Abstract
In 1926, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) officially condemned imperialism as antithetical to lasting peace. A year later, following on this resolution, the League sent a delegation of WILPF members to make contact with like‐minded women in Indochina, China, and Japan. Upon the conclusion of the “mission to Asia,” the League launched a two‐year‐long effort to battle the illegal opium trade in Asia. This article argues that WILPF members undertook the anti‐opium campaign in response to two differing objectives: to showcase Western women’s competence in matters of international policy and to demonstrate the incompatibility of imperialism with peace and freedom. Even the most anti‐imperialist of WILPF members, however, had trouble articulating a specifically feminist rationale for opposing both the illegal opium trade and Western imperialism more broadly.
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