International context

The interwar concern with change was a product of the gradual deterioration of the international climate. Peaceful change, like much 1920s and early 1930s IR, initially revolved around the question of treaty revision, specifically the (un)fairness of the Versailles peace treaty (Bloomfield Reference Bloomfield1957, 32; Ashworth Reference Ashworth2013, 134). Narrowly conceived, peaceful change was to provide an answer to the grievances of ‘have-nots’ concerning disarmament, and the territorial and colonial distribution established in the 1919 status quo. Much of the peaceful change discourse therefore consisted of factual data on minorities, colonial trade, raw material resources, population pressures – often assessing the validity of the ‘Have-nots’’ need for additional territory, raw materials, and market access. More broadly conceived, peaceful change was to tackle the wider critique that the League and entire post-WWI order had become overly static, conservative and statusquoist; that the Versailles settlement was ‘too uncompromising, too everlasting’ and near the end of its ‘post-war cycle’ (Armstrong Reference Armstrong1935, 4, 8) and that international law, organization, and order had failed to keep pace with political, economic, social, and technological changes (Wright Reference Wright1938, 825). The established order looked increasingly fragile, if not crumbling, after the 1935 Abyssinian Crisis. The failure of the League to deter and punish Italy is arguably the most well-known example of how a political dilemma brought about change in international thought, forcing scholars to reevaluate their beliefs in the League, international law, collective security, and how to prevent further violent disruptions of the status quo (Hall and Bevir Reference Hall and Bevir2014, 829). Interpreted in context, peaceful change is an interregnum problematique: an attempt to peacefully manage a situation where the old order was dying and the new yet to be born.

The stress on peaceful change was the result of an international context where war-like changes loomed large. When delegates met at the 1937 peaceful change conference, the equilibrium had been ‘violently disturbed’ – Japan had invaded Manchuria, Italy had occupied Ethiopia, Germany had remilitarized the Rhineland – and Versailles was seen as a ‘dead letter’ (Webster Reference Webster and Manning1937, 4, 11). The imminent risk of world war led scholars to argue that ‘the outstanding problem of our time’ was ‘how to bring about peaceful change in the international order, and so avert the fall of the sword of Damocles’ (Bentwich Reference Bentwich1938, 157). The shadow of WWI provided the contextual backdrop for thinking peaceful change. Like all concepts, ‘peaceful change’ has a temporal structure, a ‘space of experience’ and ‘horizon of expectation’ (Koselleck Reference Koselleck1990). Its ‘space of experience’ was informed by the destructiveness of the Great War, which led to the reasoning that war was no longer a viable institution for accommodating demands for change. In the more immediate past, the Kellogg-Briand pact (1928) renunciating war as an instrument of national policy led to the reasoning that if you cannot have war you must have ‘peaceful methods of settlement’ and if change is inevitable you must have ‘peaceful methods of change’ (Fischer-Williams Reference Fischer-Williams1928, 420; Reference Fischer-Williams1931, 337; Forster Reference Forster and Woolf1933, 340; Bourquin Reference Bourquin1936, 13–15, 43). Part of its wider ‘space of experience’ was the (perceived) historical experience that major changes of the international status quo, order, and law had emerged through major wars (Feller Reference Feller1933, 183; Bourquin Reference Bourquin1936, 13–15; Keeton Reference Keeton1938, 398) and that although post-war attempts to construct ‘general settlements of international affairs’ are always envisioned as permanent, indefinite, and changeless, they eventually crack, crumble, and become obsolete (Fischer-Williams Reference Fischer-Williams1931, 327; Dulles and Mitrany in Bourquin Reference Bourquin1936, 42, 264; Cruttwell Reference Cruttwell1938, 85). Its ‘horizon of expectation’, in turn, was the possibility of a future where ‘something’ is devised so change comes about peaceably: ‘if war is to be averted something must be devised to do in the future what war has done in the past’ (Webster Reference Webster and Manning1937, 6). ‘Peaceful Change’ was to replace a punctuated equilibrium model of change where long periods of stasis are suddenly disrupted (through war) to give way to a new order (through peace treaties). The political context clearly informed the concept of ‘peaceful change’, but is not a necessary or sufficient explanation for its emergence, nor should it exhaust our interpretation.

Institutional context

Institutional and disciplinary context also shaped the interwar discourse on peaceful change. Peaceful change emerged as IR was emerging as a discipline and therefore took place in various institutional and multidisciplinary settings, primarily the International Studies Conference (ISC) under the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation (IIIC) of the League of Nations, but also lectures at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, including The Problems of Peace series (Fischer-Williams Reference Fischer-Williams1932b), American Society of International Law which devoted its 1936 conference to peaceful change (Moon Reference Moon1936; Wright Reference Wright1936; Yntema Reference Yntema1936), Royal Institute of International Affairs (e.g. Toynbee Reference Toynbee1936), lecture series at the LSE (Manning Reference Mannheim and Manning1937), publications by Foreign Policy Association (Stone and Eichelberger Reference Stone and Eichelberger1937), Council on Foreign Relations (Dunn Reference Dunn1937), Institute of Pacific Relations (Angus Reference Angus1937b), New Commonwealth Institute (Strupp Reference Strupp1937), and many other institutions that submitted contributions to the 1937 ISC. The League-affiliated ISC, however, was the key node. Established in 1928, ISC from 1931 onwards brought together experts from various disciplines in 2-year cycles to discuss ‘concrete problems of international relations’ (IIIC 1937, 20) such as ‘The State and Economic Life’ (1931–1933), ‘Collective Security’ (1933–1935), ‘Peaceful Change’ (1935–1937), and ‘Economic Policies in Relations to World Peace’ (1937–1939). ‘Peaceful Change’ attracted most participants and publications.

