During the 19^th century, various developments intensified interactions between states and contributed to the advancement of these ideas.

From a political perspective, the "Concert of Europe” that emerged from the Vienna Congress is often considered an important step in the evolution of multilateral cooperation. It refers to the informal system of consultation between the Great European powers that came into existence after the Napoleonic wars. It was based on the organization of international conferences and made governments accustomed to the practice of high-level meetings before conflicts erupted.

At the same time, technical and scientific developments brought about by the Industrial Revolution pushed states to increase their cooperation. The first international administrations were created owing to improved communications and economic exchange. Although the first international organizations – the Central Commission for the Navigation on the Rhine (1815) and the Danube Commission (1856) – were established to regulate river navigation, the International Telegraph Union (1865), the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (1875), and the Universal Postal Union (1878) illustrate the need for the internationalization of norms in the field of technical cooperation.

In 1919, the victorious powers met in Paris to negotiate the peace settlements. It is during the Paris Peace Conference that the Covenant was adopted. The founding document of the League was not an international treaty per se. It was included in the Treaty of Versailles which ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers, and all the other peace treaties signed in the French capital.

The Covenant was drafted by an ad hoc committee, comprised of 18 members (from 13 delegations), and chaired by US President Woodrow Wilson. Wilson was a strong supporter of the League of Nations and played a key role during the negotiations in Paris. However, the “Committee of the League of Nations” also included other ardent promoters of the League. In the French delegation, Léon Bourgeois had already been one of the protagonists of the Hague Conferences held in 1899 and 1907 and published “Pour la Société des Nations” in 1909. In 1920, Bourgeois was awarded the Noble Peace Prize, jointly with Woodrow Wilson.

In the British delegation, Lord Robert Cecil had already circulated a plan for the establishment of an international organization to maintain peace when was he was member of the British Cabinet in 1916. The other representative of the British Empire, Jan Smuts, was the author of an influential pamphlet “The League of Nations: A Practical Suggestion”, published in December 1918. Other members of the Committee would become protagonists of the League’s work in the following years, such as Paul Hymans, Epitacio Pessoa, Wellington Koo, Vittorio Scialoja, the Viscount Chinda, and Eleftherios Venizelos.

The work of the Committee started in January 1919, and the Covenant was adopted on 28 April 1919. The negotiations were sometimes tense, and the architecture of the new organization resulted from a series of compromises. 

Officially, the League of Nations started its activities on 10 January 1920, when the Treaty of Versailles came into force. Although Wilson played a pivotal role in the process of creation of the League of Nations, he was not able to secure the majority necessary at the US Senate for the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles. In the end, the United States never joined the organization.