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The newly born League of Nations confronted the post-WWI world—from growing stateless populations to the resurgence of right-wing movements—by aiming to create a transnational, cosmopolitan dialogue on justice. As part of these efforts, a veritable army of League personnel set out to shape “global public opinion,” in favor of the postwar liberal international order. Combining the tools of global intellectual history and cultural history, A Violent Peace reopens the archives of the League to reveal surprising links between the political use of modern information systems and the rise of mass violence in the interwar world. Historian Carolyn N. Biltoft shows how conflicts over truth and power that played out at the League of Nations offer broad insights into the nature of totalitarian regimes and their use of media flows to demonize a whole range of “others.” An exploration of instability in information systems, the allure of fascism, and the contradictions at the heart of a global modernity, A Violent Peace paints a rich portrait of the emergence of the age of information—and all its attendant problems.
Carolyn Biltoft, Assistant Professor, International History and Politics, the Graduate Institute.
Aidan Russell, Associate Professor, International History and Politics, the Graduate Institute.
Emma Rothschild, Jeremy and Jane Knowles Professor of History, Director, Center for History and Economics, Harvard University.
Andrew Sartori, Professor of History, New York University.
Biltoft, Carolyn. 2021. A Violent Peace: Media, Truth and Power at the League of Nations, University of Chicago Press.
This event is co-sponsored by the International History and Politics Department.
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