The foundational role of the ISC has been marginalized in IR history (Long Reference Long2006). Yet, this multidisciplinary League-affiliated institution played an important sociological role in bringing together academics from different disciplines and countries to discuss international political problems. Participants were not pedigreed ‘IR’ scholars – PhDs in IR employed in departments of IR publishing in IR journals – but historians, lawyers, economists, geographers, or political scientists united by the pressing political problem of peaceful change. The multidisciplinary setup is important for how debates unfolded because disciplinary divides became potential lines of contention (lawyers focusing on the legal framework of peaceful change vs. historians and political scientists studying empirical peaceful changes). Moreover, the ISC constitutes a rich and largely unexplored historical archive. Apart from the staggering 120 memoranda, monographs, and edited volumes submitted to the ‘Peaceful Change’ conference, IIIC published an official report containing ‘an almost complete record of the discussions in both plenary and round-table sessions’ (IIIC 1938, 12). Conference transcripts are interesting sources because they give us insight into the actual dialogical debates on peaceful change (Guilhot Reference Guilhot2011).

Intellectual context

Finally, concepts must be interpreted within the field of thinkers and their position-taking in academic conversations, not as free-floating ideas. Because I structure my analysis around debates on the concept, mechanisms, and policies – not particular texts or thinkers – of peaceful change, I focus more on performative moves made in this debate and less on the granular authorial intentions than conventional contextualism (Skinner Reference Skinner2002). Despite the conceptual focus, my analysis does serve to contextualize Carr's ‘classical’ take on peaceful change by situating it alongside contemporary scholars he interacted with and positioned himself against in the peaceful change debate – rather than alongside other ‘classical’ works like Thucydides' and Gilpin's. Among the more prominent participants in the written or oral discourse on peaceful change, we find scholars of international law, history, classics, political science, sociology, economics, demography, anthropology, and colonial administration, such as Henry Angus, Maurice Bourquin, Alexander Carr-Saunders, Charles Cruttwell, John and Allen Dulles, Frederick Dunn, Hersch Lauterpacht, Lucy Mair, Karl Mannheim, Charles Manning, Paul Mantoux, David Mitrany, Gilbert Murray, Georges Scelle, James Shotwell, Eugene Staley, Arnold Toynbee, Charles Webster, Quincy Wright, and Alfred Zimmern (IIIC 1937, 12–15). IR historiographers have produced excellent biographical studies on many of these thinkers and my analysis of the peaceful change debate therefore does not delve into their positions on other issues.

A more important methodological issue concerns the international thought we exclude by looking at the ‘peaceful change’ debate. Most participants in this debate were elite, white, Anglo-American, male thinkers. Conference debates were also shaped by lesser-known scholars, also from beyond the Anglophone world. But most were from Europe and the colonies were not represented, although colonial redistribution was crucial to the discussions. Apart from the Eurocentric character of discussions, the debate venues were also dominated by male thinkers, with exceptions like Lucy Mair, Vera Dean, and ‘Lady Zimmern’ (as she was designated in IIIC 1938, 632; Mair Reference Mair and Manning1937). Indeed, concerns about the limited positionalities of the peaceful change debate go beyond nationality, race, and gender. Participants were broadly located at the centre of the international political spectrum, broadly supportive of the League and collective security but open to its reform. There were few ‘radicals and reactionaries’ (Hall Reference Hall2015) involved in this debate, barring some vocal delegates from fascist Italy and Nazi Germany who advocated peaceful change but were critical that the League and collective security could provide it (finding some common ground with realists) (Bourquin Reference Bourquin1936). Fascist voices dissipated as their countries left the League, however.

The politically ‘mainstream’ character of the debate is only partly explained by institutional in/exclusions and the ISC's League-centred nature. Another reason is that the concept of ‘peaceful change’ is inherently reformist – both anti-conservative and anti-revolutionary. This conceptually excludes much reactionary and radical international thought, for example some Marxist, communist, and anti-colonial strands. The purpose of reformist ‘peaceful change’ is exactly to resolve the dialectics of stability and change, order and justice, stasis and progress, peace and war, conservatism and revolution. Its conceptual opposite is therefore both ‘no change’ and ‘violent change’ – rigid conservation of an anachronistic status quo and revolutionary change. The two were viewed as dialectic: ‘If your international constitution is too rigid, you will not avoid change, but you will make your changes revolutionary’ (Fischer-Williams Reference Fischer-Williams1928, 420). Peaceful change aims to avoid that rigid preservation of the peace and status quo becomes a cause of violent change; that just demands for changes in the system turn into revolutionary changes of the system. Some even argued that violent revolutions are made by conservatives, not revolutionaries: ‘The history of every revolution is a story of blocked channels of change’ (Mitrany in Bourquin Reference Bourquin1936, 209). The argument for peaceful change was that the most stable institutions, protected against revolution, are those most flexible and adaptable to changing circumstances. What is needed to sustain peace is not an order that prevents change, but one that makes it as easy and peaceful as possible; ‘perpetual peace is not perpetual “rest”’ (Fischer-Williams Reference Fischer-Williams1931, 327). Thus, reformist peaceful change is itself quasi-conservative by preferring gradual change through managed reform within the existing order over revolutionary/war-like change. Peaceful change proposes change for the sake of ‘stability’, not of the particular status quo, ‘but of the general peace, order and good government of the world’ (Fischer-Williams Reference Fischer-Williams1931, 328).

