, indeed, all the League managed to do in the 1920s and 1930s
was to fail, again and again. Assuming, for the purpose of this discussion,
that such an assessment of the League is correct – even though recent
studies on the League have certainly challenged our assumptions about
its effectiveness – I believe there is still value in studying these failures.
1
This was particularly true in the whaling dilemma. Despite the series of detailed legal
arrangements of the 1930s, the whale nevertheless faced the danger of extinction in the
1930s and 1940s. Most of the scholars who have explored the history of whaling completed
their studies with an almost definitive conclusion that the League had failed in its efforts to
protect the whale by means of international law.

338
 c on c lusion 339

We do not discourage studies on other controversial steps in the history

of early environmentalism, or in the history of international environ-
mental law, because of the outcomes of their research objectives. In some
instances, the contrary is true. Scholars such as Mario Prost and Yoriko
Otomo, concluding their study of the (failing) 1900 London Convention,
are not afraid to agree that the “1900 London Convention . . . was
arguably never intended to abolish the large-scale extermination of
wild animals in Africa but rather to provide a legal framework within
which the symbolic hunt could continue.” They go on to say that, despite
this, “the significance of the 1900 London Convention on the inter-
national conservation project should not be underestimated. The
Convention . . . established key concepts and ideas of preservation that
came to dominate international conservation efforts in the twentieth
century.”2
No matter how much it failed, the League certainly had an important
role in the evolution of modern international environmental law, which
continues to impact legal arrangements today. I am not at all sure if any
of policymakers, scientists, environmental activists, jurists, and scholars
of the interwar period realized that the Convention against the Pollution
of the Sea by Oil3 (unsuccessful though it was) would set the tone and
legal mechanisms for marine protection for the rest of the century.
Similarly, in the case of whaling, it is likely that no one foresaw that
a legal “lapdog of the major whaling nations – would one day be trans-
formed into an anti-whaling institution, though in fact that is what
happened in 1982.”4
Moreover, with regard to the layered structure of international envir-
onmental law (and its history), the interwar period should not be over-
looked in terms of comparative legal history. Was there something new
under the sun5 in the 1920s and 1930s? This research shows there
certainly was. Although legal history tends to skip this period altogether,
it was not merely made up of a patchwork of incidental issues – some
more successful than others. As I have argued, several aspects of the
2
Mario Prost & Yoriko Otomo, British Influences on International Environmental Law: The
Case of Wildlife Conservation, in B R I T I S H I N F L U E N C E S O N I N T E R N A T I O N A L L A W :
1 9 15 – 20 15 , 192, 200 (Robert McCorquodale & Jean-Pierre Gauci eds., 2016).
3
Which was originally started with environmentalist-conservationist applications for inter-
national treaties for the sake of avian protection.
4
MARC CIOC, THE GAME OF CONSERVATION: INTERNATIONAL TREATIES TO PROTECT
T H E W O R L D ’ S M I G R A T O R Y A N I M A L S 10 (2009).
5
J. R. MCNEILL, SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN: AN ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
O F T H E T W E N T I E T H – C E N T U R Y W O R L D (2013).
340 co nc lusion

League’s environmental regime intertwined in the different cases it

handled, and we can track parallel sets of ideas and legal mechanisms
in some of its environmental campaigns. If we turn to a legal history
perspective, and comparative legal history methodology in particular,
these similarities can provide us with some relevant insights into the
toolbox that the League had in mind for its environmental initiatives. An
examination of the agenda for the 1900 London Conference on African
Wildlife, for instance, reveals similar provisions to those found in the
League’s whaling campaign.
This should not come as a surprise. Although the environmental
problems of the interwar period were very different, they did share
some common characteristics – such as a clear intersection between
nature, historical tradition, and economic interests – and players. For
instance, the idea to establish special reserves or sheltered areas in which
the killing of wild animals was prohibited appeared in the 1900 London
Convention, as well as in some of the drafts for whaling conventions that
were circulated between the League and other political centers and
capitals in the 1930s. Both conventions also tackled the issue of how
best to manage these reserved areas, and who would be trusted with the
responsibility for this international agreement. Moreover, the question
on the need for additional measures to reinforce the efficacy of hunting
(in the case of the 1900 London Conference) and whaling (in the case of
1931 Geneva Convention for Regulation of Whaling) was not limited
only to the early phase of 1900, the first decades of the twentieth century,
and interwar period.6
Before going into detail on the “practical” legal questions regarding
where and to what extent the League changed different aspects of inter-
national environmental law per se, I would briefly like to discuss the
general overview of the League’s contribution to the course of legal
environmentalism, and the shift that it effected in this regard.
As I have shown, in order to facilitate their way into the world of
international law, many interwar players turned to an urgent scientific-
based discourse. In its deliberations with other bodies on the issues of
whaling, deforestation, or oil pollution of the sea, the League was actually

6
This parallel–comparative question includes, among other things, the establishment of
closed hunting/whaling seasons to facilitate the rearing of young; the protection of
immature animals and mammals; the use of international hunting or whaling licenses to
raise revenue and control access to game or to whaling; and the prohibition of certain
hunting techniques that were deemed primitive and wasteful (nets and pitfalls), or means
that were considered unethical, such as poison and the use of explosives.
 c on clus ion 341

aware of the urgent need to find solutions, before it was too late. NGOs
repeatedly urged the League to use its force and authority to protect
whales, poisoned, dying birds, contaminated water sources in rural areas,
and disappearing forests.
Interwar environmentalism was, in many ways, a global discussion
with a clear sense of urgency. However, a look at several relevant works
reveals that this sense of urgency has not always been characteristic of
international environmental law.7 Largely due to the actions of NGOs
and subnational agents that identified the League as a relevant target and
partner for their advocacy, the League made it a priority to find solutions
to the modern environmental hazards and dilemmas that each test case
encompassed. As I have shown, these different solutions had to be crafted
using the toolbox of international law: whether they were concrete
agreements, standards, methods of information sharing, procedural dip-
lomatic routines of fixed committees and planned conferences, and
more. In response to this urgent and alarming discourse on environmen-
tal challenges and risks, the League introduced a variety of possible
international legal solutions.
In many ways, this broad environmental perspective of the interwar
period resonates with key features of international environmentalism at
the turn of the (twentieth) century. As I discussed earlier, the dilemma
between conservation and preservation, for instance, which was reflected
in other initiatives of early international environmental law, was also
evident in the League’s policies. However, the League also presented
other elements. Unlike environmental discussions that took place outside
the League,8 where the Anglo-American influence was keenly felt, the
environmental discussions and missions negotiated in Geneva were more
global in character, if one can use this term. Norway, Germany, China,
Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Romania, Venezuela, Argentina, and
other countries – whether independent or under colonial rule – were
involved in this phase of international environmental law.
7
See, e.g., J A N S C H N E I D E R , W O R L D P U B L I C O R D E R O F T H E E N V I R O N M E N T : T O W A R D S
AN I N T E R N A T I O N A L E C O L O G I C A L L A W A N D O R G A N I Z A T I O N (1979); L Y N T O N
C A L D W E L L , I N D E F E N S E O F E A R T H ( 19 7 2) ; E D I T H B R O W N W E I S S , I N F A I R N E S S T O
F U T U R E G E N E R A T I O N S (1989).
8
British and American officials, scientists, and representatives of nongovernmental organ-
izations (who were promoting preservation, conservation, and environmental causes)
were deeply involved in the bird treaties of 1916 and 1936. Moreover, Anglo-American
perspectives also gained a leading role in the matter of the Africa Wild Animal agenda,
whereas North-Atlantic statesmen and colonial administrators promoted their nations’
own agendas.
342 c on clusi on

The general overview of the interwar environmental regime supports

the claim that the League symbolized and facilitated the shift from trans-
national modes to internationalism. By saying this, however, I do not mean
to claim that the League was solely responsible for this shift. Moreover, it
should go without saying that the League was not the only institution to
deal with environmental concerns, conservationist agendas, or preserva-
tionist initiatives either in the first half of twentieth century or during the
interwar period. Certainly, other frameworks and collaborations used law
to address environmental causes and they developed it in complex ways,
often crossing sovereign national borders. The 1900 London Conference
on African Wildlife, for instance, and the Second International Conference
for the Protection of the Fauna and Flora of Africa9 that followed it,
operated under the auspices of British Empire10 at the beginning of the
new century, and later in the 1930s. Apart from the League, there were
other institutions that had their own international environmental agendas,
and they promoted similar ideas both before the rise of the League and also
during its lifetime. The world has seen, for example, the creation of the
International Union of Biological Science, which was established in 1925
by P. G. van Tienhoven, the founder of the Netherlands Commission for
International Nature Protection. Almost one decade later, in the mid-
1930s, this Union had evolved into the International Office for the
Protection of Nature.11
Moreover, my analysis here does not claim that the League was,
relatively speaking, the most progressive institution in terms of environ-
mentalist scale or criteria. There were also other environmental initia-
tives that were promoted shortly before and during the interwar period as
well. Some of these other environmental measures sometimes offered
more comprehensive environmental perspectives on certain issues than
the League was able to contribute. Some would claim, for instance, that
the 1900 London Conference and the Second International Conference
for the Protection of the Fauna and Flora of Africa (from 1938) revealed
a much stronger commitment to protecting the world’s fauna. Similarly,
the Second International Conference of 1938, for which the League was
not responsible, reflected an “emerging sense of the wild animal’s
welfare . . . [that attributed] characteristic[s] such as innocence and
9
Of May 1938.
10
With the colonial self-esteem of the British, as suggested by Prost & Ottomo. (See supra
note 2, especially between pages 197–205.)
11
Which is known today as the International Union for the Conservation of Nature
(IUCN). See C I O C , supra note 4, at 40–41.
 c on c lusion 343

beauty to those beings,”12 as some of the scholars suggested.13 Some of

these were, perhaps, more advanced environmentalist approaches than
the ones expressed in the discussions on the whaling dilemma or poi-
soned birds in the 1920s and 1930s, under the (direct) auspices of the
League.
However, having said that, it is important to remember that during the
interwar period, both regional and superregional problems were at stake.
Since local domestic steps were inadequate to address these issues, collect-
ive action between the nations of Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Oceania
was necessary. This was something that could not have been promoted by
any international institution but the League. Unlike earlier or parallel
campaigns that also turned to super-state legal mechanisms, such as the
case of protecting wildlife in Africa and Northern America, the League
came up with solutions that aimed to overcome constraints of national-
domestic and regional-international legal dimensions.
This shift to internationalism was not only reflected in the substantive
issues that were at stake. The interwar environmental regime was pri-
marily based on a procedural and legal routine that supported the
environmental challenges that confronted the League. Handling envir-
onmental concerns (including the ones handled by the League) with
transnational legal measures was not an interwar invention. As I have
described in each chapter, in most of the test cases, transnational frame-
works preceded the League.
However, the League brought something completely different to the
table. Earlier attempts to cope with the fear of overexploitation or
extinction of world fauna (such as whales, seals, and migrating birds),
or with rural hygiene, took place before the establishment of the League.
As I have described, some of these issues not only became subjects for
domestic and national conservationist regulations, but were transferred
into several legal transnational arrangements. Yet, most of these attempts
were based on specific, isolated ad hoc, initiatives.
These environmental law missions show how and to which extent the
League shifted these discussions (which were generally of interest to
some of the parties involved) and kept them going, thanks to its regular
institutional routine. With the daily agenda of the different departments
in Geneva, scheduled discussions, meetings, sessions, and conferences,

12
Prost & Otomo, supra note 2, at 9.
13
See, e.g., Yoriko Otomo & Cressida Limon, Dogs, Pigs and Children: Changing Laws in
Colonial Britain, 40 A U S T R A L I A N F E M I N I S T L. J. 163 (2014).
344 c on clusio n

most of these environmental issues continued to be addressed. It was the

regular, systematic – almost bureaucratic – institutional work of the
League that triggered and reignited these discussions, squeezing them
into different modes of operation. In this way, these issues developed
their own dynamic as part of international law. Indeed, earlier and
parallel transnational attempts to regulate whaling used some of the
same mechanisms as the League (such as conferences, conventions, and
scheduled meetings), but the League offered – and practiced – an overall
experience of ongoing international law and international governance.
Moreover, as I have demonstrated, many of the League’s environmental
initiatives were put on hold because of World War II. However, some of
these initiatives continued regardless of the deteriorating stability of the
1930s, even though they had been directly affected by the Nazi invasion of
Poland. The League’s continuing bureaucratic institutional work did not
let the whaling dilemma, the efforts for the special convention against the
pollution of the sea by oil, the campaign to improve rural hygiene policies,
and to an extent the fight against deforestation, to become overshadowed
by other pressing problems that troubled the interwar world. These envir-
onmental challenges had a place and a relevant forum at the League, with
the attention of officials, national representatives, professional experts,
scientists, formal reports, and publications. Internal bodies and depart-
ments of the League relied on this institution for its bureaucratic and legal
products (such as papers, proposals for circulation, and drafts for submis-
sion) – not only in the case of the environment and natural resources, but
as part of an institutional routine.
In each of the environmental challenges, I have woven the interwar story
between the past and future. This shows that the stories are not isolated in
the time capsule of the 1920s and 1930s, but are part of a larger, continuing
plot of environmental legal history. Moreover, in the evolving process of
codifying an international environmental regime, the League did not only
contribute the “substantive” issues of whaling or antipollution mechan-
isms per se. It had also supplied international environmental law with
mechanisms of procedure that allowed for the maintenance of environ-
mental challenges. An example of this is the Conferences of the Parties
(COP) method, which literally flourished during the interwar period and
was promoted by the League.14 This method of performance, which
14
Early, and – as I argue – rather formative experiences of that kind can be seen in the
variety of international gatherings that the League was working towards. As a matter of
fact, the League began convening regular conferences on environmental questions (such
as for the whaling problem, first in 1931 and then in 1937; as well as on the increasing
 c on c l usion 345

