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Review Essay—The Mystic Wand of Participation: An Appraisal of Mark Mazower's “No Enchanted Palace: The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations” (2010)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

Abstract

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Mark Mazower's latest book, No Enchanted Palace: the End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations intelligently weaves in the League of Nations as the primary informant of the United Nations to deconstruct any claims of discontinuities between the two institutions. In doing so, Mazower offers an eloquent polemic against the literature's tendency to idolize the United Nations' founding as a symbolic and material break from empire. Exploring the dark sides of its intellectual origins and early years, however, Mazower points to the decolonization movement to argue for the potential of the United Nations as a site of emancipatory struggle — his book concludes with a reinvestment in its promise of a more inclusive and just world order. The issue left to the reader, and which I hope to address in this review essay, is the legitimacy of Mazower's claim that the United Nations has indeed escaped its imperial heritage.

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Copyright © 2011 by German Law Journal GbR 

References

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6 Mazower used this term to describe how the UN is portrayed in the literature he is reacting against. He claims that one of the two purposes of the book is to challenge the belief that the UN rose as an Aphrodite, “uncontaminated” by the failures of its predecessor institution. Id. at 14.Google Scholar

7 Id. Evidently, British imperial thought was instrumental in the creation of this kind of League of Nations. However, as already established in historical literature, the American role was also significant. See for example, Antony Anghie, Colonialism and the Birth of International Institutions: Sovereignty, Economy and the Mandate System of the League of Nations, 34 New York Journal of International Law and Policy 513, 553 (2002); Nussbaum, Arthur, A Concise History of The Law of Nations 247-248 (1954). Notwithstanding any reservations on Nussbaum's account of the history of international law, like many others, he establishes Wilson's relationship to the League and more importantly American imperial thought, particularly in relation to the Monroe Doctrine. As President of the US, Wilson had worked unsuccessfully to create a Pan American Pact that would officiate the Monroe Doctrine, and that would like very similar to a League of Nations. As Nussbaum points out, although the idea of the League of Nations was voiced in Britain during WWI, it was voiced with “less authority and vigor.” Additionally, the American idea of the League as an “alliance” was markedly different from British jurists who compared the League of Nations to a corporation. Nussbaum's last point speaks to Mazower's anxiety about the benevolence of the American story. Nevertheless, a more nuanced study of this “alliance” would quickly uncover it as merely another version of the British corporation.Google Scholar

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17 The author's purpose might not necessarily be establishing the UN's lineage of formal empire. Still, it is not clear why this is the second of the two central theses of a book, published in 2009. Whom is Mazower responding to? This question also arises when we look into Mazower's choice of characters – each, as an iteration of the former – which emphasizes the claim that international institutions were instrumental in sustaining the imperial policies of the time. Although the choice of Jan Smuts as the primary protagonist is an “easy target,” it becomes more understandable once you reach the book's final chapter. The final chapter highlights Smuts's role in Apartheid South Africa, which, according to Mazower, initiated the spark of anti-colonial movements that strategically used the UN as a podium for voicing criticisms of the imperial logic that still reigned throughout the world. Nevertheless, the infamy of Jan Smuts crowds historical inquiry whether in law, politics, or history. Considered the mastermind behind the Mandate System, Smuts's role in the project of empire building is far from peripheral in the literature. Equally important is the institutional environment that made Smuts successful. However, Mazower's concern with establishing the British connection might simply be explained by the fact that he is an intellectual historian who is writing a corrective narrative of what he views to be a widespread misconception in his field regarding the perceived influence of British imperial thought versus its American counterpart.Google Scholar

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33 Mazower contrasts British imperial policies of annexations of German and Ottoman possessions with Wilsonian self-determination, seen in that light as the friendlier of the two evils.Google Scholar

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44 Another interpretation of Mazower's inclinations is that he sees the value in tactically utilizing ideas of liberal internationalism, such as self-determination to disrupt that same ideology of liberal internationalism.Google Scholar

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66 As Ernesto Laclau points out, post-moderns can be perceived to be “weakening the imperialist foundationalism of Western Enlightenment and opening the way to a more democratic cultural pluralism; but they can also be perceived as underpinning a notion of ‘weak’ identity which is incompatible with the strong cultural attachments required by a ‘politics of authenticity'.” Ernesto Laclau, Emancipation(s) 47 (2007).Google Scholar

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73 Id. at 191 (emphasis added).Google Scholar