Negative peaceful change

In the negative definition, sometimes labelled ‘realist’ by proponents, peace is seen as latent war and peaceful change defined as the alternative to change through outright war. To Frederick Dunn (Reference Dunn1937, 2), the Yale political scientist later claimed by realists, ‘the term “peaceful change”, then, refers simply to the alteration of the status quo by peaceful international procedures rather than by force’. The more well-known advocate of ‘realism’ and Wilson professor of International Politics in Aberystwyth, E.H. Carr (Reference Carr1939, 265) also defined the concept negatively: as how, in national politics, to effect ‘necessary and desirable changes without revolution and, in international politics, how to effect such changes without war’. Although peaceful change was defined as non-violent change, this school contends that threats of war actually facilitate peaceful changes. The possibility and threat of war is the sine qua non for peaceful change, Dunn (Reference Dunn1937, 127–28) maintained, because great powers will only seriously consider proposed changes that threaten the peace if not satisfied. ‘The contingent threat of war’, Oxford historian Charles Cruttwell (Reference Cruttwell1937, 1) argued in his historical overview, has ‘been one of the main considerations which have been decisive in securing a change without war’. ‘An operation of peaceful change’, Carr (Reference Carr1939, 274–75) echoed two years later, ‘could not be effected save under a threat of war’.

By implication, the relative power of states engaged in a controversy was crucial because only claims by strong states able to provoke world war would receive attention (Angus Reference Angus1937b, 5; Bourquin Reference Bourquin1938, 47). To Henry Angus (Reference Angus1937a, 11), head of the political science department at the University of British Columbia, this meant that ‘For a long time to come peaceful change, like violent change, is likely to benefit the strong at the expense of the weak and to appear to the weak and unsheltered as merely a new formula for justifying spoliation’. In an argumentation later reproduced by Carr, Angus (Reference Angus1937a, 10–11) contended that satisfied states would rarely give up possessions because they mistakenly believe the current distribution of privileges is just and are unable to recognize their own parochialism: ‘It must be remembered that every “satisfied” nation considers that it is calm and contented because of its honesty and self-reliance, its patience and its courage. It has, in short, the bourgeois temper’.

Charles Manning, then Montague Burton professor at LSE, also primarily advocated a negative, realist concept of peaceful change. To Manning (Reference Manning1937, 173–74), changes are never urgent or inevitable, good or bad, in themselves: ‘No one, it seems, has yet come out for peaceful change simply in the interests of change – as some take the car for a run with no specific destination in mind’. Concrete proposals for peaceful change are never disinterested and based solely on reason or justice, but in the interest of those who benefit from peace and wish to avoid ‘otherwise anticipated warlike change’ (satisfied powers). Manning (Reference Manning1937, 174) directly criticized scholars who implied that ‘peaceful change is necessarily change for the better, change in the interests of justice, and change accepted freely’ for obscuring the question. At the 1937 conference, Manning criticized colleagues who proposed both just and peaceful changes for wishing for more than had been obtained in domestic politics (IIIC 1938, 271). In the ideal international society, Manning (Reference Manning1937, 190) argued, ‘the case for change is understood in terms not of abstract justice – or vested rights – but of realism, compromise, and common sense’. Dunn (Reference Dunn1937, 127) was also critical that ideals and claims about justice might cloak power politics, as changes justified by reason or morality are often ‘in the immediate interest of the state having the power advantage. The resulting peace is only a temporary truce while the nation which was forced to acquiesce is gaining strength to challenge the settlement’.

In the negative conceptualization, peaceful change is a way for strong states to avoid war – not to produce a more just world order. The problem of peaceful change was not how to construct a general legal-institutional mechanism for producing a more elastic order, but how to meet the specific claims of challengers to the status quo distribution of rights and duties while preserving peace (c. Angus Reference Angus1937b, 3). Maurice Bourquin, professor at the Graduate Institute in Geneva and general rapporteur for the 1937 conference, was a strong voice for such ‘realism’ in the peaceful change debate. He drew a line between those treating peaceful change in abstract terms – constructing ‘attractive systems’ that correspond to ‘a true ideal’ – and ‘realism’ which concentrates on the ‘concrete forms which the problem assumes’ (Bourquin Reference Bourquin1938, 22–23, 260). Bourquin and Manning were both sceptical that reason and science could solve the problem of peaceful change and even that a solution could be found at all, unless the fundamental structure of international relations was changed. They maintained that claims for change are not only about ‘real’ socio-economic needs of dissatisfied nations, but also about the political need to become a great power. In such political questions, ‘reason loses much of its power’ and what is required is ‘more prudence, more tact, more precautions’ (Bourquin Reference Bourquin1938, 36–37). Manning criticized ‘the naïve belief in the compelling power of Reason’ to solve the problem of peaceful change and advocated a ‘realism’ that realizes the limits of reason, that law, moral, and reason are subject to politics, and that diplomacy works in secretive and mysterious ways (Manning Reference Mannheim and Manning1937, 169; Manning in IIIC 1938, 269; also Schrieke Reference Schrieke1937, 16; Moresco Reference Moresco1937, 1). Other participants such as Blühdorn, Antonesco, Winiarski, and MacPherson supported the call for ‘realist peaceful change’ that faces the reality of power politics among states and only proposes change that is ‘immediately applicable’ and ‘practicable without too strict a regard for its ideal desirability’, as opposed to ‘ideal peaceful change’ treating the problem in a ‘rational’, ‘academic’, ‘abstract’, ‘theoretical’, and ‘idealist’ manner (IIIC 1938, 269–71, 548–57, 574).

To summarize, negative peaceful change is defined as non-violent changes of the status quo to avoid war among the great powers, albeit often preceded by threats of great power war. Peaceful change is the attempt to satisfy the unsatisfied by statecraft and the redistribution of privileges, often territory. This concept is hard to distinguish from appeasement. But, as discussed below, to many interwar scholars, even some subscribing to negative peaceful change, appeasement as it materialized in the Munich Agreement did not qualify as peaceful change as it was too late, too short-sighted, conducted from a position of weakness, based exclusively on force, whetted the appetite for more, and did not even accomplish the purpose of avoiding war, not to speak of producing a more just order.

