For at least 200 years, men have sought to create a world order that would ensure stability and eliminate threats to peace. But it is only in the 20th century that this ideal has been brought to fruition, first in the ill-fated League of Nations, established in 1919, which expired, almost unnoticed, after the outbreak of war in 1939, and then in the United Nations.
Governing the World charts the history of the idea of international co-operation since the end of the Napoleonic wars. It is a penetrating and wide-ranging study, illuminating not just the history of internationalism but also the problems involved in realising it in the world of today.
The story begins in 1818, when there occurred a development which Metternich’s secretary, Friedrich von Gentz, saw as ‘a phenomenon without precedent in the history of the world’, the creation of the Concert of Europe, a system of regular summits amongst the powers, as an instrument to keep the peace.
But, as Mazower shows, the Concert was rapidly bedevilled by a confusion of aim.
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