Nationalist Interests in the Intellectual Cooperation Work of the League of Nations: The Case of Portugal

Abstract

How did Portugal confirm its national interests while integrated into an institution that promoted visions of an international community? This article addresses the central question of this peripheral country's response to two proposals put forward by the Organisation for Intellectual Cooperation in the 1930s inter-war period: the revision of textbooks and the use of broadcasting for peace. After a brief analysis of the institutional aspects and Portugal's integration into the system of intellectual cooperation, the article examines how Portugal addressed two issues of national relevance in a transnational context. Based on extensive archival research, this article starts from the premise of whether Portugal's nationalist stance prevented it from adhering to two resolutions that sought moral disarmament. More broadly, this article aims to contribute to the renewed interest in revisiting the history of the League of Nations by focusing on projects devised by the technical organs of intellectual cooperation.

With the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, the League of Nations was born, with ‘the aim of seeking the effective organization of a world political and social order in which the common interests of mankind could be observed and served beyond the barriers of national tradition, racial difference, or geographical distance’. ¹ The League of Nations did not envisage an organization for intellectual cooperation, but the idea that the search for peace should be supported by a policy of cultural cooperation between nations was already present before the outbreak of World War I. Thus, although the Pact obviated the creation of a system of intellectual cooperation, the voices from Geneva proclaiming the weakness of the promotion of peace without the support of intellectual work converged in the conception of an International Commission on Intellectual Cooperation (ICIC). The first Assembly of the League of Nations discussed a report by Henri La Fontaine, president of the Permanent International Peace Bureau, on the organization of intellectual work. The resolution for the establishment of the ICIC was put forward at the second Assembly of the League of Nations held on 21 September 1921 by Léon Bourgeois (former French prime minister and first president of the League of Nations Assembly) and approved at the 16th session of the Council of the League of Nations held in January 1922. ² The conception of this body was fundamentally elitist: ‘its architects believed that dialogue between renowned intellectuals would contribute to fostering the desire for peace’. ³ Four years later, the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation (IIIC) was inaugurated in Paris. The agenda of both organizations was based on a mixture of pacifist ideas and scientific concerns.

The traditional narrative on the League of Nations, until recently predominant in historiography, was political in nature and concerned the issue of collective security at the international level. In a literature review essay on the subject, historian Susan Pedersen detected a renewed interest in the history of the League of Nations, especially as it relates to its various organs, ⁴ such as the ICIC, whose history has been extensively studied by French historian Jean-Jacques Renoliet. ⁵ This author was the first to study the history of the League's Organization for Intellectual Cooperation (which includes ICIC, IIIC, and the various National Commissions for intellectual cooperation), creating a genealogical framework for further development from a variety of perspectives, despite having a distinctly French vision. The Organization for Intellectual Cooperation also been the focus of renewed interest on the part of a large number of academics, who have conducted research into the participants who were part of this organization as well as women's participation in it. ⁶ On the occasion of the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the creation of ICIC (2022), a conference was organized in Geneva with several presentations from different perspectives. ⁷ For Portugal's relationship with the bodies created for cooperation and the promotion of intellectual cooperation, there was a very general approach by Cláudia Minhos and Quintino Lopes, ⁸ but it is with the postdoctoral research carried out by Jesús M. Bermejo that the role that Portugal assumed in the system of intellectual cooperation is being explored in greater depth. ⁹

However, despite the increase in research on the inter-war system of intellectual cooperation, studies on the participation of small and medium-sized powers in the League of Nations and its technical bodies remain scarce. ¹⁰ Based on primary sources located in the historical archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Historical Archives (both in Portugal) and with the assistance of the ICIC and IIIC archives, based in Paris, both of which have been fully digitized, the present research project analyses Portugal's attitude towards two proposals integrated in the context of moral disarmament. ¹¹ The premise of this paper is to determine whether the nationalism of the Estado Novo (regime installed by António Oliveira Salazar in 1933) permeated Portugal's stance on two measures driven by ideas of diplomatic cooperation and conflict resolution. This article is structured in two parts: in the first, by way of an introduction to frame the discussion of the topic, we point out the most important aspects of Portugal's relationship with the League of Nations in order to understand the country's interactions around intellectual cooperation. In the second part, we analyze the Portuguese position on the revision of history textbooks and the use of broadcasting as an instrument for peace.