usually takes place annually or biennially, has become the most common
practice of multilateral environmental agreements in operation today.
In the institutional realm, the Economic Committee stands as one of
the prominent centers of the League’s environmental regime. In almost
every case that involved environmental considerations, whether they had
to do with conservation, preservation, or proto-sustainability, it was the
Economic Committee that managed and supervised the translation of the
discussion (in the relevant cases) into precise legal terms. Some might
wonder why the League handled such a large volume of environmental
missions when there were so many other problems that were considered
far more dangerous to global security and peacekeeping than the future
of whales, trees, and migrating birds. Perhaps this study can shed some
light on this question.
The Economic Committee, with its intensive involvement in a variety
of environmental concerns, took the League one step further. The
Committee considered all of these issues to be an important part of
postwar stability and security. In that sense, timber was part of economic
security and stability because of its importance for global economic
recovery. Similarly, rural hygiene and proper sanitation in global periph-
eries were crucial to assuring international security.
These environmental concerns were not at all part of the League’s
official, legal, charter. It was the institutional routine and the daily work –
and a broad legal interpretation – of the League (and the Economic
Committee in particular) that made the environmental challenges an
integral part of its activity.
It also seems that the transition from an ad hoc routine to international
law and international governance was assisted by two other general
characteristics of interwar diplomacy. First, it was a time of science and
scientific discourse. In each environmental story, the central role of
scientific expertise and scientists from a variety of disciplines cannot be
overlooked.
The League and the other bodies involved (both those who supported
environmental causes as well as those who were opposed) often turned to
scientific terms, discourse, and data when they discussed nature in terms of
international law. There was something in the League’s institutional

danger of pollution of the sea by oil, and the special rural hygiene conferences in Geneva,
1931, and Bandoeng, 1937). During these conferences, the League, either through special
committees or certain institutes within its framework (such as the Health Organisation),
reviewed reports on the current status and on the progress that had been made towards
the implementation of these international legal arrangements.
346 c on cl usio n

framework that was not only accessible to representatives of science, but

literally invited them to take part. Together with its procedural routine, the
League not only enabled, but actually supported and encouraged, the
discourse of professionals and experts throughout its daily schedule.
Each environmental dilemma – the whaling dilemma, the campaign that
fought against the pollution of the sea by oil, the sanitation missions to
improve rural hygiene in Eastern Europe and East Asia, and deforestation –
all relied on scientific argumentations and calls for action. Moreover, some
of the test cases in this study – whaling and the rural hygiene campaigns in
particular – were initiated by scientists and scientific observations, but also
actively brought biologists, medical doctors, and other experts together.
Second, when the League first started to handle environmental issues,
the developing environmental regime changed the framework of who got
to play the game of international law – something that worried certain
powers, who were concerned for their economic and industrial interests.
The different test cases that I have analyzed show how the League was
loyal to its belief in international law, international governance, and
cooperation, and how it was not as loyal to old-school, traditional,
diplomacy. The interwar environmental regime shattered the closed
doors of the diplomatic club that dominated international relations
until 1914. New states, old powers, diplomats, scientists and scientific
associations, subnational agents, industrial consortiums, independent
economic-commercial organizations, devoted NGOs, and the media –
all worked with or turned to the League as a forum where they could
bargain, promote their agendas for protecting nature, or defend their
interests and assets.
Instead of the familiar powers that typically governed world politics,
other states identified the environmental dilemmas and discussions as
a chance to influence internationalism. In other words, it is uncertain,
perhaps, whether all the participants were concerned specifically for the
survival of whales, migrating birds, and forests, or whether they were
concerned only to the extent of keeping the sea and shores clean of
drifting black oil, or fighting pollution of water sources in rural areas.
Whereas previously, these states and other bodies had rarely been offered
the chance to make themselves heard on the international stage, sud-
denly, they had access to unfamiliar tools and possibilities. This allowed
them to become involved in shaping international law and the world
order in ways that had not been possible before – at least not to that
extent or with these modes of operation. When the League distributed
a questionnaire, or gathered a professional committee, the game of
 con c lusion 347

international law became much more pluralistic, democratic, and open

for (almost) anybody who wished to be heard.
Indeed, powers such as Britain and France participated in many of the
discussions, including those that incorporated reflections – and policies –
from their colonial territories. However, states that did not play a leading
role (if any at all) prior to the Paris Peace Conference soon realized the value
that the League’s new modes offered them. Brazil, Roumania, Norway,
China, Argentina, New Zealand, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, and
other countries influenced the interwar environmental regime in a variety
of ways: either by actively participating in the ongoing crafting of inter-
national law, or by carrying out the League’s actions. The way the League
managed the environmental regime brought new voices and fresh perspec-
tives – ones that did not necessarily favor or protect the obvious British,
French, and other hegemonic nations’ interests. As the Brazilian govern-
ment was quick to point out in its reply to the League during the discussion
on the matter of developing an international whaling law, “[T]he democra-
tization of the world, the equality of States . . . are the constituent elements of
a new international order which necessitates the careful definition of recip-
rocal rights and duties.”15 In that sense, the League also contributed to the
expansion of the scope of international environmental law. When earlier
stages in the evolution of transnational environmental law were confined to
the circle of “civilized” European imperial powers – France, Germany,
Belgium, Spain, Italy, Portugal and, most eminently, Britain16 – the interwar
phase changed the rules of the game, at least to a certain extent.
Alongside states that were interested in becoming part of international
law and international governance, the League especially welcomed –
perhaps more than ever before – NGOs and subnational bodies. This
pattern of opening the floor of international law to non-state actors was
not unique to environmental causes (either conservationist or preserva-
tionist), and one can characterize the interwar period as the golden hour
of NGOs and organized civilian diplomacy. As I have demonstrated,
these environmental challenges not only enabled NGOs to be part of
the discussion, but also allowed them to push the League to use its
capacity to set in motion an environmental regime.
This is not to argue, however, that these new voices – of either
“supporting actor” states or devoted NGOs – completely changed the
15
Opinion of Professor Clovis Bevilaqua, Legal Advisor to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
Received on Feb. 28, 1927, League of Nations Archives, 19/57699/47284, at 2–3.
16
For instance, these states were the ones which took part at the 1900 London Conference
on the Preservation of Wild Animals.
348 c on clusio n

course of interwar international law. International environmental law

was still governed by traditional powers, and they did not disappear once
the League stepped into the picture. And yet, as a result of the intensifying
involvement of the League in these campaigns, these traditional powers
did seem to be losing their exclusive grip on internationalism as a whole,
and early environmental frameworks in particular. In Britain’s view (in
the matter of the whaling dilemma), the League’s involvement jeopard-
ized the future of international law. It believed that the call for open
involvement in the crafting of international (environmental) arrange-
ments would simply invite other states to join the game.17
Moreover, throughout its environmental regime, the League was a beacon
for international law and cooperation – an institution that humanity could
trust and believe in. After all, the League was meant to lead the world into
a phase of peace, stability, progress, and international cooperation. By offer-
ing its innovative toolbox to these new participants, the League allowed them
to “[re-imagine] themselves as actors in global governance.”18 It was not just
the League’s desire to become a relevant and accessible institution that
secured it such status in international governance; by turning to the
League for solutions to environmental problems, states and non-state bodies
also ensured the League’s prominence in this regard.
Moreover, the League offered functional, feasible, and practical tools with
which these new players could access and shape international law directly. It
seems that genuine hope was not enough, and if the League had not had as
much to offer as it did, it is likely that internationalism would have been
generated rather differently from how I have depicted it. The technical
modes of operation, such as open-for-discussion questionnaires and legal
documents, were not familiar to most of the players who took part in the
new international, legal, and diplomatic game of the League. But, the League
also practiced other, semilegal mechanisms that made the sense of inter-
national law less elusive and more approachable – inviting, even.
In many ways, the “spectacular gathering”19 of the world’s statesmen,
jurists, experts, and scientists from different fields would not have been
possible without the soft law practices the League offered to its audience.

17
Minutes of the Interdepartmental Conference on the Question on International Control
of Whaling, Oct. 12, 1927, National Archives of Canada, RG 23, vol. 1081, File 721–
19–5[3].
18
Steve Charnovitz, The Emergence of Democratic Participation in Global Governance
(Paris, 1919), 10 I N D . J. G L O B A L L E G A L S T U D . 45, 77 (2003).
19
Anna-Katharina Wöbse, Oil on Troubled Water? Environmental Diplomacy in the League
of Nations, 32 D I P L O M A T I C H I S T . 519, 521 (2008).
 con c lusion 349

The collecting, sharing, and distributing of information, for instance,

regardless of the core issues of environment, nature protection, and
exploitation of natural resources, was one of the central characteristics
of the interwar period in general, and the environmental regime in
particular. These mechanisms of supervision and monitoring character-
ized much of the work and negotiations of the League’s environmental
regime.
Since I started this concluding part with a general assessment of the
League’s (environmental) policy that failed, this is perhaps an appropri-
ate place to explain what the League was not doing in terms of environ-
mentalism. Among the issues that did not feature in any international
discussions in the 1920s and 1930s are climate change (with the exception
of singular single note made by the French delegation on the matter of
deforestation in the late 1930s), depletion of the ozone layer, or recycling
as a systematic policy of treating human garbage. Some of which, if not
all, were not yet known to scientists and experts during that period, but
that is perhaps a question for another research in legal history and
environmental studies.
However, one might also question why the League did not address –
whether intentionally or inadvertently – several other issues that were
known to interwar political, environmental, and economic circles. Issues
such as air pollution, for instance, had been part of the public discussion
in the urban regions of several countries as early as the second third of the
nineteenth century, and also at the turn of the century. What is more, in
Britain, for instance, policymakers successfully argued that there was
a link between the prevention of air pollution,20 public health (and
mortality), and relevant legislation. Why, then, did the League’s environ-
mental regime not address these many issues that were part of different
public discussions, such as mining and its environmental effect on scenic
areas and the natural landscape, coastal protection (beyond the oil
pollution issues), and more?21 These other environmental issues were
clearly recognized as problems that humankind (through industrial-
economic development in particular) was responsible for – not only in
the case of carbon emissions. The same argument can be made for

20
Mostly in industrialized urban centers.
21
International conservation law, with its special focus on the governance of animal life,
played a leading – and quite intensive – role in international diplomacy long before the
Paris Peace Conference established the League. Different colonial nations, superpowers,
and states invested great effort in trying to promote transnational concern for conserva-
tion measures, especially in Africa.
350 c on clus ion

endangered migrating species other than whales and seabirds (which the
League advocated for so intensively). The European bison, for instance,
another species that became endangered due to human expansion, was
the subject of an ongoing international media campaign during the
interwar period.22 However, unlike the whale or certain bird species,
the migrating bison never found its way to Geneva and never had the
chance to become a subject of international environmental law.
The example of the European bison serves as a relevant example of
what the League avoided doing during the interwar period in terms of
concrete environmental concerns. Like the whale, the bison too was
hunted for meat (and sport). Moreover, the bison was also an inter-
national creature that frequently crossed several European borders
and jurisdictions during its seasonal journeys (also like the whale).
I have focused on the territorial-sovereignty barrier that justified the
protection of migratory birds and international whales using inter-
national law (as well making spreading rural diseases a subject of
international sanitation policies), but the woeful example of the
bison challenges my earlier explanation. It seems that the League (or
its bodies, departments, and officials) simply did not consider all
endangered species to be equal or worthy of protection. Based on its
legal-environmental characteristics, the bison too became a subject of
certain transnational legal arrangements – but not ones managed by
the League. Like other less fortunate species of that period, the
European bison sadly remained dependent on domestic, inter-
imperial, and regional legislations for survival. This intriguing (coun-
ter) case23 perhaps deserves further comparative study, especially
given the fact that just like whales and birds, the bison also had

22
Raf de Bont, Extinct in the Wild: Finding a Place for the European Bison – 1919–1932, in
S P A T I A L I Z I N G T H E H I S T O R Y O F E C O L O G Y : S I T E S , J O U R N E Y S , M A P P I N G S 165 (Raf de
Bont & Jens Lachmund eds., 2017).
23
One might claim there are a few alternative explanations for the League’s “indifference”
on other environmental issues. When such concerns were handled by other bodies, such
as in the case of the protection of wild animals (which was discussed as part of
a transnational framework of the multilateral 1900 London Convention for the
Preservation of Wild Animals, Birds, and Fish in Africa), perhaps the League felt that
there were other forums that could solve these issues using transnational arrangements.
Another explanation as to why these issues were not addressed in the interwar regime is
that they did not have a powerful agency (either a state, NGO, or devoted scientist) to
advocate for them, such as in the case of deforestation, whaling, or migrating birds. For
a study on the London Convention of 1900 see, among others, J O H N M. M A C K E N Z I E ,
THE EMPIRE OF NATURE: HUNTING, CONSERVATION, AND BRITISH IMPERIALISM
( 1 99 7 ).
 co n clusion 351

independent conservationist and preservationist civilian associations

that drew international attention for their campaign.
Having briefly described the environmental problems that the League
did not tackle, I shall also mention which states did not participate in its
environmental regime. The absence of Germany (as a state) from
almost all of the League’s discussions on the central issues at stake
seems rather surprising. Environmental historians have studied the
relatively developed German conservationist approaches and tenden-
cies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and yet there
was not a single case in which Germany (or German voices) took on
a leading role in the international relations of the environmental
regime. Indeed, Germany had a strained relationship with the League,
especially after Hitler and the Nazis came to power.24 But given the
fairly developed environmental political streams within German society
and politics at that time, not to mention Germany’s experience in
transnational environmental networks and frameworks,25 the fact that
German officials and NGOs did not play a significant role in the
League’s environmental regime (which was not restricted to member
states alone, as the American case shows), is surprising.
But besides this seeming exception, one can identify a general charac-
teristic that was in common to most of the League’s environmental
regime: the notion of migration and constant movement. This notion
challenged and triggered interwar international environmental law. In
the case of the gray whale, for instance, migration meant that it could
travel almost 10,000 miles between its feeding ground in the Bering and
Chukchi seas and its breeding grounds in Baja California – a track that is
the longest known migration route of any mammal on Earth. Likewise,
the League faced issues to do with migration and traveling in the form of
spreading rural diseases, poisoned seabirds, ships and oil slicks drifting
out in the ocean, and strove to find legal solutions for these problems.26

24
In October 1933, Nazi Germany announced its withdrawal from both the Disarmament
Conference and the League.
25
On early German environmentalism see, e.g., F R A N K U E K Ö T T E R , T H E G R E E N E S T
N A T I O N ? A N E W H I S T O R Y O F G E R M A N E N V I R O N M E N T A L I S M (2014), or BE R N H A R D
GISSIBL, THE NATURE OF GERMAN IMPERIALISM: CONSERVATION AND THE
P O L I T I C S O F W I L D L I F E I N C O L O N I A L E A S T A F R I C A (2016).
26
However, it should also be noted that the definitions and frameworks of internationalism
sometimes rather restricted the League’s competence when it came to migration.
Diplomacy, for instance, used a narrower definition of migration than scientists and
biologists. In that sense, interwar international law was restricted only to those species
that regularly crossed and challenged national borders by their seasonal movements.
352 c on c lusion