Positive peaceful change

A second school objected against the negative and power politics-based definition and stressed that peaceful change must be based on consent, justice, and systematic procedures. In the positive conceptualization, peaceful change should do more than avoid war. As Quincy Wright, the Chicago political scientist and international lawyer, formulated it, ‘peaceful change means changes in the status quo necessary for justice’, not simply change to ‘buy off Powers that are threatening war’ (Wright in IIIC 1938, 477). Charles Webster (Reference Webster and Manning1937, 5), the historian who formerly held the Wilson chair and was now Stevenson chair at LSE, outlined such a broader typology of peaceful change: (1) to avoid war, (2) to produce or remedy justice, and (3) to produce a world order better adapted to the material and mental processes. This was modelled on the domestic analogy where peaceful changes can be means to (1) appease the poor, (2) remedy injustice, or (3) create a better planned community. The first is equivalent to negative peaceful change, the latter two to positive peaceful changes.

The temporal horizon differs here. Rather than simply avoiding war in the immediate future, the positive conceptualization contains a promise of long-term progress: that peaceful change could make the League and the territorial order more flexible so as to prolong its life for the foreseeable future, if not overcome the problem of war entirely. In this more ambitious conceptualization, the challenge of peaceful change is to increase the political elasticity of the international (legal) order, making it able to transform itself, not simply to defuse the present political grievances of ‘have-nots’ (Dulles Reference Dulles1936, 25). Peaceful change should create a more elastic, and thus more legitimate and just, world order. Its goal is to ensure a ‘living justice’ that satisfies changing needs and conceptions of justice over time (Forster Reference Forster and Woolf1933, 342). By implication, proposed changes, if they are to produce a lasting peace, must be just and not based purely upon power considerations or immediate threats of war. Peaceful change cannot aim only to maintain peace – in which case changes will only be made at the advantage of strong states – but also to produce a just peace (IIIC 1938, 268).

Apart from justice, other advocates of positive peaceful change added consensual and legal peaceful change. Arnold Toynbee (Reference Toynbee and Manning1937, 28), the historian of civilizations and editor of Chatham House's Survey of International Affairs, proposed that by peaceful change ‘we mean something more than merely change which takes place without war. We probably mean peaceful and voluntary change’ (also Angus Reference Angus1937b, 6–7). By including consent, he disregarded cases where threats of force resulted in fait accomplis, for example the re-occupation of the Rhineland, as peaceful changes. Others, mainly international lawyers, further stressed that peaceful changes must be legal. In the definition of John Fischer-Williams (Reference Fischer-Williams1928, 420), an international lawyer and British League delegate who was one of the earliest students of peaceful change, what is needed is both ‘non-violent and legal modification of rights’. He envisioned peaceful change as a legal ‘safety-valve’ that, like legislation in domestic politics, avoids revolutionary explosions by renegotiating and synchronizing the order to new circumstances (Fischer-Williams Reference Fischer-Williams1931, 329). Quincy Wright (Reference Wright1939, 13) also proposed a definition of peaceful change ‘as a change in law or rights through procedures other than war which are in accord with the international obligations of the parties concerned, or which the law recognizes as competent in emergencies to override normal rights and obligations in the interest of a higher justice or of the welfare of the community of nations as a whole’.

A positive, legal definition of peaceful change is also found in Hersch Lauterpacht, perhaps the most prominent international lawyer, who was critical of peaceful change as a procedure to avoid war. Lauterpacht (Reference Lauterpacht and Manning1937b, 141) treated peaceful change as an institution of international law, defined as ‘the acceptance by States of a legal duty to acquiesce in changes in the law decreed by a competent international organ’. The ability to produce peaceful changes is paramount to legal systems, a system without it ‘bears in itself the germs of its own destruction. It is in itself an incentive to violence’ (Lauterpacht Reference Lauterpacht1937a, 4). Without a legal mechanism for peaceful change, international law risks perpetuating an ‘obnoxious status quo’ that eventually leads to the conclusion that a just war is better than an unjust peace (Lauterpacht Reference Lauterpacht1937a, 6). A system without provisions for peaceful change not only risks war-like change, but serves as an excuse for noncompliance with all international law (Forster Reference Forster and Woolf1933, 342) as war or the threat thereof is the only way to improve one's rights and a party can effectively only change treaties by breaking them (Mitrany in Bourquin Reference Bourquin1936, 212). In legal terms, peaceful change had to overcome the tension between pacta sunt servanda (treaties are binding and must be kept) and rebus sic stantibus (if there has been a fundamental change of circumstances, parties may withdraw from or terminate treaties). The legal peaceful change argument, in short, is that the sanctity of treaties depends on the ability to update them to changed circumstances, but also that they are updated in accordance with existing international law.

Many proponents of positive peaceful change – as consensual, just, legal, and systematic change – opposed the call for ‘realist peaceful change’ looking only at the concrete manifestations of peaceful change, especially demands for redistributive change of territory. In Lauterpacht's (Reference Lauterpacht1937a, 1–3; Reference Lauterpacht and Manning1937b, 135–40) conceptualization, pragmatic political solutions to particular problems – German colonies, Manchuria, Abyssinia – do not fall under the topic peaceful change, only fundamental considerations about the legal system do. He opposed the ‘pragmatic method of leaving the fundamental issues alone and of trying to solve each difficulty as it arises. Such pragmatism would be deceptive. For we may find that in the absence of legally effective institutions of peaceful change we are not solving these particular problems but are compelled to accept solutions under the impact of force or – what is the same – of the desire to avert war’ (Lauterpacht Reference Lauterpacht and Manning1937b, 140). At the 1937 conference, scholars such as Van Kan, Hauser, Richardson, Lord Lytton, de la Harpe, Mantoux, and Scelle argued that the ‘realism’ of looking at concrete and practicable peaceful changes would stifle any progress. They stressed instead that systematic procedures rather than particular instances of territorial change were necessary to produce lasting peaceful change, that justice and ideals remains important driving forces, and that scholars should in fact judge the moral value of revisionist claims (IIIC 1938, 261–68, 572–74).

