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ABSTRACT
The League of Nations’ long term interest in the traffic in women and children mirrored, in key ways, what I call the ‘familial internationalism’ of some of its most influential British founders. Grounded in their understanding of the British Empire as an institution uniquely able to reconcile ‘liberty and self-government’ with the denial of liberty and self-government to the colonies, this vision of internationalism recast nations as cultural ‘families of mankind’ rather than political units with a right to sovereignty. This article thus explores first the influence of British imperial thought on League internationalism and then moves on to an analysis of the League’s Advisory Committee on the Traffic in Women and Children. In contrast to most historical investigations of the Committee, I read these archives as multivocal sites of political and cultural contestation about the status of women in relation to the national ‘family’. Ultimately, I argue, the work of the Committee resulted in an international convention that restricted women’s liberty by making it more difficult for them to travel internationally.
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Notes
1 Barbara Metzger, ‘Toward an International Human Rights Regime During the Inter-War Years: The League of Nations’ Combat of Traffic in Women and Children’, in Beyond Sovereignty: Britain, Empire, and Transnationalism, 1880-1950, eds. Kevin Grant, Philippa Levine, and Frank Trentmann (New York, NY; Palgrave, 2007), 73.
2 The League of Nations Social and Humanitarian Work (Geneva; The League of Nations, Secretariat, The Information Section, 1926), 25–6.
3 William Snow, ‘The Program of the League of Nations Advisory Committee on the Traffic in Women and the Protection and Welfare of Children and Young People’, Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science in the City of New York, 12, no. 1 (1926), 417.
4 Letter from Zimmern to Hobson, The Round Table Papers, Bodleian Library, Bodl.MSS.Engl.hist.c817, 139. For more on Zimmern’s influence on the League of Nations see Jeanne Morefield, Covenants Without Swords (Princeton, NJ; Princeton University Press, 2005). For accounts of Curtis influence see Debora Lavin, From Empire to International Commonwealth (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 1995) and Jeanne Morefield, Empires Without Imperialism: Anglo American Decline and the Politics of Deflection (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2014); Alfred Zimmern, Nationality and Government (New York, NY: Robert M. McBride and Company, 1918), 36.
5 Zimmern, Nationality and Government, 39.
6 ‘Report of the Seventh International Congress for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children, London, Tuesday, June 28th – Friday, July 1st, 1927’, 121.
7 Alfred Zimmern, Third British Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1934), 1.
8 Martin Wight, ‘Western Values in International Relations’, in Diplomatic Investigations, eds. Wight, Herbert Butterfield (Cambridge, MA; Harvard University Press, 1966), 121.
9 Jan Smuts, The League of Nations; A Practical Suggestion (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1918), 30, 32, 29. Smuts vacillates between capitalizing and not capitalizing ‘league’ and ‘nations’.
10 Alfred Zimmern, ‘United Britain: A Study in 20th Century Imperialism’, (1905), The Alfred Zimmern Paper, Bodleian Library, Bodl. MS Zimmern 136, fol. 24.
11 Edward Hallett Carr, The Twenty Years Crisis (London; Macmillan and Co, 1942), 97.
12 Alfred Zimmern to John Hobson, 13 September, 1916. Bodl.MS.Engl.hist.c817, fol. 139. Lionel Curtis, from a memorandum commenting on the draft of Section Three of the Round Table’s Commonwealth project, The Lionel Curtis Paper, Bodleian Library, MS.Curtis 836, fol. 122.
13 Lionel Curtis, The Commonwealth of Nations (London: Macmillan and Co., 1918), 177.
14 Zimmern, Nationality and Government, 36.
15 Cecilia Lynch, Beyond Appeasement: Interpreting Interwar Peace Movements in World Politics (Ithaca, NY; Cornell University Press, 1999), 7.