Moreover, the League was also enthusiastic about developing forms of

soft international law (such as the collecting, producing, and sharing of
information, scientific exploration, and involvement of experts and pro-
fessionals) when it came to combating spreading diseases in rural per-
ipheries as environmental threats.
Moreover, it seems that in most cases where the League was willing to
step in to solve environmental problems, it mostly only did so if these
issues were not locked within sovereign states, their territories, or sub-
jected to any domestic applicable law. Indeed, in some cases, such as the
whaling campaign and the discharge of oil, the League grappled with the
notion of state sovereignty. Yet in general, while biologists and early
environmentalists were deeply worried for the survival of species that
remained within the confines of a single state, in these issues the League –
and international law – generally kept out of the way.
This ambivalent line continues as one attempts to draw conclusions
about the interplays between the League, its environmental regime, and
the multilayered imperialist and colonialist world. As some of the envir-
onmental case studies I have presented show, the League did enter into
the complex relations between imperial powers and other countries
(including those that were subject to the political influence of imperial
powers in regions beyond Europe). The rural hygiene campaign pictured
how the interwar story – and its environmental concerns – challenged
imperial networks and power relations. During its work on the different
sanitary problems that put local, national, and global public health at risk,
the League invested a great deal of scientific, comparative, and profes-
sional effort into revising possible policies with which these dangers
could be confronted. After the first international Rural Hygiene
Conference (Geneva, 1931), the League convened a second, larger con-
ference: the Intergovernmental Conference on Rural Hygiene in Far
Eastern Countries (Bandoeng, Java 1937) assimilated colonial and imper-
ial tensions into the campaign. As I have demonstrated, some of these
depict the imperial world (or worlds) not as a simplistic, bipolar, or
dichotomous system, but rather as a multilayered, complex, and hetero-
geneous universe.27

27
At this point, it is worth mentioning another relevant historical fact. Whether or not this
was nothing more than a coincidence, Bandoeng (which also spelled “Bandung”) also
held another conference that related directly to colonialism. Bandung Conference of
April 1955 was the first large-scale Afro-Asian conference convened in order to coordin-
ate a common policy in a postcolonial world. Twenty-nine states, most of which were
newly independent, aimed to promote Afro-Asian political, economic, and cultural
 c on clus ion 353

It is unrealistic to think that we can fully comprehend an issue simply

by looking at its pros and cons, and the same is true of the environmental
agenda. The League (which was not a single, unified entity, as I have
noted before), as a new and unfamiliar institution focused on recogni-
tion, legitimacy, and support worldwide, also had its own considerations,
interests, and agenda to worry about. As I have argued in the case of the
whaling, when several popular newspapers and magazines approached
the Secretariat to mobilize the League for certain measures to protect the
whale, officials within the League identified this as an opportunity to
bolster the League’s international public relations and image.
Along with devoted scientists, mammalogists, jurists, businessmen,
representatives of different industries, diplomats, NGOs, officials, and
professional experts, the League’s environmental regime had enough
room to include journalists and newspapers, too. Thanks to petitions
from the Herald Tribune and the Times, high-ranking League officials
saw the fierce battle of whaling (also) as an opportunity to promote the
growing legitimacy, authority, and public relations of the League as
a newborn institution – and to support the survival of the whale of course.
I opened these concluding remarks with a general “acknowledgment”
of the failures of the League’s environmental regime. However, I would
like to adjust that conclusion slightly. After all, even if we agree that the
League failed, how successful is our own current international environ-
mental law? And can we point at great or successful milestones in the
ways in which global environmentalism faces the challenges of the
ecological crisis? In spite of the rapidly growing number of legal instru-
ments, data collections, new technologies, awareness, and mechanisms,
only a few international arrangements have been labeled as successful in
managing to halt environmental degradation to any great degree: first
and foremost, the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone
Layer.28 The rest, or at least a large number – including climate change

cooperation and to oppose declining colonialism or neocolonialism in any nation.

Historians of postcolonial studies tend to identify this conference, and Bandung, as
a central event in the rise of the Third World movement and in the evolution of
decolonialism. On the interplays between Bandung Conference and colonialism see
J A M I E M A C K I E , B A N D U N G 1 9 55 : N O N – A L I G N M E N T A N D A F R O – A S I A N
S O L I D A R I T Y (2005), M A K I N G A W O R L D A F T E R E M P I R E : T H E B A N D U N G M O M E N T
A N D I T S P O L I T I C A L A F T E R L I V E S (Christopher J. Lee ed., 2010), B A N D U N G 1 95 5:
L I T T L E H I S T O R I E S (Antonia Finnane & Derek McDougall eds., 2010).
28
See, D A N I E L B O D A N S K Y , T H E A R T A N D C R A F T O F I N T E R N A T I O N A L E N V I R O N M E N T A L
L A W (2010); P H I L I P P E S A N D S , J A C Q U E L I N E P E E L , A D R I A N A F A B R A & R U T H
M A C K E N Z I E , P R I N C I P L E S O F I N T E R N A T I O N A L E N V I R O N M E N T A L L A W (2012);
354 c on clus ion

regulations, unfortunately – are still either controversial and suffer from

a powerful anti-coalition, or they are difficult to enforce in our twenty-
first century world, despite its alleged improved possibilities compared to
those of the League. Moreover, considering that environmental degrad-
ation continues to worsen, and that regional and global problems remain
unsolved, it seems that a more cautious legal-historical assessment of the
discipline is relevant. It is necessary to understand the possible reasons
why international environmental law failed to introduce an accepted
solution, and why it has not been (successfully) enforced on the ground
with regard to today’s pressing environmental challenges.
By trying to sum up where the League succeeded and where it fell
short, one should take note of the involvement, of several “penitent
butchers”29 in at least some of the campaigns I have analyzed in this
study. On the other side of diplomats, scientists, officials, and NGOs that
were advocating for wild animals, birds, clean shores, and forests, there
were also the lobbies of hunters and the industries that threatened these
creatures and environmental interests in Geneva. Their presence during
decisions and articulations of the legal arrangements might provide
another explanation for why several nations were willing to sign and
participate in these measures of global environmental regulations.
However, the involvement of game protective and propagation associ-
ations, whaling industries, and shipping companies in the negotiating
process of each realm can also elucidate some of the treaties’ inherent
weaknesses.
Some scholars have argued that in this involvement, the “hunting”
agencies were largely working to establish “uniform game regulation
across national borders.”30 All that these interest groups were doing
was trying to provide a level playing field for hunters, and to reduce the
illegal international transport of products, which jeopardized and dam-
aged their commercial interests. Further research might review this
assumption vis-à-vis the interwar environmental regime. At the closure
of this research, I believe it is also the appropriate place to note that much
of what I have traced is a (or another) “history of privileged men,” as
Prost and Otomo have pointed out.31 After all, I have looked at persons,
departments, and organizations that have been recorded as primary

PATRICIA BIRNIE, ALAN BOYLE & CATHERINE REDGEWELL, INTERNATIONAL LAW

A N D E N V I R O N M E N T (2009).
29
As Cioc calls them. See C I O C , supra note 4, at 11.
30
Id.
31
Prost & Otomo, supra note 2, at 194.
 c on clus ion 355

actors in the international domain: diplomats, representatives, scientists,

NGOs, and officials, side by side with interest groups such as the industry
(in the cases of the Convention on the Pollution of the Sea by Oil, as well
as in the whaling dilemma and the timber problem), administrators, and
politicians who have shaped the terms of what Arjun Appadurai called
“tournaments of value.”32 One can argue that without further research
that would uncover the role of others – for instance, indigenous peoples,
who were subjects of or influenced by the decisions made by the League
(as well as by those it did not make) – we cannot claim that we have a full
understanding, or a full picture, of this chapter in the evolution of
international environmental law.

32
Arjun Appadurai, Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value, in T H E S O C I A L
L I F E O F T H I N G S : C O M M O D I T I E S I N C U L T U R A L P E R S P E C T I V E 2 1 ( Arjun Appadurai
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 INDEX

Introductory Note
References such as ‘178–79’ indicate (not necessarily continuous) discussion of a
topic across a range of pages. Wherever possible in the case of topics with many
references, these have either been divided into sub-topics or only the most significant
discussions of the topic are listed. Because the entire work is about the ‘League of
Nations’, the use of this term (and certain others which occur constantly throughout
the book) as an entry point has been minimised. Information will be found under the
corresponding detailed topics.
abstract transnational agreements, international, 63, 75–76, 140, 144,
179, 327 163, 165, 168, 262, 336, 340
actors, 45, 89, 95, 118, 132, 145, 176, agricultural associations, 200, 216
315–16, 320, 348 agriculture, 246, 258, 262, 278, 281, 284,
ad hoc initiatives, 93, 182, 189, 272, 304, 309, 320, 325
300–2 air pollution, 349
Adam, Rachelle, 21 Alston, Phillip, 29–30
advocacy, 49, 56, 63, 253, American environmental advocacy,
257, 341 152, 180
environmental, 152, 180 American experts, 57–59, 327
Africa, 18, 21–22, 193, 316, 319, 339, American involvement, 180, 327–28
342–43 American Society of Mammalogists,
agencies, 13, 25, 30, 89, 147, 192, 199, 151, 153, 180, 321, 325, 328, 330
234, 241, 250 ancylostomiasis, 224, 233–34
governmental, 148, 323 Anglo-Norse whaling industries,
agendas, 15, 17, 90, 94–95, 141–42, 106, 298
211–12, 281–82, 309–10, animals, 38, 41, 44, 56, 116, 125, 135,
314–15, 331–32 162, 168, 332–34
conservationist, 25, 85, 105, 150, 153, Antarctic, 102–3, 114, 164, 169, 183
158, 265, 342 seas, 103–4, 111, 116, 169
economic, 253, 287 Anthropocene, 3, 194
environmental, 3, 30, 77, 342, 353 anti-pollution campaign, 40, 42, 48–79,
grassroots, 85, 314 85–86, 313–14, 320–21,
agents, 35, 93, 239, 279 327, 336
subnational, 341, 346 anti-pollution convention, 39, 49–50,
agrarian cooperatives, 216, 322 55, 60, 76–78, 82–83, 299, 302,
agreements, 25, 27, 156–58, 166–67, 304, 313–14
170–71, 174, 175, 271–73, anti-pollution initiative, 39, 76, 320
306, 307 Anyanova, Ekaterina, 39, 81

