Chapter Text
So. This is a map of what the world looked like politically roughly around the time the ICW is supposed to be an established enough supranational entity to have enacted and enforced the International Statute of Secrecy in 1692.[1]
(Seriously, if anyone can figure out how to transform this map into A Cohesive International Organization, please inform me forthwith. I shall be very grateful and will modify my shit accordingly)
You might notice that this is much more scattered/decentralized than a modern world map.
Pottermore states, "Though European explorers called it ‘the New World’ when they first reached the continent, wizards had known about America long before Muggles...even far-flung wizarding communities were in contact with each other from the Middle Ages onwards. The Native American magical community and those of Europe and Africa had known about each other long before the immigration of European No-Majs in the seventeenth century. They were already aware of the many similarities between their communities. Certain families were clearly ‘magical’, and magic also appeared unexpectedly in families where hitherto there had been no known witch or wizard. The overall ratio of wizards to non-wizards seemed consistent across populations, as did the attitudes of No-Majs, wherever they were born."[2]
I find many things wrong with that Pottermore article, but one things at a time.
Given that there's evidence suggesting Polynesian explorers had made their way across the Pacific to the Americas by the thirteenth century in real life without magic[2], it's not a huge stretch to believe that similar journeys and explorations could've taken up on a larger scale with magic. Though if there was extensive magical contact between Europe, Asia and Africa and North and South America prior to the fifteenth century, that raises Many Questions on how that changes the course of history (both magical and non-magical) in regards to smallpox and cholera and half a dozen other nasty epidemiological partridges on an infectious pear tree and their impact on the indigenous populations of the Americas. But more on that later (next chapter).
Before we get to the specifics of how history played out, my IR Questions regarding the ICW have more to do with how the hell a supranational organization existed by the seventeenth century with enough teeth and clout to even attempt to issue a mandate like the Statute - since nationalism as a concept and unified nation-states didn't much exist until the eighteenth and nineteenth century and supranationalism was a twentieth century invention in the aftermath of the world wars.
Supranationalism, for those who aren't IR pedants, is the idea or practice of separate national governments coming together to form institutions and/or create policies that have authority or jurisdiction over the member states.[4] The European Union is one example, and the African Union, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, as is the United Nations and its precursor, the League of Nations - all of which were distinctly twentieth century developments. Because, surprise, states generally really hate ceding any amount of sovereignty, tend to screech worse than a caterwauling cat over it, and it usually takes A Really Big Stick to get that to happen. In real life, it took two world wars and the idea/threat of nuclear annihilation to even get it to remotely stick.
The League of Nations - precursor to the current UN - got its start because everyone was like "The Great War (now known as World War I) sucked! Maybe it's worth giving up a tiiny amount of sovereignty in order to prevent another one from happening again." As we all know, the League of Nations didn't work out so well.[5]
It's a little hard to get to the "nations should cede certain aspects of sovereignty for The Greater World Benefit" phase of thinking when nationalism as a concept (we'll get to What Is Nationalism in Chapter Four) hasn't even quite...evolved yet. Really, states (and not the American kind) as we know them today are a Fairly Recent Development in the Grand Scheme Of Human History and are not actually The Natural Order Of The World. And even now, the United Nations, with all due respect to the august organization and the good it has accomplished and/or attempted, fairly arguably has very little teeth. Getting all of its member-states to agree on just what to have for lunch is a feat - let alone anything else.
Which presents a bit of a problem as far as ICW representatives and the authority they supposedly have.