16 See also Helen McCarthy, The British People and the League of Nations (Manchester, UK: Manchester Univ. Press, 2011).
17 Susan Pederson, ‘Back to the League of Nations’, The American Historical Review, 112, no. 4 (2007), 192.
18 Antony Anghie, ‘The Evolution of International Law: Colonial and Postcolonial Realities’, Third World Quarterly 27, no. 5 (2006): 739–53. See also Anghie’s discussion of the ‘right’ to free trade and ‘open door’ economic policies in the Mandate System in Imperialism, Sovereignty, and the Making of International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
19 Antony Anghie, ‘Decolonizing the Concept of ‘Good Governance’ in Decolonizing International Relations, ed. Branwen Gruffydd Jones (New York, NY: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006), 124.
20 Adom Getachew, World Making After Empire (Princeton NJ; Princeton University Press, 2019). Siba Grovogui, Sovereigns, Quasi-Sovereigns, and Africans (Minneapolis, MN; University of Minnesota, 1996). Jeanne Morefield, Empires Without Imperialism (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2014).
21 Covenant of the League of Nations, The Avalon Project, Documents in Law and History, Yale Law School, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/leagcov.asp
22 Susan Pedersen, ‘The Maternalist Moment in British Colonial Policy: The Controversy over ‘‘Child Slavery’’ in Hong Kong, 1917–1941’, Past and Present, 171 (2001), 165. See also, Antoinette Burton, ‘The White Woman’s Burden: British Feminists and the Indian Woman, 1865-1915’, Women’s Studies International Forum, 13, no. 4 (1990), 293–308.
23 Emily Baughan, ‘Every Citizen of Empire Implored to Save the Children!’ Empire, Internationalism, and the Save the Children Fund in Inter-War Britain’, Historical Research, 86, no. 231 (2013), 119. Daniel Gorman argues that women involved in these various maternalist projects were attracted to such causes because they allowed them a level of autonomy unavailable within ‘the strictly masculine power structures of domestic politics’. For instance, he points out, a woman (Rachel Crowdy) could serve as the head of the Opium and Social Questions Section of the League ‘a full decade before a woman held a cabinet position in the British Government’. Daniel Gorman, ‘Empire, Internationalism, and the Campaign against the Traffic in Women and Children in the 1920s’, Twentieth Century British History, 19, no. 2 (2008), 216.
24 Leila Rupp, Worlds of Women: The Making of An International Women’s Movement (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997). McCarthy, The British People and the League of Nations.
25 Katarina Leppanen, ‘International Reorganization and the Traffic in Women’, Lychnos: Annual of the Swedish History of Social Science, (2006), 116.
26 Metzger, ‘Toward an International Human Rights Regime during the Inter-War Years’, 74.
27 Jessica Pliley, ‘Claims To Protection: The Rise and Fall of Feminist Abolitionism in the League of Nations’ Committee on the Traffic in Women and Children,1919–1936’, Journal of Women’s History, 22, no. 4 (2010), 92.
28 Leppanen, ‘International Reorganization and the Traffic in Women’, 524.
29 Ibid.
30 Leila Rupp, Worlds of Women, 151.
31 Metzger, ‘Toward an International Human Rights Regime’, 58.
32 See for instance Ethan Nadelman, ‘Global Prohibition Regimes; the Evolution of Norms in International Society’’ International Organization, 44, no. 4, (1990), 514.
33 For more on women’s movement’s associated with the League, see Patricia Ward D'Itri, Cross Currents in the International Women's Movement, 1848–1948 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999).
34 Metzger, ‘Toward an International Human Rights Regime’, 60.
35 See, in particular, Donna Guy’s chapter on Argentina and the League of Nations in, White Slavery and Mothers Alive and Dead: The Troubled Meeting of Sex, Gender, Public Health, and Progress in Latin America (Lincoln, NE: Universoty of Nebraska Press, 2000).
36 ‘Conference Recommendation to the Council, 1921’, Resolutions Adopted by the Assembly, the Council, and the Traffic in Women and Children Committee, 1920–1929 (Series of the League of Nations Publications, IV Social, 1929), 3.
