Das Chaos beseitigen: Die internationale Standardisierung forst- und holzwirtschaftlicher Statistiken in den 1920er und 1930er Jahren und der Völkerbund

When in 1948 the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization began to publish internationally comparable and reliable statistics on the global forestry and timber industry, it could rely on infrastructure and methods developed and established during the 1920s and 1930s as well as on personnel with experience of more than a decade. The article focuses on the actors involved and their motivation to develop and establish such international statistics. Given the frequent characterisation of the League of Nations’ Economic and Financial Organisation (EFO) as “path-breaking” and “pioneering” in statistical matters, this article then examines the EFO’s actual participation in the international standardisation of economic statistics. It is argued that its efforts in this field should be seen in a more differentiated way. EFO certainly became an indispensable player in the international standardisation of economic statistics. However, it neither defined the pace nor the direction of the process in every case. Instead, it rather had an accelerating effect on already existing efforts and served as a coordinating centre for a huge number of international organisations and actors involved in the standardisation process.