Assuming that magical governing bodies at the time (ie a lot of monarchies) generally paralleled their respective non-magical counterparts before the implementation of the Statute of Secrecy in 1692, and there's no reason to not think that was the case, the European representatives alone would consist of: England and France and Spain who all rabidly hate each others' guts and are trying to outdo each other, Portugal who also occasionally feuds with Spain, Switzerland who is unfortunately hosting this whole lot and trying their best to be neutral (yes I am mostly arbitrarily declaring Geneva as the center of the ICW - since that's where it is in RevArc), a dozen or two "Italian" and "Germanic" representatives who spend as much time quarreling amongst themselves as anyone else because the unification of Italy and Germany as we know it don't happen until the mid-1800s (more on that later in Chapter Four), Austria who is at war with the Ottomans, the Ottomans who are currently in control of the Balkans and feuding with Austria over said Balkans, Poland-Lithuania who is also possibly feuding with the Ottomans over said Balkans and attempting to hold off the Russian Empire the other front yet again, the Swedes doing their own thing up north and alternately feuding between the Poles and Assorted Germanic States, Norway is annoyed because everyone forgets they exist and lumps them in with Sweden, and the Russian Empire wanting its own share of the Eastern European pie.
(And that's to say nothing about the representatives from The Rest Of The Non-European World. Which, at an absolute minimum probably includes some combination of Morocco, the Safavid Empire, Qing China, Joseon Korea, Tokugawa Japan, the Mughal Empire, The Iroquois Confederacy/Haudenosaunee, the Mayans in the Yucatan, the various kingdoms making up Southeast Asia, Oirat Confederation, and the Kanem-Bornu Empire plus other empires/sultanates in Africa. Or you can argue that the Statute of Secrecy is entirely Eurocentric and imposed. Which, honestly fits with history, but magical colonialism as I have it played out differently than in real life, so there was probably some level of buy-in from at least the largest non-European wizarding states/kingdoms/etc)
So essentially, I'm positing that the ICW for much of human history (because magical and non-magical history is The Same until 1692) was less An All Powerful Ruling Body and more...an assortment of particularly powerful wizards from especially large and powerful kingdoms/empires/duchies/sultanates/emirates/etc who politic and "collaborate" with (and occasionally backstab) each other and attempt to quote-unquote "Impose Order" on the magical world - their success regarding the latter tends to vary and they generally believe they are more successful at "Imposing Order" than they actually are and there's lot a self-delusion about their efficacy outside of Europe.
The ICW also serves as a proto-embassy/international forum for entities to conduct diplomatic missions with each other without going to the trouble of needing to send an ambassador to every other magical entity and still retains that function today, as seen in RevArc - since, as a general rule, most wizarding countries really do not have the population base to staff an embassy in every other country it has diplomatic relations with. Wizarding America post World War II is considered A Bit Of An Aberration for that, and even with being the third largest wizarding nation in terms of population, how they mostly manage it post-Integration is because they're piggybacking on the infrastructure of the non-magical US Government.
As a result, at the time of the imposition of the Statute (and later on, to a slightly lesser extent) getting a representative seat in the ICW is less indicative of An Being Actual Nation-State and more 'how much money/influence/resources/etc do you have and how successful are you at getting the ICW General Assembly auditorium which is full of cats to sit an actual quorum and wrangle a majority vote to admit you.' A number of less consolidated entities across the world likely take one look at the ICW and are like "....What is this organization? We do not recognize it or play its games," and flat out don't give a fuck about the Statute or the ICW.
It is also, given its location in Geneva, skewed towards being A European Endeavor and a number of other wizarding entities from other parts of the globe, roll their eyes a lot - the Chinese delegation in the seventeenth century, at least, would have been all, "Five thousand years of history in the Middle Kingdom, the affairs of upstart puny Europe are Beneath Us," and mostly use it as a dumping ground for troublesome civil servants or something.
Given the...aesthetic behind the wizarding world as presented in Wizarding Britain, it seems that wizarding society (at least in Europe) began isolating themselves sometime in the sixteenth or seventeenth century. After a generation or so of retreat and in the aftermath Seventeenth Century European Political Upheavals (to be dissected In Detail in Chapter 5), someone, almost certainly one of the European delegations, which have an outsized influence due to the ICW being headquartered in Geneva, had a Very Bright Idea - "Hey, maybe if we detach ourselves from the non-magical population and mind our own business, all our problems will be solved!"