At the end of the First World War and with the creation of the League of Nations as a transnational institution to prevent a new world war, Portugal, with its credentials as a belligerent country, victor in the Great War, and founding member of the Geneva body, considered its rights to a seat as a non-permanent member of the Executive Council to be well-founded. However, it suffered the humiliation of being marginalized from this body while Spain, which remained neutral in the Great War, obtained a seat on the Executive Council. Thus, since 1920, Portugal's main aspiration in terms of external action was to join the Executive Council, since it represented the starting point for finding a solution to the vast majority of the country's problems. This internal organ of the League of Nations was of great importance for the international aspirations of small and medium-sized powers, and Portugal, as a small periherical country, was aware of the prestige it could gain from membership as well as being in an ideal position to better safeguard the status of its colonies, which were highly coveted by other powers.

In addition to the loss of human lives during the war and being represented in the world by a language spoken by some 45 million people, Portugal also claimed to be the third colonial power. Maintaining the integrity of its colonies was a key issue during the Peace Conference, where ‘news of the aspirations of the victors, large or small, over Portuguese Africa, especially that of the Union of South Africa, was circulating’. ¹² However, despite these reasons (not of a political nature), Portugal did not have a seat on the Executive Council, from where it could better defend its colonial interests, due to the internal situation. The socio-political instability experienced by the First Republic, especially since the assassination of President Sidónio Pais ¹³ (with a country plunged into a serious economic crisis, brief successions of governments, and persistent strikes in the streets of the capital), did not provide the most favorable conditions for Portugal to be considered a suitable candidate for a non-permanent seat. ¹⁴ Thus, the country's internal affairs were a determining factor in its not being able to count on British support, its ally, which determined the direction of the votes of the majority of the members of the Assembly, to which the non-permanent members were appointed each year.

Obtaining a seat on the Executive Council meant, from the point of view of the international diplomacy of the time, standing out among the small and medium-sized powers, and Portugal, aware of its international status, was very conscious of the prestige it could gain by belonging to this body, restricted to the strongest and best positioned powers. Admission to this ‘select club’ was, therefore, a prerequisite for reinforcing the country's relevance on the international scene and, on the other hand, for being able to participate in international political resolutions at the highest level. Likewise, being accepted by this organization meant, from an internal political point of view, the legitimization of power and its decisions and, therefore, a strategy to mask the critical situation the republican regime was going through. In the course of this article, we will be able to elucidate whether the loss of enthusiasm for the Geneva organization, due to the failure to obtain a seat on the Council, may have influenced Portugal's disinterest in the system of intellectual cooperation.

Parallel to the setback to Portugal's aspirations within the League of Nations, when we trace the genealogy of the system of intellectual cooperation, we note the country's disinterest in participating in the meetings held in September 1920 by the International University. This institution, derived from the Union of International Associations, which sought to internationalize intellectual work through conferences and master classes, is the closest precedent to the ICIC. The Council of the League of Nations approved a request for financial support for the IU. It was the first time that the League of Nations had taken an interest in intellectual matters. Portugal was invited to participate in the second session of this institution, which took place at the Palais Mondial (Brussels) from 15 to 20 September. The Portuguese ambassador in Brussels, Dr. Alves de Veiga, was in charge of representing the Portuguese universities in this second session. He was sent with the mission that the Portuguese language should also be considered a vehicle for scientific use. A memorandum signed by Melo Barreto, then Minister of Foreign Affairs, stated that ‘the languages considered as vehicles for scientific use are only French, English, Spanish, Slavic languages, and Esperanto’. ¹⁵ However, although Dr. Alves de Veiga attended as a representative of Portugal, he regretted the lack of acceptance of the Portuguese academy to participate in this meeting while criticizing the way in which the intelligentsia:

I noted with regret that I did not see the name of any Portuguese professor in the conference program. conference programme. This was an interesting manifestation of international intellectual life. I had hoped that now some of the members of our university centers would come to affirm the existence of Portuguese intellectual vitality, as so many other countries have, some of them even far away from here, such as Japan, the United States, Russia, and India. United States, Russia, and India. ¹⁶

Beset by a severe economic and financial crisis and political and social instability, the chaotic situation in which Portugal found itself since the death of President Sidónio Pais combined as one of the main factors for Portugal's continued failure to obtain a seat on the League of Nations Executive Council ¹⁷ during the Military Dictatorship (1926–33), a regime established by means of a coup d’état in 1926 that put an end to the First Republic. The fact that the ICIC was a consultative body to the League of Nations demonstrates the political nature of this intellectual cooperation, and consequently, it could be deduced that Portugal's internal turmoil also explains the absence of a representative of the Portuguese cultural or scientific elite in the international intellectual community. A report issued in 1926 by the writer and state delegate, Virgínia de Castro e Almeida, stated that the country's disorder was detrimental to its international interests:

Unfortunately, the backwardness of our country, hindered in its development by political upheavals and the system of administration that results from them, does not allow Portugal to follow with due attention an international movement of this nature, nor to calculate the advantages that could be gained if it were to collaborate with intelligence and commitment in the same way as other civilizations. ¹⁸

Besides Portuguese dissatisfaction at not being granted a place on the Executive Council of the League of Nations, the Portuguese's exclusion from the intellectual sphere of the ICIC provoked protests from the head of the Portuguese delegation to the League of Nations, João Chagas. In 1923, Chagas began a campaign to champion Portugal's legitimate right, as he saw it, to join the ICIC. In a speech to the assembly, he recalled that it was the ICIC itself, in a report drafted on the occasion of the holding of the fifth commission, which recognized that it could not wield authority and fully carry out its responsibilities unless it was truly and completely representative, holding that ICIC members should be selected ‘not only for their diverse intellectual approaches, but also in order to cover the range of different national cultures’. ¹⁹ This demonstrates that intellectual cooperation implemented under the auspices of the League of Nations was ‘greatly influenced by political and nationalistic considerations at the international level’. ²⁰ Chagas was condemning, with these words, the non-compliance with one of the primary characteristics of the ICIC: its non-governmentalism. If this criterion were followed, the weight of academic achievements would have more value than the nationality of its members. As a consequence of this, he criticized the fact that cultural universality, which was another one of ICIC's fundamental principles, was also not being accomplished.

Although he praised the Portuguese intelligentsia and pointed to its active role in European intellectual movements, the low level of schooling in Portugal and the high degree of illiteracy that permeated society meant that it could not guarantee a suitable level of scientific progress. Carlos Fiolhais argues that the gulf between Portugal and advanced countries was evident on the occasion of Albert Einstein's visit to Lisbon en route to South America in 1925, which did not attract much attention despite the fact that he had won the Nobel Prize for Physics and was famous around the world for his theory of relativity. ²¹

Another element of the vast system of intellectual cooperation was the creation of a National Commission for Intellectual Cooperation. This body, forgotten by Portuguese historiography, reported directly to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. On 30 January 1926, the Minister of Foreign Affairs entrusted Dr. Brito Camacho, the former High Commissioner of the Republic in Mozambique, with the task of organizing a National Commission to operate in parallel with the IICI. Thus, on 10 April 1926, the National Commission was created under the chairmanship of the writer Júlio Dantas. ²² This body had the mission of coordinating with the IIIC. To this end, a state delegate was appointed to represent Portugal at the Institute in Paris. Virgínia de Castro e Almeida, who was the person chosen as delegate, ²³ represented her country by supervising and monitoring the work of the Institute, examining the advantages and interests of her country in this work and how she could contribute to it.