Statecraft

To proponents of negative peaceful change, the primary procedure was statecraft: direct diplomatic negotiations among states, primarily great powers, as opposed to legal procedures. A key part of the argument challenged the validity of analogies to domestic peaceful change through legislation. Manning (Reference Manning1937, 177–80) directly opposed the ‘domestic analogy’ that international institutions could be endowed with the power to deprive states of rights against their will. Unlike domestic politics, Brierly noted, there is no international legislature to solve the problem of peaceful change, only ‘fragile dams of legal formulas’, and peaceful change thus becomes a ‘problem of statesmanship’ (Brierly in Geneva Institute of International Relations 1930, 297). In Hamilton Fish Armstrong's (Reference Armstrong1935, 7–9) ‘power politics’ perspective, the League and Article 19 contained the embryo of peaceful change, but lacked an enforcement mechanism.Footnote ² Only stronger states, not the League, could solve the problem of German, Italian, and Japanese expansionism. It would be futile to design abstract legal formula for peaceful change because such once-and-for-all solutions would necessarily fail to predict the future conditions and demands for change. Only political procedures provide that flexibility.

Directly calling for ‘realism’, proponents of this view, led by Manning, encouraged colleagues to ‘guard against illusions’ and ‘ideally perfect procedures’ such as authoritative peaceful change enforced by a ‘super-State’. The faith in international law and organization, analogies to change in the domestic sphere, and especially Lauterpacht's radical proposal for peaceful change through a ‘super-state’ represented the kind of legal blueprints that realists like Manning rebelled against. He opposed the ‘all or nothing’ definition of peaceful change as an overriding international legislature and ridiculed Lauterpacht who went ‘all out for the World State; and, upon my words, for one moment I really began to think he was going to get it!’ Manning was sceptical of the technocratic-rationalist notion that if only the correct legal procedure of peaceful change was established, a solution would automatically follow: ‘You put in your penny, you turn the handle, and out comes your settlement!’ Peaceful change would not come about through judgment or legislation, but a ‘construction politique’ (Manning Reference Mannheim and Manning1937, 175–77; Manning in IIIC 1938, 550–57).

Dunn (Reference Dunn1937, 125) made similar critiques of instrumentalist approaches to peaceful change: ‘The widespread notion that by the mere calling of conferences, the establishment of international commissions of inquiry or the devising of new techniques of negotiation it will be possible to find acceptable solutions for all demands for change is largely the product of wishful thinking’. The solution, rather, was ‘unofficial and informal’ procedures among states conducted without the publicity of League discussions (Dunn Reference Dunn1937, 149). John Condliffe (Reference Condliffe1938, 5, 8), who also defined peaceful change as the ‘ways and means of satisfying urgent present needs without recourse to war’, believed states should be the primary movers in solving it: ‘It follows that international machinery is regarded not as the starting point of a possible future unitary organisation for the world as a whole, but as a means of facilitating cooperation between independent nation-states’. Manning (Reference Manning1937, 172) praised Condliffe's statism, stating that ‘It is an aid to clear thinking, and a check to undue optimism, that, in viewing any problem in the field of international policy, we remember how, for anything to be accomplished in the matter, it must be done by the Governments of the existing sovereign States’.

E.H. Carr similarly characterized peaceful change through a world legislature or court as ‘utopian’ and advocated for a great power bargaining mechanism attuned to the conflicts of interest between Haves and Have-nots. It is worth recalling, however, that Carr (Reference Carr1939, 222) advocated for a synthetic realist-utopianist mechanism of peaceful change that could compromise between the utopian ‘common feeling of what is just and reasonable’ and the realist ‘mechanism of adjustment to a changed equilibrium of power’ – but his concern with justice emphasized the injustice done to Have-nots, leading him to support appeasement.

Legal machinery

A contending view, drawing on the positive concept of peaceful change, held that mechanisms must be legal, institutional, systematic, and collective rather than political, ad hoc, and statist. As Toynbee (Reference Toynbee1936, 27; Reference Toynbee and Manning1937, 37–38) put it, ‘artificial channels’ of peaceful change should moderate, if not substitute, old-fashioned ‘ad hoc’ state-centric modes of international organization: ‘we must take thought and create institutions, create collective security which – permanently in operation – will effect peacefully those changes which, if they do not take place peacefully, will presently take place through a new series of explosions’.

