In this article, we revisit the story of the League of Nations’ (1919–1946) death. Throughout its existence, the League served as an instrument for a series of important experiments in organising European politics and negotiating Europe's place in the wider global order. To understand the League's demise and legacy, we need to study these different conceptions of Europe, their shortcomings, failures and legacies. The article explores three such conceptions: (1) the Eurocentric civilisational order that played a foundational role in the early 1920s; (2) the European regional agenda that rose to prominence as a product of the French-German rapprochement of the late 1920s; and (3) the new technocratic visions of regional European cooperation that were associated with a deteriorating international political climate in the 1930s. The Atlantic heritage, with the transfer of experiences, functions and personnel from the League to the UN during and after the World War II, is addressed in the article's fourth and final sections. Our argument is that these European visions were attempts to manage the turbulent and skewed post-war world order by an Eurocentric organisation that from its very inception was hampered by the fact that one of its chief designers, namely the United States, opted not to join. In a broader perspective, we show that in order to understand how international organisations die, we should work with a deeper historical perspective that considers the effects of their various life stages.

中文翻译：

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欧洲的生与死 – 大西洋的复兴？国际联盟旷日持久的灭亡的欧洲性


在本文中，我们回顾了国际联盟 （1919-1946） 去世的故事。自成立以来，国际联盟一直是组织欧洲政治和谈判欧洲在更广泛的全球秩序中的地位等一系列重要实验的工具。要了解国际联盟的消亡和遗产，我们需要研究这些不同的欧洲概念、它们的缺点、失败和遗产。本文探讨了三个这样的概念：（1） 在 1920 年代初期发挥了奠基作用的以欧洲为中心的文明秩序;（2） 作为 1920 年代后期法德和解的产物而崛起的欧洲区域议程;（3） 与 1930 年代不断恶化的国际政治气候相关的欧洲区域合作的新技术官僚愿景。大西洋遗产，以及二战期间和之后国际联盟向联合国的经验、职能和人员的转移，将在本文的第四部分也是最后一部分讨论。我们的论点是，这些欧洲愿景是一个以欧洲为中心的组织试图管理动荡和扭曲的战后世界秩序，该组织从一开始就受到其主要设计者之一（即美国）选择不加入的事实的阻碍。从更广阔的角度来看，我们表明，为了理解国际组织是如何消亡的，我们应该从更深层次的历史角度来考虑其不同生命阶段的影响。