Full title: From Liberia and Ethiopia to the League of Nations: Józef Beck’s Approach to the 'Colonial Question’

Author: Piotr Puchalski

Abstract:

It can be argued that the newly created Polish state of the interwar period was partly a product of Wilsonianism, as the idea of national self-determination helped to secure its western and southern borders. Rarely, however, has the new Poland been examined in the broader framework of the Versailles system and its integral colonial element, namely the mandates and the internationalist turn of colonialism. Still less known is the Polish government’s relationship to the colonial world order at large. In my talk, I will present selected findings from my upcoming book and demonstrate the ways in which interwar Poland used opportunities that presented themselves in Africa to address real and perceived domestic problems. In particular, I argue that, in exchange for certain privileges, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Warsaw and the Maritime and Colonial League helped Liberia in opposing an internationalist attempt to infringe on its sovereignty, which took place in 1934. Only two years later, Polish diplomacy under Józef Beck decided to issue colonial statements in order to reform certain aspects of the Wilsonian system altogether. In particular, I will discuss the international context in which these statements appeared as well as the legal, political and economic arguments put forward by Polish experts at the time.