Others directly defined peaceful change as a ‘legal machinery’ or ‘legal system’ enforced within the established legal frameworks of the League (Strupp Reference Strupp1937; Supan Reference Supan1937, 1; Von Verdross Reference Von Verdross1937, 1). Here the domestic analogy was invoked as exemplar: like ‘police and court systems and legislative assemblies have lessened the power of the strong arm in private disputes’, similar legal procedures should be developed by the international community ‘if peaceful change is to be substituted for violence’ (Staley Reference Staley1937, 8–9). While legal provisions for peaceful change existed in Article 19 of the Covenant, there were extensive discussions of whether it made adequate provision for peaceful territorial change or needed reform, whether international law was a hindrance or aid to peaceful change, and particularly whether it extended beyond the ability to devise rules for revising the status quo to ‘rules for revising rules’ (constitutional peaceful change) (Gathorne-Hardy Reference Gathorne-Hardy1935; Wright Reference Wright1936; Yntema Reference Yntema1936). As a modest proposal for League reform, Quincy Wright suggested the establishment of less-than-unanimity decisions in the League Assembly, an advisory commission, and a court of justice limiting its powers as a way of institutionalizing peaceful change (IIIC 1938, 533). Lauterpacht (Reference Lauterpacht1937a, 11; Reference Lauterpacht and Manning1937b, 141–42) went further. To him the only solution would be an ‘international legislature’, a ‘super-state’ with the ‘constitutional means of effecting peaceful change without the consent of the State’. The argument was, Lauterpacht (Reference Lauterpacht1937a, 45–48) acknowledged, ‘profoundly radical’ and ‘seemingly revolutionary’ but he firmly believed that ‘the science of international law and relations, instead of joining the superficially realistic condemnation of ‘schemes of dreamers’, may legitimately contribute its share towards working out a proper system of [international legislation]’. He even doubted whether the ‘apparently realistic and logical approach can justly claim to be scientific’.

A less radical argument was that only a collective security mechanism that both facilitates change and restrains power can provide a lasting solution to the problem (Toynbee Reference Toynbee and Manning1937, 36). It critiqued that peaceful change enforced by individual states as diplomatic manoeuvres for satisfying dissatisfied states within a security system dominated by self-help and power politics would be potentially violent, unjust, and ‘made only to advantage of strong States’ (IIIC 1938, 268). Without a collective, international restraint on power, ‘peace can be preserved only by ‘giving the lion's share to the lion’’ (Staley Reference Staley1937, 8–9). Only a collective security system can facilitate systematic and just procedures of peaceful change: ‘you cannot have peaceful change without collective security, and equally you cannot have collective security without some organised system of peaceful change’ (Lord Lytton in IIIC 1938, 261). Collective security is a precondition for ‘imperative measures’ for peaceful change, Quincy Wright contended, because as long as their security depends on their relative military power, states will consider any change in terms of how it affects their relative power and will not yield rights in the name of justice (IIIC 1938, 532). Several scholars at the conference also argued that an association of force adequate to maintain peace (collective security) and devoted to the pursuit of justice is a necessary condition for peaceful change (IIIC 1938, 266–67; also Moon Reference Moon1936, 31–32).

Communitarian mechanisms

A less legal-institutional mechanism emphasized persuasion, reason, and community-building. The argument was that the causes for conflict were, at least partly, psychological, symbolic, and based on misinformation. Their solution, therefore, was more reason, information, and ‘psychological détente’ of the dissatisfied (Mitrany in Bourquin Reference Bourquin1936, 263). The problem of peaceful change demands a removal of the ‘assumption of violence’ (Staley Reference Staley1937, 36). It requires a psychological change, unthinking violent change, rather than a redistribution of territory or a legal machinery. Peaceful change will come from ‘good feeling’, not litigation (Zimmern in Bourquin Reference Bourquin1936, 277).

Some envisioned a prominent role for scholars in this mechanism. Since ‘pragmatic’ politicians have failed to solve the conflict, scholars may ‘endeavour to contribute something to the solution’ (Webster Reference Webster and Manning1937, 5, 9). Scholarly reason and information might soften the demands of ‘Have-nots’ and also help ‘Haves’ realize their privileged position. Memoranda from the Institute of Pacific Relations discussed whether research can help, not only design better legal institutions for peaceful change, but also educate public opinion: ‘that informed discussion will facilitate the peaceful adjustment of apparently conflicting interests’ and that ‘If we have any function at all it is to see that when national attitudes crystallise into national policy it is on the basis of knowledge rather than of ignorance’. The popularization of expert knowledge might introduce the mass to the outlook of well-informed circles, ‘remote as this possibility may appear to the hard-boiled realist’ (quoted in Angus Reference Angus1937b, 179–84, 193). Others went further, arguing that ‘to change international psychology’ scholars must ‘be apostles for peaceful change’ who can convince public opinion and governments that procedures of peaceful change are possible (Von Verdross in IIIC 1938, 264).

Here the possibility of substituting peaceful change for conflict ‘depends on how rapidly a sense of world-wide social cohesion, world citizenship, and world loyalty can be developed, and that present trends are not too encouraging’ (Staley Reference Staley1937, 210). But even advocates of negative peaceful change, like Dunn (Reference Dunn1937, 129), deemed it possible ‘eventually’ to appeal to other motives than the desire to avoid war and ‘to build up a general community interest’ and ‘a realisation that community welfare depends on the satisfaction of the needs of individual members’. The communitarian argument resonated with David Mitrany, then professor at the Institute of Advanced Studies, later famous for his functionalist theory. Mitrany consistently argued that peaceful change focused excessively on things that divide – redistributing territory and frontiers – rather than things that unite and bind. The proper mechanism of peaceful change in Mitrany's view was not, as peaceful change realists advocated, to peacefully redraw borders so as to satisfy grievances. Peaceful territorial change often makes little difference, and not always for the better, because they solve one problem and create others, and are essentially a concession to nationalism, not internationalism. Also opposed to formal-legal mechanisms, however, peaceful change in Mitrany's proto-functionalist argument implied that orders must be more pragmatic, elastic, and organic rather than formal, fixed, and final. Functional, progressive, and constructive peaceful changes are those that remove the need for changes of frontiers, indeed cause frontiers to be forgotten, and instead satisfy needs by promoting functional cooperation, human intercourse and integration, and ‘an understanding state of mind’ (Mitrany Reference Mitrany1935, 832–34; Reference Mitrany and Bourquin1936, 213; Reference Mitrany1943, 26; Mitrany in Bourquin Reference Bourquin1936, 265).

