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Writing Multilateral Trade Rules in the League of Nations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2020

Madeleine Lynch Dungy*
Affiliation:
College of Humanities, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, CH-1014Lausanne, Switzerland

Abstract

This article analyses the mechanics and the political stakes of multilateral trade negotiations in the League of Nations, in the context of the transition from empires to nation states. It examines one attempt to transfer bilateral treaty norms to a multilateral framework, the Draft Convention on the Treatment of Foreigners. This highly contested treaty addressed a policy question that was at the heart of both national sovereignty and international order – the legal treatment of foreign nationals. The attempt to regulate this question on a multilateral basis provoked intense debate about the authority of the League to mediate the relationship between international commerce and national governments.

Type
Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

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References

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26 Quinn Slobodian rightly emphasises the influence of Austrian post-imperial politics on trade liberalisation in the League of Nations and the ICC in the 1920s. He does not, however, address how pan-German nationalism structured visions of multilateral economic order in Vienna, especially in the Vienna chamber of commerce (Slobodian, Globalists, 30–42).

27 On Riedl's engagement with the ICC and the League in the 1920s, see Madeleine Dungy, ‘Peace, Power and Economic Order: International Rivalry and Cooperation in European Trade Politics, 1900–1930’, PhD Thesis, Harvard University, 2017, 285–336.

28 Nautz, Jürgen, ‘Tarifvertragsrecht und “Anschluss”. Das Projekt einer gemeinsamen Tarifrechtsreform in Deutschland und Österreich 1919–1931’, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, 31 (1991)Google Scholar; Fischer, Peter, ‘Die österreichischen Handelskammern und der Anschluß an Deutschland. Zur Strategie der “Politik der kleinen Mittel” 1925 bis 1934’, in Das Juliabkommen von 1936. Vorgeschichte, Hintergründe und Folgen (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1977), 299314Google Scholar.

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32 Suppan, Arnold, ‘Mitteleuropa Konzeptionen zwischen Restauration und Anschluss’, in Plaschka, Richard G., Haselsteiner, Horst, Suppan, Arnold, Drabek, Anna M. and Zaar, Brigitta, eds., Mitteleuropa Konzeptionen in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1995), 171–97Google Scholar; Thorpe, Julie, Pan-Germanism and the Austrofascist state, 1933–38 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), 1644CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Hochman, Erin, Imagining a Greater Germany: Republican Nationalism and the Idea of Anschluss (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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34 Letter from Maurice Beaumarchais to Aristide Briand, 8 July 1926, Archives diplomatiques du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères (AMAE), Société des Nations (SDN)/1197, 27–8. The French ministry of foreign affairs engaged with many pan-European leaders suspected of pro-Anschluss leanings in order to try to bring them in line with French security interests. See Boyce, Interwar Crisis, 173–4.

35 Riedl, Richard, Collective Treaties Facilitating International Commerce in Europe (Vienna: J.N. Vernay, 1926)Google Scholar. This is an abridged version Riedl's above-cited Denkschrift über die Möglichkeiten einer Erweiterung des österreichischen Wirtschaftsgebietes, stripped of its overt references to pan-German unity.

36 Letter from Pietro Stoppani to Édouard Dolléans, 1 July 1926, LON, R 529 10C/51057/46431.

37 Meeting summary, Chambre de Commerce Internationale, Commission des Entraves au Commerce, Première Session de la Commission Générale, 23–24 Feb. 1927, ÖStA, AVA/Nl Riedl/134.

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42 Pietro Stoppani, Notes Pour Sir Arthur Salter, 19 Mar. 1925, AMAE, Papiers d'Agent, Joseph Avenol/19, 92.

43 Hörtlehner, Alexander, ‘Ludwig von Mises und die österreichische Handelskammerorganisation’, Wirtschaftspolitische Blätter, 28, 4 (1981), 140–6Google Scholar and Slobodian, Globalists, 48–9, 66.

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47 The League economic committee first attempted to address registration issues by establishing unified procedures related to commercial travelers’ identity cards and samples in its 1923 Convention on the Simplification of Customs Formalities. The Draft Convention on the Treatment of Foreigners proposed to extend these 1923 provisions to address a wider range of registration requirements. See League of Nations, International Convention Relating to the Simplification of Customs Formalities, C.678.M.241.1924.II (Geneva: League of Nations, 1924), 67Google Scholar.

