The 54 countries that wrote the rules only represented part of the globe. One country conspicuously not in attendance was the Soviet Union–although it had been invited and even selected a delegation, its delegates were ordered to turn back en route in an early indication of the tensions that would soon erupt into the Cold War.

This left the Anglophone nations as the most experienced in aviation. The United States controlled 70% of international commercial traffic at the time, and the United Kingdom was a distant second at 12%. The rivalry between these two aviation powers shaped the convention, as each hoped to set down rules that would redound to its benefit. The Americans hoped to press their existing advantage in the size of their fleet and what they believed was their technological edge, while the British diplomats intended to leverage their existing territorial empire.

The diplomats gathered at the Stevens Hotel rejected the plans for a full internationalization of aviation presented by Australia and New Zealand, and instead upheld the principle of national sovereignty over airspace. When the agreement was finalized in December 1944, its signatories largely did not anticipate the way that decolonization would shortly redraw the globe and aviation with it. Those new nations now also enjoyed the privilege of sovereignty over airspace negotiated at Chicago, and many would seek to turn the tools Chicago offered them to their advantage.

These papers all engage with the Chicago Convention and the world it created, and the panel will have a broad appeal to historians of aviation but also diplomacy, mobility, decolonization, the Cold War, and labor. Andreas Greiner delves into the operation of airlines during the World War to reveal the origins of conflicts that later arose in Chicago. Jess Pearson explores the intersections between aviation, sovereignty, and African women’s pursuit of liberation from colonialism and patriarchy alike. Phil Tiemeyer examines how Tito’s Yugoslavia forged an aviation system that retained a socialist-inspired suspicion of the Chicago Convention while nonetheless nurturing an airline that competed with Western Europe’s carriers and creatively linked Yugoslavia to the Global South. Lauren Stokes examines how airline workers became unlikely anti-globalization activists as they responded to deregulation and privatization in the 1990s, criticizing states for weakening the Chicago principles that had opened access to civil aviation even for small states.