ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the way in which the Austrian pacifist Alfred Hermann Fried (1864–1921) and the Brussels-based Central Office of International Institutions (established in 1907) sought to document ‘international life’ in the early twentieth century. In doing so, it highlights Fried’s attempt to cast pacifism as a ‘scientific’ endeavour: according to Fried, the momentum towards greater international cooperation could be measured in the growing number of international organizations, congresses and agreements. Seen from this angle, the chapter examines a strand of peace activism and considers broader visions of the early twentieth century as an age of internationalism. At the same time, Fried’s exchanges with the Central Office and its Belgian founders – the pacifist leader and politician Henri La Fontaine (1854–1943) and the bibliographer Paul Otlet (1868–1944) – provide us with a case study in transnational cooperation. On the one hand, the joint efforts of Fried, La Fontaine and Otlet resulted in an ambitious publishing venture, the Annuaire de la Vie Internationale. On the other hand, practical matters, personal tensions and, ultimately, the outbreak of war in 1914 undermined these collaborative endeavours.
