Getting to know the IHP Faculty: Davide Rodogno

New school year, more interviews! We begin with Davide Rodogno, Professeur boursier, who is a co-director of the Doctoral and Faculty Seminar in International History and Politics this year (and who will team-teach a course on the League of Nations and the United Nations: A Parallel History in the spring).



Jaci Eisenberg: I’m curious about how you became interested in your specific areas of research. Could you tell us about what you did your graduate studies on, and how that’s evolved into what you’re working on today.

Davide Rodogno: I was a Ph.D. student here at the Graduate Institute. Our director, Philippe Burrin, was my supervisor and I also was a teaching assistant for Professor Bruno Arcidiacono and Matthew Leitner. I consider the three of them as my mentors. The topic of my dissertation was on Fascist Italy military occupations in Europe during the Second World War.

The topic of my Ph.D. actually began as a seminar paper in late 1994. Bruno Arcidiacono asked me whether I was interested in working on Fascist policy towards the Jews of the occupied territories in Europe. The topic appealed to me a lot, since it contributed to the understanding of the persistence of a myth alive still today in Italy: Italiani brava gente, the Italians were good people and benevolent occupiers. In 1995, I came to the conclusion that if one really wanted to understand Fascist policies towards the Jews in Europe it was necessary to understand the broader context of the military occupation or annexations. The seminar paper became a mémoire and, eventually, a PhD dissertation.

In 2000, while finishing my thesis, I became interested in the topic of my second book, (a history of humanitarian interventions during the nineteenth century, which should be published by the end of 2010). I should mention that the 1990s was a time when at the old HEI there was a lively debate on humanitarian interventions. As a student I had the privilege to attend seminars of international law professors such as George Abi-Saab, Theodor Meron, and Luigi Condorelli. While preparing my thesis defense, I dealt with questions concerning the history of genocide and I came across Vahakn Dadrian’s book on the Armenian genocide. Dadrian mentioned humanitarian interventions during the 19th century, without giving any definition of this international practice. So, I started doing some historiographical research and realized that, with the exception of some international law articles, nothing had been written on the history of humanitarian interventions.

Shortly after my doctoral thesis defense I applied for a bourse chercheur avancé of the Fonds National Suisse. My research project was about armed intervention against massacre in the Ottoman Empire throughout the nineteenth century. In the meantime, I was already working for the World Bank in Lithuania and try to keep as many professional doors open for my future because I wasn’t so sure that I would get the Post-Doc fellowship.

So, this is how things developed in my case. Curious maybe, but that’s the way it is.

Jaci Eisenberg: What were you doing at the World Bank exactly?

Davide Rodogno: The World Bank had to prepare a Country Economic Memorandum, a photograph of Lithuania, one of the post-communist transition countries, as they were called back in the 1990s. I was one of the members of a team of 10 experts, and the only non-economist of the group. I had to prepare a report on the business environment. It was a very formative experience because I could interview the ex-President of Lithuania, the representatives of the patronat, of the workers, of small-and-medium size enterprises, as well as NGOs monitoring corruption in the country.

At the very same time I was applying for the YPP (the Young Professional Programme of the World Bank) the FNS awarded me the post-doctoral fellowship. I decided that I would keep working in academia. I moved to London and to Paris. From there I moved to St. Andrews, where I was appointed Academic Fellow in 2005.

Now, to go back to your first question, while I was working on the history of humanitarian interventions throughout the 19th century, I realized that a number of public opinion movements, such as the Pro-Armenian, Pro-Macedonian, the Congo Reform Association had a truly transnational dimension. I started developing an interest in transnational history, and wanted to combine this new research interest with my previous interest in the history of humanitarianism and humanitarian interventions. In 2007, I submitted a new proposal to the Fonds national, this time for a position of Professeur boursier, on the history of international humanitarian associations.

I started this 4 years’ project when I came in Geneva, in 2008. It is an entirely new experience for me. For the first time a lead a small research group and collaborate with two IHP Ph.D. students: Shaloma Gauthier and Francesca Piana. The first thing that we did was to narrow down the topic. We have decided to focus on humanitarian relief operations in the aftermath of conflicts, whether internal or international during the 1920s and 1930s. Our units of analysis are European and Northern-American non-state humanitarian actors, such as the ICRC, the League of Red Cross Societies, Save The Children, l’Union Internationale de Secours aux Enfants or the American Relief Administration. The project is about a given number of situations, post-war situations, and a given number of configurations. Geographically, the project covers an area that goes from Poland, down to Eastern and Central Europe, the Balkans, and then Turkey and Caucasus, including the relief for Armenians, from Anatolia to Asia Minor. We try to understand who were the actors doing what, and how humanitarian cooperation took place.

