Member states of the League of Nations

List

Founding members below are listed in the order matching the Covenant (signatories first, followed by invitees), except for Ecuador. The colonies of the British Empire immediately followed it and did not sign in alphabetical order. Czechoslovakia and El Salvador were alphabetized under 'S'.

A country was allowed to send a withdrawal notice at any time, but it would take two years to come into effect after the League received it, and meanwhile the country would retain both its obligations and its membership. In practice, a withdrawing country quit the League immediately, and was absent from all sessions and votes for the last two years of its formal membership. The "Date of withdrawal" column shows when the withdrawal notice was sent.

Original Allied signatory Original invitee

Expulsion of the Soviet Union

On 14 December 1939, the Soviet Union was expelled for invading Finland in violation of the Covenant of the League of Nations, by a Council vote of 7–0–4–3 (7 in favor, 0 against, 4 abstaining, 3 absent). The United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, South Africa, and Egypt voted in favor; the Republic of China, Finland, Greece, and Yugoslavia abstained; and Iran, Peru, and the Soviet Union itself were absent. Three of the votes in favor had been made Council members the day before the vote (South Africa, Bolivia, and Egypt). This was one of the League's final acts before it practically ceased to function.

It has been disputed whether the expulsion was legally valid. Article 16 paragraph 4 of the Covenant stated that the Council may expel a member from the League if all members of the Council other than the to-be-expelled member concur. However, it is unclear if abstentions or absences were permitted for expulsion votes, though it is undisputed that they were allowed for all of the Council's other unanimous decisions. Even so, it is disputed whether the expulsion could be legally valid without a majority (8 out of 14) of the Council in favor.

Regardless, both the expulsion and any possible dispute of it had little practical effect. The Soviet Union had already declared nine days earlier that it would be absent from the League until further notice; it acknowledged its expulsion and made no effort to challenge it on any grounds. No other member was ever expelled from the League to demonstrate any precedent, and the League took no further significant actions with the outbreak of the Second World War.

Non-members

Between November and December 1920, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Ukraine applied for membership amid the dissolution of the Russian Empire and the Russian Civil War, but were denied because they did "not appear to have a stable government whose authority extends over the whole of its territory". (Some extra consideration was given to Armenia due to it being a signatory of the Treaty of Sèvres, which would have given Armenia some territory from the broken-up Ottoman Empire, but the treaty failed to be ratified.) Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania also applied in 1920 and were denied that year because they "had not achieved a definite international status" at the time (the three would be admitted the next year).

Some of the European microstates, namely Liechtenstein, Monaco, and San Marino, also applied for membership but were denied, explicitly "by reason of their small size". Monaco applied for membership on April 6, 1920, but withdrew the application on October 22, 1920. San Marino applied on April 25, 1919, but its application lapsed when it failed to respond to a request for information by August 22, 1920. Liechtenstein pursued its application with vigor, leading its application to be considered by the League admissions committee. The committee concluded, "there can be no doubt that juridically the Principality of Liechtenstein is a sovereign State", but found that because Liechtenstein delegated some state functions to other states, it "could not discharge all the international obligations which would be imposed on her by the Covenant." The committee voted 28 to 1 (with only Switzerland voting in favor of admission) against admission for Liechtenstein (with 13 abstentions). The decision has been criticized by international lawyers who have noted that other entities, which lacked the powers typically associated with sovereign states, were allowed to be member states.

Andorra and Vatican City never sought membership. Iceland was given the opportunity to join the League of Nations in 1920, but opted not to, primarily due to limited administrative resources.

Newfoundland was the only British dominion which did not apply for membership of the League, which Arthur Berriedale Keith attributed to its "small size and microscopic population" (less than 300,000 people at the time). It had also been denied separate representation at the Paris Peace Conference and was less active in foreign affairs compared to the other dominions.

Some relatively-isolated sovereign states in Asia also did not join, including Bhutan, Nepal, and Yemen, at least in part due to having no diplomatic relations with the major powers. Mongolia (from 1921) and Tibet were de facto independent, but their independence was not recognized by the major powers.

The Kingdom of Hejaz declined to join in 1920, and was conquered by the Sultanate of Nejd in 1925, creating the Kingdom of Hejaz and Nejd. The dual monarchy was consolidated to become Saudi Arabia in 1932. Saudi Arabia never joined the League.

The Sultanate of Muscat and Oman never joined the League of Nations; it was de jure an independent state but was considered a de facto British protectorate.

At the IX Congress of European Nationalities, an organization of the League of Nations, held in Bern, the first three autonomous jurisdictions of Spain (Basque Country, Galicia, and Catalonia), were recognized as nations, but since they were not constitutionally independent, they were represented by the Spanish government.

World War II and aftermath

Several member states were occupied or annexed during World War II, during which the League was largely paralyzed and held no sessions or votes. With the exception of the Anschluss, the League did not recognize any of these occupations, and the occupied states remained members of the League on paper. With the exception of Vichy France (later rescinded by Free France), the League also did not recognize any notices of withdrawal sent by puppet regimes, considering them to have been sent under duress. Not all puppet regimes attempted to withdraw.

The membership table above notes occupations that began before the start of World War II in Europe, those that continued after the end of World War II, and those whose puppet states attempted to withdraw. For brevity, the large number of occupations that do not meet these criteria (such as in the case of Luxembourg) are not listed.

The 20th annual session of the Assembly took place in 1939, but the 21st session did not take place until April 1946, after which the League ceased to exist. During this last session, 35 out of 44 League members attended, with Albania, Bulgaria, Ethiopia, Iraq, Liberia, Thailand, and the Baltic states not present. (Colombia was present, but only as a non-voting observer as its government had not authorized its representative on whether to vote for or against the dissolution of the League. Allied-occupied Austria was also permitted to send an observer with approval from its occupiers and the rest of the League.)

The League partially did not recognize the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states, which were the only member states of the League to remain occupied after the end of World War II. In its last session, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania remained on the list of members of the League. However, two months before the session, the League stated that it would not consider the 1939 documents of any representatives as valid, and required the governments of the League members to furnish new documents naming representatives. When the representatives of the Latvian government-in-exile and Lithuanian government-in-exile attempted to attend the session, a Secretariat staff member denied their 1939 documents as instructed, and explicitly stated that there did not exist any government which could provide them with the necessary credentials. The letter documenting this incident refers to the representatives as the "permanent delegate of Latvia" and "permanent delegate of Lithuania" as titles. (The letter does not mention the presence of the delegate of Estonia.) The staff member offered the representatives, and their family members and assistants, entry into the League's diplomatic gallery to spectate the session, but the representatives refused the offer for themselves, while accepting it for their family members and assistants. In addition, the offered entry card, and even the envelope containing the card, explicitly omitted a country name and a title.

The League of Nations was formally dissolved on 18 April 1946; its assets and responsibilities were transferred to the United Nations.

Map