New Histories of the United Nations

The United Nations has become the object of new and exciting historical research because of historians' renewed interest in themes that have preoccupied the UN from the outset, including questions of race and racism, the global implications of anticolonial nationalism, the problem of development in relations between North and South, and the gendered nature of the postwar international order. In this article we survey the state of histories of the UN and reflect on some of the ways in which the history of the UN has a place in international as well as world history as a site of cultural contestation, influence, continuity, and change.