365
366 in de x
Appadurai, Arjun, 355 bird life, 38, 56, 64, 74
aquatic animals, 129–30, 133, 138, 145 birds, 35, 36–38, 42, 56–57, 66–68,
archival research, 6, 11, 30 73–74, 81, 294–95, 312, 321
Argentina, 112, 116, 165, 168, 174, 177, migratory, 78, 81, 322, 325, 330, 332,
330, 341, 347 343, 345, 346, 350
articulation, 62, 139, 243, 354 poisoned, 39, 42, 323, 343, 351
legal, 175, 305 protection, 19, 23, 26, 38, 41, 49, 70,
Asia, 188, 191, 193, 218, 220, 232, 234, 74, 82, 85
236, 316, 318–19 bison, 350
East, 188–89, 191, 201–2, 204–5, Black Sea, 125, 133
220–24, 225–26, 228–29, blue whales, 19, 148, 161, 166, 168,
236–38, 242, 316–18 184, 294
Assembly, 16, 93–95, 149–50, 154, 157, borders, 46, 201, 242, 293, 295, 320
273, 274–75, 277–83, 302–3, European, 87–89, 220, 318, 350
331–32 national, 198, 294–95, 329,
associations, 46, 50, 127, 180, 210–11, 342, 354
215–16, 322, 325 new, 214, 247
civilian, 55, 165, 351 Brazil, 126, 174, 250, 310, 316, 347
scientific, 13, 63, 90, 162, 172, 181, Britain see United Kingdom.
293, 320, 336, 346 bubonic plague, 232–33
Atlantic, North, 66, 72, 100 Budapest Conference, 205, 209–11
Australia, 68–69, 157, 165, 167, 341 Bulgaria, 68, 72, 124, 208, 219
Austria, 166, 211, 259, 269, 270, 296 Burma, 223, 316–17
authority, 75, 113, 115, 119, 121, 183, businessmen, 42, 51, 353
185, 232–33, 281, 306–8
awareness, environmental, 18, 52, calves, 96, 155, 161, 165
294–95 campaigns
environmental, 36, 80, 86, 164, 294,
bacteriology, 194, 207 310, 323–24, 340
balance, 18, 52, 107, 114, 140, 287 rural hygiene see rural hygiene.
baleen, 88, 154, 172, 184 Canada, 65, 68, 71, 101, 105–6, 116, 120,
Bandoeng, 190, 191, 200, 203–4, 218, 260–61, 264, 298
220, 223, 233–35, 239, 241 Canadian-American Commission,
barriers, 35, 319 106, 110
national, 40, 85, 314 canals, 207
Basques, 99 irrigation, 225, 227
Belgium, 124, 208, 347 canoes, 108, 156
Berlin, 54, 153–54, 159, 266, capabilities, institutional, 110, 131, 157,
270–72 189, 226
betterment, 51, 130, 214, 275 capacity, 57, 59, 146, 160, 212, 234, 236,
bilateral treaties/agreements, 3, 79, 306, 314, 347
106, 298 case studies, 12–13, 39, 65, 132, 302,
binding quotas, 269, 272, 283 314, 319
biological research, 130–31, 134 catastrophes, 107, 130, 134, 195, 297
biologists, 50, 92, 168, 173, 209, 215, cellulose, 249, 254, 280
323–24, 330, 346, 352 central institutions, 245, 253, 289,
biology, 244, 325 294, 303
applied, 135 cetaceans, 91, 101, 129, 135, 142, 334
 in de x 367
Ceylon, 223, 232, 233–34 Comité International du Bois, 15, 251,
challenges, 10, 12, 14, 77, 79, 85, 91, 181, 258–59, 268, 304
187, 191 commerce, 14, 75, 113–14, 253, 267
environmental, 4, 15–16, 18, 292–97, of raw materials, 257–58
312, 315, 341, 343–45, 347 commercial incentives, 159
global, 187, 263 commercial interests, 96, 97, 130, 132,
sanitary, 190, 196, 214 150, 157, 173, 176, 180, 185
chaos, 98, 235, 286 committee of experts, 53–63, 64, 69,
China, 123, 125, 172, 174, 184, 188, 223, 75–77, 78, 110–11, 211, 301–2,
242, 310, 316 331–32
Chodźko, Witold, 216, 300 committee of experts, special, 35,
cholera, 197–98, 201, 318 49–50, 53, 55, 63, 89, 300,
cities, 34, 76, 159, 195–96, 299 302, 313
populated, 195, 207, 231, 335 Committee of Experts for the
civil society Progressive Codification of
groups, 11, 210, 293 International Law see
organizations, 86, 89, 320 Codification Committee.
civilian associations, 55, 165, 351 commodities, 201, 256, 260–61, 263
civilian diplomacy, 165, 323, 347 commons, tragedy of the, 13, 92, 125,
Clavin, Patricia, 315 127, 129
cleanliness, 232, 240 Communications and Transit
climate change, 9, 246, 250, 349, 353 Organisation, 17, 35, 49, 53, 55,
closed doors, 174, 309, 346 63, 76, 302, 324
closed seasons, 139, 147, 178, 183 communities, 12, 20, 45, 54, 203, 210,
coal, 14, 36–37, 41, 260–62, 328 226, 230, 290, 297
coasts, 36, 58, 62–63, 70, 132, 163, global, 114, 241, 335
178, 326 local, 188, 206, 214, 232, 238,
codification, 87, 90, 97, 111, 114, 118, 295
123, 302, 330, 332 rural, 203, 213, 225
Codification Committee, 90–91, comparative data, 187, 232, 244
111–15, 116–18, 120–22, comparative perspective, 132, 179, 252,
126–30, 132–35, 137–44, 289, 326
148–54, 175–76, 333–34 competing interests, 52, 63, 159,
summarizing of replies, 128–40 172, 287
collaboration, international, 79, 185, complexity, 7, 21, 29, 108, 112, 115, 131,
206, 235, 261, 282 211, 224, 238
collective action, 40, 134, 136, 303, 319, compromise, 50, 63, 122, 230
321, 343 compulsory separators, 45, 46–47, 57,
environmental challenges as 58–59, 61–63, 69, 71, 76, 83
accelerator, 292–96 conflicts, 12, 33, 66, 129, 177, 182, 191,
collective security, 6, 77–78, 85, 245, 211, 308, 311
275, 316 consensus, 140, 224
Colombia, 157, 215 conservation, 25, 27–29, 103, 109, 138,
colonial frameworks, 21, 294 140, 181, 183, 341, 345
colonial networks, 21, 228, 237 conservationist agendas, 25, 85, 105,
Colonial Office, 106, 179, 326 150, 153, 158, 265, 342
colonialism, 1, 9, 18, 188, 190, conservationist approaches, 27–28,
237, 239 32, 351
368 in de x
consortiums, 94, 136, 148, 250–51, 265 countryside, 197, 200, 207–10, 212–14,
industrial, 127, 176, 293, 319, 219, 223, 225, 226–27, 229–30,
325, 346 231–32
consumption, 28, 109, 226–27, 250, Covenant, 17, 31, 243, 255
256, 261, 272 coverage, media, 13, 39, 44, 52, 74, 83
contamination, 3, 44, 213, 227, 236 COVID-19, 4, 188, 235, 243
continuity, 15, 18, 31, 272 crises, 3, 63, 71, 189, 191, 263, 266,
control 273–74, 283, 285
flies, 217, 222–23, 231, 235, 242, 246, ecological, 4, 246, 353
317–18 economic, 191, 240–41, 282
rats, 14, 208, 224, 231–32, 236 environmental, 10, 20, 235
Convention against the Pollution of the Cuba, 124, 215
Sea by Oil, 34–86, 240, 308, Czechoslovakia, 65, 124, 219, 259,
339, 344 269, 347
committee of experts discussion and
questionnaire preparation, damage, 38, 42, 44, 54, 64, 72, 82, 111,
55–63 125, 284
historical background, 40–48 dangers, environmental, 128, 234,
League of Nations and anti-pollution 237, 245
campaign, 49–79 Danube, 133
questionnaire distributed with draft Danzig, 76
convention, 63–79 data
conventions, 3, 26–27, 36–37, 59–61, comparative, 187, 232, 244
98, 154–62, 164–67, 168–72, economic, 260, 263, 329
183–85, 305–8, 338–40 objective, 73, 325
see also individual convention names. scientific, 44, 75, 106, 130–31, 163,
general, 120, 136–37, 138 171, 298, 321, 324, 329
special, 12, 35, 303, 306, 344 databases, 151, 160, 180, 336
whaling, 13, 28, 31, 98, 147, 152–54, scientific, 155, 182, 324
155, 158, 302, 306 deforestation, 9–10, 247–90, 331–32,
cooperation, 14–15, 89, 115, 149–50, 334–35
240, 245, 252, 258, 346, 348 see also timber.
international, 90, 92, 106, 110, 122, regulation of timber trade to support
126, 199, 203–4, 216–17, industry, 267–75
244–46 spreading, 14, 16, 249, 254, 293, 331
mutual, 15, 283 and timber challenge, 265–86
cooperatives, agrarian, 216, 322 demand, global, 263–65, 266
coordination, 12, 15, 26, 36, 245, 274 democratisation, 126, 174, 310, 347
Copenhagen Council, 136, 148–50, 152, Denmark, 59, 68, 101, 119, 136, 148,
154, 304 149, 219, 331
cordon sanitaire, 190, 200, 246 departments, 5, 39, 75, 89, 149, 194,
costs, 28, 36, 45, 229, 276 302–4, 343–44, 350, 354
environmental, 252, 253, 277, 331 Depression, 14, 240–41, 246, 248, 253,
financial, 42, 190 255, 258, 261, 263–64, 272–73
cotton, 14, 260, 277, 328 development, 3, 23, 31, 33, 98, 99,
Council, 16, 19, 93–95, 110–11, 253–54, 275–76, 289, 336–38
114–15, 136–37, 146, 148, 150, industrial, 37, 184, 326
282–83 industrial-economic, 15, 349
 in de x 369
industrial-technological, 42, 101 policy, 10, 15, 31, 253, 255, 263–66,
rapid, 105, 276 272, 287
technological, 13, 41, 80, 90, 292, 323 Soviet, 31, 255, 263, 266, 272, 334
diplomacy, 4, 9, 27, 31, 90, 92, 95, 173, duties, 30, 55, 110, 126, 150, 174,
178, 180 310–11, 347
civilian, 165, 323, 347
environmental, 79, 181 East Asia, 188–89, 191, 201–2, 204–5,
interwar, 36, 97, 109, 150, 153, 302, 220–24, 225–26, 228–29,
322, 328, 345 236–38, 242, 316–18
professional, 150, 304 Eastern Europe, 10, 14, 78, 188–89,
whaling, 91, 98, 128, 152–53, 158, 200–1, 205, 335, 346
170, 182, 185, 325, 336 Economic Committee, 111, 148–50,
diplomatic club, 174, 309, 346 153–54, 161–63, 266–70,
diplomatic routine, 93, 127, 152, 183, 276–78, 280–84, 285–86,
189, 252, 316, 327 302–3, 345
diplomats, 88, 161, 167, 174, 178, 188, economic crises, 191, 240–41, 282
326, 330, 346, 353–55 economic data, 260, 263, 329
disarmament treaties/agreements, 87, economic development, 32–34
214, 247 economic governance, 260, 263
discharge, oil, 10, 12, 35, 43–45, 46–48, economic incentives, 15, 150, 155, 249
53, 62, 67, 68, 291 economic interests, 4, 39, 54, 85, 111,
discussion, international, 64, 77, 123, 265–66, 284, 333, 340
110–11, 116, 126, 174, 206, economic motivations, 66, 336
210, 311 economic products, 125, 135, 334
diseases, 187, 190, 191–93, 198, 200–3, economic-industrial framework, 260,
207–8, 218–19, 236, 238, 266, 275–76
241–42 economy, 28, 257, 266, 291
infectious, 192, 237, 316, 326 global, 236, 255, 263, 269
rural, 234, 350, 351 national, 73, 129, 131
spreading, 14, 187, 189, 196–97, ecosystems, 4, 16, 28, 32, 125, 129, 134,
201–3, 246–47, 296, 301, 350, 231, 250
351–52 marine, 113, 116
doctors, 151, 191, 200, 204, 209, effectiveness, 71, 167, 169, 171,
215–16, 223–24, 323, 346 295, 338
domestic law, 38, 138, 211, 294, eggs, 38, 42, 321
352 Egypt, 20, 67, 71, 75, 118, 312, 316
domestic legislation, 43, 46, 144, 233 Elbel, Paul, 276–79, 283–84, 285, 302,
domestic measures, 49, 110, 232 331–32
domestic sovereignty, 81, 294 elephants, 38, 294
dominions, 120, 179, 327 emerging states, 39, 90, 95, 117
drainage, 214, 246 endangered species, 9, 21, 32, 158, 241,
drifting oil, 44, 45, 63, 81, 346 294, 350
drinking water, 196, 211, 213, energy, 93, 119, 143, 218, 242, 246,
222, 224 255, 282
dropping prices, 15, 248–49, 263–65, institutional, 135, 166, 187, 192, 214,
268, 276, 277 242, 247, 258, 301
Drummond, Eric, 119 enforcement, 72, 107, 116, 139, 155,
dumping, 213, 272, 277, 287 167, 170–71, 293
370 in de x
engineers, 75, 191, 200, 209, 216, environmental issues, 1, 3, 8–9, 11, 18,
240, 323 24, 26, 31, 302, 311
sanitary, 210, 219, 223 environmental law, 2–3, 8, 11, 21, 31,
entanglements, 37, 39, 91, 96, 98, 133, 93, 322, 347
248, 273, 308 early, 21, 39, 126
entomologists, 218 environmental outcomes, 187, 253,
environment, 1–2, 3–5, 28, 184, 190–91, 266, 283
192, 194–95, 224–25, 241, environmental perspectives, 2, 6, 13,
335 15–16, 35, 189, 203, 265,
human, 9, 28, 80 273, 329
marine, 37, 66, 75, 80, 83, 107, environmental policies, 11, 16, 29,
120, 297 32
rural, 225, 229–30, 242, 246–47 environmental problems, 10, 11, 162,
surrounding, 188, 218, 225, 291, 335 166, 287, 291–92, 296, 331, 348,
environmental agendas, 3, 30, 77, 351–52
342, 353 environmental regime, 16–19, 25, 84,
environmental aims, 178, 325, 331 291, 292, 296–97, 305–6,
environmental awareness, 18, 52, 315–17, 326–28, 336–38,
294–95 345–54
environmental campaigns, 36, 80, 86, balanced assessment, 332–37
164, 294, 310, 323–24, 340 different modes of international law
environmental challenges, 4, 15–16, 18, practiced, 305–9
292, 296–97, 312, 315, 341, environmental challenges as
343–45, 347 accelerator, 292–96
as accelerator for collective evaluation, 291–355
international action, 292–96 and individual pioneers, 330–32
environmental changes, 3, 10, 195, 263 legal and procedural approaches,
environmental conditions, 189, 192, 296–305
200, 214, 247, 320 new states and NGOs, 309–22
environmental costs, 252, 253, 277, 331 and scientific expertise, 322–30
environmental crises, 10, 20, 235 environmental risks, 189, 196–97,
environmental dangers, 128, 234, 223–24, 226, 227, 229–30, 235,
237, 245 245, 294, 300
environmental dilemmas, 4, 89, 93, 125, environmental threats, 187–88, 195–97,
165, 240, 292, 346 200, 204, 206, 207–8, 215, 222,
environmental diplomacy, 79, 181 235, 244
