The book critically investigates the local impact of international organizations beyond a Western rationale and aims to overcome Eurocentric patterns of analysis. Considering Asian and Western examples, the contributions originate from different disciplines and study areas and discuss a global approach, which has been a blind spot in scholarly research on international organizations until now. Using the 1930s as a historical reference, the contributions question role of international organizations during conflicts, war and crises, gaining insights into their function as peacekeeping forces in the 21st century. While chapter one discusses the historicity of international organizations and the availability of sources, the second chapter deliberates on Eurocentrism and science policy, considering the converging of newly created epistemic communities and old diplomatic elites. Chapter 3 sheds light on international organizations as platforms, expanding the field of research from the diversity of organizations to the patterns of global governance. The final chapter turns to the question of how international organizations invented and introduced new fields of action, pointing to the antithetic role of standardization, the preservation of cultural heritage and the difficulties in reaching a non-Western approach.

For the 21st century, the often-quoted citation 'past is prologue' reads the other way around: The global present lacks a historical narrative for the global past. Focussing on a transcultural history, this book questions the territoriality of historical concepts and offers a narrative, which aims to overcome cultural essentialism by focussing on crossing borders of all kinds. Transcultural History reflects critically on the way history is constructed, asking who formed history in the past and who succeeded in shaping what we call the master narrative. Although trained European historians, the authors aim to present a useful approach to global history, showing first of all how a Eurocentric but universal historiography removed or essentialised certain topics in Asian history. As an empirical discipline, history is based on source material, analysed according to rules resulting from a strong methodological background. This book accesses the global past after World War I, looking at the well known stage of the Paris Peace Conferences, observing the multiplication of new borders and the variety of transgressing institutions, concepts, actors, men and women inventing themselves as global subjects, but sharing a bitter experience with almost all local societies at this time, namely the awareness of having relatives buried in far distant places due to globalised wars.

Im ausgehenden 19. Jahrhundert fand eine Verdichtung grenzubergreifender, nichtstaatlicher Kontakte bisher unbekannten Ausmasses statt. Die Staaten der westlichen Welt zelebrierten die entstehende Moderne mit der Grundung internationaler Organisationen und der Veranstaltung von Weltausstellungen, mit immer zahlreicheren Konferenzen und Kongressen. Am Beispiel dreier Staaten, die an der Peripherie des europaischen Grossmachtesystems existierten, wird nachgewiesen, dass die neuen grenzubergreifenden Netzwerke neben der konventionellen Diplomatie als Hinterturen zur Macht genutzt werden konnten."

Whether we think of statues, plaques, street-names, practices, material or intangible forms of remembrance, the language of collective memory is everywhere, installed in the name of not only nations, or even empires, but also an international past. The essays in Sites of International Memory address the notion of a shared past, and how this idea is promulgated through sites and commemorative gestures that create or promote cultural memory of such global issues as wars, genocide, and movements of cross-national trade and commerce, as well as resistance and revolution. In doing so, this edited collection asks: Where are the sites of international memory? What are the elements of such memories of international pasts, and of internationalism? How and why have we remembered or forgotten “sites” of international memory? Which elements of these international pasts are useful in the present? Some contributors address specific sites and moments—World War II, liberation movements in India and Ethiopia, commemorations of genocide—while other pieces concentrate more on the theoretical, on the idea of cultural memory. UNESCO’s presence looms large in the volume, as it is the most visible and iconic international organization devoted to creating critical heritage studies on a world stage. Formed in the aftermath of World War II, UNESCO was instrumental in promoting the idea of a “humanity” that exists beyond national, regional, or cultural borders or definitions. Since then, UNESCO’s diplomatic and institutional channels have become the sites at which competing notions of international, world, and “human” communities have jostled in conjunction with politically specific understandings of cultural value and human rights. This volume has been assembled to investigate sites of international memory that commemorate a past when it was possible to imagine, identify, and invoke “international” ideas, institutions, and experiences, in diverse, historically situated contexts. Contributors:Dominique Biehl, Kristal Buckley, Roland Burke, Kate Darian-Smith, Sarah C. Dunstan, David Goodman, Madeleine Herren, Philippa Hetherington, Rohan Howitt, Alanna O’Malley, Eric Paglia, Glenda Sluga, Sverker Sörlin, Carolien Stolte, Beatrice Wayne, Ralph Weber, Jay Winter.