As you see, my interest in the history of Ottoman Armenians is still alive today. The reason why today I keep working on the international relief on behalf of Armenian populations, especially women and children in the 1920s, is because for me this is in a way the third chapter of a story that begins with the Armenian massacres of the 1890s, when no humanitarian intervention ever took place, and tragically continued during the War with genocide.

Jaci Eisenberg: Have you started any other projects? In previous conversations you’ve mentioned the League of Nations Century Project.

Davide Rodogno: This is a very long-term project that involves the colleagues of this academic unit, and possibly of other academic units, who have an interest in the history of international organizations. On the one hand, we wish to cooperate with the United Nations in the process of digitization of the documents. Currently, we are exploring the possibility of focusing on the Fonds Nansen, which is a corpus of documents that stands alone. Moreover, some of these documents have already been microfilmed, so the digitization process should be smooth and easy. On the other hand, we are developing a scientific project that will go along with the digitization. The history of Nansen is inextricably linked to the history of refugees, and, as you know, HEID hosts a refugee center, directed by Jussi Hanhimäki.

Jaci Eisenberg: You’ve already mentioned quite a lot of future projects, but do you have any others that you’d like to talk about?

Davide Rodogno: I would like to teach a seminar on the history of NGOs (maybe co-teaching it with Professor Pierre-Yves Saunier of Lyon). Pierre-Yves and I have already been discussing a number of things that we’d like to deal with in our seminar. We would like to encourage students to work in the archives of NGOs, to study the history and politics of NGOs as well as the history of NGOs governance a very topical question. As you know, a number of NGOs have their headquarters in Geneva or in Switzerland, and I wish our students to exploit this gold mine of unexplored archives in the future.

Bernhard Struck (University of St Andrews), Jakob Vogel (University of Cologne) and myself organized a two-round conference on the history of transnational networks of experts and organizations during the long nineteenth century. We are currently preparing a synopsis, and hoping to find an editor willing to publish this volume.

Finally, let me mention the Groupe d’Histoire des Organisations Internationales (History of International Organization Network). Last year, together with Sandrine Kott, from the University of Geneva, and Daniel Palmieri, from the ICRC, we funded this group. Our initial aim was to provide advanced students, independent scholars, university professors, as well as archivists with a forum and a locus where they could meet and exchange their views on the history of international organizations. We began by organizing a number of meetings with the archivists of the ICRC, the United Nations, the ILO. This year we’ve got an award from UNO Academia to organize a seminar on the history of international organizations. On October 27, we had a brilliant Oxford historian, Patricia Clavin, come to Geneva and present a fascinating paper on the League of Nations during the Second World War. By the beginning of 2010, we plan “to go virtual” and to have a website allowing scholars and students from all over the world to join the network. So, students and scholars coming to Geneva – where many archives of international organizations are located – will get to know the community of students and scholars sharing their same interests.

Jaci Eisenberg: Do you have any advice for the students of the History and Politics section?

Davide Rodogno: Just follow your passion. Especially for Ph.D. students, this is extremely important, because they have to live with their topic for 4 years. They should not follow any ephemeral fashions or short-term interests and take all the time necessary to understand what really their passionate about.

Professor Davide Rodogno, Office Hours on Wednesdays from 16h to 18h, Voie Creuse 334.

2009 Europaeum Lecture: Margaret MacMillan discusses “90 Years On – Lessons for Peacemakers from 1919?”

The 2009 Europaeum Lecture was held this evening, in the Auditorium Jacques-Freymond, at 18h30. IHP Professor Jussi Hanhimäki delivered opening remarks, among which was the exciting news that Professor Davide Rodogno (also IHP) is launching the League of Nations Century Project with Margaret MacMillan as co-chair. While official details were not released, one can assume this will follow in the steps paved by the United Nations Intellectual History Project and the ILO Century Project.

This years’ Europaeum speaker, Margaret Macmillan, is a world-renowned international historian. Currently Professor at and Warden of St. Antony’s College, Oxford, Dr. MacMillan has written several works familiar to us: “Paris 1919,” “Nixon in China,” and most recently, “The Uses and Abuses in History.” Dr. MacMillian began her remarks by noting this was her first visit to Geneva (which she was quite enjoying), but it would not be her last. Our location even prompted her to let us in on the fact that Woodrow Wilson and David Lloyd George (who also happens to be her great-grandfather!) originally wished to hold the peace conference in Geneva, believing tempers to be too high in Paris, but in the end, Paris it was.