environmental effects, 230, 263, environmentalism, 4, 20–21, 23–26,
276, 349 27, 32, 45, 173, 286, 332–33,
environmental historians, 8, 27, 336–38
98–101, 194–95, 351 early, 85, 104, 339
environmental historiography, 3, 5, 22, global, 26, 289, 353
85, 99, 196 international, 8, 9, 21–22, 27,
environmental history, 2, 4, 9, 18–21, 188, 341
26–27, 36–38, 39, 79–80, 98, interwar, 31, 341
194–95 legal, 9, 23, 340
environmental initiatives, 26, 30–32, environmental-sanitary risks, 14,
72, 98, 241, 254, 335, 340, 226, 242
342, 344 epidemic threats, 197–98, 200–1
 in de x 371
epidemics, 189, 198, 203, 212, 237, 244, rational, 125, 134–35, 140, 334
294, 299 uneconomic, 117, 142
epidemiology, 217–19, 243 explorations, 1–2, 4–5, 108, 136, 352
equality, 126, 174, 310, 313, 347 exporter countries, 257, 259–61
erosion, 249, 266, 278–79, 282–85, 286, exports, 226, 260, 263, 265, 270–71, 280
288, 331 extermination, 103, 117, 135, 142, 144,
Estonia, 119, 270 334, 339
Europe, 197, 200–1, 203, 208–9, extinction, 88, 100, 102, 105–6, 113–14,
218–20, 239, 245, 279–80, 124–25, 127, 178–79, 325–26,
319, 335 330–31
European bison, 350 possible/potential, 113, 132, 161, 178,
European borders, 87–89, 220, 318, 322, 326, 333
350 whales, 89, 100
European Conference on Rural
Hygiene, 14, 189, 200, factories, 102, 132, 166, 178
212–16 factory ships see also floating factories,
European powers, 160, 220, 239, 315 102, 104, 164, 170
evidence, 8–9, 68, 70, 73–74, 161, failures, 26, 30, 81, 85, 92, 96, 159, 166,
307, 324 288–90, 338
expeditions, 111, 116, 131–32, 151, Far East, 14, 189–90, 238, 242,
164, 169 318, 352
experiments, 67, 228, 286 fascism, 77–78, 166, 246
expertise fauna, 46, 74, 142, 326
professional, 187, 221 marine see marine fauna.
scientific, 88, 90, 94, 95, 150–51, feathers, 56, 67
178–80, 322–30 feedback, 49, 63, 299
technical, 148, 215, 221 fin whales, 103, 168
experts, 53–56, 57–61, 146–48, 150–54, financial costs, 42, 190
156–57, 211, 216–18, 229–32, Finland, 119, 136, 259–60, 264
299–302, 330–32 fish, 66, 68–69, 130, 132, 138
American, 57–59, 327 stocks, 10, 145
committee of, 53–56, 59–61, 69, fisheries, 34, 42, 47, 54, 56, 64–66, 129,
75–77, 78, 110–11, 211, 299, 131–33, 169
301–2, 331–32 fishing, 113, 123, 129, 134, 138
meetings, 140, 143, 157–59 fleets, 101, 130, 132
professional, 39, 114, 188, 238, 243, industries, 68, 131, 173
267–68, 323–25, 330, 344, 353 fleets, 13, 159, 161, 164
public health, 191, 224, 323 commercial, 103, 291
scientific, 107, 146, 159, 178, whaling, 124, 161, 177, 184, 292, 312
323–24, 326 floating factories, 101, 116, 156, 177–78
technical, 137, 146, 267 see also factory ships, 101, 116,
exploitation, 32, 97, 111–12, 117, 156, 177–78
119–20, 122, 125, 126–27, flora, 46, 74, 326
144, 146 submarine, 56
of forests, 248–49, 276 fly control, 217, 222–23, 231, 235, 242,
of marine fauna, 105, 310 246, 317–18
of natural resources, 30, 109, 125, food, 4, 20, 26, 67–68, 125, 135, 183, 334
255, 273, 336, 349 supplies, 109, 129, 132
372 i nde x
force, 11, 29, 49, 82, 89, 152, 158, 167, global environmentalism, 26, 289,
194, 283 353
productive, 125, 135, 334 global governance, 176, 203, 244,
forestation, 251–52, 273, 280, 286 319–20, 348
forestry, 210, 258, 276, 320 global security, 203, 208, 214, 235, 241,
forests, 14–15, 248–49, 254–55, 259, 247, 335, 345
264, 266–67, 275–81, 284, Gold, Edgar, 39, 79
286–88, 289–90 goods, 266, 273–74, 281
see also deforestation; timber. governance, 27, 95, 221, 248, 257,
exploitation, 248–49, 276 273–74, 338
harvest, 15, 249, 276, 287, 335 economic, 260, 263
loss, 4, 250 global, 176, 203, 244, 319–20, 348
shrinking, 3, 192, 283, 332 international, 208, 211, 213, 227–28,
formal reports, 153, 218, 344 235–36, 265, 267, 322, 345–46,
frameworks, 21–24, 114, 117, 145, 212, 347–48
214, 242, 244, 247, 249 grassroots movements, 42, 152, 180
colonial, 21, 294 gray whales, 88, 165, 172, 351
institutional, 16–17, 61, 63, 179, Great Depression see Depression.
181, 206, 209–10, 215, 217, Great powers, 33, 74, 314–15
304–5 Great War see World War I.
international, 11, 48, 215, 235, 248, Grimshaw, C.H., 56–57, 59–60, 63,
294, 314 64, 78
in-transition, 152, 180, 328 Gruvel, Abel, 142–43
legal, 111, 113, 132, 145, 158, 171,
197, 339 harbors, 36, 43, 59, 66, 68, 138
regional economic, 105, 298 harmony, 15, 248, 287
transnational, 37, 46, 48, 206, 215, headquarters, 87, 94, 251, 257, 259,
216, 296, 318, 343 268, 285
France, 54–55, 71–72, 79, 117, health, 203, 214–16, 221, 235, 238
124, 141–42, 143, 157, 177, authorities, 224, 230, 240
347 officers, 200, 215–16, 223
fuel oil, 67, 75 public see public health.
rural, 210, 218
garbage, 191, 213, 217, 243, 349 services, 209, 325
Geneva, 51–52, 54, 78, 79, 203–4, Health Committee, 209, 215,
214–15, 267–68, 303–4, 223, 308
314–15, 341 Health Organisation see also
Geneva Convention for Regulation of WHO193–94, 199, 208, 215–18,
Whaling, 340 234, 236, 240–41, 242–43, 244,
Geneva Convention on the High 299–300
Seas, 83 hegemonic nations, 190, 221, 317, 347
geopolitical situation, 191, 222, Herald Tribune, 161, 163, 353
228 high seas, 90, 92, 105, 107, 116, 119, 125,
Germany, 31, 34, 159, 165, 166, 170, 127, 147–48, 160–61
282, 285, 347, 351 historians, 6, 91, 93, 100, 180–81,
Weimar Republic, 124, 159 195–96, 199, 202, 292, 328
global demand, 263–65, 266 environmental, 8, 27, 98–101,
global economy, 236, 255, 263, 269 194–95, 351
 in de x 373
historical background, 18, 90, 189, 205, economic, 15, 150, 155, 249
241, 299, 335 industrial, 4, 265, 336
historiography, 5–6, 8, 11, 20–21, 23, independent bodies, 251, 258, 287, 334
173, 193, 196–97 independent organizations, 90, 94, 137,
environmental, 3, 5, 22, 85, 99, 196 249, 322
of the League, 5–11 India, 68, 71–72, 121, 157, 207, 219,
history, 1–2, 4–9, 11, 24–27, 29, 194, 230, 239, 317–18
196–97, 286, 288, 338–39 Indonesia, 189, 317
environmental, 2, 4, 9, 18–21, 26–27, industrial consortiums, 127, 176, 293,
36–38, 39, 79–80, 98, 194–95 319, 325, 346
of hygiene, 200, 215 industrial incentives, 4, 265, 336
of international law, 2, 95–96, industrial interests, 13, 15, 54, 71, 88,
188, 316 90, 94, 159, 287, 295
legal, 6, 11, 18, 29, 32, 37, 84, 96–97, Industrial Revolution, 34, 184, 195, 318
171, 339–40 industrial-economic development,
modern, 40, 92, 101, 176, 313, 315 15, 349
rural hygiene, 193–200 industrial-economic interests, 1, 114
whaling, 90–91, 99–109 industrialization, 101, 263
housing, 210, 214, 222, 231 industrial-technological development,
rural, 211, 213, 219, 224, 230 42, 101
human environment, 9, 28, 80 industries, 56–57, 70–71, 102–4, 106–8,
humanitarian issues, 55, 88, 183, 192, 132, 147–49, 249–50, 312–13,
236, 329 336, 353–55
human-organic waste, 224, 227 national, 15, 56, 107, 260, 264
humpbacks, 148, 163, 166, 169, shipping, 44–45, 47–50, 52, 54, 56,
170, 177 59, 63, 69–73, 83, 85
Hungary, 73, 118, 209, 219 timber, 15, 18, 248, 253–55, 258–59,
hunting, 32, 102, 113, 122, 138, 145, 263–67, 270, 275–76, 277, 334
156, 161, 170, 173 whaling, 103, 105–7, 125–26, 154,
hygiene, 194, 200, 210, 215, 219, 223, 155, 163–64, 166–67, 173,
241, 335 183–85, 312
poor, 10, 202 infectious diseases, 192, 237, 316, 326
public, 193, 197 information, 204, 226, 227–28, 232–33,
rural see rural hygiene. 235, 257, 259, 308, 349, 352
gathering, 217, 221, 259, 267
Iceland, 68, 101, 132 sanitary, 206, 245
ILO (International Labour infrastructures, 214, 231, 257, 261,
Organisation), 194, 215 266, 308
immature whales, 155, 166 inhabitants, 137, 138, 141, 225, 228–30,
immunities, 111, 144 231, 334
Imperial Japan see Japan. initiatives, 63–64, 85–86, 112, 117–18,
imperial powers, 95, 237, 318, 347, 119–20, 123–25, 149–52, 182,
352 312–14, 343–44
imperialism, 1, 9, 188, 190, 237, 317 ad hoc, 93, 182, 189, 272, 300–2
implementation, 87, 145, 160, 166, 222 environmental, 26, 30–32, 72, 98,
importing countries, 15, 258–59, 270 241, 254, 335, 340, 342, 344
incentives, 33, 108, 127, 290 international, 77, 122, 210, 245, 321
commercial, 159 progressive, 94, 112
374 in de x
inquiries, 6, 13, 14, 68, 75–76, 111–12, international attention, 111, 254, 294,
128, 243, 267, 279 331, 351
international, 56, 112, 128, 220 international collaboration, 79, 185,
insects, 212–13, 218 206, 235, 261, 282
institutional capabilities, 110, 131, 157, international community, 4, 14, 122,
189, 226 124, 187–88, 207, 208, 244–45,
institutional energy, 135, 166, 187, 192, 299, 329–32
214, 242, 247, 258, 301 international conferences, 43, 45–47,
institutional framework, 16–17, 61, 63, 78, 82, 135, 138, 189–91,
179, 181, 206, 209–10, 215, 217, 211–12, 302–3, 342
304–5 international conventions see
institutional internationalism, 275, 285 conventions.
institutional routine, 59, 214, 269, international cooperation, 90, 92, 106,
296, 299, 300, 302–3, 306, 110, 122, 126, 199, 203–4,
343–45 216–17, 244–46
institutional structure, 7, 16, 17, 162, international discussion, 64, 77,
181, 251, 301 110–11, 116, 126, 174, 206,
institutionalized international law, 36, 210, 311
51, 73, 95, 160, 176 international environmentalism, 8, 9,
intentions, 97, 106, 166, 168–69, 21–22, 27, 188, 341
190, 298 international forum, 95, 211, 223, 248,
Interchange Program, 203, 205–8 277, 293, 307, 317
interest groups, 42, 94, 177, 294, international frameworks, 11, 48, 215,
354–55 235, 248, 294, 314
interests, 32–33, 50, 64–66, 86–87, international governance, 208, 211,
90–91, 93–96, 106–7, 117–19, 213, 227–28, 235–36, 265, 267,
121–23, 146–47 322, 345–46, 347–48
commercial, 96, 97, 130, 132, 150, international initiatives, 77, 122, 210,
157, 173, 176, 180, 185 245, 321
competing, 52, 63, 159, 172, 287 international inquiries, 56, 112,
economic, 4, 39, 54, 85, 111, 123, 128, 220
265–66, 284, 333, 340 international institutions, 89, 92, 173,
industrial, 13, 15, 54, 71, 88, 90, 94, 199, 213, 266, 270, 281, 337, 343
159, 287, 295 International Labour Organisation
industrial-economic, 1, 114 (ILO), 194, 215
political, 66, 74, 333 international markets, 14, 264, 269
Intergovernmental Conference of Far international media, 162–64
Eastern Countries on Rural International Mercantile Marine
Hygiene, 14, 203, 220–35, Officers Association, 127,
352 176, 320
internal reports, 114, 128 international organizations, 15, 250,
international action, 44, 53, 71, 117, 255, 262, 275, 277, 285, 288,
282, 292 322, 329
international agreements, 63, 75–76, international protection, 38,
140, 144, 163, 165, 168, 262, 149–50, 154
336, 340 international regulation, 31, 35, 56,
international arena, 1, 10, 86, 89, 123, 58–60, 69, 71–73, 76, 132–33,
127, 170, 172, 295, 297 277, 280
 in de x 375
international relations, 2, 13, 74, 96, 97, knowledge, 17, 204, 251
126, 314, 316, 346, 351 practical, 228, 245
International Sanitary Conferences, scientific, 66, 89, 137, 180, 324
199, 206, 210 Kodaki, Akira, 167, 170
international security, 7, 246, 335, 345
international solidarity, 157–58, 185 lakes, 138, 198, 207, 212–13, 241, 335
international solutions, 49, 71, 142, 252, land stations, 101, 165, 168, 174, 177
265, 283 landscapes, 241, 249, 265, 331
international stability, 236, 242, 245–47 natural, 10, 276, 349
international standards, 161, 204, 257 rural, 197, 214, 223
international supervision, 145, 169, wooded, 3, 266, 276, 279, 289, 291
171, 233, 255 language, 29, 62, 69, 127, 244, 284,
International Tea Committee, 262 325, 328
International Timber Committee, 251, latrines, 222, 227–29, 233, 246, 307
258, 304 Latvia, 68, 72, 270
International Whaling Commission layered structure, 80, 172, 339
(IWC), 91, 183 League of Nations see Introductory
international whaling law/regulation, Note.
90, 114, 117, 138, 139–40, 142, legal arrangements, 38, 80, 84, 96, 98,
175, 177, 180, 182 185, 304, 307, 350, 354
internationalism, 61, 122, 126, 127, legal documents, 47, 84, 97, 107, 111,
309–10, 313, 315, 342, 343, 348 152, 175, 243, 312, 348
institutional, 275, 285 legal environmentalism, 9, 23, 340
interwar, 50, 314 legal frameworks, 111, 113, 132, 145,
