Empire, internationalism, and the campaign against the traffic in women and children in the 1920s

Twentieth Century British History

Volumn 19, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 186-216

  Gorman, Daniel ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; CHILD; FEMALE; HISTORY; HUMAN; HUMAN RIGHTS; INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION; POLITICAL SYSTEM; POLITICS; PROSTITUTION; UNITED KINGDOM;

CHILD; COLONIALISM; FEMALE; GREAT BRITAIN; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HUMAN RIGHTS; HUMANS; INTERNATIONALITY; POLITICS; PROSTITUTION;

EID: 49849101199     PISSN: 09552359     EISSN: 14774674     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/tcbh/hwm030     Document Type: Article

References (143)

1. 'Declaration made to me by Andrée Guillet, a minor girl, French Subject', signed Paul Coihen, 21 April 1929. Women's Library, London Metropolitan University, Records of the International Bureau for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children [hereafter IBSTWCJ, 4/IBS Box 113, File 6.H; Cicely McCall - F. A. R. Sempkins, 7 June 1929, 4/IBS Box 113, File 6.H.
2. Cicely McCall, 'International Bureau for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children. Its work in Egypt', 11-12. IBSTWC, IBS Box 113, File 6.M.
3. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (London, 1988), 407-13
4. T.R. Moreman, "Small Wars" and "Imperial Policing": The British Army and the Theory and Practice of Colonial Warfare in the British Empire, 1919-1939', Journal of Strategic Studies - Special Issue on Military Power: Land Warfare in Theory and Practice, 19 (1996), 105-31
5. Anne Orde, The Eclipse of Great Britain: The United States and Imperial Decline, 1895-1956 (London, 1996).
6. Peter Cain and Anthony Hopkins, 'Gentlemanly Capitalism', Economic History Review, XL (1987), 11-12
7. and Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism: Crisis and Deconstruction, 1688-2001 (London, 2001), 111-12, 308-9.
8. For a contrary view, see Angela Redish, 'British Financial Imperialism after the First World 'War', in Raymond Dummett (ed.), Gentlemanly Capitalism and the New Imperialism: The New Debate on Empire (London, 1999), 127-40.
9. John R. Ferris, 'The Greatest Power on Earth': Great Britain in the 1920s', The International History Review, XIII (1991), 726-50
10. Gordon Martel, 'The Meaning of Power: Rethinking the Decline and Fall of Great Britain', International History Review, XIII (1991), 662-94.
11. John Gallagher, in Anil Seal (ed.), The Decline, Revival, and Fall of the British Empire (Cambridge, 1982), 86, 103, 105-6
12. Michael Dockrill, 'The British Empire and the Peace Conferences, 1919-1923', Historian, 42 (1994), 3-4
13. David Cannadine, 'Emollience: Stanley Baldwin and Francis Brett Young', Churchills Shadow (Oxford, 2003), 162, 180-1
14. Andrew Thorpe, A History of the British Labour Party (New York, 2001), 55, 50-1.
15. David Abernethy, The Dynamics of Global Dominance: European Overseas Empire 1415-1980 (New Haven, 2000), 104
16. A. Lentin, 'What Really Happened at Paris?', Diplomacy & Statecraft 1 (1990), 266.
17. See Akira Iriye, Global Community: The Role of International Organizations in the Making of the Contemporary World (Berkeley, 2002), 11-16.
18. George Walley, 'Henri Bergson', Architects of Modern Thoughts (Toronto, 1959), 36, 42. G.B. Shaw satirizes the overt idealism of the Committee and its sympathizers in his 1938 play 'Geneva'.
19. Anthony Clayton, The British Empire as a Superpower, 1919-1939 (Athens, GA, 1986), 517.
20. Leonard Woolf, International Government (London, 1916).
21. See also Peter Wilson, The International Thought of Leonard Woolf: A Study in Inter-war Idealism (New York, 2003)
22. and Wilson, 'Fabian Paternalism and Radical Dissent: Leonard Woolf's Theory of Economic Imperialism', in David Long and Brian C. Schmidt (eds), Imperialism and Internationalism in the Discipline of International Relations (Albany, 2005), 117-40.
