International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation

Last updated

International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation
1922–1946
StatusInternational organisation
CapitalGeneva
Historical era Interwar period
 Creation
1922
 Dissolution
1946
Succeeded by
UNESCO Flag of UNESCO.svg
ICIC Archives in Geneva Humanites Numeriques.JPG
ICIC Archives in Geneva

The International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, sometimes League of Nations Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, was an advisory organisation for the League of Nations which aimed to promote international exchange between scientists, researchers, teachers, artists and intellectuals. [2] [3] [4] Established in 1922, it counted such figures as Henri Bergson, Albert Einstein, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Jagadish Chandra Bose, Nitobe Inazo, Marie Curie, Gonzague de Reynold, Leonardo Torres Quevedo, and Robert A. Millikan among its members. [5] [6] [7] The committee was the predecessor to UNESCO, and all of its properties were transferred to that organisation in 1946.

Contents

The International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation (Geneva)

The International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation (ICIC) was formally established in August 1922. [8] Having started out with 12 members, its membership later grew to 19 individuals, mostly from Western Europe. [7] The first session was held on August 1, 1922, under the chairmanship of Henri Bergson. During its lifetime, the committee attracted a variety of prominent members, for instance Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Kristine Bonnevie, Jules Destrée, Robert Andrews Millikan, Alfredo Rocco, Paul Painlevé, Leonardo Torres Quevedo, Gonzague de Reynold, Jagadish Chandra Bose and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. Einstein resigned in 1923, protesting publicly the committee's inefficacy; he rejoined in 1924 to mitigate the use German chauvinists made of his resignation. [9] The body was successively chaired by:

The ICIC maintained a number of sub-committees (e.g. Museums, Arts and Letters, Intellectual Rights or Bibliography) which also worked with figures such as Béla Bartók, Thomas Mann, Salvador de Madariaga and Paul Valéry.

The ICIC worked closely with the International Educational Cinematographic Institute created in Rome in 1928 by the Italian government under Mussolini. [10]

The last session took place in 1939, but the ICIC was only formally dissolved in 1946, like the League of Nations.

The International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation (Paris)

A side of the Palais-Royal (Paris), where the IIIC was installed in 1926. Sap01 mh0092807 p - IMG 20140526 1501390000.tif
A side of the Palais-Royal (Paris), where the IIIC was installed in 1926.

To support the work of the commission in Geneva, the organization was offered assistance from France to establish an executive branch, the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation (IIIC), in Paris in 1926. [12] However, the IIIC had an autonomous status and was almost only financed by the French government, giving it a certain independence that created tensions with the League of Nations. [3] It maintained relations with the league's member states, which established national commissions for intellectual cooperation and appointed delegates to represent their interests at the institute in Paris. While being an international organisation, each of the IIIC's three successive directors was French:

From 1926 to 1930, Alfred Zimmern – the well-known British classicist and a pioneering figure in the discipline of international relations – served as the IIIC's deputy director.

As a result of the Second World War, the institute was closed from 1940 to 1944. It re-opened briefly from 1945 to 1946. When it closed for good in 1946, UNESCO inherited its archives and some parts of its mission. [13] [14]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henri Bergson</span> French philosopher (1859–1941)

Henri-Louis Bergson was a French philosopher who was influential in the traditions of analytic philosophy and continental philosophy, especially during the first half of the 20th century until the Second World War, but also after 1966 when Gilles Deleuze published Le Bergsonisme. Bergson is known for his arguments that processes of immediate experience and intuition are more significant than abstract rationalism and science for understanding reality.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">League of Nations</span> 20th-century international organisation, predecessor to the United Nations

The League of Nations was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. The main organisation ceased operations on 18 April 1946 when many of its components were relocated into the new United Nations. As the template for modern global governance, the League profoundly shaped the modern world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Union of International Associations</span> International organization

The Union of International Associations (UIA) is a non-profit non-governmental research institute and documentation center based in Brussels, Belgium, and operating under United Nations mandate. It was founded in 1907 under the name Central Office of International Associations by Henri La Fontaine, the 1913 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and Paul Otlet, a founding father of what is now called information science.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hendrik Lorentz</span> Dutch physicist (1853–1928)