interpretation of international law, 137, 158, 171, 197, 339
186, 204, 313 legal history, 6, 11, 18, 29, 32, 37, 84,
interwar diplomacy, 36, 97, 109–71, 96–97, 171, 339–40
302, 322, 328, 345 legal mechanisms, 89–90, 174, 252, 254,
interwar environmentalism, 31, 341 262, 290, 293, 294, 298, 339–40
interwar internationalism, 50, 314 legal products, 47, 303, 305, 344
in-transition framework, 152, 180, 328 legal regimes, 80, 89, 113, 145, 197,
Iraq, 68, 71, 118 213, 239
Irish Free State, 68, 72, 165 legal restrictions, 108, 120, 150, 155,
irrigation canals, 225, 227 170, 336
Italy, 16, 56, 58, 68, 72, 75, 78, 258, 347 legal solidarity, 145
IWC (International Whaling legal solutions, 23, 52, 58, 92, 183–84,
Commission), 91, 183 288, 294–95, 298, 326, 331
legitimacy, 39, 73–75, 95, 115, 162, 181,
Japan, 77–78, 159–61, 164–65, 167, 170, 183, 281, 313, 353
182, 184, 223, 235–36, 311 leprosy, 193, 218, 222, 234, 236, 242
Java, Bandoeng, 190, 191, 200, 203–4, Lithuania, 270
218, 220, 223, 233–35, 239, 241 livestock, 211, 225
jurisdiction, 88, 121, 138, 145, 179, 197, living conditions, 196, 223
308, 311, 350 lobbies, 13, 23, 45, 150–51, 287,
309, 354
Kellogg, Remington, 151, 180, 328, local authorities, 43, 229, 234
330–31 local communities, 188, 206, 214, 232,
key players, 150, 157, 159, 210, 263 238, 295
376 in de x
local-national markets, 104 mobilization, 11, 192, 242, 295, 353
London Conference, 165–66, 183, momentum, 57, 147, 165, 167, 259
340, 342 Morocco, 118
motivations, 1, 12, 107, 173, 321
McNeill, John, 19 economic, 66, 336
malaria, 222, 231, 235 museums, 103, 127, 176, 319, 325
Manchuria, 159, 191 mutual cooperation, 15, 283
manure, 212, 217, 219, 222, 229–30, 243
marine animals, 124, 141 nation states, 7, 11, 40, 315, 324
marine ecosystems, 113, 116 national barriers, 40, 85, 314
marine environment, 37, 66, 75, 80, 83, national borders, 198, 294–95, 329,
107, 120, 297 342, 354
marine fauna, 110–11, 112, 114, national economies, 73, 129, 131
118–19, 129–30, 132–33, 136, national governments, 105, 322, 325
138–39, 144, 149 national industries, 15, 56, 107,
exploitation, 105, 310 260, 264
overexploitation, 131, 298 national policies, 208, 262–64
marine mammals, 151, 157, 280 national representatives, 268, 302, 344
marine resources, 111, 144 national sovereignty, 93, 127, 138, 211,
marine species, 113, 130, 132 258, 295, 320, 336
marine transportation, 41–42, 45, national waters, 155, 172
53–54, 80, 291, 321 nationality, 111, 144, 276
maritime nations/states, 41, 43, 47, 48, natural landscape, 10, 276, 349
51, 61, 66, 105–6, 296, 298 natural resources, 4, 9, 12, 28–30,
maritime powers, 63–65, 66, 71, 78, 85, 103–4, 109, 114–15, 249,
112, 117, 121, 127, 175 276, 280
markets, 258, 261, 263, 265 exploitation, 30, 109, 125, 255, 273,
international, 14, 264, 269 336, 349
local-national, 104 nature protection, 3–4, 9, 30, 70, 73–75,
timber, 15, 249, 258, 268–69, 334 96, 129, 142, 181, 277
mass media, 161, 261 naval wrecks, 41, 323
mass production, 261, 273, 280 Nazis, 5, 78, 344, 351
meat, 100, 109, 161, 350 negotiations, 9, 13, 91, 95, 108, 173, 270,
mechanisms, legal, 89–90, 174, 252, 274, 325, 349
254, 262, 290, 293, 294, 298, Netherlands, 34, 48, 72, 75, 124,
339–40 312, 342
media, 161–64, 216, 249, 292, 321, East Indies, 223
322, 346 networks, 79, 236, 244
coverage, 13, 39, 44, 52, 74, 83 colonial, 21, 228, 237
international, 162–64 new states, 309–22
mass, 161, 261 New Zealand, 72, 120–21, 153, 156–57,
medical doctors see doctors. 165, 341, 347
medical services, 14, 188, 209, 214, 220 Newfoundland, 67, 100, 132
migrating seabirds, 241, 294 newspapers, 161–63, 249, 261, 353
migratory birds, 78, 81, 322, 325, 330, NGOs, 11–13, 49, 53–56, 73–75,
332, 343, 345, 346, 350 292–94, 309–23, 326–28, 336,
migratory species, 130, 133, 137, 353–55
294, 350 British, 44, 46, 51
 in dex 377
devoted, 42, 321, 336, 346, 347 outcomes, environmental, 187, 253,
role, 35, 46 266, 283
no-man’s-land, 113, 155, 172 overexploitation, 4, 29, 151, 160, 276,
nonhuman pollution, 14, 187 310, 343
non-involved states, 147, 153, 275 of marine fauna, 131, 298
nontraditional players, 174, 310 of whales, 97, 99, 158
North Atlantic, 66, 72, 100 overproduction, 263–65, 272, 277, 287
North Pacific, 167, 178, 326 ozone layer, 349, 353
Norway, 101–2, 116–17, 119, 121–22,
142, 143, 152–54, 156–60, Pacific, North, 167, 178, 326
163–64, 175 palm oil, 290
pandemics see also epidemics, 4,
objective data, 73, 325 202–3
obligations, 58–59, 62, 71, 77, 83, Paris, 46, 51, 137, 140, 142–44, 147–48,
140, 143 150, 219, 297–98
obligatory separators, 52, 63, pathogens, 188, 200, 203, 335
313, 336 peace, 5, 146, 329, 348
Oceania, 121, 319, 343 peacekeeping, 6, 78, 214, 241, 247, 275,
officials, 5–6, 12, 232, 236, 297, 299, 335, 345
302, 304, 350, 353–55 peasants, 216, 227, 228–29, 307, 322
oil, 31–38, 41–44, 45–46, 56–57, 58–59, Pedersen, Susan, 95, 314–15
62–63, 67–70, 306, 320–21, perceptions, 4, 8, 22, 32, 95, 105, 201,
323–24 240, 243, 246
discharge, 10, 12, 35, 43–45, 46–48, performative bodies, 55, 139
53, 62, 67, 68, 291 periodization, 80, 90, 199, 236, 291
drifting, 44, 45, 63, 81, 346 peripheral areas, 188, 192, 193
fuel, 67, 75 peripheries, 188, 199, 205, 208–10, 213,
palm, 290 316, 335
pollution, 34–40, 46–56, 58–60, rural, 4, 10, 224–25, 230, 236, 241,
66–69, 72–74, 77–80, 81–84, 244, 291, 294, 330
295–99, 301–2, 323–26 periphery
effects, 37, 67–69, 312 global, 30, 316, 345
spills, 4, 41, 50, 79, 81 regional, 16
whale, 101, 104, 116, 153, 159, pests, 14, 188, 204, 214
163–64 petitions, 49–50, 56, 73–74, 153, 162,
oily water, 42, 58 330–31, 353
open sea, 106, 109, 115, 116, 133, 135, physicians see doctors.
155, 172, 177–78, 181 pioneers, 11, 50, 53, 330–32
open-for-discussion questionnaires, piracy, 111, 144
175, 304, 348 pirogues, 108, 156
optimism, 64, 88, 106, 140, 170, 216, pits, 212, 227–28, 229
231, 282 plagues, 191, 198, 219, 222, 231–35, 236
Ordinary Sessions, 273, 277–79, players, 73, 76, 137–38, 173–74, 175–78,
281, 283 180, 181, 263, 293, 295
organs, 5–7, 12, 17, 36, 39, 92–95, 187, key, 150, 157, 159, 210, 263
251, 324 new, 72, 85, 309, 348
Oslo, 157, 167–69 nontraditional, 174, 310
Otomo, Yoriko, 21–22, 91, 339, 354 poisoned birds, 39, 42, 323, 343, 351
378 in de x
Poland, 92, 118, 124, 170, 219, 259, maritime, 63–65, 66, 71, 78, 85, 112,
269, 344 117, 121, 127, 175
policies, 21–22, 187–88, 212–13, traditional, 39, 72, 126, 174, 310,
216–17, 241, 244, 250, 253, 272, 315, 348
273–74 ultra-fascist, 166, 191
environmental, 11, 16, 29, 32 Western, 182, 190, 237, 307, 318
general, 4, 183, 221 practical knowledge, 228, 245
Soviet, 264, 270 Preparatory Committee, 211–13,
policymakers, 4, 189, 244, 258, 290, 318, 214–15, 302
339, 349 preparatory work, 49, 116, 154, 215,
policymaking, 16, 197, 304 299–301, 323
political awareness, 14, 188 preservationist perspectives, 1, 27, 29,
political interests, 66, 74, 333 32, 173, 320, 331, 332, 347
political power, 52, 85, 211 pressures, 13, 52, 166, 170, 182
political pressure, 52, 294, 337 political, 52, 294, 337
politics, 4, 159, 315, 324, 351 public, 44, 53
polluted waters, 41, 59, 227, 241, prices, 15, 249, 253, 257, 270, 272,
322, 336 274, 335
polluter-pays principle, 44, 80 decreasing, 264, 273
pollution, 31–36, 42–44, 45–47, 53, dropping, 15, 248–49, 263–65, 268,
65–67, 74–77, 79–80, 82–83, 276, 277
207–8, 223–25 procedural routine, 64, 271, 299,
nonhuman, 14, 187 303, 346
oil, 35, 37, 48–49, 53, 55, 63–65, 77, production, 14, 109, 130–31, 253,
78–80, 81, 297–98 254–57, 264, 280, 288, 328, 335
sea, 10, 26, 44, 66, 306, 336 mass, 261, 273, 280
of water sources, 211, 226, 229, 243, timber, 14–16, 252–53, 257–59, 263,
300, 317, 335 266–68, 271–74, 276, 279,
ponds, 226–27 282–83, 302–4
populated cities, 195, 207, 231, productive force, 125, 135, 334
335 products, 100, 109, 111–12, 116–17,
populations, 20, 96, 109, 132, 197, 207, 120–21, 123, 125, 129, 140, 182
214, 220, 240, 242 economic, 125, 135, 334
local, 225, 227, 229 legal, 47, 303, 305, 344
rural, 207, 209, 229, 232 professional committees, 54, 214, 244,
whales, 96, 100–1, 168, 178, 300, 346
297, 326 professional diplomacy, 150, 304
ports, 41–43, 48, 54, 62, 67, professional expertise, 187, 221
109 professional experts, 39, 114, 188, 238,
Portugal, 124, 164, 207, 215, 347 243, 267–68, 323–25, 330,
power relations, 18, 190, 221, 226, 344, 353
238, 352 professional unions, 87, 310
powers, 66, 88–89, 123, 143, 175–77, professionals, 59, 207, 217, 258, 301,
236, 295, 312–15, 319, 323, 346, 352
346–47 profits, 15, 159, 248, 264
European, 160, 220, 239, 315 property, 42, 64, 111
Great, 33, 74, 314–15 prosperity, 87, 103, 129, 223, 245,
imperial, 95, 237, 318, 347, 352 247–48, 329, 334
 in dex 379
Prost, Mario, 21–22, 91, 339, 354 regulation, international, 31, 35, 56,
protection 58–60, 69, 71–73, 76, 132–33,
of birds, 19, 23, 26, 38, 41, 49, 70, 74, 277, 280
82, 85 remote areas, 197, 236
international, 38, 149–50, 154 reports
nature, 3–4, 9, 30, 70, 73–75, 96, 129, final, 88, 154, 283
142, 181, 277 formal, 153, 218, 344
protective measures, 133, 169, internal, 114, 128
204, 284 scientific, 301, 310
public attention, 42, 151, 163 representatives, 46–47, 59–60, 78–79,
public health, 187–88, 199, 202–3, 206, 163, 164, 215, 217, 269–70,
226, 230, 243–45, 247, 317, 322 330–31, 353
experts, 191, 224, 323 national, 268, 302, 344
public hygiene, 193, 197 of science, 323, 346
public pressure, 44, 53 research, 1–2, 5, 10, 16–17, 22, 24, 130,
public relations, 162, 163, 353 131, 218–19, 354–55
purification, water, 211, 224, 318 archival, 6, 11, 30
biological, 130–31, 134
questionnaires, 63–66, 69, 73, 75, scientific, 75, 218, 336
97–98, 111–12, 114, 116–19, reservoirs, 225–26, 279, 334
127, 144 resolutions, 149–50, 215, 272,
open-for-discussion, 175, 304, 348 274, 282
special, 49, 55, 64–66, 97, 109, 114, resources, 20, 28, 96, 104, 129, 242,
116–17, 220, 299, 302 244, 277
quotas, 169, 257, 269–71 marine, 111, 144
binding, 269, 272, 283 natural, 9, 21, 28–30, 103–4, 109,
114–15, 153, 249, 276, 280
railways, 198, 207 water, 14, 187, 220, 226, 229, 236,
Rajchman, Ludvik, 194, 221 242, 326
rapacity, 129, 135, 334 restricted areas, 45, 58, 96
rational exploitation, 125, 134–35, restrictions, 45, 58, 106, 108–9, 156,
140, 334 158–59, 160, 165–66, 169,
rats, 188, 204, 231–32, 236, 241–42, 183–84
317, 336 legal, 108, 120, 150, 155, 170, 336
control, 14, 208, 224, 231–32, 236 new, 44, 177
raw materials, 253, 254–57, 260–62, right whales, 100, 165, 172
264, 267, 269, 274–75, 279–80, risks, 14–15, 42, 102, 125, 230, 232, 234,
281–82, 333–34 238, 311, 316–18
commerce of, 257–58 environmental, 189, 196–97, 223–24,
shortages, 183, 256 226, 227, 229–30, 235, 245,
reafforestation, 250, 283–85 294, 300
recommendations, 203, 212, 214–15, environmental-sanitary, 14, 226, 242
216–17, 223, 225–26, 234–35, sanitary, 187, 189, 307, 309
243, 300–1, 306–7 sanitation, 187–88, 195
REDD+, 290 rivers, 198, 207, 212, 225–26, 241, 279,
refugees, 7, 145–46, 197, 201 307, 332, 335
regional economic framework, 105, Romania see Roumania.
298 Rome, 15, 251, 258–59
380 in de x
Roumania, 118, 125, 132–33, 215, 219, safety, 58, 83, 165, 223, 227
259, 269, 310, 341, 347 public, 42
routine sanitary challenges, 190, 196, 214
diplomatic, 93, 127, 152, 183, 189, sanitary conditions, 189–90, 191,
252, 316, 327 195–96, 198, 203, 211
institutional, 59, 214, 269, 296, 299, sanitary engineers, 210, 219, 223
300, 302–3, 306, 343–45 sanitary information, 206, 245
procedural, 64, 271, 299, 303, 346 sanitary problems, 14, 189, 197, 214,
RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection 226, 233, 352
of Birds), 19, 38, 41–42, 44–46, sanitary risks, 187, 189, 307, 309
50, 53, 70, 73, 320–21, 323 sanitary threats, 212, 220, 235, 238, 241,
RSPCA (Royal Society for the 318, 335
Prevention of Cruelty to sanitation, 187–88, 189–91, 192–204,
Animals), 38, 44, 50, 53, 70, 74, 205–6, 209, 211–17, 223–25,
320–21 238–40, 243–47, 317–18
