Becoming Global from East to West, 1933–1939

Abstract

Following the Manchuria Crisis, the League Health Organization and smaller state powers within the League’s membership elevated human security to a principal objective of international action. This chapter asserts that the Health Organization’s leading role was possible because of the progression of its activities in eastern Europe’s post-imperial successor states. Experiences of the 1920s placed the Health Organization at the forefront of the League of Nations’ general shift toward “technical work” and social questions in the 1930s. For the Health Organization and its eastern European cohort, the 1930s was an era of expertise and institutional growth. In their second decade, they turned their experience toward western Europe, the United States, and the Soviet Union, critiquing domestic governance, imperialism, and the exportation of ideologies.