Appeasement as peaceful change

The very problem of peaceful change acknowledged that not only aggressive ‘have-nots’ threatening the peace, but also powerful ‘haves’ protecting a status quo that contains some injustices and unwilling to yield their rights as ‘stubborn and uncompromising opponent of any and every change,’ were part of the problem (Fischer-Williams Reference Fischer-Williams1928, 412; Reference Fischer-Williams1931, 326; Forster in Geneva Institute of International Relations 1930, 243; Armstrong Reference Armstrong1935, 6; Moon Reference Moon1936, 27).Footnote ³ The victorious European status quo powers were criticized for coupling the League and the collective security system to the vindictive Versailles peace treaty, effectively using it as an instrument to punish the vanquished and maintain a beneficial status quo, eventually contributing to its failure (Dulles Reference Dulles1936, 14; Reference Dulles1939a, 120; Reference Dulles1939b, 81–82). The flagrant treaty violations and challenges to the international order by Germany, Italy, and Japan were explained in part by the absence of a mechanism for peaceful change (Keeton Reference Keeton1938, 397). A ‘realistic’ approach, Schwarzenberger (Reference Schwarzenberger1939, 72–75) argued, would see that a great deal of criticism against treaties, and international law per se, was objectively justified. By perpetuating the status quo while providing no mechanism for peaceful change, the satisfied empires behaved in a hypocritically self-interested manner, using international law as an ‘ideological cloak’ to disguise that the status quo was in their interest.

Another advocate for realist peaceful change, E.H. Carr, also saw German dissatisfaction as a product of an excessively punitive Versailles Treaty and blamed the interwar crisis mainly on the satisfied powers who had mistakenly equated peace with the maintenance of the status quo but neglected that this status quo was in their particular interest, not the general interest of the world as proclaimed. Carr argued that revolts against the peace settlements stemmed from the fact that victors had imposed their own political system on the vanquished, mistakenly tying values such as democracy to the status quo of the peace settlement, and therefore resisted change. This led him to argue that there ‘is no more urgent problem, if peace is to be preserved and democracy survive, than what is known as the problem of peaceful change’ (Carr Reference Carr1936, 860). However, Carr's (Reference Carr1939, 270–72) approach to peaceful change saw the central problem in the ‘recurrent conflict between “haves” and “have-nots” as one of accommodating “Have-nots.”’ The problem of peaceful change could only be solved once dissatisfied powers realize the possibility of remedying grievances by peaceful negotiation (preceded by threats of force) and satisfied powers are presented with a fait accompli of imminent war and give concessions. Unlike many contemporary scholars of peaceful change, Carr (Reference Carr1939, 282) treated ‘Herr Hitler’ as a leader that could become satisfied with the status quo and therefore endorsed appeasement as the only realistic policy for maintaining peace, famously characterizing the Munich Agreement as ‘the nearest approach in recent years to the settlement of a major international issue by a procedure of peaceful change’. Prudent as the realist he was, Carr toned down the favourable attitude towards appeasement as a method of peaceful change in the post-war edition, and replaced ‘Herr Hitler’ with ‘Hitler’ (Fox Reference Fox1985).

Critiques of appeasement as peaceful change

Many other contributions to the peaceful change discourse opposed the appeasement policy. Even scholars advocating negative peaceful change were skeptical that war could be averted if the ‘Haves’ appeased the territorial demands of ‘Have-nots’ (Dunn Reference Dunn1937, 5). One argument questioned the effectiveness of appeasement, particularly territorial and colonial redistribution, if demands are driven by other considerations than an actual economic need for territory, population relief, and raw materials (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1936, 5–14; Dunn Reference Dunn1937, 8–31; Moresco Reference Moresco1937, 10; Staley Reference Staley1937, 9). Rather than blaming the conservatism of status quo powers, numerous studies dismantled the economic claims of ‘Have-nots’, arguing that Germany would access few resources in former colonies or that the economic benefits of colonial possessions were exaggerated (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1936, 7–8; Gregory Reference Gregory and Manning1937, 77; Staley Reference Staley1937, 7; Condliffe Reference Condliffe1938, 22). Dunn's study, and several others, argued the primary motivation for ‘Have-nots’ was not actual needs for territory, but prestige and recognition. He emphasized the symbolic ‘signs of defeat and dishonor’ and ‘position of inferiority’ imposed on Germany at Versailles when it was deemed unworthy of having a colonial empire. The removal of these symbols of defeat combined with a preservation of the balance of power – not territorial appeasement – would be an important step towards peace (Dunn Reference Dunn1937, 20–21, 139; on prestige as source of revisionism, Royal Institute of International Affairs 1936, 5–7; 1937, 66; Carr-Saunders Reference Carr-Saunders1937, 323; Mair Reference Mair and Manning1937, 82–84; Mannheim Reference Mannheim and Manning1937; Moresco Reference Moresco1937, 2; Schrieke Reference Schrieke1937, 4, 15–16; Staley Reference Staley1937, 187). Even scholars acknowledging the injustices of the status quo questioned whether the roots of the problem of peaceful change would disappear by ‘moving a few misplaced boundaries’, or if this would only reveal more ‘sore spots’ (Moon Reference Moon1936, 27–29).