rural areas, 187–88, 190, 192, 193, 197, campaign, 188, 192, 238, 240, 299,
204, 207–10, 220, 236–37, 306, 318
316–17 improving, 202, 237, 299
rural communities, 203, 213, 225 poor, 201, 208, 294, 318
rural diseases, 234, 350, 351 risks, 187–88, 195
rural districts, 200, 209–10, 215–17, rural, 188, 197, 241, 296, 306, 335
222, 243, 308 studies, 191, 196–97, 207
rural environment, 225, 229–30, 242, systems, 195–96, 198, 212, 243
246–47 SARS, 244
rural frontier, 14, 188, 230, 245 Save-the-Seabirds Campaign,
rural housing, 211, 213, 219, 224, 230 50–55
rural hygiene, 187–247, 300–2 sawn timber, 14, 260, 263, 271
1931 European Conference, 212–16 Scandinavia see also individual
background and history, 193–200 countries, 15, 72, 122, 261,
conferences, 211, 214, 218, 220, 236, 269, 280
240, 299, 322, 325, 327 scholars, 4–6, 8, 10, 79, 81, 91–92, 107,
early steps and preparations, 205–11 193, 204, 338–39
follow-up to 1931 Conference and science, 4, 73, 75, 128, 130–31, 134, 143,
preparation for Second 162, 325, 328
Intergovernmental Conference, representatives of, 323, 346
216–19 scientific associations, 13, 63, 90, 162,
Intergovernmental Conference of 172, 181, 293, 320, 336, 346
Far Eastern Countries, 14, 203, scientific data, 44, 75, 106, 130–31, 163,
220–35, 352 171, 298, 321, 324, 329
sanitation scientific databases, 155, 182, 324
and environmental threats, scientific discourse, 73, 94, 131, 180,
200–35 181, 323, 325–27, 330, 340, 345
rural landscapes, 197, 214, 223 scientific expertise, 88, 90, 94, 95,
rural peripheries, 4, 10, 224–25, 230, 150–51, 178–80, 322–30
236, 241, 244, 291, 294, 330 scientific experts, 107, 146, 159, 178,
rural populations, 207, 209, 229, 232 323–24, 326
rural sanitation, 188, 197, 241, 296, scientific knowledge, 66, 89, 137,
306, 335 180, 324
 in de x 381
scientific observations, 59, 75, 93, shipping, 36–37, 41, 43, 54, 56, 70–71,
147, 169, 192, 218, 219, 296, 305, 312, 313
323–24, 329 industry, 44–45, 47–50, 52, 54, 56, 59,
scientific reports, 301, 310 63, 69–73, 83, 85
scientific research, 75, 218, 336 ships, 10, 12, 41–44, 45, 62–63, 70–71,
scientific warnings, 97, 153, 178, 326 80, 81, 83, 200–1
scientists, 59–60, 93–94, 130–32, see also vessels.
150–52, 173–74, 178, 188, whaling, 164, 166, 168, 179
244–45, 321–26, 345–46 shrinking forests, 3, 192, 283, 332
American, 151, 165 Siam, 223
sea, 31–36, 45–49, 82–85, 111–14, Smets, Charles, 149, 156–57
119–23, 129–31, 293–97, 301–2, soft international law, 204–5, 233,
324–26, 333–34 306–7, 352
high seas, 90, 92, 105, 107, 116, 119, soft law, 204–5, 233, 243, 301, 305–8,
125, 127, 147–48, 160–61 338, 348, 352
pollution, 10, 26, 44, 66, 306, 336 soil, 213, 230, 246, 284
Sea of Whales, 87–99 solid waste, 196, 212, 214
seabirds, 34, 46, 68, 350 solidarity, 115, 157, 185
migrating, 241, 294 biological, 114
poisoned, 39, 351 international, 157–58, 185
seals, 133–35, 138, 178, 326, legal, 145
334, 343 solutions, 44, 51–52, 57–59, 61, 71–73,
seasons, 29, 68, 165, 168, 178, 326 84–85, 171–73, 280–81,
closed, 139, 147, 178, 183 300, 341
Secretariat, 16, 66, 119, 121, 141–42, international, 49, 71, 142, 252,
144, 149, 204, 207, 268 265, 283
Secretary General, 119, 121, 303 legal, 23, 52, 58, 92, 183–84, 288,
security, 188, 214, 224, 241, 246–47, 294–95, 298, 326, 331
335, 345 possible, 48, 60, 66, 109, 139, 162,
global, 203, 208, 214, 235, 241, 247, 231, 243–44
335, 345 practical, 136, 143, 230, 243, 288
international, 7, 246, 335, 345 progressive, 143, 164, 173, 185
water, 13, 246 suggested, 36, 173, 178, 284
separators techno-environmental, 44, 63, 72
compulsory/obligatory, 45, 46–47, South Georgia, 103–4, 106
52, 57, 58–59, 61–63, 69, 71, sovereignty, 7, 40, 59, 81, 89, 93, 123,
76, 83 138–39, 180, 197
installation, 44–48, 56–59, 61–63, domestic, 81, 294
70–71, 74, 75–77, 78, 299, national, 93, 127, 138, 211, 258, 295,
313, 336 320, 336
sessions, 59, 170, 204, 216, 222, 242, state, 95, 114, 352
275, 303, 323, 343 Soviet Union, 10, 15, 65, 159, 165, 200,
Ordinary, 273, 277–79, 281, 283 248–49, 253, 259–61, 263–65
sewage, 171, 194, 204, 212–13, 214, 217, dumping, 31, 255, 263, 266, 272, 334
219, 243 policies, 264, 270
disposal, 210–11 Spain, 71, 85, 100, 124–25, 157, 207,
shipowners, 47, 56–57, 59, 70–71, 209, 312, 347
80 Spanish flu, 189, 202–3, 205
382 in de x
special committee of experts, 35, 49–50, technical expertise, 148, 215, 221
53, 55, 63, 89, 300, 302, 313 technical experts, 137, 146, 267
species, 28–29, 113–14, 129–30, techno-environmental solutions, 44,
132–34, 137–39, 145–46, 63, 72
163–64, 168, 172, 294 technological improvements/
endangered, 9, 21, 32, 158, 241, developments, 4, 13, 41, 80,
294, 350 90, 109, 128–29, 190, 201,
migratory, 130, 133, 137, 294, 350 291–92
whale, 29, 88, 90, 93, 96–97, 137–38, tensions, 95, 97, 104, 106, 182, 238, 240,
163, 169, 285, 292 273, 318, 333
spreading diseases, 14, 187, 189, territorial waters, 40, 43, 68, 105, 108,
196–97, 201–3, 246–47, 296, 111, 123, 136, 138, 298
301, 350, 351–52 test cases, 12, 27, 37, 122, 217, 224, 337,
stability, 85, 214, 242, 245, 266, 275, 341, 343, 346
282, 329, 344–45, 348 threats, 56–57, 88, 212, 214, 241,
international, 236, 242, 245–47 244–45, 246, 250, 316–18,
standardization, 217, 219, 243, 307 335–36
standards, 75, 205, 330, 341 direct, 147, 203, 242, 310
international, 161, 204, 257 environmental, 187–88, 195–97, 200,
starvation, 56, 67–68 204, 206, 207–8, 215, 222,
state sovereignty, 95, 114, 352 235, 244
statesmen, 88, 146, 176, 206, 319, epidemic, 197–98, 200–1
331, 348 sanitary, 212, 220, 235, 238, 241,
stations, land, 101, 165, 168, 174, 177 318, 335
statistics, 136, 149, 168, 208, 234, 259, timber, 5, 14–15, 248, 249–55,
270, 328–29 257–69, 271–75, 277–79, 281,
Stockholm Declaration, 80–81 287–88, 302–5, 328–29
Stoppani, Pietro, 156, 276 see also deforestation.
structure crisis, 248–90
institutional, 7, 16, 17, 162, 181, environmental concerns added to
251, 301 general economic industrial
layered, 80, 172, 339 framework, 275–86
Suárez, José Léon, 112–14, 116, 123, industries, 15, 18, 248, 253–55,
126–27, 141–42, 144–47, 258–59, 263–67, 270, 275–76,
150–53, 155, 161, 330–32 277, 334
submarines, sunken, 41, 323 market, 15, 249, 258, 268–69,
subnational agents, 341, 346 334
subsoil water, 212, 228 production, 14–16, 252–53, 257–59,
sugar, 14, 256, 260–62, 277, 328 263, 266–68, 271–74, 276, 279,
sunken submarines, 41, 323 282–83, 302–4
supervision, 17, 106–7, 155, 233, 245, sawn, 14, 260, 263, 271
250, 274, 286, 298, 328 supervision, 270, 272
international, 145, 169, 171, 233, 255 in the interwar period, 254–65
of timber, 270, 272 trade, 248–49, 254, 255, 258, 261,
sustainability, 27–29, 125, 173, 287 263, 267, 269–70, 276–79,
Sweden, 68, 124, 208, 259–60 286–87
Sweeney, Joseph, 37–38 regulation to support industry,
Switzerland, 65, 208, 312 267–75
 ind ex 383
timber-producing countries, 252–53, Interdepartmental Conference on
254, 264–65, 267, 270, 280 the Question of International
timelines, 18, 36, 40, 90, 98, 179, 182, Control of Whaling, 140,
189, 191, 192 147, 309
tools, 189, 223, 227, 229, 237, 245, 246, United Nations, 1, 8, 20, 82, 90,
286, 289, 299 92, 199
practical, 204, 348 Educational, Scientific and Cultural
tourism, 42, 51, 54, 66, 237 Organization (UNESCO),
trade, 14, 32, 253, 254–59, 263–65, 267, 26, 289
273, 282, 288, 295 Environment Programme (UNEP), 9
timber, 248–49, 254, 255, 258, 261, United States, 40, 43, 54–56, 58–59, 65,
263, 267, 269–70, 276–79, 66, 150–53, 157, 165, 180
286–87 Oil Pollution Act, 37, 43, 47
traditional powers, 39, 72, 126, 174, urban centers, 188, 195–96, 199, 207,
310, 315, 348 210, 225, 231, 234, 242, 335
tragedy of the commons, 13, 92, 125, USSR see Soviet Union.
127, 129
transitions, 31, 131, 199, 218, 314, Venezuela, 127–28, 341
332, 345 vessels, 47, 48, 56–57, 59, 61–63, 70, 82,
transnational agreements, abstract, 156, 163–64, 177
179, 327 see also ships.
transnational frameworks, 37, 46, 48, whaling, 102, 155, 168, 182, 184
206, 215, 216, 296, 318, 343 Vienna, 200, 259, 266–68, 271–72
transportation, 40, 80, 198, 201, 207, villagers, 227, 229, 232
237, 309, 326 villages, 207, 210, 225, 231, 234,
marine, 41–42, 45, 53–54, 80, 307, 335
291, 321
treaties, 18, 27, 144, 160, 288, 306, 354 warnings, scientific, 97, 153, 178,
see also agreements; conventions. 326
bilateral, 106, 298 Washington Conference, 47–49, 55
disarmament, 214, 247 Washington Convention, 60–62, 69,
existing, 112, 115–16, 145 77–78, 80, 172, 301
Turkey, 68, 72, 215 Washington Preliminary Conference
typhoid fever, 217, 243 on Oil Pollution of Navigable
Waters, 37, 47, 298
ultra-fascist powers, 166, 191 waste, 74, 165, 194–96, 211
uneconomic exploitation, 117, 142 collection, 196, 204
UNEP (UN Environment human-organic, 224, 227
Programme), 9 solid, 196, 212, 214
UNESCO (United Nations wastewater, 44, 171
Educational, Scientific and water, 62–63, 67–68, 72, 208, 213, 217,
Cultural Organization), 26, 219, 224–27, 240, 243
289 drinking, 196, 211, 213, 222, 224
United Kingdom, 40–43, 48–49, 50–53, management, 217, 224–25, 322
70–71, 119–22, 156–60, 164–65, oily, 42, 58
174–75, 294–95, 347–49 polluted, 41, 59, 227, 241, 322,
government, 52–53, 67, 75, 120, 336
147–48, 175, 179, 294, 308, 312 purification, 211, 224, 318
384 in de x
water (cont.) companies, 158–60, 170, 173,
resources, 14, 187, 220, 226, 229, 236, 249, 287
242, 326 conventions, 13, 28, 31, 98,
security, 13, 246 147, 152–54, 155, 158, 302,
sources, 207, 223, 229, 241, 242, 300, 306
317, 332, 335, 346 dilemma, 87–187, 293–95, 310–11,
pollution, 211, 226, 229, 243, 300, 332–33
317, 335 diplomacy, 91, 98, 128, 152–53, 158,
subsoil, 212, 228 170, 182, 185, 325, 336
supply, 210–11, 213, 214, 227, early 1920s and first convention,
242, 246 152–60
wealth, 91, 112, 114–15, 145, 158 expeditions, 13, 166, 168–69
Weimar Republic see also Germany, fleets, 124, 161, 177, 184, 292,
124, 159 312
wells, 213, 225, 227, 240, 307 general timeline and outline, 97–99
Western powers, 182, 190, 237, history, 90–91, 99–109
307, 318 industry, 103, 105–7, 125–26, 154,
whale oil, 101, 104, 116, 153, 159, 155, 163–64, 166–67, 173,
163–64 183–85, 312
whale stocks, 102, 107, 111, 114, 116, international law/regulation, 90, 114,
170, 183 117, 138, 139–40, 142, 175, 177,
whalebone whales, 154, 172 180, 182
whalers, 102–5, 107, 116, 145, 155, 167, interwar diplomacy and rise of
174, 185, 295, 297 international whaling law,
whales, 99–109, 110–16, 128–30, 109–71
132–35, 137–39, 144–48, nations, 117–20, 123–25, 136–37,
155–58, 160–64, 168–71, 143, 147, 148–49, 152–54,
350 166–67, 175–77, 184
blue, 19, 148, 161, 166, 168, Paris experts meeting and British
184, 294 Interdepartmental Conference,
endangered, 16, 50, 192, 291, 338 140–52
extinction, 89, 100 preparing to launch special
fin, 103, 168 questionnaire, 109–16
gray, 88, 165, 172, 351 seasons, 104, 158–60, 165,
humpback, 148, 163, 166, 169, 168–69
170, 177 closed, 139, 147, 178, 183
immature, 155, 166 ships, 164, 166, 168, 179
overexploitation, 97, 99, 158 state and organizational responses to
populations, 96, 100–1, 168, 178, questionnaire, 117–28
297, 326 summarizing of replies by
right, 100, 165, 172 Codification Committee,
Sea of Whales, 87–99 128–40
survival, 90, 92, 101, 147, 155, 346 technologies, 101, 109, 116, 184,
whalebone, 154, 172 200
whaling, 89–92, 94–96, 98–106, 108–12, toward 1937 Convention, 160–71
115–20, 122–27, 137–39, vessels, 102, 155, 168, 182, 184
162–66, 173–79, 181–85 wheat, 14, 256, 260–62, 263
 ind ex 385
WHO (World Health Organization), World War I, 34, 37, 40–41, 101–2, 105,
199, 203, 235, 244 110, 187, 189, 201–3, 297
wild animals/wildlife, 18, 22, 28, World War II, 6–8, 78, 79, 82, 98, 177,
130, 294–96, 319, 339–40, 182, 199, 266, 272
342, 354
wooded landscapes, 3, 266, 276, 279, Yugoslavia, 124, 219, 259, 269
289, 291
World Health Organization see WHO. zoology, 103, 145, 150–51, 330
 cambridge studies in international
and comparative law