Hendrik Antoon Lorentz was a Dutch physicist who shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pieter Zeeman for the discovery and theoretical explanation of the Zeeman effect. He derived the Lorentz transformation of the special theory of relativity, as well as the Lorentz force, which describes the combined electric and magnetic forces acting on a charged particle in an electromagnetic field. Lorentz was also responsible for the Lorentz oscillator model, a classical model used to describe the anomalous dispersion observed in dielectric materials when the driving frequency of the electric field was near the resonant frequency of the material, resulting in abnormal refractive indices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Painlevé</span> French mathematician and politician (1863–1933)

Paul Painlevé was a French mathematician and statesman. He served twice as Prime Minister of the Third Republic: 12 September – 13 November 1917 and 17 April – 22 November 1925. His entry into politics came in 1906 after a professorship at the Sorbonne that began in 1892.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Victoria Ocampo</span> Argentine writer (1890–1979)

Ramona Victoria Epifanía Rufina Ocampo was an Argentine writer and intellectual. Best known as an advocate for others and as publisher of the literary magazine Sur, she was also a writer and critic in her own right and one of the most prominent South American women of her time. Her sister was Silvina Ocampo, also a writer. In 1970, she was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature by Argentine writer Miguel Alfredo Olivera.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nitobe Inazō</span> Japanese writer and diplomat (1862–1933)

Nitobe Inazō was a Japanese agronomist, diplomat, political scientist, politician, and writer. He studied at Sapporo Agricultural College under the influence of its first president William S. Clark and later went to the United States to study agricultural policy. After returning to Japan, he served as a professor at Sapporo Agricultural College, Kyoto Imperial University, and Tokyo Imperial University, and the deputy secretary general of the League of Nations. He also devoted himself to women's education, helping to found the Tsuda Eigaku Juku and serving as the first president of Tokyo Woman's Christian University and president of the Tokyo Women's College of Economics.

Emilio Arenales Catalán was the foreign minister of Guatemala from 1966 to 1969 and the president of the United Nations Twenty-Third General Assembly from 1968 to 1969. He was born and died in Guatemala City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alfredo Rocco</span> Italian politician and jurist

Alfredo Rocco was an Italian politician and jurist. He was Professor of Commercial Law at the University of Urbino (1899–1902) and in Macerata (1902–1905), then Professor of Civil Procedure in Parma, of Business Law in Padua, and later of Economic Legislation at La Sapienza University of Rome, of which he was rector from 1932 to 1935.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Albert Thibaudet</span> French essayist and literary critic

Albert Thibaudet was a French essayist and literary critic. A former student of Henri Bergson, he was a professor of Jean Rousset. He taught at the University of Geneva, and was the co-founder of the Geneva School of literary criticism. He was succeeded in his post by Marcel Raymond.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jules Destrée</span> Walloon lawyer, cultural critic and socialist politician

Jules Destrée was a Walloon lawyer, cultural critic and socialist politician. The trials subsequent to the strikes of 1886 determined his commitment within the Belgian Labour Party. He wrote a Letter to the King in 1912, which is seen as the founding declaration of the Walloon movement. He is famous for his quote "Il n'y a pas de Belges", pointing to the lack of patriotic feelings in Flemings and Walloons, while pleading for some kind of federal state.

Nine Latin American nations became charter members of the League of Nations when it was founded in 1919. The number grew to fifteen states by the time the first League Assembly met in 1920 and later, several others joined in the decade that followed. Although only Brazil had any participation in World War I, these nations supported the idealistic principles of the League and felt it offered some measure of juridical protection from the interventionist policies of the United States before the proclamation of the non-interventionist Good Neighbor Policy by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933. Latin American nations also felt that being members of the League would bring prestige and notoriety to Latin America. All twenty Latin American countries were members of the League at one point, yet they were never all members at the same time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">International Office of Public Hygiene</span> Predecessor to the World Health Organization

The International Office of Public Hygiene (OIPH), also known by its French name as the Office International d'Hygiène Publique (OIHP), was an international organization founded 9 December 1907 and based in Paris, France. It merged into the World Health Organization in 1946.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">UNESCO</span> Specialized agency of the United Nations

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) with the aim of promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It has 194 member states and 12 associate members, as well as partners in the non-governmental, intergovernmental and private sector. Headquartered in Paris, France, UNESCO has 53 regional field offices and 199 national commissions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Organisation of the League of Nations</span> Intergovernmental organization