A related argument stressed that power politics disqualifies the appeasement policy as a solution to peaceful change. In the world of ‘power politics’, there are few historical examples of strong states voluntarily handing concessions to the weak on the ground of ‘ideal justice’ or so as to prevent them from taking it with force when they have become stronger (Armstrong Reference Armstrong1935, 4). The ‘Haves’ would therefore resist ‘tenaciously’ any proposed change of the status quo that alters ‘the existing power ratio’ regardless of the grounds on which it is based (Dunn Reference Dunn1937, 12). It was also questioned whether ‘Have-nots’ were satiable. Since states rely on ‘self-help’, they cannot feel secure until in a superior position (Dunn Reference Dunn1937, 13) and there is no assurance that ‘even wise and timely’ concessions ‘will satisfy and halt a state seeking expansion’ (Armstrong Reference Armstrong1935, 4). Uncertainty over whether Japan would be satisfied with Manchuria, Italy with Abyssinia, Germany with Austria and Danzig made it ‘hard to imagine the “haves” adopting a policy of voluntary territorial concessions and change in favour of the “have nots”’ (Armstrong Reference Armstrong1935, 5). Expansionism to the point when it is difficult to further improve one's position is inherent in human nature, argued the Austrian delegate Blühdorn, and consequently conflicts between expansionist and conservationist powers are inevitable (Bourquin Reference Bourquin1938, 31). To yield territory to states seeking superiority would more likely start an endless spiral. Therefore, as Dunn (Reference Dunn1937, 129) concluded two years before Carr condoned the appeasement policy as an example of peaceful change, ‘the proposal to placate the dissatisfied Powers or bribe them into keeping the peace by yielding to their demands, one by one, appears to be fully discredited’.

A third argument against appeasement as ‘peaceful change’ stressed timing. Appeasement is not only too little, but too late. Appeasement can even worsen the situation under the wrong circumstances, namely threats of war, treaty violations, and exaggerated demands for change (Forster Reference Forster and Woolf1933, 344–50, 361–62). Once in a ‘war economy’ where countries prepare for war, all assets are counted as constituent elements of national power and measured in relative terms. The problem of raw materials and territory then becomes an armaments problem and states become willing to fight for them (Staley Reference Staley1937, 234; also Dennery Reference Dennery1938, 90). To appease countries already threatening war through peaceful redistributive changes that ensure a more ‘equitable’ distribution of raw materials – essentially ‘fighting power’ – will be outright dangerous and ‘produce the wars that they are designed to prepare for’ (Staley Reference Staley1937, 29–30). Concessions under duress will be interpreted as weakness and lead to further demands. Reshuffling the territorial and colonial status quo in favour of states threatening violence might therefore ‘simply whet their appetite for more, and perhaps encourage other states to try the same tactics’ (Toynbee Reference Toynbee1936, 31; Staley Reference Staley1937, 187–88; Webster Reference Webster and Manning1937, 10). The mistake was not to give concessions, Toynbee noted after Munich (1939, 317–19), if they had been given to legitimate demands of Weimar Germany, but to so at the eleventh hour when ‘our acquiescence wears the appearance of a capitulation, under an immediate threat of war, to a Nazi dictatorship’. Peaceful change through concessions to Have-nots could have worked under the collective security system and a strong League, but became a ‘free pass to aggressors’ once appeasing powers had ‘shown they could be bullied’ (Whitton Reference Whitton1936, 111; Dulles Reference Dulles1939a, 123–24; Jackson and Lee Reference Jackson and Lee1941, 90).

Fourth, scholars advocating just peaceful change, criticized the injustices of appeasement. Appeasement based on unjust redistributions would not bring lasting peace. ‘To many’, Webster (Reference Webster and Manning1937, 8–10) contended, concessions that sacrifice weaker states to maintain peace among great powers ‘seem dishonourable even if they help to preserve peace’. Peace therefore cannot be an end in itself, justice and injustice in the present distribution of territory must be considered. Although such considerations were limited to injustices done to weaker European states, others stressed injustices done to colonial subjects. Even ‘the most backward tribe’ cannot be exchanged like ‘cattle’, argued Emanuel Moresco (Reference Moresco1937, 11) the ISC rapporteur on colonial questions, especially not to a dictatorial Germany with its National-Socialist race doctrine. Another proponent of just peaceful changes similarly criticized the policy of redistributing colonies, mandates, or raw materials for ‘the white people to settle their quarrels’ while ignoring that ‘the fate of the colonies is not only of interest to the white peoples’ (Lorwin Reference Lorwin1936, 465).

Finally, proponents of legal peaceful change criticized appeasement for undermining international law. Since there were already some legal mechanisms for peaceful change of both rights and law itself within the given order, Quincy Wright (Reference Wright1936, 57) questioned whether the (Have-nots') call for peaceful change arose from discontent with specific international laws and inadequate mechanisms for changing them or a discontent with international law per se: whether dissatisfied states ‘prefer anarchy and the opportunity to fish in troubled waters to law in international affairs’. Contrary to Carr, Wright (Reference Wright1939, 29–32) held that the ‘Munich settlement was not a case of peaceful change’ but an intervention that violated international law; the ‘dictates of Munich’ fulfilled legal obligations and justice as much as the ‘dictates of Versailles’ they sought to rectify. Toynbee (Reference Toynbee1939, 318) did view Munich as an ‘unprecedented’ instance of peaceful change, but one achieved at the ‘extreme threat of war’ and the price of the League: ‘it would hard to say that it is not good. And yet the League seems to be dying of it. She is like a mother dying in childbirth because the birth is so long overdue’. Several other scholars were also critical that Anschluss and Munich had been cases of ‘Peaceful change’ because they were presented as fait accomplis backed by the threat of force, did not look so peaceful to Czechs and Austrians, and had done little to satisfy Hitler's ambitions (Eichelberger Reference Eichelberger1938, 121; Rogers Reference Rogers1939, 13, 15). In sum, while the concept of peaceful change clearly intersects with appeasement, the many critiques serve to demonstrate that peaceful change need not be synonymous with appeasement – although it was to Carr.