Books in the Series

160 Rewriting Histories of the Use of Force: The Narrative of ‘Indifference’
Agatha Verdebout
159 The League of Nations and the Protection of the Environment
Omer Aloni
158 International Investment Law and Legal Theory: Expropriation and the
Fragmentation of Sources
Jörg Kammerhofer
157 Legal Barbarians: Identity, Modern Comparative Law and the Global South Daniel
Bonilla Maldonado
156 International Human Rights Law Beyond State Territorial Control
Antal Berkes
155 The Crime of Aggression under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court
Carrie McDougall
154 Minorities and the Making of Postcolonial States in International Law
Mohammad Shahabuddin
153 Preclassical Conflict of Laws
Nikitas E. Hatzimihail
152 International Law and History: Modern Interfaces Ignacio de la Rasilla
151 Marketing Global Justice: The Political Economy of International Criminal Law
Christine Schwöbel-Patel
150 International Status in the Shadow of Empire
Cait Storr
149 Treaties in Motion: The Evolution of Treaties from Formation to Termination
Edited by Malgosia Fitzmaurice and Panos Merkouris
148 Humanitarian Disarmament: An Historical Enquiry
Treasa Dunworth
147 Complementarity, Catalysts, Compliance: The International Criminal Court in
Uganda, Kenya, and the Democratic Republic of Congo
Christian M. De Vos
146 Cyber Operations and International Law
François Delerue
145 Comparative Reasoning in International Courts and Tribunals
Daniel Peat
144 Maritime Delimitation as a Judicial Process
Massimo Lando
143 Prosecuting Sexual and Gender-Based Crimes at the International Criminal Court:
Practice, Progress and Potential
Rosemary Grey
142 Capitalism As Civilisation: A History of International Law
Ntina Tzouvala
141 Sovereignty in China: A Genealogy of a Concept Since 1840
Adele Carrai
140 Narratives of Hunger in International Law: Feeding the World in Times of Climate
Change
Anne Saab
139 Victim Reparation under the Ius Post Bellum: An Historical and Normative
Perspective
Shavana Musa
138 The Analogy between States and International Organizations Fernando Lusa
Bordin
137 The Process of International Legal Reproduction: Inequality, Historiography,
Resistance
Rose Parfitt
136 State Responsibility for Breaches of Investment Contracts
Jean Ho
135 Coalitions of the Willing and International Law: The Interplay between Formality
and Informality
Alejandro Rodiles
134 Self-Determination in Disputed Colonial Territories
Jamie Trinidad
133 International Law as a Belief System
Jean d’Aspremont
132 Legal Consequences of Peremptory Norms in International Law
Daniel Costelloe
131 Third-Party Countermeasures in International Law
Martin Dawidowicz
130 Justification and Excuse in International Law: Concept and Theory of General
Defences
Federica Paddeu
129 Exclusion from Public Space: A Comparative Constitutional Analysis
Daniel Moeckli
128 Provisional Measures before International Courts and Tribunals
Cameron A. Miles
127 Humanity at Sea: Maritime Migration and the Foundations of International Law
Itamar Mann
126 Beyond Human Rights: The Legal Status of the Individual in International Law
Anne Peters
125 The Doctrine of Odious Debt in International Law: A Restatement
Jeff King
124 Static and Evolutive Treaty Interpretation: A Functional Reconstruction
Christian Djeffal
123 Civil Liability in Europe for Terrorism-Related Risk
Lucas Bergkamp, Michael Faure, Monika Hinteregger and Niels Philipsen
122 Proportionality and Deference in Investor-State Arbitration: Balancing Investment
Protection and Regulatory Autonomy
Caroline Henckels
121 International Law and Governance of Natural Resources in Conflict and Post-
Conflict Situations
Daniëlla Dam-de Jong
120 Proof of Causation in Tort Law
Sandy Steel
119 The Formation and Identification of Rules of Customary International Law in
International Investment Law
Patrick Dumberry
118 Religious Hatred and International Law: The Prohibition of Incitement to Violence
or Discrimination
Jeroen Temperman
117 Taking Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Seriously in International Criminal Law
Evelyne Schmid
116 Climate Change Litigation: Regulatory Pathways to Cleaner Energy Jacqueline Peel
and
Hari M. Osofsky
115 Mestizo International Law: A Global Intellectual History 1842–1933
Arnulf Becker Lorca
114 Sugar and the Making of International Trade Law
Michael Fakhri
113 Strategically Created Treaty Conflicts and the Politics of International Law
Surabhi Ranganathan
112 Investment Treaty Arbitration As Public International Law: Procedural Aspects
and Implications Eric De Brabandere
111 The New Entrants Problem in International Fisheries Law
Andrew Serdy
110 Substantive Protection under Investment Treaties: A Legal and Economic Analysis
Jonathan Bonnitcha
109 Popular Governance of Post-Conflict Reconstruction: The Role of International
Law
Matthew Saul
108 Evolution of International Environmental Regimes: The Case of Climate Change
Simone Schiele
107 Judges, Law and War: The Judicial Development of International Humanitarian Law
Shane Darcy
106 Religious Offence and Human Rights: The Implications of Defamation of Religions
Lorenz Langer
105 Forum Shopping in International Adjudication: The Role of Preliminary
Objections Luiz Eduardo Salles
104 Domestic Politics and International Human Rights Tribunals: The Problem of
Compliance
Courtney Hillebrecht
103 International Law and the Arctic
Michael Byers
102 Cooperation in the Law of Transboundary Water Resources
Christina Leb
101 Underwater Cultural Heritage and International Law
Sarah Dromgoole
100 State Responsibility: The General Part
James Crawford
99 The Origins of International Investment Law: Empire, Environment and the
Safeguarding of Capital
Kate Miles
98 The Crime of Aggression under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal
Court
Carrie McDougall
97 ‘Crimes against Peace’ and International Law
Kirsten Sellars
96 Non-Legality in International Law: Unruly Law
Fleur Johns
95 Armed Conflict and Displacement: The Protection of Refugees and Displaced
Persons under International Humanitarian Law
Mélanie Jacques
94 Foreign Investment and the Environment in International Law
Jorge E. Viñuales
93 The Human Rights Treaty Obligations of Peacekeepers
Kjetil Mujezinović Larsen
92 Cyber Warfare and the Laws of War
Heather Harrison Dinniss
91 The Right to Reparation in International Law for Victims of Armed Conflict
Christine Evans
90 Global Public Interest in International Investment Law
Andreas Kulick
89 State Immunity in International Law
Xiaodong Yang
88 Reparations and Victim Support in the International Criminal Court
Conor McCarthy
87 Reducing Genocide to Law: Definition, Meaning, and the Ultimate Crime
Payam Akhavan
86 Decolonising International Law: Development, Economic Growth and the Politics
of Universality
Sundhya Pahuja
85 Complicity and the Law of State Responsibility
Helmut Philipp Aust
84 State Control over Private Military and Security Companies in Armed Conflict
Hannah Tonkin
83 ‘Fair and Equitable Treatment’ in International Investment Law
Roland Kläger
82 The UN and Human Rights: Who Guards the Guardians?
Guglielmo Verdirame
81 Sovereign Defaults before International Courts and Tribunals
Michael Waibel
80 Making the Law of the Sea: A Study in the Development of International Law
James Harrison
79 Science and the Precautionary Principle in International Courts and Tribunals:
Expert Evidence, Burden of Proof and Finality
Caroline E. Foster
78 Transition from Illegal Regimes under International Law
Yaël Ronen
77 Access to Asylum: International Refugee Law and the Globalisation of Migration
Control Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen
76 Trading Fish, Saving Fish: The Interaction between Regimes in International Law
Margaret A. Young
75 The Individual in the International Legal System: Continuity and Change in
International Law
Kate Parlett
74 ‘Armed Attack’ and Article 51 of the UN Charter: Evolutions in Customary Law
and Practice
Tom Ruys
73 Theatre of the Rule of Law: Transnational Legal Intervention in Theory and
Practice
Stephen Humphreys
72 Science and Risk Regulation in International Law
Jacqueline Peel
71 The Participation of States in International Organisations: The Role of Human
Rights and Democracy
Alison Duxbury
70 Legal Personality in International Law
Roland Portmann
69 Vicarious Liability in Tort: A Comparative Perspective
Paula Giliker
68 The Public International Law Theory of Hans Kelsen: Believing in Universal Law
Jochen von Bernstorff
67 Legitimacy and Legality in International Law: An Interactional Account
Jutta Brunnée and Stephen J. Toope
66 The Concept of Non-International Armed Conflict in International Humanitarian
Law
Anthony Cullen
65 The Principle of Legality in International and Comparative Criminal Law
Kenneth S. Gallant
64 The Challenge of Child Labour in International Law
Franziska Humbert
63 Shipping Interdiction and the Law of the Sea
Douglas Guilfoyle
62 International Courts and Environmental Protection
Tim Stephens
61 Legal Principles in WTO Disputes
Andrew D. Mitchell
60 War Crimes in Internal Armed Conflicts
Eve La Haye
59 Humanitarian Occupation
Gregory H. Fox
58 The International Law of Environmental Impact Assessment: Process, Substance
and Integration
Neil Craik
57 The Law and Practice of International Territorial Administration: Versailles to
Iraq and Beyond
Carsten Stahn
56 United Nations Sanctions and the Rule of Law
Jeremy Matam Farrall
55 National Law in WTO Law: Effectiveness and Good Governance in the World
Trading System
Sharif Bhuiyan
54 Cultural Products and the World Trade Organization
Tania Voon
53 The Threat of Force in International Law
Nikolas Stürchler
52 Indigenous Rights and United Nations Standards: Self-Determination, Culture and
Land
Alexandra Xanthaki
51 International Refugee Law and Socio-Economic Rights: Refuge from Deprivation
Michelle Foster
50 The Protection of Cultural Property in Armed Conflict
Roger O’Keefe
49 Interpretation and Revision of International Boundary Decisions
Kaiyan Homi Kaikobad
48 Multinationals and Corporate Social Responsibility: Limitations and Opportunities
in International Law
Jennifer A. Zerk
47 Judiciaries within Europe: A Comparative Review
John Bell
46 Law in Times of Crisis: Emergency Powers in Theory and Practice
Oren Gross and Fionnuala Ní Aoláin
45 Vessel-Source Marine Pollution: The Law and Politics of International Regulation
Alan Khee-Jin Tan
44 Enforcing Obligations Erga Omnes in International Law
Christian J. Tams
43 Non-Governmental Organisations in International Law
Anna-Karin Lindblom
42 Democracy, Minorities and International Law
Steven Wheatley
41 Prosecuting International Crimes: Selectivity and the International Criminal Law
Regime
Robert Cryer
40 Compensation for Personal Injury in English, German and Italian Law: A
Comparative Outline
Basil Markesinis, Michael Coester, Guido Alpa and Augustus Ullstein
39 Dispute Settlement in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea
Natalie Klein
38 The International Protection of Internally Displaced Persons
Catherine Phuong
37 Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law
Antony Anghie
36 Principles of the Institutional Law of International Organizations
C. F. Amerasinghe
35 Necessity, Proportionality and the Use of Force by States
Judith Gardam
34 International Legal Argument in the Permanent Court of International Justice: The
Rise of the International Judiciary
Ole Spiermann
33 ‒
32 Great Powers and Outlaw States: Unequal Sovereigns in the International Legal
Order
Gerry Simpson
31 Local Remedies in International Law
(second edition) Chittharanjan Felix Amerasinghe
30 Reading Humanitarian Intervention: Human Rights and the Use of Force in
International Law
Anne Orford
29 Conflict of Norms in Public International Law: How WTO Law Relates to Other
Rules of International Law
Joost Pauwelyn
27 Transboundary Damage in International Law
Hanqin Xue
25 European Criminal Procedures
Edited by Mireille Delmas-Marty and J. R. Spencer
24 Accountability of Armed Opposition Groups in International Law
Liesbeth Zegveld
23 Sharing Transboundary Resources: International Law and Optimal Resource Use
Eyal Benvenisti
22 International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law
René Provost
21 Remedies against International Organisations
Karel Wellens
20 Diversity and Self-Determination in International Law
Karen Knop
19 The Law of Internal Armed Conflict
Lindsay Moir
18 International Commercial Arbitration and African States: Practice, Participation
and Institutional Development
Amazu A. Asouzu
17 The Enforceability of Promises in European Contract Law
James Gordley
16 International Law in Antiquity
David J. Bederman
15 Money Laundering: A New International Law Enforcement Model
Guy Stessens
14 Good Faith in European Contract Law
Reinhard Zimmermann and Simon Whittaker
13 On Civil Procedure
J. A. Jolowicz
12 Trusts: A Comparative Study
Maurizio Lupoi and Simon Dix
11 The Right to Property in Commonwealth Constitutions
Tom Allen
10 International Organizations before National Courts
August Reinisch
9 The Changing International Law of High Seas Fisheries
Francisco Orrego Vicuña
8 Trade and the Environment: A Comparative Study of EC and US Law
Damien Geradin
7 Unjust Enrichment: A Study of Private Law and Public Values
Hanoch Dagan
6 Religious Liberty and International Law in Europe
Malcolm D. Evans
5 Ethics and Authority in International Law
Alfred P. Rubin
4 Sovereignty over Natural Resources: Balancing Rights and Duties
Nico Schrijver
3 The Polar Regions and the Development of International Law
Donald R. Rothwell
2 Fragmentation and the International Relations of Micro-States: Self-
Determination and Statehood
Jorri C. Duursma
1 Principles of the Institutional Law of International Organizations
C. F. Amerasinghe