Peace on Our Terms: The Global Battle for Women's Rights After the First World War

Mona L. Siegel

Published by Columbia University Press 2020

Peace on Our Terms

The Global Battle for Women's Rights After the First World War

Mona L. Siegel

In the series Columbia Studies in International and Global History

https://doi.org/10.7312/sieg19510

Overview
Contents

About this book

Peace on Our Terms is the first book to demonstrate the centrality of women’s activism to the Paris Peace Conference and the critical diplomatic events of 1919. Mona L. Siegel tells the timely story of how female activists transformed women’s rights into a global rallying cry, laying a foundation for generations to come.

Author / Editor information

Mona L. Siegel is professor of history at California State University, Sacramento. She is the author of The Moral Disarmament of France: Education, Pacifism, and Patriotism, 1914–1940 (2004).

Reviews

A riveting study...this sparkling, character-driven history will captive readers interested in the suffrage movement and feminist history.

Erez Manela, author of The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism:
As diplomats gathered in Paris in 1919 to negotiate the peace that would end World War I, women around the world—in North America and Europe but also in Egypt, China, and elsewhere—mobilized to make their voices heard. Convinced that they had a role to play in making the peace, they demanded disarmament, racial justice, national sovereignty, international cooperation, and women’s rights. This deeply researched and elegantly written book shows how these women’s efforts, despite many disappointments, helped to shape the new world order and the rise of global feminism.

Karen Offen, author of European Feminisms, 1700-1950: A Political History:
Peace on Our Terms highlights the contributions that women from all over the world made in 1919 to the history of peacemaking. Her collage of activists—from France's Marguerite de Witt-Schlumberger to China's Soumay Tcheng—is stunningly drawn. By investigating women's activism on a global scale, Siegel has made an outstanding contribution to our understanding of the post-World War I period. A beautifully written, inspiring page-turner!

Louise Edwards, author of Women Warriors and Wartime Spies of China:
Siegel models beautifully the capacity for academic scholarship to draw transnational connections within a complex, multilingual project. Few scholars have this capacity for such beautiful writing. The book is truly engaging, and readers will come to ‘know’ the key figures in really personal ways—readers share humor and wit, puzzlement, adventure and grief alongside the women themselves. In this regard, it is a very contemporary style of scholarly history—and one that I hope will be modeled more in the future.

Dorothy Sue Cobble, coauthor of Feminism Unfinished: A Short, Surprising History of American Women's Movements:
A stunning retelling of the Great War’s aftermath and how women rose up at the war’s end to demand a different and better world. Siegel’s evocative prose transports us back in time and around the world as women from east, west, north, and south descend on Versailles in pursuit of their rights. Peace on Our Terms is a stirring, extraordinary tale of how the denial of voice to more than half the world’s people shaped our time. This is history and drama at its finest.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Timeline of International Women’s Activism in 1919 Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Prologue: The Closing Days of the First World War Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
I. A New Year in Paris: Women’s Rights at the Peace Conference of 1919 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	12
II. Winter of Our Discontent: Racial Justice in a New World Order Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	51
III. March(ing) in Cairo: Women’s Awakening and the Egyptian Revolution of 1919 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	91
IV. Springtime in Zurich: Former Enemies in Pursuit of Peace and Freedom Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	129
V. May Flowers in China: The Feminist Origins of Chinese Nationalism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	163
VI. Autumn on the Potomac: Women Workers and the Quest for Social Justice Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	200
Epilogue: Rome, 1923 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	237
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	251
Abbreviations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	257
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	261
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	303

Language: English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Illustrations
- Other: 28 b&w photographs

eBook

Published: September 7, 2020
ISBN: 9780231551182