37 The League of Nations Social and Humanitarian Work (Information Section, Geneva, 1926), 25–26.
38 The League of Nations Social and Humanitarian Work, 24.
39 Ibid., 21.
40 Ibid., 24.
41 Ibid., 26.
42 Rachel Crowdy, ‘The Humanitarian Activities of the League of Nations’, Journal of the Royal Institution of International Affairs, 6, no. 3 (1927), 153–69.
43 Minutes of the Traffic in Women and Children Committee: Eleventh Session, April 4th to 9th, 1932, Amendments to the Conventions of 1910 and 1921: Elimination of Age Limit, 2. See Crowdy on percentages in ‘The Humanitarian Activities of the League of Nations’, 58.
44 Crowdy, ‘The Humanitarian Activities of the League of Nations’, 156.
45 Leppanen, ‘International Reorganization and the Traffic in Women’, 528.
46 Metzger, ‘Towards and International Human Rights Regime’, 69.
47 Pliley, ‘Claims to Protection’, 90.
48 For more on Butler’s influence on the League see, Magaly Rodriguez Garcia, ‘The League of Nations and the Moral Recruitment of Women’, Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis, 10 (2012), 97–128. A discussion of Harris’ involvement with the Committee is explored in Stephanie Limoncelli, The Politics of Trafficking: The First International Movement to Combat the Sexual Exploitation of Women (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012).
49 League of Nations Social and Humanitarian Work, 1926, 32.
50 Comments of the Italian representative, Marquis de Calboli, ‘Advisory Committee on the Traffic in Women and Children, Minutes of the First Session Held at Geneva from June 28th to July 1, 1922’, 17.
51 Resolution Adopted by the Assembly, Sept. 25, 1922, Resolutions Adopted by the Assembly, 3.
52 Deniz Kandiyoti, ‘Identity and Its Discontents’, Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory, ed. Patrick Williams, Laura Chrisman (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1994), 382. See also Nira Yuval Davis and Floya Anthias, Woman-Nation-State (London; Macmillan and Co., 1989).
53 ‘Advisory Commission for the Protection and Welfare of Children and Young People, Traffic in Women and Children Committee, Minutes of the Seventh Session’, Geneva (1928), 42.
54 ‘Advisory Commission for the Protection and Welfare of Children and Young People, Traffic in Women and Children Committee, Minutes of the Sixth Session’, Geneva (1927), 43.
55 ‘Report of the Special Body of Experts on the Traffic in Women and Children’, Geneva (1927), 28.
56 ‘Advisory Commission for the Protection and Welfare of Children and Young People, Traffic in Women and Children Committee, Minutes of the Third Session’, Geneva (1924), 5.
57 Minutes of the Sixth Session, 31, 33,
58 Report of the Special Body of Experts, 29.
59 Ibid., 26.
60 Ibid., 14.
61 Minutes of the Sixth Session (1927), 35
62 ‘Advisory Commission for the Protection and Welfare of Children and Young People, Traffic in Women and Children Committee’, Minutes of the Ninth Session (1930), 57.
63 Minutes of the Ninth Session (1930), 57.
64 Minutes of the Eighth Session (1929), 43.
65 Minutes of the Sixth Session, (1927), 31.
66 Metzger, ‘Towards an International Human Rights Regime’, 69.
67 Minutes from the Sixth Session, 37. In this case, the Committee at first chose to simply ignore the proposal and then, when it was reintroduced at another session, refer it to the ILO.
68 Minutes of the Sixth Session, 17.
69 The Advisory Commission for the Protection and Welfare of Children and Young People: Report by the International Labour Office on Family Allowances in Relation to the Physical and Moral Well-being of Children (Geneva: Series of the League of Nations Publications, Social, 1928), 1.
70 ‘Advisor Committee on the Traffic in Women and Protection of Children, Minutes of the Fourth Session’, Geneva (1925), 18.
71 Report of the Special Body of Experts, 27.
72 Ibid., 43.
73 Minutes of the Third Session (1924), 27.
74 The Covenant of the League of Nations, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/leagcov.asp#art7
75 ‘Report of the Seventh International Congress’, 121.