Author Archives: Megan Donaldson

About Megan Donaldson

Megan Donaldson is Lecturer in Public International Law, University College London. She has a particular interest in the interwar foundations of the present international order, and the way in which debates in this period of crisis and experimentation illuminate current doctrinal problems. She is at work on a history of secrecy and publicity in the international legal order, from the late nineteenth century to the present. Her article “The Survival of the Secret Treaty: Publicity, Secrecy and Legality in the International Order” won the Francis Deák Prize (2017).

The League of Nations, Ethiopia, and the Making of States

Abstract: This article uses the case of Ethiopia to illustrate how the League of Nations refracted approaches to statehood. It shows the League ‘making’ states in multiple ways, formulating new standards for admission, but also changing the context in which such standards could be debated, applied, and contested. The article looks beyond intellectual debates about the nature of the state, into exchanges within foreign ministries and League committees, as well as state-making projects pursued in Addis Ababa. This illuminates the fragility of interwar definitions of Continue reading → Continue reading →