Date of Award

5-11-2018

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

History

First Advisor

Ian Christopher Fletcher

Second Advisor

Masako Nohara Racel

Abstract

This thesis explores the making of a transpacific peace movement linking peace advocates in Japan and the United States in the early twentieth century. It is based on research in the peace history collections in the archives of Haverford College and Swarthmore College as well as the American Peace Society’s Advocate of Peace and other published primary sources. After tracing the development of a transatlantic peace movement in the nineteenth century and noting signs of a broadening of the pacifist outlook in such texts as Benjamin F. Trueblood’s The Federation of the World (1899), the thesis examines the work of American peace missionaries John Hyde DeForest and Gilbert Bowles in Japan in the early twentieth century. DeForest and Bowles supported the organization of peace advocates in Japan and opposed the agitation of anti-Japanese xenophobes in the U.S. Finally, the thesis reconstructs the life and advocacy of Seichi Emerson Ikemoto, a Japanese student and orator living in the U.S. He traveled and spoke widely in favor of peace and understanding between Japan and the U.S. as well as corresponded regularly with the American Peace Society secretary Benjamin F. Trueblood. In highlighting the cross-cultural exchange between these peace advocates and the challenge they offered to rising U.S.-Japan rivalry, the thesis contributes to a more global account of peace history before the First World War.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.57709/11342267

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