Suchergebnisse

Every good humanities journal emerges from and is produced by a specific scientific community that shapes its content and its style.Central European History(CEH) is no exception. For me, i.e., a French historian of Germany teaching at a Swiss university in Geneva,CEHisthejournal to read in order to follow the more recent and innovative English-language scholarship on the history of Germany and German-speaking countries. Most of the articles published in the journal are written by historians based in the United States or in the United Kingdom (and its dominions), and most of the books that are reviewed originate from the same community, with the notable exception of ones by German authors.

Cet article analyse les possibilités et limites de l'élaboration d'une protection sociale internationale. Il étudie la façon dont la sécurité sociale s'est imposée comme modèle international de protection sociale contre celui des assurances sociales promu par l'OIT dans les années 1920-1930. Ce changement de label recouvre en réalité un glissement de paradigme rendu possible par une remise en cause des équilibres politiques et sociaux antérieurs, en particulier le déclin du syndicalisme international. L'article étudie sous quelles conditions a pu se déployer une réflexion et s'établir une norme internationale dans le domaine des assurances sociales, central pour la définition des politiques sociales durant l'entre-deux-guerres. Il s'interroge ensuite sur la manière dont le passage du modèle des assurances à celui de la sécurité sociale a été négocié à et par l'Organisation internationale du travail et comment, après la Seconde Guerre mondiale, la normativité internationale qui aurait pu constituer le socle d'une harmonisation des politiques cède finalement la place à des mesures de coordination multilatérale.

In Frankreich verkörperte Bismarck einerseits das kriegerische Deutschland und andererseits den "Schmied" der geeinten deutschen Nation, der die europäischen Gleichgewichte respektierte. Mit der Zeit entwickelte sich ein Bild von Bismarck als "gutem Europäer". Hat er tatsächlich eine gemeinsame europäische Dimension? (APuZ)

"In Frankreich verkörperte Bismarck einerseits das kriegerische Deutschland und andererseits den 'Schmied' der geeinten deutschen Nation, der die europäischen Gleichgewichte respektierte. Mit der Zeit entwickelte sich ein Bild von Bismarck als 'gutem Europäer'. Hat er tatsächlich eine gemeinsame europäische Dimension?" (Autorenreferat)

Fighting the War or Preparing for Peace? The ILO during the Second World War During the Second World War the ILO stood for an alternative, democratic internationalism in response to Nazi international/European plans. The ILO was able to serve as an international platform and was directly involved in the Allied war effort. Moreover, examining the ILO allows us to better understand the multi-layered processes and rationales that brought about a shift in the political and social balance of power during the Second World War. After the ILO moved to Montreal in May 1940, the handful of French functionaries guarding the organisation's deserted headquarters in Geneva could only look on helplessly as the reformist labour movement, together with the vision of a social Europe that it promoted, was defeated. Meanwhile, on the campus of McGill University in Montreal, the ILO underwent a twofold transformation in exile. Dependent on British and North American funding and staff, it became the champion of the pragmatic solutions to social issues implemented in those countries. Through its work for the United Nations alliance it expanded its activities in the fields of expertise and technical assistance, to the detriment of its work in setting international labour standards. While it had been founded in 1919 to protect workers and to provide an international platform for the reformist workers movement, the ILO emerged from the war as an organisation focusing increasingly on providing economic and social expertise.

This article considers the question of forced labor in the framework of human and social rights, as unfolding in the early Cold War period. A precise analysis of the discussion surrounding the convention on the abolition of forced labor within the International Labour Organization (ILO) between 1947 and 1957 forms a basis for my observations. The conflict between the two blocs, like the decolonization process, demarcated a favorable period for defining the juncture between human and social rights. The alliance between officials from southern and communist countries could have a catalyzing effect. Having had the intent of denouncing the Soviet labor camps at its inception, the convention in its final form reintroduced social rights as a condition of freedom of labor.

Having for a long time been an area of research mainly reserved for specialists in international relations and political scientists, the international organizations (IOs) that first emerged in the twentieth century's pre-World War II decades have also attracted renewed interest of historians for the past several years. This development has its place in a movement of 'globalization' within the discipline, evident in both themes and practice. The nation, the region, and the village remain pertinent units for study, but the historian interested in global history approaches them in relation to other spaces, reflecting renewed attention to connections and forms of circulation traditionally neglected in specialized studies. As will be argued below, in their role as observation posts, the IOs and international associations here comprise an especially productive area of research, in effect opening access to work on complexly intermeshing 'circulatory regimes'.

This case study of Germany and the ILO between 1919 and 1944 allows us to ask to what extent and under what form international organizations can constitute spaces within which "the international domain is produced". By distinguishing between two periods, it also allows empirical study of these mechanisms of internationalization in the domain of social policy. During the Weimar Republic, the mechanisms by means of which social knowledge and expertise were internationalized were active wherever the national and international scenes overlapped. There, the "German social model" underwent various forms of denationalization (though not without giving rise to tension). The Nazi period represented a return to the late nineteenth-century tradition of social imperialism. An examination of this period reveals the importance accorded by the Nazis to international organizations as instruments of propaganda as well as the way in which they sought to profit from these organizations by "twisting" their objectives. Adapted from the source document.