This chapter addresses Macau’s place in China’s war with Japan from the early 1930s to 1941. Macau featured in Chinese resistance efforts from the start, but its relevance became more pronounced after 1937, especially after Guangdong province was engulfed in the conflict. The chapter argues that, due to its neutrality, Macau became an important meeting place for competing Chinese actors. Both those engaged in Chinese resistance – Nationalists, communists and others – and collaborators with Japan (before and after the consolidation of Wang Jingwei’s Reorganised National Government) used the enclave to circulate materials and propaganda, to mobilise others for their cause and to reach out to opponents.

The final phase of Vichy’s dealings with Rome brought the sharpest divergence in its relations with the two Axis governments. The full occupation of France ended the last vestiges of French sovereignty. However, the power relationship between Vichy and Rome evolved very differently to that between Vichy and Berlin. Vichy’s negotiations between the conflicting demands of the German and Italian authorities were, characterised by opportunism, not fully appreciated when focusing exclusively on the German occupation. Whereas Vichy chose to work with Rome to offset Berlin’s demands on the Service du Travail Obligatoire, it resolutely chose collaboration with Berlin over the opportunities afforded by Rome when it came to the treatment of Jews. Vichy’s willing collaboration with Nazi anti-Semitic policies saw it oppose the Italian attempts to prevent the deportation of Jews in their occupation zone. The fall of Mussolini ended the prospect of any fruitful cooperation with Italy. With growing internal pressure from French collaborationist forces to engage in a more radical and ideological form of collaboration, Vichy’s alignment with Nazi Germany finally became definitive.

This chapter focuses on ideology and collaborationism. The first section suggests that in the autumn of 1940, Baudouin sought to develop a culturally driven ideological alternative to collaboration with Nazi Germany. The second section explores the French Fascists’ lack of support for collaborationism with Italy. The absence of sustained collaboration with Rome meant that there was limited scope for Vichy to slip from involuntary to voluntary collaboration. The relationship between state collaboration and collaborationism with Fascist Italy was, therefore, virtually the opposite of that with Nazi Germany. While short-lived and limited in nature, it was Vichy that led attempts to forge ideological collaboration with Rome rather than the French Fascists. And while collaborationists continued to press for greater collaborationism with the Nazis after the full occupation of France deepened state collaboration with Berlin, Vichy’s pursuit of state collaboration with Rome lasted longer than any pursuit of collaborationism.

The period between July and December 1940 is usually characterised in terms of Vichy’s attempts to develop closer relations with Berlin which culminated in a new policy of collaboration. However, this picture obscures a second dimension to Vichy’s policy that saw Pierre Laval and Foreign Minister Paul Baudouin engage in concerted efforts at rapprochement with Rome to counter the domination of Berlin. Their efforts foundered upon Mussolini’s ideologically driven opposition, but their persistence suggests that it was not inevitable that French collaboration should have become exclusively directed towards Germany. At the same time, however, Vichy had two main concerns about Italian intentions. The first was that Italy’s encroachments upon French sovereignty in its occupation zone might lead to territorial annexation by stealth. The second was the need to protect the French colonial empire from Fascist claims, especially over Tunisia. Vichy, therefore, attempted to use collaboration with Germany to counter the threat from Italy.

This chapter explores the Italian threats to French authority in the areas that fell within the remit of the Italian armistice and how French officials tackled them at a local level. Italian threats included encroachments on French sovereignty, Fascist propaganda and attempts to undermine French colonial rule. A further potential threat came from the large Italian communities living in France and French North Africa. French responses were complex and multi-layered, with local French authorities sometimes adopting different approaches to those advocated by Vichy. Where Italian actions clashed with Vichy’s defence of France’s colonies or its policies on Jews, the French authorities invited intervention from Berlin. However, as French attentions turned once again towards exploiting the rifts within the Axis, the response from Berlin showed that the strategy of seeking assistance from the Germans was to be no panacea.

Much like the dissolving international order confronting us, the concept of an international order is neither easily graspable nor predetermined, but it has provoked a range of theories and methods often depending on the international disciplines – law, politics, history. That said, while international relations scholars – whose own craft can be traced back to 1919 – became the proponents of its importance, historians in general have tended to avoid the term ‘international order’. Why have historians not directly and systematically engaged with the past of international order, or even the idea that it has a past? This afterword considers this question in the context of the significance of historical understanding of more commonly (and implicitly) studied national orders, and how historical interest in the international has significantly shifted over the last century.

The conclusion ties together the book’s argument, linking diplomatic relations to local-level negotiations and ideological dimensions to demonstrate how Vichy’s engagement with the Axis saw it caught in a double bind. It reflects on the absence of public memories of the Italian occupation and the tendency to focus on Germany in the scholarship. This chapter also highlights how French responses to the challenges arising out of the Italian armistice terms, Fascist territorial claims and the Italian occupation were critical to shaping Vichy’s wider policies on collaboration. The Italian dimension to Vichy’s actions, therefore, necessitates a reconceptualisation of state collaboration and its relationship to collaborationism as well as the relationship between collaboration and resistance.

This chapter explores post-war socialist internationalism as an experiment in international relations – one meant to offer a distinct and even alternative form of international relations to the better-known one dominated by state actors. The purpose of the socialist internationalism was never simply instrumentalist in a directly political sense. By the end of the nineteenth century, institutionalised cooperation between socialists across party and national lines had become a fundamental characteristic of socialism, contributing to the creation of an international socialist community. And as a community, socialist internationalism functioned as a site for socialists to consult on issues of common concern and to work out ’socialist’ positions on them. If this endeavour affirmed and reaffirmed the collective commitment to the community, it also actualised the hope of identifying policy positions distinct from those of non-socialists and especially of non-socialist governments.

This chapter examines the Italian occupation between June 1940 and November 1942. Despite covering only a small area of territory, the Italian government saw the occupation as essential to its policy of prestige. Rome, therefore, sought to impose Italianisation, seeing its occupation zone as an opportunity for annexation by stealth. The Italian occupation was thus more akin to the German treatment of Alsace-Lorraine or northern France than the wider German zone of occupation. Defending French territorial integrity was at the heart of Vichy’s claim to legitimacy. However, the French government’s political choices ultimately determined its response. Vichy’s decision to prioritise collaboration with Berlin over objecting to the German annexation of Alsace-Lorraine constrained its ability to oppose similar developments in the Italian zone of occupation. Vichy, therefore, consigned itself to accepting ‘relative’ sovereignty over French territory. In so doing, it experienced further humiliation in failing to prevent de facto territorial annexation by an Italian army whose claims of victory it rejected.

This chapter draws on work by historians, international relations scholars, and international lawyers to demonstrate the significance of the Paris peace settlements after the First World War in accounts of international order. Building on recent historiographical debates, the chapter argues that Paris in 1919 was a site of remarkable innovations in the reinvention of international order. A wide range of actors set out new ways of thinking about international politics, established innovative institutions and transformed the conduct of international relations.