New Zealand in the League of Nations: The Beginnings of an Independent Foreign Policy, 1919-1939.

• Author: McGibbon, Ian
• Position: Book review

NEW ZEALAND IN THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS

The Beginnings of an Independent Foreign Policy, 1919-1939

Author: Gerald Chaudron

Published by: McFarland & Company, Jefferson, North

Carolina, 2011, 270pp, US$55.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

New Zealand's path to independence is a contested area. With no war of independence to provide a clear break with its colonial past, it evolved towards independence over a considerable period. Various dates have been advanced when New Zealand achieved that state--1939, for example, when it declared war on another country in its own right, or 1947, when it ratified the Statute of Westminster or 2003, when Helen Clark's government cut the legal link to the Privy Council in London as the final court of appeal. But, as Gerald Chaudron demonstrates in this study of New Zealand's attitude to and role in the first world body, the date 28 June 1919 stands out. On it New Zealand signed the Treaty of Versailles in its own right--and became a member 'more by accident than design' of the League of Nations. Henceforth New Zealand was obliged, if only because of the need to report to the League's Permanent Mandates Commission (PMC) on its Samoan mandate, to take an international role. Later, its League membership provided 'a catalyst to begin developing its own foreign policy' in response to successive crises in the 1930s.

New Zealand's interest and role was limited at first--and the League never gained a large place in the public mind. Throughout its existence, Chaudron notes, 'The League was a distant, ill-understood and frankly irrelevant body to all but a small minority of officials, politicians and other interested New Zealanders.' Nor has it attracted great interest from historians, usually being dealt with in passing in accounts of security policy or with emphasis on just one period of New Zealand's participation. Bruce Bennett's New Zealand's Moral Foreign Policy 1935-1939." The Promotion of Collective Security Through the League of Nations (NZIIA, Wellington, 1988) is an example of the latter, dealing with the first Labour government's approach during the final years of the League before the outbreak of war in 1939 rendered it irrelevant (though it was not formally wound up until 1946). Based on Chaudron's doctoral work at the University of Canterbury in the 1980s, and solidly grounded on the documentary record, New Zealand in the League of Nations is an excellent account of New Zealand participation during the whole...