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James Cotton, ‘UN 1.0’ Australia at the League of Nations


Just as the Second World War produced the United Nations, the First World War brought forth its immediate predecessor the League of Nations. Generally viewed as a failure hamstrung by the fact that America never joined and unable to forestall Axis aggression, the League nevertheless gave birth to many important international operations that were subsequently taken over by the UN and continue to this day. For Australia, membership of the League was an important coming of age moment, one in which we were represented separately from Britain on the world stage for one of the first times in our history.

In this week’s episode of the Afternoon Light podcast, Robert Menzies Institute CEO Georgina Downer talks to James Cotton, author of The Australians at Geneva: Internationalist Diplomacy in the Interwar Years, about the UN’s ill-fated precursor.

James Cotton is an Emeritus Professor at UNSW Canberra. James graduated with first class honours and was a University medal winner at Flinders University. He was a 1975-76 Procter Fellow at Princeton University, and studied at the Beijing Language Institute (1980). He has held academic positions in Western Australia, Newcastle Upon Tyne, Singapore, the Australian National University, and Tasmania (head of Politics School, 1993-1997); he is a former head of the School of Politics, University of NSW, ADFA. In 2001 he was Centennial Professor in International Relations and in the Asia Research Centre, London School of Economics, and in 2004 and 2007 he was Visiting Professor, Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Hong Kong. He was a member of the Asia Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, Washington DC, as Australian Scholar, Session 2, 2009. In 2013 he was Harold White Fellow, National Library of Australia.

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