Feminism, War and the Prospects for Peace

Abstract

It is generally accepted in IR that before the 1980s there was little or no feminist theory in IR. Yet, there were feminists in IR prior to the 1940s who had their own particular take on global politics. This article seeks to reassess the ideas and impact of IR's first-wave feminism by concentrating on the works of one particular writer: Helena Swanwick. While not the only feminist writing on international affairs in the period, Swanwick is interesting both because of her earlier involvement in the feminist and suffragette movements, and because she constructed a clear analysis of the problems of security that was based on her suffragette experience. In the 1920s she gave sound reasons for opposing ‘League wars’ against aggressor states, but in the late 1930s this led her to support appeasement. Despite this, her criticisms of both collective security and the pre-1914 international anarchy are an interesting corrective to both the realist approach that emerged after the 1940s and the supporters of a tighter League system in the 1920s and early 1930s. It is also an indication of the extent to which a feminist agenda had been part of mainstream IR before 1939.

Keywords:

• collective security
• feminism in IR
• Helena Swanwick
• inter-war international relations
• pacifism

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Peter Wilson, Kim Hutchings and the two anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier draft of this article.

Notes

See Long and Wilson (1995); Long (1996); Schmidt (1998); Wilson (1998, 2003); Ashworth (1999, 2002, 2006); Ashworth and Long (1999); Thies (2002); Williams (2006).

First published in 1869, The Subjection of Women was a major influence on the development of the women's movement and suffrage societies, Mill (2001).

My thanks to Peter Wilson for this insight. See also Curtis (2003: 7–8).

In fact Swanwick was ahead of the pack here. Her move towards a concern for peace began before 1914. Other activists in her circle only became interested in foreign affairs after 1914. See, for example, Kathleen Courtney's admission of her own ignorance of the causes of war and foreign affairs prior to 1914, quoted in Haslam (1999: 40).

Norman Angell and H. N. Brailsford were journalists and major figures in British IR before 1950. Mary Agnes Hamilton was a writer and Labour politician. Both Angell and Brailsford worked with Swanwick, while Hamilton and Swanwick were part of the British delegation to the League of Nations in 1929.

Both Philip Noel-Baker and William Arnold-Foster were writers on international affairs and senior figures in the Labour Party.

Arthur Ponsonby was a leading Labour politician, and Charles Roden Buxton was a writer on Balkan issues and an active member of the Labour Party. Both were influential pacifists in the Party.

This publication was the transcript of a debate between Swanwick and Arnold-Forster.

Much British and American opinion at the time blamed France's hard line approach to Germany for the later tensions with Nazi Germany. For the French view of the problem see Williams (2008).

The pacifism of Buxton and Lansbury was also a product of their Christian faith. Swanwick's pacifism, like Ponsonby's, was different in that it was not a product of religious belief.

Author of many books on international affairs, including The Twenty Years' Crisis (1939), and regarded as one of the key realists of the twentieth century.

‘Cato’ was the nom de plume for three journalists: Michael Foot, a future leader of the Labour Party, Frank Owen and Peter Howard.

Emily Greene Balch was a professor of economics at Wellesley College in the United States. She won the Nobel Peace Prize for her writing on international affairs. Mary Parker Follett, considered one of the founders of business studies in the United States, wrote on the League of Nations, while Dorothy Buxton was a British writer and Labour Party activist.