The topic of the lecture was “90 Years On – Lesson for Peacemakers from 1919?”, and Dr. MacMillan did not disappoint in offering possible answers. However, before delving in, she warned against believing history has “lessons” to be “learned.” For her, such “lessons” necessitate skepticism if they are employed in a definite way (“History teaches us…”); such beliefs can force decision-makers into taking erroneous decisions. On the other hand, historical “lessons” are useful in the sense that they provide policymakers with a range of possible options to act with. In sum, she synthesized her most recent work: history can be a dangerous tool, but it is the only one we have.

Are there lessons to be pulled from the Paris Peace Conference of 1919?

First, Dr. MacMillan pointed out, the context is quite different. In 1919, leaders of the Great Powers came together for 6 months to come up with a settlement. Today, such a meeting would be impossible and impractical. Meetings such as the G7 or G8 tend to only last two days! In a related vein, Dr. MacMillan observed it is no longer the “fashion” to have large international conferences to deal with several issues at once; nowadays we tend towards issue-specific conferences (ex. the Dayton Conference to deal with Bosnia).

Dr. MacMillan pointed out that the prevailing view of the “six months that changed the world” in 1919 is that the settlement was a complete disaster, directly causing World War II 20 years later. She would beg to differ: not all of it was a failure, nor did it lead directly to World War II. The politicians meeting in Paris did the best they could in very difficult circumstances, an observation often ignored with our benefit of hindsight. As she went on to explain, in 1919, conditions were not favorable for peace. The world, postwar, was in turmoil, suffering from a huge loss of life: to paraphrase, society went through enormous tremors. The prevailing belief was that World War I was to be followed by a revolution (in the vein of the Bolshevik Revolution) which would turn European society on its head. But in the end, this was not the case.

Slightly off topic, but interesting nevertheless, Dr. MacMillan addressed the misconception that the Treaty of Versailles “created” Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia out of nothing. As she sees it, empires were disintegrating and the people which had been part of it were demanding states, homelands of their own. Therefore, it is more accurate to say the constituent groups of (soon-to-be) countries like Czechoslovakia dreamed them up, with the Treaty of Versailles merely solidifying the borders.

Returning to the central question of what lessons can be learned, Dr. MacMillan suggested that the means to enforce the clauses of the Treaty of Versailles were lacking, inherently suggesting that modern-day peacemakers should not try to devise settlements they cannot uphold.

Another “lesson” would be that leaders should be realistic in explaining to their publics what they can and cannot expect from a peace settlement. Politicians who pander to the ballot box will end up disappointing. For example, David Lloyd George ran his Winter 1918 election on the platform of seeking revenge on Germany, and this was fulfilled by the enormous German reparations bill. However the actual wording of the reparations bill split the payments into three, whereby the first part would have to be paid before the bill for the second part was issued – leaving Germany with no incentive to pay the first part (who wants to get further bills?). In reality, the amount of reparations paid by Germany was likely less than that paid by France after the Franco-Prussian War. But given the rhetoric surrounding the reparations payments, the German people had the impression they had paid too much.

Another caveat for modern peacemakers would be the need to consult those affected by potential divisions. At the Paris Peace Conference, the British delegation created Iraq – essentially they threw portions of the disintegrating Ottoman Empire together, believing their advanced technology, combined with a complacent local ruler, would suffice to give them power. However this did not turn out as planned.

Dr. MacMillan also noted that human mistakes are made, even in situations like these. A prime example was Woodrow Wilson’s stubbornness to compromise on terms of accession to the League of Nations. The bill approving membership in the League was subjected to joinders, small concessions, as it passed through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. While it is clear that David Lloyd George and Georges Clemenceau would have accepted American membership with some concessions – they were quite keen to have the US on board – Wilson was so stubborn about the alterations that he even convinced his own party to vote against the bill.

Dr. MacMillan offered some general instructions to us historians: we should cut some slack to the politicians present at the negotiations in 1919 – there was no way they could predict the Great Depression, nor could they predict the rise of Germany under Adolf Hitler. In more general terms, in history, never dismiss the defeated, and never assume anything in history is permanent.

In closing, events like the Paris Peace Conference show that unintended consequences were much greater than the intended ones.