Chapter 9 The Hague as a framework for British and American newspapers' public presentations of the First World War -- Notes -- Chapter 10 Norway's legalistic approach to peace in the aftermath of the First World War -- The Scandinavian proposal for an international judicial organisation -- Drafting the Permanent Court of International Justice's statute -- The establishment of the Permanent Court of International Justice -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Chapter 11 Against the Hague Conventions: Promoting new rules for neutralityin the Cold War -- The communist 're-discovery' of neutrality -- Attempts at reshaping neutrality in the Cold War era -- New rules for neutrals -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Chapter 12 The neutrals and Spanish neutrality: A legal approach to international peacein constitutional texts -- A commitment to peace -- (Re)defining neutrality in a system of collective security in the League of Nations era -- The law of war in an age of democracy -- Conclusions -- Notes -- Index
W. T. Stead (1849-1912) was a newspaper editor, author, social reformer, advocate for women rights, peace campaigner, spiritualist, and one of the best-known public figures in the late Victorian and Edwardian Britain. W. T. Stead: Nonconformist and Newspaper Prophet provides a compelling religious biography of Stead, offering particular attention to his conception of journalism--in an age of growing mass literacy--as a means to communicate religious truth and morality, and his view of the editor's desk as a modern pulpit. Leading scholar, Stewart J. Brown explores how his Nonconformist Conscience and sense of divine calling infused Stead's newspaper crusades-most famously his 'Maiden Tribute' campaign against child prostitution. The biography also examines Stead's growing interest in spiritualism and the occult, as he searched for the evidence of an afterlife that might draw people in a more secular age back to faith. It discusses his imperialism and his belief in the English-speaking peoples of the British Empire and American Republic as God's new chosen people for the spread of civilisation; and it highlights how his growing understanding of other faiths and cultures--but more especially his moral revulsion over the South African War of 1899-1902--brought him to question those beliefs. Finally, it assesses the influence of religious faith on his campaigns for world peace and the arbitration of international disputes.
Born in Leicester, England, and raised in a working-class family, Richardson emigrated to northern Manitoba in 1911. She was influential in the women's and peace movements in both countries. Devoutly religious, she challenged orthodoxy and worked outside the mainstream churches for peace and social justice. She cofounded one of the earliest suffrage groups in Manitoba and was a key activist in peace movements during the Boer War and World War I. She also served as an information centre for international antiwar news and ran an internationally focused women's peace crusade in World War I from her Manitoba farmhouse via the post and newspaper columns. Richardson was also a gifted writer and poet. She wrote on a variety of women's movement issues for British and Canadian newspapers and magazines, including Woman's Century, the magazine of the National Council of Women of Canada. Her outcries against war, her indictment of militarism, and her call for women and men to stand together for justice were powerful messages that still have resonance today. Tragically, poor health, both mental and physical, interfered with Richardson's work and prevented her from achieving the recognition attained by feminist contemporaries such as Nellie McClung.
Disaffected examines the effects of antisedition law on the overlapping public spheres of India and Britain under empire. After 1857, the British government began censoring the press in India, culminating in 1870 with the passage of Section 124a, a law that used the term "disaffection" to target the emotional tenor of writing deemed threatening to imperial rule. As a result, Tanya Agathocleous shows, Indian journalists adopted modes of writing that appeared to mimic properly British styles of prose even as they wrote against empire. Agathocleous argues that Section 124a, which is still used to quell political dissent in present-day India, both irrevocably shaped conversations and critiques in the colonial public sphere and continues to influence anticolonialism and postcolonial relationships between the state and the public. Disaffected draws out the coercive and emotional subtexts of law, literature, and cultural relationships, demonstrating how the criminalization of political alienation and dissent has shaped literary form and the political imagination.
