In the Absence of Belonging: Rethinking Sovereignty and Legal Subjecthood in the Interwar Crisis of Statelessness, 1919–1939

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dc.contributorFitz-Gibbon, Desmond
dc.contributorSemyonov, Alexander M.
dc.contributor.advisorKing, Jeremy
dc.contributor.authorFan, Xinran
dc.date.accessioned2025-07-15T11:53:25Z
dc.date.available2025-07-15T11:53:25Z
dc.date.gradyear2025
dc.date.issued2025-07-15
dc.description.abstract“In the Absence of Belonging: Rethinking Sovereignty and Legal Subjecthood in the Interwar Crisis of Statelessness, 1919–1939” examines six imaginations generated by mass statelessness in the two decades after World War I. By contextualizing them, I highlight how perceptions of state sovereignty and legal belonging varied in the interwar era. Although states claimed the inviolability of sovereignty (i.e., supreme jurisdiction over their territories and members), understandings about the modern state and subjecthood were under constant debate in the 1920s and 1930s. Attempting to eliminate the statelessness crisis, League of Nations officials, civil servants, and stateless persons adapted previous imperial experiences of layered, hierarchical belongings to the interwar reality. This project challenges scholarly literature that describes the interwar era as a postimperial moment in which nation-states exercised exclusionary policies against national others, rendering thousands of persons stateless. A transition in that direction was perhaps underway, but it was neither predetermined nor unchallenged. Archival materials, including administrative and judicial records, were collected from the National Archives at Kew (the United Kingdom), the League of Nations Archives website, the Shanghai Archives, and the Library of Congress.
dc.description.sponsorshipHistory
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10166/6765
dc.language.isoen_US
dc.rights.restrictedrestricted
dc.subjectinternational law
dc.subjectsovereignty
dc.subjectlegal subjecthood
dc.subjectLeague of Nations
dc.titleIn the Absence of Belonging: Rethinking Sovereignty and Legal Subjecthood in the Interwar Crisis of Statelessness, 1919–1939
dc.typeThesis
mhc.degreeUndergraduate
mhc.institutionMount Holyoke College

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