I am....Very Skeptical of the Pottermore reasoning that fear of the European witch hunts in general and specifically the Salem Witch Trials were the reason behind the Statute of Secrecy being imposed, especially since Harry Potter canon made it clear that the witch hunts were a joke to most witches and wizards. Maybe I could buy a European Statute of Secrecy based on the sixteenth and seventeenth century witch hunts such as the Würzburg and Bamberg witch trials (which, in real life, emerged out of the religious power-jockeying/competition created by the Protestant Reformation) - but no, you do not get an International Statute of Secrecy based on European witch hunts that were stated in HP canon to be laughable in terms of their actual impact on the wizarding population.
Unless Pottermore's definition of 'international' was Europe, at which point there are Much Bigger Problems With World-building.
So the assumption I'm running with is that The European Wizarding Ruling Powers looked at the Many Political Upheavals that occurred in the seventeenth century Europe and decided that if the 'common people' already mostly lived in majority-magical villages/towns/etc, there was no reason they should be bound to the dictates of the non-magical monarchs and separation of the societies would bequeath more political power to them.
Because seventeenth century Europe was...kind of a mess! Regions changed hands constantly, some part of the continent was usually perpetually at war, dynasties were deposed and civil wars raged, reform of the state religion/religious wars/the Protestant vs Catholic mess caused more chaos and were the underlying factor in the European witch hunts in real life, etc. There was the Eighty Years' War, English Civil War, War of Spanish Succession, and then the Thirty Years' War which involved basically the entire continent and resulted in Many Dead Bodies. The wizarding ruling powers could've very well gotten tired of it and decided they didn't want to deal with "Muggle" conflicts anymore.
And if the wizarding world already had, for the most part, their own private educational institutions/systems, majority wizarding villages, and were already increasingly isolating themselves from non-magical society - why should mages pay taxes to Muggle kings and lords? So, in the midst of all this chaos, the idea behind the Statute emerges.
And as the decades pass, the wizarding (European) nobility like this whole not paying taxes or being bound to the rulings of the church thing, and thus (the European) wizarding world in general become more and more alienated from non-magical society until they fail to understand it at all. And so you have the modern wizard who literally has no clue why they separated off way back when except for a vague idea that the witch burnings had something to do with it. And that's also how you get RBC canon in which pureblood kids at Hogwarts consider fucking Christianity to be a "Muggle myth/story."
Why did a majority of the relevant magical entities at the time decide to implement the Statute, considering Europe was fairly arguably not the center of world power in 1692? (That distinction likely goes to Qing China, the Ottomans, and/or the Mughal Empire - Europe really won't start to take over that particular world stage for another half-century, with the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution)
I have Absolutely NO FUCKING CLUE!
Maybe they also liked the idea of no longer having to obey and pay taxes to their non-magical rulers. China possibly rolled its eyes and voted for it on the basis of, "Whatever, let the puny Europeans do their thing. It's not like the Middle Kingdom is obligated to follow these dictates anyway." Otherwise, consider this part of the canon I wasn't able to chuck into the wood-chipper and I'm hand-waving the rest of it. I'm trying to work with what I have and the Statute of Secrecy is so foundational to Everything Harry Potter (and more importantly, RevArc) that I can't chuck it into the wood-chipper.
The way I think how enactment/enforcement of the International Statute of Secrecy worked out is that it was akin to a papal bull.
The Vatican/Pope/Catholic Church has no standing army to enforce any of the pope's edicts - historically relying on the relevant countries heeding said papal bull and carrying it out themselves with their armies. Countries who didn't view themselves as belonging under the umbrella of the Catholic Church (any of the Eastern Orthodox countries, chunks of Europe post-Protestant Reformation, England after King Henry wanted that divorce, anyone who wasn't Christian, etc) felt little to no obligation to heed any of the Vatican's edicts - though depending on the breakdown of religious affiliation within the country, may have faced internal dissent over that decision to not give a fuck.
(Apologies to any observant Catholics and theologians if I utterly botched/simplified that. I am Definitively Not Catholic, though I do attend a nominally Catholic university - mostly drawing from my Religion & Ethics in International Affairs course as taught by a Jesuit. I'm trying to keep things as simple and understandable as possible.)