As for the IIIC, which acted as the executive arm of ICIC, it was inaugurated on 16 January 1926, occupying part of the Palais Royal. During the ceremony, the French Minister of Education, Edouard Daladier, told those present that the creation of this organization was inspired by the collective effort for peace. ²⁴ From its inception, the IIIC consisted of more than 70 members from 30 different countries, and its mission was to: establish itself as a platform for the exchange of ideas and knowledge among scholars, writers, artists, and teachers; set common standards in the fields of science and librarianship; disseminate internationally important scholarly achievements, knowledge, and ideas; protect intellectual property rights; and encourage student exchanges. With a more universal character than the ICIC, the IIIC invited countries such as Mexico (which did not join the League of Nations until 1931) ²⁵ or continued to count on the collaboration of Brazil (which ceased to be a member of the League in 1926). ²⁶ The most important mission of the IIIC was the development and expansion of the ‘international spirit’ and ways to stimulate international life. ²⁷ This internationalism clashed with the nationalism of the Estado Novo (considered here as a sentiment of expression in the sense of valuing the nation above others). ²⁸

Portugal's lack of commitment to the Institute's work was a constant feature that the Portuguese delegate denounced in the reports she sent to the National Commission. In her opinion, it was unfair to blame only the ignorance shown by the members of the National Commission about the ‘benefits’ of internationalism in Geneva as the cause of their indifference to intellectual cooperation. The chaotic situation of the country, which conditioned its international takeoff, was another determining factor in explaining Portugal's lack of commitment to international initiatives in general and to intellectual cooperation in particular. The uneasiness generated by the exclusion from the Executive Committee, rather than affecting the members of the Commission ignorant of what was happening in Geneva, had a more direct impact on the Portuguese delegates to the League of Nations.

The establishment of the Estado Novo (1933) under Salazar's rule led to a financial and economic balance in the country that was viewed favorably from abroad. The stabilization of the country in all respects was rewarded, which allowed Portugal to accede to the long-awaited seat as a non-permanent member of the Council. This reward given by League of Nations might suggest a rapprochement between Salazar and the internationalism of Geneva. However, the opposite was true: Salazar's animosity towards the Geneva organization dated back to the previous regime's attempt to obtain a financial loan. At that time, Salazar, without concealing his distrust of the Geneva ‘assemblyism’, proposed disassociating the country's economic dependence on the League. This sentiment, which had been maturing within him since the military dictatorship, was translated, as head of the Estado Novo, into a policy of non-interference in the Geneva political ‘hornet's nest’. ²⁹ Thus, although most democratic governments rejected international control of history books because they were a key element in the formation of a citizen loyal to his country, Portugal's refusal, apart from responding to a defense of any interference in the national values of the Estado Novo, may have been influenced by the animosity with which Salazar viewed everything that came from Geneva.

One of the most important debates of the inter-war period within the IIIC (and one that has been little addressed by the historiography) was the question of the revision of textbooks, ³⁰ especially history textbooks. ³¹ Before the First World War, the peace movement had already criticized the strong nationalist bias of history textbooks in most European countries. With the outbreak of the World War, some teachers’ unions and education professionals demanded that governments curb nationalism in history textbooks. ³² It was not until 1925 that Julio Casares, the Spanish representative to the League, took up this challenge and presented a resolution that would bear his name. It recommended that books should not contain ‘passages detrimental to good international understanding’. ³³ The aim of this proposal was to ensure that the teaching of history was stripped of false appearances and errors that could disfigure the true physiognomy of other peoples, although this was to be done in full national freedom.

