Integrating Labor into the Narrative of Wilsonian Internationalism: A Literature Review

Abstract

Among the most famous visual images to emerge from the World War I era is a photograph of Woodrow Wilson greeting throngs of well wishers in Dover, England, en route to the Versailles Peace Conference. Young girls in the photo wave American flags and toss flowers in the president's path as he leads a procession of world leaders through the crowded streets. On Wilson's shoulders, the photograph seems to imply, rested the aspirations of millions for a future world order free from destructive wars and from the tyranny that wrought international instability. The widespread publication of this picture, and others like it, in American textbooks and monographs is symbolic of a tendency among U.S. historians to treat Wilson as the central character in an unfolding drama that involved the decision for war, the effort to forge a peace without victory at Versailles, and the construction of a new international organization–the League of Nations—that would help to ensure future peace through collective security. Indeed, the most recent historiography asserts Wilson's centrality not only in the narrative of World War I and the Versailles Peace Treaty, but also in the emergence of anticolonial struggles in Asia and the Middle East during this era.1