Neither Right nor Left: Interwar Internationalism between Justice and Order

This essay examines three recent monographs on the history of interwar humanitarianism and legal internationalism. Together, these three works consider how the shock of World War I accelerated prewar European trends in the fields of humanitarianism, international criminal law, and the institutionalization of international society. They indirectly point toward the surprising politics of interwar humanitarianism and legal internationalism, suggesting the exceptionality of the interwar era in the history of internationalism. The essay argues that more careful investigation of the particular motivations and ideologies of the internationalist actors and their projects would yield greater insight into the recasting of international order after the First World War and the legacies of the period for the moral history of the twentieth century.