The IIIC took up this task in 1930, and two years later, a committee of experts met in Paris and presented a recommendation to strengthen the Casares resolution by giving more importance to the role of national commissions. In 1935, the Institute prepared a draft agreement aimed at establishing a procedure to eliminate or at least mitigate differences that might arise as a result of the interpretation of certain historical events in textbooks. Although little progress was made in the revision, some achievements were made: numerous commissions began to work on the subject: the Italian commission revised more than fourteen Spanish textbooks; the French, German and Polish commissions prepared documents on their tasks; in December 1936 a Pan-American Conference on the construction of peace was held in Buenos Aires, where treaties and resolutions were adopted in favor of intellectual cooperation, including the revision of textbooks according to the indications of the IIIC. The most notable and, seen in perspective, perhaps the most heroic example was the commission of French and German historians who worked together to revise history textbooks when the rise of Nazism suppressed this initiative. ³⁴

The Secretary General of the League of Nations, in application of a resolution adopted on 20 January 1936, submitted to the Portuguese government the draft declaration on the revision of school textbooks, accompanied by an explanatory note on the origin of this project. The aim of this draft was to strengthen and develop good relations between nations. To this end, it was necessary to give the youth of each nation a broader knowledge of the history of the others in order to avoid the biased presentation of certain historical events. Such a commitment consisted of :

Ensure that the history of other nations is taught as fully as possible.

To give prominence in the teaching of world history to those elements which can give an understanding of the interdependence of nations. ³⁵

In July 1937, the ICIC examined the Declaration on the Teaching of History (revision of school textbooks) sent to the various governments by the Secretary-General of the League of Nations. This text recommended that national commissions and textbook writers ‘attach the greatest possible importance to the history of other nations’, ³⁶ and ‘emphasize in the teaching of world history those elements which help to understand the interdependence of nations’. ³⁷ To this end, it suggested the creation in each country of a committee of teachers capable of working on the revision of school textbooks along these lines. In addition to these commitments, it stated that each government should strive to discover means for the choice of school textbooks in order to preserve youth from allegations or interpretations that could arouse unfair prejudices in relation to others. These measures were inspired by the Casares resolution, adopted on 29 July 1925, which provided for the correction of errors and omissions and the rectification of value judgments or comments that revealed animosity against foreign peoples or tended to show a relationship in an unfavorable light. ³⁸

The National Commission, as the body in charge of relations with the IIIC, ³⁹ was charged with studying the proposal. Although the project, described as ‘very sympathetic’, was intended to strengthen relations between peoples, to provide the young people of each nation with the greatest possible knowledge of the history of other nations, and to ensure that in each nation the truth concerning the history of other nations was scrupulously respected, the Portuguese National Committee considered that it was neither necessary nor desirable to make the commitment required by the 1937 declaration and that it could carry out the project without being subject to any binding commitment. The reasons given were as follows:

The present programs, as well as the previous ones, give to the history of all civilized nations the maximum development compatible with the time allotted to this teaching.

We have always tried to make the pupils understand the interdependence of nations and the influence that events in one of them have on the others.

The most scrupulous respect for truth has always been demanded of the teaching of history, and no allegation or interpretation less exquisite for any other nation has ever been tolerated. ⁴⁰

With this reply, the National Commission wanted to make it clear that the commissions or boards formed in each nation, with the power to collaborate with each other, could affect the independence and freedom that the Portuguese Government had to preserve in order to guide education. Furthermore, it was pointed out that the government also had the authority to give the historical facts, without the slightest infringement, the interpretation best suited to national interests. ⁴¹ The basis for this response must have been repeated in other democratic countries, with most governments rejecting the idea of international control of history textbooks.

It was the president of the National Commission, Júlio Dantas, then also a member of the IIIC, who was responsible for drafting Portugal's reply after it had been discussed by the National Commission. Dantas had first-hand knowledge of this project when he was present at the IIIC plenary session in July 1935, where it was presented at the initiative of Emile Borel, president of the IIIC. Under this convention, the signatory nations undertook to revise history textbooks, orienting them towards a ‘spirit of rigorous objectivity and perfect harmony and suppressing all material prejudicial to the good understanding of peoples’. ⁴² The objections to the proposed text, to which the National Commission attributed a contractual character as opposed to the harmless initiative of Casare's draft, were based on the following:

