The Interwar Otherwise: Rewriting Liberal Histories of International Law

This article critically examines the mainstream international legal narrative of the interwar period,arguing that it functions not as a neutral recounting of the past but as a strategic intervention thatgoverns the present. The conventional story—centered on collective security, codification ofrestraints on war, the mandates system, and minority protection—is shown to be a distinctlyliberal construction. It presumes a liberal concept of law and treats peace and security as law’snatural horizon, thereby sidelining the era’s competing legalities: economic ordering andtechnocracy, racialized governance and imperial extraction, social rights internationalism andlabor constitutionalism, emergency as a legal technology, and administrative internationalismacross finance, health, and trade. In this sense, the interwar as conventionally narrated is largelya self-description of liberal legalism, not a transparent periodization.The article advances twoclaims. First, that this narrative framing narrows what counts as international legality andnaturalizes particular institutional forms. Second, that in 2025—amid fraying constitutionaldemocratic orders, notably in parts of the Global North—we must reinvent our narratives. Thismeans foregrounding legal architectures that structured social conflict and authority beyondthe security frame: debt, trade, and resource governance; race and empire within internationaladministration; emergency and technocratic expertise; and rival internationalisms. Rewritingthe interwar is not antiquarian labor but a practical intervention to enable the strategic work ofhistory in constituting the horizon of the possible.