Internationalismus in der Zwischenkriegszeit : Deutschland und Frankreich in der globalen Agrarkrise

Abstract

The study "Internationalismus in der Zwischenkriegszeit. Deutschland und Frankreich in der globalen Agrarkrise“ builds on the perspective that nationalism and internationalism in agricultural politics do not have to be seen as contradictory concepts. By looking at transnational agricultural interest groups with common cultural and political concepts, this thesis to the existing literature in three ways. Firstly, it contributes to the recent historiography on international organisations in the interwar period. The study identifies new actors in international agricultural policy in the shape of transnational interests groups (Commission Internationale d’Agriculture, Commission Internationale des Betteraviers Européens, International Sugar Council) and analyses their role within intergovernmental organisations like the International Institute of Agriculture in Rome and the League of Nations. Building on interdisciplinary impulses from social and political sciences, it shows that transnational interest groups managed to infiltrate international organisations and used them as a tool to further their own policy causes. By doing so, they contributed to the establishment of the League of Nations as an autonomous actor vis-à-vis its member states and not as a simple medium of diplomacy. Secondly, the study looks at questions of Europeanization. Having a genuine European focus, the transnational interest groups contributed to a Europeanization of the League of Nations and its agricultural policy. The League of Nations ceased to promote free trade in the agricultural sector but instead advocated global market planning as a solution to the global crisis. At the same time, the study also highlights first attempts to institutionalise a Common Agricultural Policy in Europe in the early 1930s. Finally, the study aims to embed the agricultural policy in the interwar period in a broader context of debates before the First World War and after the Second World War. By doing so, it shows continuities and discontinuities of the European agricultural integration process throughout the first half of the 20th century.