Albrecht, Nicole (2024) Peasant internationalists and the making of the Yugoslav Third Way, 1920-1956. PhD thesis, Birkbeck, University of London.
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Abstract
This dissertation investigates how Yugoslav specialists in health, education, economics, agriculture, and law strove to improve the living conditions, socioeconomic status, and welfare of peasants. In studying their ‘lived experience’ of internationalism using social and intellectual history methods, I conceptualise a unique type of twentieth-century international cooperation – ‘peasant internationalism.’ The project investigates ‘peasant internationalism’ in two ways: a social network of expertise that persisted beyond the Second World War and a collection of ideas and approaches to rural modernisation. Between 1920 and 1956, peasant international initiatives simultaneously bolstered and critiqued the ‘liberal international’ framework by influencing international laws and policies, approaches to modernisation, international aid, and development. The perspectives of peasant internationalists also demonstrate how national and international priorities coexisted within the League of Nations (LON) and the United Nations (UN) and how the smaller states shaped the international system from within and outside – through their collaboration in regional research institutes. The Yugoslav delegates cooperated with their colleagues from Central-Eastern Europe and other predominantly agricultural states in advocating for rural social justice, federalism, universal health, and democracy nurtured within the context of the global capitalist economy. However, they did not speak the language of liberalism or socialism. They understood sovereignty predominantly in economic rather than political or ideological terms. Finally, this dissertation reveals the salience of peasant internationalism in explaining the transition of power in Yugoslavia from the émigré government to the communist regime, revealing how it also influenced the Yugoslav foreign policy and political economy after WWII, paving the road to the country’s leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Thesis |
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| Copyright Holders: | The copyright of this thesis rests with the author, who asserts his/her right to be known as such according to the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. No dealing with the thesis contrary to the copyright or moral rights of the author is permitted. |
| Depositing User: | Acquisitions And Metadata |
| Date Deposited: | 23 Oct 2024 09:52 |
| Last Modified: | 23 Oct 2024 13:50 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/54450 |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.18743/PUB.00054450 |
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