Editors Karin van Leeuwen and Morten Rasmussen explain how their Cambridge Handbook uses deep archival research across dozens of collections and brings together international contributors to reveal how the League of Nations used legal techniques, institutions, and networks to shape an incipient form of global governance.

The episode highlights key findings — the League’s legal section and court experiments, tensions between sovereign equality and imperial hierarchies, and case studies like Upper Silesia and the Manchurian crisis — and argues the handbook reframes the League as central to the development of international law and institutions, while noting the limits of ‘‘peace through law".

Resources: Ask a Librarian! Ask an Archivist! Ikonomou, H. A. et al. (eds.) (2026) The Cambridge Handbook of the League of Nations and International Law. 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Guests: Karin van Leeuwen

Morten Rasmussen

Host: Amy Smith

Recorded & produced at the United Nations Library & Archives Geneva 

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