Many recent commentators have seen the League of Nations as a ‘golden age’ of international minority rights commitments. This chapter argues, however, that the 1919–24 decisions of international diplomats were motivated less by a principled commitment to justice for minorities than by a particular conception of world order. This conception saw selective international supervision of minority protection as necessary to prevent interstate war and respond to the exigencies of a civilizational and power hierarchy amongst peoples and states, while also advancing the particular politico-economic interests of the Principal Allied Powers. The result was support for internationally guaranteed territorial autonomy for a few minorities, but rejection of the claims of others and of the entrenchment of universal minority rights in the League Covenant. The early years of the League minority protection system has lessons for today’s debates about the place of minority rights within the post-cold-war order.