The expressions in the text were imprecise, but above all, I consider that historical truth is not susceptible to change according to good or bad diplomatic relations, serving concord or discord as it suits the chancelleries. History serves neither the cause of war nor the cause of peace, but only scientific truth. ⁴³

Dantas gave a speech to the Assembly in which his ‘views were similar to those advocated by other speakers’. ⁴⁴ In this speech, he argued that the national value of events could not be downplayed when teaching history to young people. Nationalist-tinged responses were therefore not only peculiar to the Salazarist regime. The report of the Portuguese response concluded that the government should refrain from signing a declaration described as useless. The decision not to accede to this convention was based on the argument that Portuguese history textbooks were not written in a spirit of discord and did not contain material detrimental to the proper understanding of international relations. Therefore, since ‘the Portuguese state, its government, and its educators would be repulsed by the use of textbooks as instruments of aggression against other peoples, Portugal did not need to commit itself not to use processes that it has never used or to practice acts that it considers morally and pedagogically condemnable’. ⁴⁵ The establishment of peaceful relations between the different countries in this project, which starts from a technical body like the League of Nations, although very politically permeable, seeking the rigorous objectivity of school textbooks, was going to mean turning them into a kind of simple chronological catalog or an arid synopsis of facts and dates.

In 1938, Dantas signed a report that reaffirmed the opinion of the National Commission that it was not advisable to adhere to the convention on the revision of school textbooks. The anodyne formula that had become the proposal for a general convention, an initiative of Emile Borel, seemed destined to make historical science an instrument of pacifist policy in the service of the Geneva League, integrating it into the framework of the moral disarmament of the Conference for the Reduction and Limitation of Armaments. Thus, the project presented by the director of the IIIC was nothing more than an unhappy initiative born out of Byzantine and utopian concerns about moral disarmament. He ended his report by ironizing about how wonderful it would be to be able to sleep peacefully if peace depended on the world depending on school textbooks and the more or less objective teaching of universal history. ⁴⁶ The negative response of the National Commission could therefore be based on two criteria: on the one hand, the political essence of the system of intellectual cooperation could have contributed to the rejection. In this respect, it should be underlined that Dantas’ integration into the ICIC took place in 1933, the same year in which Portugal took a seat as a non-permanent member, precisely when the country recovered financial equilibrium and stability under Salazar's leadership. On the other hand, the ignorance and reticence that the members of the National Commission, criticized by Virgínia de Castro e Almeida, showed towards the internationalism emanating from Geneva may have played a role. The most decisive factor was the strong nationalist character of the Salazarist Estado Novo, which feared that the League's internationalist exchanges would corrode national identity. In recent years, however, some authors have pointed out the connections between the two phenomena. Glenga Sluga wrote that both nationalism and internationalism are ‘related ideologies that feed on the same indissoluble questions about the nature of individuals or groups’. ⁴⁷ The interwar period was a time when the interplay between nationalism and internationalism manifested itself in a compelling way. ⁴⁸

It was not only books that could distort opinion, fueling aggression and nationalist passions. The press and popular culture were also of concern to the Organization for Intellectual Cooperation. The League had to deal with the spread of other messages and other kinds of cultural internationalism. From the outset, therefore, it had to confront the question of public opinion formation. A Publicity Section was set up to publicize the League's work around the world. This attracted a significant number of media professionals and established contacts with journalism associations, some of them transnational. However, the relationship with the press was strained at times. In 1931, the Assembly asked the Secretary-General to raise with journalists the need to control the spread of false news as a threat to world peace. The issue of disinformation became the focus of two international journalists’ conferences held in Copenhagen and Madrid in 1932 and 1933, respectively. These conferences produced inconclusive results, and, in many places, journalists and press associations resisted any hint of control.

