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Who's Afraid of Violent Language?: Honour, Sovereignty and Claims-making in the League of Nations

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-07, 16:42 authored by Jane Cowan
The peace treaties following the Great War dictated that certain nation-states accept, as the price of international recognition, agreements to protect the rights of their minority populations. Responsibility to 'guarantee' and 'supervise' the minority treaties fell to a novel and untried international institution, the League of Nations. It established the 'minority petition procedure', an unprecedented innovation within international relations that initiated transnational claims-making. Focusing on the supervision of agreements pertaining to the Macedonian region, I examine how the Minorities Section of the League of Nations Secretariat handled 'minority petitions' alleging state infractions of minority treaties. I consider, in particular, a preoccupation among both bureaucrats and states with 'violent language' in petitions. I argue that this preoccupation signalled anxieties about honour, sovereignty and legitimacy, about the ambiguous position of 'minority states' and about the potentially explosive effects of popular energies in the post-war international order.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

Anthropological Theory

ISSN

1463-4996

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Issue

3

Volume

3

Page range

271-291

Pages

21.0

Department affiliated with

  • Anthropology Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2012-02-06

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