The League of Nations was established with three main constitutional organs: the Assembly; the Council; the Permanent Secretariat. The two essential wings of the League were the Permanent Court of International Justice and the International Labour Organization.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">International Bureau of Education</span> Organisation created in Geneva in 1925

The International Bureau of Education (IBE-UNESCO) is a UNESCO category 1 institute mandated as the Centre of Excellence in curriculum and related matters. Consistent with the declaration of the decision of the 36th session of the General Conference and to ensure a higher effectiveness and a sharper focus, the IBE has defined the scope of its work as pertaining to: curriculum, learning, teaching, and assessment. The IBE-UNESCO provides tailored technical support and expertise to all UNESCO Member States facilitating the provision and delivery of equitable, inclusive, high-quality education within the framework of Education 2030 Agenda.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ellen Gleditsch</span> Norwegian radiochemist

Ellen Gleditsch was a Norwegian radiochemist and Norway's second female professor. Starting her career as an assistant to Marie Curie, she became a pioneer in radiochemistry, establishing the half-life of radium and helping demonstrate the existence of isotopes. She was Vice President of the Norwegian Association for Women's Rights 1937–1939.

Gonzague de Reynold was a Swiss writer, historian, and right-wing political activist. Over the course of his six-decade career, he wrote more than thirty books outlining his traditionalist Catholic and Swiss nationalist worldview.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Davos University Conferences</span>

The Davos University Conferences were a project between 1928 and 1931 to create an international university at Davos in Switzerland.

Euripide Foundoukidis was a Greek administrator at the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation (IIIC) who ran the International Office of Museums (IOM) for many years.

References

General

  • Northedge, Frederick (1953). International Intellectual Co-operation Within the League of Nations: Its Conceptual Basis and Lessons for the Present. London: University of London.
  • Renoliet, Jean-Jacques (1999). L'UNESCO oubliée, la Société des Nations et la coopération intellectuelle (1919-1946)[The Forgotten UNESCO, the League of Nations and Intellectual Cooperation (1919-1946)] (in French). Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne. ISBN   978-2-85944-384-9.
  • Grandjean, Martin (2018). Les réseaux de la coopération intellectuelle. La Société des Nations comme actrice des échanges scientifiques et culturels dans l'entre-deux-guerres [The Networks of Intellectual Cooperation. The League of Nations as an Actor of the Scientific and Cultural Exchanges in the Inter-War Period]. Lausanne: Université de Lausanne. (English summary)
  • Centenary of the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation of the League of Nations. Geneva: United Nations Library and Archives. 2022.

Specific

Notes

  1. League of Nations archives, United Nations Office in Geneva. With a network Visualization of the ICIC archives, showing thousands of documents exchanged between the plenary committee, its secretary, national commissions and experts. Grandjean, Martin (2014). "La connaissance est un réseau" (PDF). Les Cahiers du Numérique. 10 (3): 37–54. doi:10.3166/lcn.10.3.37-54. (PDF), Grandjean, Martin (2015). "Introduction à la visualisation de données : l'analyse de réseau en histoire". Geschichte und Informatik. 18/19: 109–128.
  2. Laqua 2011.
  3. 1 2 Grandjean 2022.
  4. Shine 2018.
  5. Pernet 2014.
  6. Grandjean 2018.
  7. 1 2 Grandjean 2020.
  8. Grandjean 2017.
  9. Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions (New York: Bonanza/Crown, 1954), p. 84.
  10. "International Educational Cinematographic Institute" (PDF). biblio. 17 December 1929. Retrieved 23 September 2021.
  11. LoN archives 1924, United Nations Offices in Geneva. Picture from this collection.
  12. Rodríguez-Casañ, Rubén; Carbó-Catalan, Elisabet; Solé-Ribalta, Albert; Roig-Sanz, Diana; Borge-Holthoefer, Javier; Cardillo, Alessio (24 October 2024). "Analysing inter-state communication dynamics and roles in the networks of the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation". Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. 11 (1): 1–9. doi: 10.1057/s41599-024-03829-1 . ISSN   2662-9992.
  13. "UNESCO Archives". Archived from the original on 19 August 2021. Retrieved 20 June 2016.
  14. Renoliet 1999.