Maiden Tribute: A Life of W. T. Stead This journalist who communicated with his Senior Partner instantaneously, whose ecumenical advance beyond his epoch still startles his readers, throughout his life retained his Whitmanesque individualism and rugged speech. W. T. Stead frequently scoffed at the Anglican Sunday prayers that instructed God how to direct the affairs of the world. If God did not comply, it was not for want of pious instruction. Anglicans were wanting, and most of his late Victorian-Edwardian world was Anglican. W. T. Stead (1849-1912) was a Nonconforrmist with and without the capital n. Had he been born with a wooden spoon in his mouth, it meant only that God needed his help to make the world silver. He never ceased to believe the world could be made silver, for mankind in general was anonymously, even though sluggishly, contributing to the infinite ascending spiral traced by the finger of God between the universe and the ideal. Clearly, the position of women in the 1870s was far from the ideal, remote from the privileges selfishly guarded by men. Taking a cue from his mother who campaigned against the Contagious Diseases Actswhich punished women but not men for transmitting syphilishe determined to bring women nearer the honors of Mary the Mother and Mary the Magdalen, for these two women stand out against the gloom of the past radiant as the angels of God, and yet the true ideals of the womanhood of the world. Such appeared implausible. Everywhere he saw in the streets wretched ruins of humanity, women stamped and crushed into devils by society . . . . And the children nursed in debauchery, suckled in crime, predestined to a life of misery and shame! Mrs. Josephine Butler already knew that Britains leadership would not assist: in the grandest house of the kind in Paris, are to be seen portraits of all the great men who had frequented themdiplomatists, generals, and English Lords . . . . The brothel-keeper put a cross underneath the portrait at each visit, to mark the number of visits made to the house by these great men! Before he visited London, the export of English girls for State-regulated prostitution in Brussels imposed upon Stead a sense that he was destined to write an Uncle Toms Cabin on The Slavery of Europe. The burden is greater than I can bear. But if it is ultimately to be laid on my back, God will strengthen me for it. If I have to write it I shall have to plunge into the depths of the social hell, and that is impossible outside a great city. Even high-minded seekers of justice found the social hell a place they could not venture into. Initiating research for The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon, Stead took counsel with civic powers Lord Carnarvon, John Morley, Arthur Balfour, Henry Labouchere among others, and Sir Charles Russell, who declined an invitation to see for himself because as leader of the English Bar he could not play the rle of a detective in a house of ill-fame. As the shocking series of four daily exposes neared its close, why others had not done Steads work was explained by Benjamin Scott, the City Chamberlain who had prompted Stead to take up the cause: We had not the ability or the opportunity that Stead possessed, and lacked the courage. Stead had begun the Maiden Tribute with a complaint against British society, that chivalry was dead and Christianity effete. Benjamin Waugh praised him after the fact: The spirit of both survives in you to-day. Stead accomplished his goal: passage of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, still in force today. Why the British sent him to jail for passing the first child protection law is graced with the word technicality. Branded both a saint and a filthy ex-convict, Stead continued to use his journalistic strength to achieve justice for citizens; in the 1890s he turned to internationalism. Lobbying for arbitration for settling international disputes, he crafted a memorial calling for li
Beginning with the extraordinary rescript by Tsar Nicholas II in August 1898 calling the world's governments to a disarmament conference, this book charts the history of the two Hague peace conferences of 1899 and 1907 – and the third conference of 1915 that was never held – using diplomatic correspondence, newspaper reports, contemporary publications and the papers of internationalist organizations and peace activists. Focusing on the international media frenzy that developed around them, Maartje Abbenhuis provides a new angle on the conferences. Highlighting the conventions that they brought about, she demonstrates how The Hague set the tone for international politics in the years leading up to the First World War, permeating media reports and shaping the views and activities of key organizations such as the inter-parliamentary union, the international council of women and the Institut de droit international (Institute of International Law). Based on extensive archival research in the Netherlands, Great Britain, Switzerland and the United States alongside contemporary publications in a range of languages, this book considers the history of the Hague conferences in a new way, and presents a powerful case for the importance of The Hague conferences in shaping twentieth century international politics.
