Exile Economics: The Transnational Contributions and Limits of the League of Nations' Economic and Financial Section

For the last five years of its existence the most relevant work done by the League of Nations was completed in North America. To add a further degree of irony, perhaps its Economic and Financial Section did the best of that work in exile in Woodrow Wilson's former home of Princeton, New Jersey. A set of economists under their chief, Alexander Loveday, was rescued from Nazi dominated Europe in 1940 specifically so they could continue compiling and analyzing globally comparable economic data. Loveday and his collaborators were invaluable because they were pioneers in this field. The Economic and Financial Section of the League of Nations was part of a tradition that continues today that uses data to make legible basic -- and critical -- aspects of international life. Indeed, they were indispensible to tracing, measuring, and defining those interconnections that made the world economy global. These individuals had been at the forefront of compiling and making legible for international audiences globally comparable information on the world economy. A new world war, as much as the Depression before it demanded that economic issues be seen in a global frame. The reigning perception was that large, impersonal forces shaped these events; cutting across boundaries to bring change within societies highlighted the transnational import of the contributions of the Economic and Financial Section. Just as important, they, the League, and its supporters built an infrastructure that assured this information could rapidly be disseminated worldwide. In that sense they were not only trafficking in transnational ideas, they built and depended on a transnational network that supported their work. In so doing they created -- and in the process they themselves became -- a valuable, even strategic commodity, a remnant of the League worth saving. They were members of an international body that, drawing on the support of various nongovernmental groups, could shape instrumental parts of discourse on global economics that central element of world affairs. Adapted from the source document.