Karen Gram-Skjoldager

Historiography and narration in transnational history

The ‘transnational turn’ has been one of the most widely debated historiographical directions in the past decade or so. This article explores one of its landmark publications: The Palgrave dictionary of transnational history (2009), which presents around 400 entries on transnational history written by around 350 authors from some 25 countries. Drawing on narrative theory and the sociology of knowledge, the article develops an extensive quantitative and qualitative analysis of the most prominent narrative structures that can be found across the Dictionary , thus piecing together a coherent historiographical portrait of the books many and multifarious entries. In doing so the article wishes to demonstrate a possible methodology for analysing the growing body of reference works – in the form of dictionaries, encyclopaedias, and handbooks – that are currently mushrooming in expanding research areas across the social sciences and the humanities such as international relations, governance, and globalization studies.

Unity and Divergence: Scandinavian Internationalism, 1914–1921

Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway and Sweden) is frequently seen as a democratic ‘island of peace’ in international politics and the three states are seen as ardent supporters of an ‘international community’ under the umbrella of the United Nations as well as its predecessor, the League of Nations. This article seeks to challenge this idealised, unitary conception of Scandinavian peace politics by exploring how different strands of internationalism, as transnational phenomena, developed from the outbreak of the First World War until the three states became members of the League. Initially, that development was more or less independent of official foreign policy. The article explains how and to what degree new internationalist ideas were eventually merged with traditional neutralist Scandinavian foreign policies.

The Law of the Jungle? Denmark's International Legal Status during the Second World War

This article investigates Denmarks international legal status during the Second World War. In exploring this theme it brings together two emergent research perspectives on twentieth-century international political history: (1) a growing interest in small states as actors and active interpreters of international political events in times of crisis and war; and (2) a focus on international law as an independent and so far underexplored research theme. From this double perspective the article highlights and analyses the unprecedented and unparalleled character of the legal relationship between Denmark and Germany after the German occupation of Denmark in April 1940. In doing so it places particular focus on how this situation was viewed and conceptualised by Danish politicians and legal experts. Thus it explores the complex entanglement of politics and law that characterised Danish attempts to bring about and consolidate the particular peaceful and ‘normal’ relationship with Germany as well as efforts to change this relationship and make Denmark a belligerent state. By analysing the four concepts of neutrality, non-belligerence, peaceful occupation, and war the article shows how these legal concepts served as political instruments that were pushed forward by competing and changing understandings of Denmarks international position and interests during the war. But it also shows how these legal conceptualisations were fundamentally structured by the general international legal and political developments of the war (the deterioration of neutrality and the emergence of long-term military occupation and guerrilla warfare throughout Europe). And it demonstrates how they gradually took on a life of their own and came to frame and shape perceptions of Denmarks international position - both among Danish politicians and bureaucrats during the Second World War and among historians to this day.

The Construction of the League of Nations Secretariat. Formative Practices of Autonomy and Legitimacy in International Organizations

ABSTRACT This article investigates the formative staffing practices of the League of Nations Secretariat. Drawing on the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu, it argues that core traits of the Leagues institutional capacity and identity was produced through the institutionalization of recruitment practices in the Leagues formative years from 1919 to 1923. Through an exploration of early negotiations and practices of staffing, we show how the League built and balanced legitimacy, by combining a clearly international make-up of the League Secretariat with acute sensitivity to state interests, and autonomy, by defending the Secretary-Generals exclusive prerogative of staffing, in a way that has been defining for the trajectory of international organizations (IOs) until today. The article thus turns to the institutional landscape where the individual and its surroundings meet: through the daily staffing practices of the Secretariat, it explores how an institution came to be, function and assert its influence as an autonomous and legitimate diplomatic agent in a broader international field. As such, the article, as an innovative contribution to the field, argues that international historians should connect thorough institutional investigations with elements of the ‘cultural turn’ in International History, in order to properly engage with and understand IOs as diplomatic actors.