23. In addition to the Foreign Office and Colonial Office, the respective offices were the Admiralty the Air Ministry the Board of Trade, the Committee of Imperial Defence, the Dominions Office (after 1925), the India Office, the Prime Minister's Office, the Treasury, and the War Office. Clayton, British Empire, 4.
24. Joseph Charles Heim, 'Liberalism and the Establishment of Collective Security in, British Foreign Policy', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5 (1995), 92, 95, 96.
25. David Long, 'Conclusion: Inter-war Idealism, Liberal Internationalism, and Contemporary International Theory', in David Long and Peter-Wilson (eds), Thinkers of the Twenty Years Crisis (Oxford, 1994), 317, 311-12.
26. Rita Hinden (ed.), Fabian Colonial Essays (London, 1945)
27. Rhiannon Vickers, The Labour Party and the World, Vol 1: The Evolution of Labour's Foreign Policy (Manchester, 2004), 6-7
28. Stephen Howe, Anti-Colonialism in British Politics (Oxford, 1993), 20, 34-8.
29. See Stephen Constantine, The Making of Colonial Development Policy (London, 1984).
30. Ronald Robinson, 'The Moral Disarmament of African Empire, 1919-1947', Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 8 (1979), 86-104
31. Susan Pedersen, 'Modernity and Trusteeship: Tensions of Empire in Britain Between the Wars', in Martin Daunton and Bernhard Rieger (eds), Meanings of Modernity: Britain from the Late-Victorian Era to World War II (Oxford, 2001), 203-20.
32. 'Note of a Meeting held in the Secretary of state's Room on Tuesday, 7th of October, at 3 p.m.', Passfield Papers, London School of Economics, Vol. 1, File B, 53.
33. Newton W. Rowell, The British Empire and World Peace (Toronto, 1922), 69, 153-4.
34. Mark Mazower, 'An International Civilization? Empire, Internationalism and the Crisis of the Mid-Twentieth Century', International Affairs 82 (2006), 560
35. Danielle Gambarara, 'The Convention of Geneva', in Lia Formigari and Danielle Gambarara (eds), Historical Roots of Linguistic Theories (Amsterdam, 1995), 280.
36. On Britain and the League's origins, see J. C. Smuts, 'A League of Nations: A Practical Suggestion' (London, 1918)
37. George Egerton, Great Britain and the Creation of the League of Nations; Strategy, Politics and International Organizations, 1914-1919 (London, 1979)
38. F. S. Northedge, The League of Nations: Its Life and Times, 1920-46 (Leicester, 1986)
39. Richard Langhorne, 'Establishing International Organisations: The Concert and the League', Diplomacy & Statecraft, 1 (1990), 10-17
40. and Peter Yearwood, 'Real Securities against New Wars': Official British Thinking and the Origins of the League of Nations, 1914-1919', Diplomacy & Statecraft, 9 (1998), 83-109.
41. Dame Rachel Crowdy, 'Humanitarian Activities of the League of Nations', Address given on 12 April 1927, Journal of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 6 (1927), 153.
42. Daniel Gorman, 'Liberal Internationalism, the League of Nations Union, and the Mandates System', Canadian Journal of History, XL (2005), 469-72.
43. Joanna Lewis, '"Tropical East Ends" and the Second World War: Some Contradictions in Colonial Office Welfare Initiatives', in John Smith (ed.), Administering Empire: The British Colonial Service in Retrospect (London, 1999), 62.
44. Barbara Bush, 'Gender and Empire: The Twentieth Century', in Philippa Levine (ed.), Gender and Empire (Oxford, 2004), 80.
45. Philippa Levine, Prostitution, Race, and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire (New York, 2003).
46. Carol Miller, 'Lobbying the League: Women's International Organizations and the League of Nations', unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Oxford University, 1992
47. Barbara Bush, 'Britain's Conscience in Africa: White women, Race and Imperial Politics in interwar Britain', in Claire Midgley (ed.), Gender and Imperialism (Manchester, 1997), 200-23.
48. Susan Pedersen, 'The Maternalist Moment in British Colonial Policy: The Controversy over "Child Slavery" in Hong Kong, 1917-1941', Past and Present, 171 (2001), 162-202
49. Bush, 'Gender and Empire', 82.
50. Pedersen, 'Maternalist Moment', 165.
51. Maurice Gregory, 'The Suppression of the White Slave Trade' (London, 1908), 16. Records of the Association of Moral and Social Hygiene [hereafter AMSH], Women's Library, London Metropolitan University, 3/AMS/6/3.
