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The 1937 International Sugar Agreement: Neo-Colonial Cuba and Economic Aspects of the League of Nations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2011

MICHAEL FAKHRI
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Abstract

To many in the West, the League of Nations was to establish political peace between nations. To the Cuban sugar-producing elite of the 1920s and 1930s, however, the League was an important socioeconomic institution used to augment many of Cuba's first modern state institutions. This article explores how and why Cuban delegates were the principals behind the 1937 International Sugar Agreement – one of the League's few operational economic treaties. This treaty sheds light onto how actors from the so-called industrial core and agricultural periphery used international law, institutions, and practice to negotiate and renegotiate their relationship with each other.

Keywords

Cubainternational trade lawLeague of Nationsperipherysugar
Type
ARTICLES
Information
Leiden Journal of International Law , Volume 24 , Issue 4 , December 2011 , pp. 899 - 922
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation of the Leiden Journal of International Law 2011

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References

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2 See, e.g., Preparatory Committee for the International Conference, Report on the First Session of the Committee (held at Geneva from April 26th to May 1st, 1926) (1926), 7–9; J. Gautie, A. Hermes, and H. A. F. Lindsay, Agriculture and the World Crisis (1927); ibid., at 33, 46–8.

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60 See Smith, supra note 13.

61 Dominguez, supra note 10.

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66 Ibid., at 260.

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78 W. A. Lewis, Economic Survey 1919–1939 (1949), 38–50.

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80 Ibid., at 121; M. McAvoy, Sugar Baron: Manuel Rionda and the Fortunes of Pre-Castro Cuba (2003), 183; L. E. Aguilar, Cuba 1933: Prologue to Revolution (1972), 45–68.

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82 Ibid., at 178–9.

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84 Pollitt, supra note 68, at 98.

85 Quoted in Jenks, supra note 10, at 390, footnote 4.

86 Rowe, supra note 69, at 15.

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88 Pollitt, supra note 68, at 100. See also B. C. Swerling, ‘Control of an Export Industry: Cuban Sugar’, (1951) 33 Journal of Farm Economics 346, at 348.

89 Dominguez, supra note 10, at 33.

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91 Dominguez, supra note 10, at 51.

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120 Ibid., at 176, 185, 196, 259–60.

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124 International Sugar Conference, supra note 118, at 23.

125 Ibid., at 81–2.

126 Ibid., at 49–57.

127 Arts. 3, 6, 7, 14, 15, 24, 33(f), 34.

128 Arts. 20, 21, 24, 32(c).

129 Art. 33(g).

130 Arts. 28, 46.

131 Art. 44.

132 Art. 37(a).

133 Art. 31.

134 Art. 37(c).

135 Arts. 40–1.

136 Art. 39.

137 Art. 6(a).

138 Arts. 6(a), 9(a).

139 Art. 19.

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