It's likely after the International Statute of Secrecy was passed that the ICW made some kind of effort into attempting to enforce it - so unlike the Vatican, there is some kind of enforcement body/agents, albeit a small one, given the constraints of the population.
My guess is that it's some kind of model akin to the current UN Peacekeeping system wherein member-states contribute soldiers (or in this case, Aurors) who perform some oversight function to ensure member-states are complying with the Statute. In practice, this enforcement is utterly laughable due to the monumental disparity between geographic area and the actual size of the enforcement body. So functionally, the ICW can't act on (or aren't aware) of Statute violations that fall short of Openly Declaring War on the Muggles and, say, using curses to blast the entire East India Company trading fleet to bits. Slipping a potion to give the entire barracks of said East India Company diarrhea, however? Probably fair game, honestly.
Historically, the ICW likely also had a relatively lax view about the rise and fall of empires/countries/etc depending on who the involved parties are. The UN, on the occasions it has to deal with this, usually at least tries to issue condemnations? Since invading your neighbor is generally considered Very Rude And Undiplomatic Conduct these days - but that's very much a development that's occurred over the last century and was not the case for Much Of History, since supranationalism didn't fucking exist until the twentieth century. Admittedly, it's...not exactly like the UN has even been able to actually do anything in terms of forcing a country to stop invading its neighbor other than Frowning Very Sternly and issuing sanctions that may or may not be effective.
So it's not a huge stretch to think that the ICW would also not particularly be able to prevent any invasions/conquests once they got started - think of exactly how well they're doing in stopping, say, Russia from Getting Up To Shit in Ukraine. Again, its role in the wizarding world likely has more to do with mediation and facilitating international diplomacy/connections and less Supreme Hegemonic Ruler Of The Wizarding World.
(*Edit: Post February 2022. Huh, I stand mildly corrected on Russia and Ukraine and the international order's response thereof. I think the overall point still stands, though.)
So think of the ICW historically less as the UN and more like the League of Nations - with all the success and teeth that implies. This changes after the Grindelwald Wars a bit, but as seen in RevArc, ICW is still very much not an Supreme Ruler Of The Wizarding World. Also, there is no fucking magical pygmy deer involved at any point in the process of deciding on the leadership. None. I'm not fucking dealing with that shit.
The ICW's response to Most Territorial Fuckery throughout large swathes of history probably runs something like this.
Conquests in [region without any representatives at the ICW, or whose representatives aren't Cooperative with the Statute]? "Well, they weren't really a proper government anyway, so it's basically unowned land. What's next on the agenda?"
Wizarding France and Germany squabbling over Alsace-Lorraine again? *stern frowny faces and no action* *eyeroll*
Grindelwald steamrolling across Europe and taking direct aim at the ICW? "Oh fuck!"
This plays into Significant Portions Of American Wizarding History - because there's no way to get a wizarding government as...classically American as RevArc and I have already written without the indigenous wizarding population having been decimated the way they their non-magical real life kindred were historically. And...there are really no pretty ways to explain that other than, at the absolute best, the ICW as an organization (and the Wizarding American government as portrayed in my fics and RevArc) stood by and shrugged while allowing entire peoples to be nearly wiped out - if not as a direct participant, since colonialism post-Statute played out quite differently, then by not intervening and being a passive bystander.
Bibliography
[1] Uranaba. "1700 CE World Map." Map. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:1700_CE_world_map.PNG
[2] Rowling, Joanne. "Fourteenth Century – Seventeenth Century." Pottermore. https://www.wizardingworld.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/fourteenth-century-to-seventeenth-century-en
[3] Handwerk, Brian. "Native Americans and Polynesians Met around 1200 A.D." Smithsonian. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/native-americans-polynesians-meet-180975269/
[4] Art, Robert J., and Robert Jervis. International Politics: Enduring Concepts and Contemporary Issues. Pearson.
[5] Ibid.