52. Morning Advertiser, 6 August 1927
53. Daily News, 13 August 1927
54. Daily Express, 13 August 1927.
55. Reynolds News, 22 July 1928
56. Vigilance Record, Records of the National Vigilance Association [hereafter NVA], Women's Library, London Metropolitan University, March 1930, S. 129.
57. Cited in Sheila Jeffreys, The Idea of Prostitution (North Melbourne, 1997), 30.
58. Alan B. Ward to NVA, 30 July 1930. NVA 4/NVA Box 195 S.128
59. W.T. Stead, The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon (The Report of the 'Pall Mall Gazette's' Secret Commission) (London, 1885). Cases of the alleged selling of children into 'unnatural' situations were not uncommon in the late nineteenth century.
60. See for instance Common Pleas Division, 'Latter v. Braddell And Wife And Sutcliffe', as reported in The Times, 4 December 1880. I am grateful to R.W. Kostal for this reference.
61. Alyson Brown, 'Mythologies and Panics: Twentieth-Century Constructions of Child Prostitution', Children and Society, 18 (2004), 346-8.
62. See Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight (Chicago, 1992), esp. 132-4, and Deborah Gorham, 'The 'maiden tribute of modern Babylon' re-examined. Child Prostitution and the Idea of Childhood in late-Victorian England', Victorian Studies, 21 (1978), 353-79.
63. Cmd 2689; Gregory, Suppression, 12-13.
64. Gregory, Suppression, 6.
65. By 1922, the following nations were members of the IBSTWC: Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Great Britain, Holland, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the United States. Russia, Turkey, South Africa and Portugal did not immediately reform after the war.
66. Madame Wanda Grabinska, Introductory Notes on the Legislative Development of the International Conventions for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons (1899-1949) (London, 1955), 2.
67. League of Nations, Advisory Committee on the Traffic in Women and Children, Minutes of the First Session, 28 June - 1 July 1922, 8-12. C.445.M.265.1922.IV.
68. Dame Rachel Crowdy-Thornhill, History and Programme of the Work of the International Bureau for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children (London, 1952), 22.
69. 'Minutes, 22 January 1926'. Minutes, IBSTWC, Volume 2, 20 March 1919-27 July 1929, 227. IBSTWC 4/IBS Box 192.
70. H. M. L. H. Sark, introduction in History and Programme of Work (London, 1952), 2.
71. Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Cuba, Great Britain, Greece, India, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Roumania, Siam and South Africa.
72. Traffic in Women and Children, Report of the Fifth Committee to the Assembly [of League], 1923. A.75.1923.IV
73. League of Nations, Advisory Committee on the Traffic in Women and Children, Minutes of the First Session, 28 June-1 July 1922, Annex 8, 43-44. C.445.M.265.1922.IV. Margaret Bondfield, parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Labour in the Labour Party's first government, spearheaded similar legislation in 1924 which banned children from orphanages or foster care from emigrating abroad if they were under the school leaving age of fourteen.
74. League of Nations, Advisory Committee on the Traffic in Women and Children, Minutes of the First Session, 28 June-1 July 1922, 8-12, Annex 11 - Employment Abroad of Women and Girls in Theatres, Music-Halls, etc., Statement by the Delegate of the British Empire, 52. C.445.M.265.1922.IV.
75. NVA, Executive Committee Minutes, Vol. II. 29 October 1918-28 November 1922. NVA, 4/NVA Box 195, 99 (25 November 1919), 109 (9 December 1919), 134 (24 February 1920).
76. Dr Hermann Schroetter, 'Public Health Services in Austria', League of Nations. Health Organisation. AMSH 3/AMS/6/3.
77. Sybil Neville Rolfe to Neilens (AMSH), 17 June 1922. AMSH 3/AMS/5/13; 'Tolerated Brothels in the BE', AMSH (October 1919).
