“Noble and Representative Sentiments Come Free”: Mountains and Emotions in Internationalist Rhetoric, 1919–45

This paper explores the process through which mountains became symbols of peace and international cooperation in the interwar period.  Previously seen as dangerous places to be gazed merely from afar, by Victorian times mountains had grown to become preferred spaces to experience the sublime and had been construed as modern spaces to deal with physical and moral ills.  Important transformations, however, happened in the interwar period that gave mountains – and the Alps in particular – a different status than they previously held.  After the Great War, their pristine landscape was idealized as a precious space left untouched by the horrors of war (despite the fact that much fighting had occurred on mountain peaks).  The people that inhabited the Alps were also celebrated for their virtue, and praises of their character made their way into the internationalist literature of this period.  Most notably, the League of Nations chose as its main site an alpine city, Geneva, and used mountain imaginary in much of its publicity.  As this paper demonstrates, mountains came to be idealized as a place that would be conducive to international cooperation, and their aesthetics - along with the wide set of emotions that they triggered  - played a crucial role in shaping internationalist ideas and practices in this period and for decades to follow.