Manchester University Press
3 Ascertaining the truth in Albania
Abstract
This chapter focusses on inquiry as an instrument of international order and how the League of Nations used it when dealing with a wide range of international issues during its lifetime. The League’s model of inquiry was not created out of a vacuum but drew upon precedents from international dispute settlement to domestic and colonial inquiries. In this chapter, inquiry as an instrument of international order is discussed through the prism of a border delimitation dispute that created tensions between Albania and neighbouring countries Greece and Yugoslavia in the early 1920s, while juxtaposing this case study with elements from later League inquiries to reach a greater understanding about the instrument’s overall purpose. The chapter shows how officials and politicians at the League of Nations often spoke about truth, impartiality and independence when pertained to inquiry, but it was left unspecified how these aims could be fulfilled when commissioners were sent out to collect information. As a result, inquiries relied on informal practices and the personal authority of individuals to produce and qualify relevant information, creating a contrast between the institution’s formal adherence to fact-finding and impartiality and a markedly different reality on the ground. League inquiry is better understood if it is not strictly considered at face value, not as a fact-finding instrument but rather as an instrument of diplomacy and the interwar international order. Frequently it served as a safety valve, allowing a greater degree of flexibility to respond to an escalating conflict or a sensitive cross-border issue.
Abstract
This chapter focusses on inquiry as an instrument of international order and how the League of Nations used it when dealing with a wide range of international issues during its lifetime. The League’s model of inquiry was not created out of a vacuum but drew upon precedents from international dispute settlement to domestic and colonial inquiries. In this chapter, inquiry as an instrument of international order is discussed through the prism of a border delimitation dispute that created tensions between Albania and neighbouring countries Greece and Yugoslavia in the early 1920s, while juxtaposing this case study with elements from later League inquiries to reach a greater understanding about the instrument’s overall purpose. The chapter shows how officials and politicians at the League of Nations often spoke about truth, impartiality and independence when pertained to inquiry, but it was left unspecified how these aims could be fulfilled when commissioners were sent out to collect information. As a result, inquiries relied on informal practices and the personal authority of individuals to produce and qualify relevant information, creating a contrast between the institution’s formal adherence to fact-finding and impartiality and a markedly different reality on the ground. League inquiry is better understood if it is not strictly considered at face value, not as a fact-finding instrument but rather as an instrument of diplomacy and the interwar international order. Frequently it served as a safety valve, allowing a greater degree of flexibility to respond to an escalating conflict or a sensitive cross-border issue.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front matter i
- Contents v
- Figures vi
- Contributors vii
- Preface ix
- Introduction 1
- 1 Becoming national 17
- 2 The League of Nations and the new uses of sovereignty 35
- 3 Ascertaining the truth in Albania 55
- 4 The chemical weapons discourse as an instrument of international order 81
- 5 ‘Weapons misused by barbarous races' 104
- 6 Colonial policy and international control 127
- 7 In the eyes of the world 152
- 8 The League of Nations and the advisory opinion of the Permanent Court of International Justice as ‘preventive adjudication’? 177
- 9 With or without the metropole 198
- Index 227
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Front matter i
- Contents v
- Figures vi
- Contributors vii
- Preface ix
- Introduction 1
- 1 Becoming national 17
- 2 The League of Nations and the new uses of sovereignty 35
- 3 Ascertaining the truth in Albania 55
- 4 The chemical weapons discourse as an instrument of international order 81
- 5 ‘Weapons misused by barbarous races' 104
- 6 Colonial policy and international control 127
- 7 In the eyes of the world 152
- 8 The League of Nations and the advisory opinion of the Permanent Court of International Justice as ‘preventive adjudication’? 177
- 9 With or without the metropole 198
- Index 227