78. Crowdy, 'Humanitarian Activities', 161.
79. Neilens to Ms Lush, 29 November 1927. AMSH 3/AMS/5/14 (Malaya 1924-).
80. E.B. Boyd to Colonial Office, 26 September 1923 (reprinted from The Shield, 3rd Series, 4, 1923, p. 116). AMSH 3/AMS/5/13.
81. Proceedings of the Federal Council of the Federated Malay States, 13 April 1920, 822, cited in J. Norman Parmer, 'Health and Health Services in British Malaya in the 1920s', Modern Asian Studies, 23 (1989), 49-7/1.
82. C.W. Beckwith to Attorney General, Hong Kong, Colonial Office circular 1 January 1921, The National Archives: Public Record Office [hereafter TNA: PRO] CO 323/1070/3.
83. W.A.R. Wood, HBM Consul-General Chiengmai, 'Note on the Provincial Administration in the Chiengmai Consular', 10 December 1915. TNA: PRO FO 628/40.
84. T.W.H. Kingston, Protector of Chinese, Keda, 'Memorandum on the traffic in women and girls by rail from Bangkok through Siam', 1-2. TNA: PRO FO 628/40.
85. Malaya Tribune, 19 August 1927.
86. Straits Times, 18 December 1923
87. Straits Times, 18 October 1923.
88. D. Beatty to Bishop of Singapore, 26 August 1924. AMSH 3/AMS/5/13.
89. Minutes, International Bureau, 5 May 1925. Minutes, International Bureau, Volume 2, 20 March 1919-27 July 1929, 221. IBSTWC 4/IBS Box 192.
90. Reverend W. E. Horlery to Bishop of Singapore, 6 Jan 1924. AMSH 3/AMS/5/ 13.
91. Malaysian Saturday Post, 19 March 1924.
92. Straits Times, 21 January 1924.
93. AMSH Leaflet, 'Resolution re. Federated Malay States', 12 November 1927. AMSH 3/AMS/5/14 (Malava 1924-).
94. Ferguson-Davie [Bishop's Lode, Singapore] to Lady Astor, 26 June 1924. AMSH, 3/AMS/5/13
95. Alison Neilens to James Henry Thomas, Secretary of State, Colonial Office, 14 March 1924. AMSH, 3/AMS/5/13.
96. Neilens to Mrs Nightengale, 19 December 1927. AMSH 3/AMS/5/14 (Malaya 1924-)
97. Manchester Guardian, 1 February 1928.
98. L.M. Guillemard to Amery, 6 August 1926. TNA: PRO CO 273/539/5.
99. Memorandum, 13 May 1927 (dated 7 July 1927). TNA: PRO CO 273/539/5.
100. Sybil Neville-Rolfe to Under Secretary of State, Colonial Office, 8 November 1927. TNA: PRO CO 273/539/5.
101. Angelique Richardson, 'Rolfe, Sybil Katherine Neville- (1885-1955)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004). [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/76744, accessed 11 December 2006]
102. Celia Davies, 'The Health Visitor as Mother's Friend', Social History of Medicine, 1 (1988), 45-6.
103. 'Report to the BSHC on Visit of Professor Bostock Hill to the Straits Settlements, Federated Malay States and Ceylon, October 1926', 2-3, 5, 9 in Rolfe to Leo Amery, Secretary of State, Colonial Office, 24 May 1927. TNA: PRO CO 273/539/5.
104. Lady Astor, Dr Douglas White, and John H. Harris, Social Hygiene Advisory Committee, 'Outline Draft, Prepared for consideration by the Colonial Office'. AMSH, 3/AMS/5/14.
105. 'First Report of the Advisory Committee on Social Hygiene', 1927, Cmd 2501.
106. 'Social Hygiene Advisory Board, December 1926. Report of Progress'. TNA: PRO CO 273/539/5
107. Alison Neilens to Amery, 14 July 1927. TNA: PRO CO 273/539/5.
108. 'Report of a Committee appointed by the secretary of State for the Colonies to examine and report on Straits Settlements Ordinance 15 of 1927 and Federated Malay States Enactment No. 18 of 1927.'
109. Manchester Guardian, 1 February 1928.
110. Neilens to F.K. Powell, 2 March 1929. AMSH 3/AMS/5/14 (Malaya 1924-)
111. 'Social Evil in Malaya', British Malaya, January 1929, 239-40. AMSH 3/AMS/5/14 (Malaya 1924+).
