Rebuilding the Postwar Order: Peace, Security and the UN-System

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Throughout the Second World War, a wide range of people, including political leaders and government officials, experts and armchair internationalists, civil society groups and private citizens talked about and formulated plans to ensure national security and to promote individual well-being in the postwar world. Rebuilding the Postwar Order explains how civil society and governments of the wartime allies conceived of peace and traces the international negotiations and conferences that later resulted in the United Nations system. It adopts a multilateral approach, connects wartime ideas to earlier peacemaking efforts, and reveals support for, as well as resistance and alternatives to, the emerging postwar order. In chapters on the United Nations, UNRRA, the IMF, World Bank and GATT, the FAO and WHO, UNESCO, and human rights, McKenzie explores the tensions between national sovereignty and international responsibility, national security and individual well-being, principles and compromises, morality and power, privilege and justice, all of which influenced the UN system.

Reviews

This impressive book draws on vast reading and research in international history to demonstrate how different conceptions of peace played a decisive role in the emergence of the United Nations and the post-WWII international order. Its multilateral approach provides readers with a truly comprehensive analysis of one of the seminal international developments of the twentieth century. * Dan Gorman, Professor of History and Department Chair, University of Waterloo, Canada *
"More than ever, we need new histories that return us to a critical moment in the invention of the existing international order. Francine McKenzie's meticulous and rich study of the origins of the UN system restores the broad ambitions of the mid-20th century, reminding us of the importance of international institutions, as they were once conceived. There once was a time when the imperative of peace took prime place in international politics- this book brings that time alive for a new generation faced with the multiple challenges of an order newly in diasarray." * Glenda Sluga, Professor of International History, European University Institute, Italy *

Author Bio

Francine McKenzie is a Professor in the Department of History at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. She is an international historian who has published extensively on international organizations, international trade, and global order. Her most recent book is GATT and Global Order in the Postwar Era (2020).