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Abstract

This chapter traces the evolution of historical writing on international organizations (IOs), laying out more traditional approaches before turning to more recent historical scholarship that focuses on the political agency and operations of IOs themselves. I argue that this recent scholarship has helped to uncover a plurality of ideological projects concealed within the “black box” bureaucracies of IOs. International histories of IOs have situated these organizations within broader contexts (such as decolonization, the Cold War, etc.) as well as through interactions with activists and communities around the world in order to better understand international relations beyond nation-state powers.

Moving beyond narratives that have focused on formal resolution or on debates centered in Europe or North America, recent scholarship has put IOs (and those who are employed by them) center stage in many international histories. These histories have taken a global approach to the practices of IOs, investigating IO employees (beyond leadership) seriously as historical agents with their own political agendas, prejudices, and – continually negotiated – powers beyond the diplomatic sphere of their headquarters. In turn, they have shown that IOs are historically contingent, reactive spaces that often emerged – as Hannah Arendt observed about the rush to establish new rights and protections in the aftermath of the Second World War and the Holocaust – only once there was sufficient global urgency to formally recognize human rights after they had already been violated.

Following a brief overview of the history of IOs and older historiographical trends, this chapter focuses on three key IO activities to which international historians recently have attended. These speak to the breadth and power of liberal IOs’ agency in shaping the international order from the ground up. The first section, “Protecting,” looks at the establishment of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and explores how the organization was designed to protect European combatants both legally and medically. In the second section, “Professionalizing,” I explore how IO officials marketed themselves as valuable experts or technocrats on the basis of a Eurocentrist understanding of modernity and statehood. In turn, this legitimized IOs as the perfect conduits for issues of collective security and international conflict. Finally, in the third section on “Developing,” I explore how IOs mobilized their professional credentials to design international development interventions across the decolonizing Global South. Even as IOs became increasingly staffed by officials from postcolonial states, employees dismissed “local” knowledge while upholding white supremacist and West-centered hegemony.

Publication Type:	Book Section
Additional Information:	© 2026 | Author. This is a preprint of a book chapter to be published in 'Explaining International History' by Cambridge University Press. It is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY).
Subjects:	J Political Science > JC Political theory J Political Science > JF Political institutions (General) J Political Science > JX International law J Political Science > JZ International relations
Departments:	School of Policy & Global Affairs School of Policy & Global Affairs > Department of International Politics
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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