112. Dame Katharine Furse to Neilens, 1 December 1927. AMSH 3/AMS/5/14 (Malaya 1924-)
113. Elizabeth Neave Hobbes to Neilens, 20 November 1927. AMSH 3/AMS/5/14 (Malaya 1924-)
114. AMSH Annotated copy of BSHC document 'Federated Malay States. Amendment to Protection of Women and Girls Act', nd. AMSH 3/AM5/5/14 (Malaya 1924-).
115. Neilens to Mrs John Clay, 28 Novernber 1927. AMSH 3/AMS/5/14 (Malaya 1924-).
116. Neilens to Katherine Furse, head of BSHC, 8 December 1927. AMSH 3/AMS/5/ 14 (Malaya 1924-).
117. 'IS the BSHC an official organization?', nd. but 1925. AMSH 3/AMS/5/14 (Malaya 1924-).
118. O. B. Schill, National Council of Women to Neilens, 22 November 1927. AMSH 3/AMS/5/14 (Malaya 1924-).
119. League of Nations, 'Report of the Special Body of Experts on Traffic in Women and Children Part One, 1927', 8-9 [hereafter 'League TWC Report, 1927' 1 C.52.M.52.1927.IV.
120. The AMSH lobbied the 1923 Imperial Conference to ensure the 1921 TWC treaty applied in Britain's mandates [the treaty did]. Minutes of the Investigation, Organization and Parliamentary sub-committee, 29 October 1923. AMSH, 3/AMS/1/1/04. The AMSH also wrote to the International Diplomatic Emigration Conference protesting against moves to place restrictions on young women travellers: 'better treatment of women emigrants should be seriously considered to insure that no harassing restrictions should be laid on the personal freedom of adult women and that no restrictions should be made for such women that do not apply to all emigrants without respect to sex'.
121. Ibid., AMSH, 3/AMS/1/1/05, 16 May 1924.
122. Minutes of the Overseas Committee (Foreign Affairs Committee until July 1922). AMSH, 3/AMS/1/3/05, 8 July 1925.
123. 'League TWC Report, 1927', 10, 11.
124. Barbara Metzger, 'Towards an International Human Rights Regime during the Inter-War Years: The League of Nations' Combat of Traffic in Women and Children', in Kevin Grant, Philippa Levine and Frank Trentmann (eds), Beyond Sovereignty: Britain, Empire and Transnationalism, c. 1880-1950 (Basingstoke, 2007), 66-71.
125. Ibid., 13-15.
126. Ibid., 25, 17.
127. Ibid., 17-19, 43, 20.
128. Ibid., 31-32.
129. Ibid., 23.
130. Ibid., 32.
131. Ibid.
132. Crowdy, 'Humanitarian Activities', 156.
133. Colonial Office circular, 14 May 1930. TINA: PRO CO 323/1070/3.
134. 'Report by Sir Austen Chamberlain on Child Welfare Committee, Advisory Commission for the Protection and Welfare of Children and Young People', 1926. TNA: PRO CO 323/957/6.
135. Copy, Statements at 5th Committee of the 10th Assembly of the League of Nations, 12 September 1929, Colonial Office circular, 14 May 1930. TNA: PRO CO 323/1070/3.
136. Rolfe to Dr Drummond Shields, MP, 8 May 1930. TNA: PRO CO 323/1070/3.
137. Rolfe to Under Sec of State, Colonial Office, 8 November 1927. TNA: PRO CO 273/539/5.
138. William Walters, 'Secure Border, Safe Haven, Domopolitics', Citizenship Studies, 8 (2004), 237-60
139. Wilson, The International Theory of Leonard Woolf, 76-7.
140. Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas (London, 2000 [1938]), 234.
141. See Daniel Drezner, 'Ideas, Bureaucratic Politics, and the Crafting of Foreign Policy', American Journal of Political Science, 44 (2000), 733-49.
142. See Judith Goldstein and Robert Keohone, Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Social Change (Ithaca, 1993), ch. 1.
143. Margaret Grace Bondfield, Minister of Labour in the second Labour administration (1929-1931), was Britain's first female cabinet minister. She had also been the first female minister, serving as parliamentary secretary to the Ministry of Labour in the 1924 Labour government.