48 League of Nations, Draft Convention.

49 Quinn Slobodian notes that there were conflicting opinions within the Vienna chamber of commerce concerning migration. Some of the chamber's leaders insisted that free trade and free migration were inseparably linked. Others argued that people need not move if goods and capital could move freely, supporting a global regime of free markets and closed borders built around nation states. Riedl's Draft Convention occupies an intermediary position between these views. See Slobodian, Globalists, 43, 50, 53–4.

50 Article 23, League of Nations, Draft Convention, 13.

51 Telegram from Diplomatie to Clauzel, 17 Nov. 1926, AMAE, SDN/1379, 68; Lewis, Mary Dewhurst, Boundaries of the Republic: Migrant Rights and the Limits of Universalism in France, 1918–1940 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), 1753Google Scholar; Lewis, Mary Dewhurst, Divided Rule: Sovereignty and Empire in French Tunisia, 1881–1938 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), 98130CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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55 On this dynamic, see James, End, 117–8.

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57 Badel, milieu, 94.

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59 Notes additionnelles présentées au Comité Économique par le co-rapporteur M. Riedl en annexe au rapport de M. Serruys, 16 Jan. 1929, ÖStA, AVA/Nl Riedl/115.

60 On the formulation of the minimum standard of treatment in the early twentieth century, see Paparinskis, Martins, The International Minimum Standard and Fair and Equitable Treatment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 3946CrossRefGoogle Scholar. León Castellanos-Jankiewicz shows that the minimum standard was a response to the proliferation of conflicting national civil codes in the nineteenth century. Crucially, it made the attribution of international rights dependent on nationality, thus excluding stateless persons. See León Castellanos-Jankiewicz, ‘Nationality, Alienage and Early International Rights’, paper presented at ‘States, Societies and Crises across Time and Space’ conference held at the European University Institute, Florence, June 2018.

61 Dunn, Frederick Sherwood, ‘International Law and Private Property Rights’, Columbia Law Review, 28, 2 (1928), 175–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Jasper Kauth emphasises that the minimum standard emerged in the nineteenth century as a tool to support North American and Western European commercial activity. See Kauth, ‘Fremdenrecht’, 210.

62 Theodore Kill suggests that League norms on the legal treatment of foreign nationals went beyond the customary definition of the minimum standard of treatment at the time. See Kill, Theodore, ‘Don't Cross Streams: Past and Present Overstatement of Customary International Law in Connection with Conventional Fair and Equitable Treatment Obligations’, Michigan Law Review, 106, 5 (2008), 870–1Google Scholar.

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70 Comité Économique. Observations sur le projet de convention concernant le traitement des étrangers. Observations de M. di Nola, 14 Mar. 1928, LON, R 2776, 10D/295/338, 1–2 and League of Nations, International Conference on the Treatment of Foreigners, Preparatory Documents, C.36.M.21.1929.II (Geneva: League of Nations, 1929), 84–5Google Scholar.

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74 League of Nations. Economic Committee. Twenty-Seventh Session. Minutes of the Fifth Meeting, 17 Jan. 1929, LON, E/27th Session/P.V.5(1), 22–3.

75 Laqua, Daniel, The Age of Internationalism and Belgium, 1880–1930: Peace, Progress and Prestige (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015), 145–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; League of Nations, Proceedings of the International Conference on the Treatment of Foreigners, C.97.M.23 (Geneva: League of Nations, 1930), 30Google Scholar.

76 Aufzeichnungen des Herrn Staatsekretärs Dr. Trendelenburg über die Arbeiten der außerordentlichen Tagung des Comité Economique, July 1927, PA AA Rechtsabteilung/R 54262. While the central German leadership in Berlin supported the Draft Convention, Jasper Kauth notes that there was considerable resistance to it in local governments, particularly in border regions. See Kauth, ‘Fremdenrecht’, 224–5.

77 The mandates were supposed to be governed by an ‘open door’ regime guaranteeing all League members equal economic access. In practice, this provision mainly applied to German efforts to reclaim influence in former German colonies, as there was otherwise little outside interest in mandate economies. The ‘open door’ principle was generally respected in British mandates but not in French ones, where it was seen as a cover for German revisionism. See Susan Pedersen, Guardians, 233–7.

