Chile and the League of Nations: Diplomatic Labour in the face of the Intellectualism (1921-1938)

Abstract

This article deals with Chilean foreign policy in the League of Nations and specifically analyses the roles assumed by various diplomatic agents in the International Commission for Intellectual Cooperation and the International Institute for Intellectual Cooperation, institutions whose purpose was to harmonise the troubled inter-war period through education. In view of the scarce historiographical production on this subject, we have
resorted, in order to carry out this research, to various unpublished documentary sources from the General Historical Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Chile, the documentation issued by the United Nations and that kept in the National Library of Chile, in addition to the bibliographical consultation of specialists. In this sense, we maintain
that the Chilean state’s perception of intellectual cooperation is divided into two stages. The first corresponds to an indifferent collaboration in its objectives, while in the second, it opted for a contribution against the backdrop of Geneva idealism with the aim of becoming a reference in the international community.