The American Peace Movement and Asia, 1941-1961

Abstract

SINCE 1898 WORLD-MINDED AMERICANS have puzzled over the problem of how the United States could play a superintending but nonmilitary role in shaping Asia's future. In practice, the official U.S. response to this problem was to participate in the working out of the nineteenth-century imperialist system and, when that system collapsed during World War I, to cooperate with Britain and Japan at the 19211922 Washington Conference in patching together a new imperial order. The Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor destroyed the Washington treaty system, however, and opened the way for the creation of a postimperial era in Asia.' Japan's decision for war ignited a challenge that flamed with difficulty and excitement, and nowhere was the excitement greater than on the American political left. Heir to a mixed tradition of anti-imperialism and economic uplift, the whole range of American liberals and radicals leapt at the opportunity to re-make Asia. This article examines how members of the organized American peace movementthe main clearinghouse in the formulation of leftist international views-responded to this opportunity and how they pressed U.S. policymakers to lead Asia actively but peaceably beyond the Age of Empire and into an era of political self-determination and economic modernization.