As far as radio broadcasting was concerned, the IIIC considered that radio was not simply an instrument for information but that it should also ‘contribute to raising the level of general culture and assist in the intellectual, artistic, and moral education of the general public to whom it is addressed daily’. ⁴⁹ Thus, in September 1931 (in the context of the memorandum on the question of moral disarmament sent by the Polish Foreign Minister), the League of Nations Assembly asked the IIIC to extend its study on educational broadcasting to all international questions raised by the use of radio in relations between States. In early 1933, the Assembly adopted a proposal submitted by the IIIC to draft an international convention on broadcasting and peace for submission to the various governments.

On 9 February 1934, the Secretary of the League of Nations addressed to all member and non-member states (such as Germany, the United States, Brazil, Costa Rica, the Free City of Danzig, Egypt, Iceland, and Japan) a circular note accompanied by a preliminary draft of international scope concerning the use of broadcasting in the interests of peace drawn up by the Organization for Intellectual Cooperation in accordance with the directives which it had given to the League of Nations Assembly. Portugal, as a Member State, was thus asked to comment on this preliminary draft and to give its response by 1 August 1934. ⁵⁰ Júlio Dantas, as chairman of the National Commission, was responsible for drawing up a report in which, after having analyzed each of the articles of the preliminary draft with the restrictions he considered necessary, he recommended a new wording ‘which did not contain legally imprecise expressions’, since, in his opinion, some of its provisions were purely subjective in nature:

It was not easy to define what broadcasts are harmful to international understanding, nor to what extent an assessment of political, economic or social facts should be considered as disturbing to good relations between peoples; what determines whether or not a broadcast can constitute an act of radio aggression, or in Atkinson's concept, inadmissible propaganda material. ⁵¹

Despite these assessments, the president of the National Commission did not fail to recognize the noble purpose behind the League of Nations’ initiative to use radio in the service of peace, as well as the considerable difficulties the experts had to face in giving legal form to the ‘generous thinking of the Genevan body’. ⁵² In the redrafting of the draft international convention on the use of broadcasting in the interests of peace, drawn up in 1935, the experts responsible introduced some alterations to the original wording, mostly suggested by the Portuguese government's response. And as the draft was improved in the wording of its article, the Commission determined that there was no objection to your country accepting this draft as it stood after the objections. However, the following was stated:

In the matter of a convention of this nature it should be limited to the undertaking given by the contracting States to endeavour to avoid, by all means in their power, the production of radio broadcasts which might, especially in times of crisis, be prejudicial to good international relations. I also believe that, within certain limits, the persuasive, systematic and persevering action of the International Radio Union and of the respective Geneva bureau would suffice to prevent, in the interests of the peoples, so-called inadmissible broadcasts. ⁵³

However, due to the specific nature of this project, which had security implications, not only the National Commission expressed its opinion. The Ministry of War, through the Defense Staff, issued a report in which it judged favorably the use of radio in the interests of peace, considering that ‘it contained in itself the legitimization of the use of means which, both in normal circumstances and in the emergency of an international crisis, may affect the interests of national defense and salvation’. ⁵⁴ This acceptance of the project was due to a strategic explanation of state security: Portugal's concern about the entry of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics into the League of Nations (1934), since its political, social, and moral principles were in flagrant opposition to those of the Portuguese state. This strategy exemplifies what Madeleina Herren said: the states’ preference for internationalism as a kind of ‘back door’ to be used in a way that is compatible with the national interest. ⁵⁵ Thus, according to the Ministry of War, this project could be used to diminish anything that would directly or indirectly undermine the strengthening of the patriotic spirit.

