Description
In ‘Mrs Roosevelt’s Class on Human Rights’, the USSR delegate is consigned to the naughty corner. This cartoon by Hungarian émigrés, Derso & Kelen, famous in their day, features in their book on the nascent work of the United Nations. In the introduction, the two artists reflect: ‘It could be twenty years ago, or it could be a hundred years from now’. This 1950 volume is the last of their joint publications, which began in 1923 and which capture the Zeitgeist of the era. The paper draws on archival sources of their work, and a forthcoming book, to show what visual evidence contributes to the history of multilateral cooperation.
The opening image of their visual history of the first decade of international cooperation under the League of Nations indicates that an organization that aspired to be universal, with positions open equally to men and women, was Eurocentric and male-dominated. Other cartoons depict League initiatives on justice, protecting minorities, reducing trade barriers, economics & finance, and intellectual cooperation; peace and disarmament get scarcely a mention. Their cartoons show, however, that European Union was conceived in 1929 as a peace project.
This unique corpus of cartoons constitutes an important source for historians seeking to analyse multinational cooperation and to communicate its history.