78 League of Nations. Economic Committee. Twenty-Fourth Session. Minutes of the Seventh Meeting, 29 Mar. 1926, LON, E/24th Session/PV7, 26; League of Nations, Preparatory Documents, 79 and Telegram from Georg Martius, 27 Nov. 1929, PA AA, Rechtsabteilung/R 54268.

79 Boyce, Interwar Crisis, 10–4; Cohrs, Patrick, The Unfinished Peace after World War I: America, Britain and the Stabilisation of Europe, 1919–1932 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008)Google Scholar and Tooze, Adam, The Deluge: The Great War and the Remaking of Global Order, 1916–1931 (London: Allen Lane, 2014)Google Scholar.

80 Drummond, Ian M., British Economic Policy and the Empire 1919–1939 (Abingdon: Routledge, 1972), 7087Google Scholar; James, End, 172–4; Harper, Marjory and Constantine, Stephen, Migration and Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 17–8, 57–9, 88–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tooze, Deluge, 348.

81 For example, strong British support was decisive in the conclusion of League transit treaties in the early 1920s and in the 1923 Convention on the Simplification of Customs Formalities. See Dungy, ‘Economic Order’, 71–7, 85–7.

82 Riedl, Richard, Rapport sur le Projet d'une Convention Internationale relative au Traitement des Étrangers (Paris: International Chamber of Commerce, 1929), 17Google Scholar.

83 Observations du Comité National Polonais sur le projet de convention relative au traitement des étrangers, 13 June 1929, PA AA, Rechtsabteilung/R 54265, 2.

84 League of Nations, Proceedings; Georg Martius, Schlußbericht über den Verlauf der ersten Tagung der Konferenz über die Behandlung der Ausländer, 6 Dec. 1929, PA AA, Referat Völkerbund/R 96707, 14.

85 Report, undated (begins ‘Artikel. 1, Absatz. 1’), ÖStA, Archiv der Republik/Auswärtige Angelegenheiten/Handelspolitik/1163; Projet de lettre aux membres de la délégation française, undated, AMAE, SDN/1381, 222–6.

86 League of Nations, Proceedings, 141–53, 210–20.

87 League of Nations, Preparatory Documents, 5, 39. In broad terms, Article 8 anticipated Mode 4 of the General Agreement on Trade in Services, concluded in 1995. This multilateral framework, supervised by the WTO, has primarily been used to facilitate the mobility of managers and other highly skilled professionals linked to trade. See Lavenex, Sandra and Jurje, Flavia, ‘The Migration-Trade Nexus: Migration Provisions in Trade Agreements’, in Talani, Leila Simona and McMahon, Simon, eds., Handbook of the International Political Economy of Migration (Edward Elgar: Cheltenham, 2015), 259–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

88 League of Nations, Proceedings, 141–53.

89 Ibid., 146.

90 Ibid., 146, 215.

91 Ibid., 143, 212.

92 Ibid., 67–9, 84–5.

93 Ibid., 67–9.

94 Ibid., 72.

95 Ibid., 72.

96 Ibid., 78.

97 Ibid., 79.

98 Ibid., 78.

99 Ibid., 80.

100 Ibid., 25.

101 The meeting minutes and working papers related to Devèze's second round of negotiations in 1930–1 can be found in PA AA, Rechtsabteilung/R 54269–54279 and LON R 2885 dossier 10D/23109.

102 Aufzeichnung über die vierte Sieben-Mächtbesprechung des Entwurfs über die Behandlung der Ausländer in Genf, 11 Nov. 1931, PA AA, Rechtsabteilung/R 54277, 2.

103 Letter from Richard Riedl to Charles Smets, 30 Oct. 1930, LON, R 2885, 10D/23109/23109 and Observations du Gouvernement fédéral autrichien concernant la documentation relative aux travaux de la Conférence Internationale sur le Traitement des Étrangers, 28 May 1930, PA AA, Rechtsabteilung/R 54270.

104 League of Nations Economic, Financial and Transit Department, Commercial Policy in the Interwar Period, 27; Pinchis, ‘Ancestry’, 29 n. 93.