The opinion of the Chief of the Defence General Staff on the preliminary draft, although it considered it very beneficial that Portugal should collaborate in the work of co-operation and solidarity between peoples, in pursuit of an objective of civilization and, therefore, of harmony and peace (adhering to the project concerning the use of radio broadcasting in the interests of peace), objected as an objection to the last part of the fifth article, which ‘should not be accepted in any way in so far as this work of organizing peace might slightly affect or weaken the spirit of its military institutions or the autonomy of its military institutions or its autonomy; objected to the last part of the fifth article’, ⁵⁶ which ‘was not to be accepted in any way in so far as this work of organizing peace might slightly affect or weaken the spirit of its military institutions or the autonomy of the Portuguese State’. ⁵⁷

At the Intergovernmental Conference held in Geneva from 17 to 23 September, which examined the 1935 draft, the Convention concerning the International Convention on the Use of Broadcasting for the Promotion of Peace was adopted. Although Portugal participated in the adoption of this Convention, it finally decided not to ratify its accession to it before its entry into force in April 1938. Portugal's reticence towards this Convention was also reflected in its negative response to the refusal given to the Argentine government (which also did not accede to the Convention) on a bilateral agreement that Argentina proposed to Portugal for the use of radio for cultural propaganda. ⁵⁸

In this research, which deals with the project of revising history textbooks and the convention on the dissemination of relative information, both of which have received little attention in the historiography of the inter-war period, we have rescued two internationalist proposals carried out by the IIIC during the 1930s in order to understand their limited acceptance. By studying the two proposals put forward in this article, far from the pedagogical approach and the cultural perspective of other authors who have previously dealt with this question, we have been able to observe, through the study of the case of Portugal, the difficult conciliation between the internationalist idealism that permeated these two ideas and the nationalist interests of the Portuguese state.

The Casares textbook reform project gave the various national committees a crucial role in denouncing aggressive representations of other nations in school textbooks. However, the complexity of its provisions made it difficult to implement effectively and comprehensively. The problem with the implementation of the two drafts analyzed was enforcement. ICIC did not have the instruments to implement them and could do no more than entrust them to national committees and suggest bilateral agreements. But the committees were very heterogeneous bodies, in many cases formed by the governments themselves (as in the case of Portugal), so it was very difficult for them to try to interfere in an area that the authorities considered strategic. As for the revision of textbooks, for Portugal, this was a key element in the formation of their country's loyalty, and they were unwilling to subject this policy to any kind of external control. In addition to this eminently nationalistic factor, the Portuguese Commission also considered the project to be useless because it was not backed by any obligation to implement it or by any sanctioning body and, above all, because historical truth was not susceptible to change according to good or bad diplomatic relations. The same nationalist factor was raised for the objection to accession to the convention on peace broadcasting. In this matter, safeguarding the spirit of military institutions and guaranteeing state autonomy prevailed.

Both in the debate on the content of history books and in the broadcasting of fake news on the radio, the need to avoid aggressively nationalistic messages that would lead to mutual incomprehension among peoples was defended. The international context of the 1930s (after the economic crisis of 1929, which led to great economic and social difficulties; the worsening of the European political crisis with the emergence of fascism and nationalist movements), which increased autarky and isolation from international actors, no longer allowed for favorable results. The results were rather poor for several reasons: The desire of States to protect their sovereignty in the sensitive area of education and, in particular, the teaching of history, which affected the training of citizens and involved a commitment to mind control (typical of dictatorships); the deteriorating international climate of territorial claims arising from war and peace treaties, which used history for political purposes; the nationalist outbursts of fascist dictatorships, which exalted war and conquest; and, finally, the IIIC's insufficient financial and human resources.

The conclusion drawn from the case of Portugal is that the two projects aimed at establishing peaceful relations between countries did not find favor with a peripheral country that had a dictatorial regime when both projects saw the light of day (although many democratic countries did not support these measures, perhaps because they saw in them a sort of international moral censure by the League). The obstacles that the League placed in the way of Portugal, a founding member of the Geneva institution, taking a seat on the Council and the resulting dissatisfaction may well have been reflected in the attitude of the members of the National Commission towards the work of the IIIC. However, even when this disappointment, together with the disregard of the members of the Commission for the benefits of internationalism, could have combined as factors to be taken into account, it was the animosity of the leader of the Estado Novo towards the League that was the most important element. The nationalist elements of the dictatorial regime, together with Salazar's desire for the League, permeated the Portuguese response to the projects analyzed.