Historian - Author
The Search for Negotiated Peace:
Women's Activism and Citizen Diplomacy in World War I
The First World War was an epic event of huge proportions that lasted over four years and involved the armies of more than twenty nations, resulting in 30 million casualties, including more than 8 million killed. Set against the backdrop of this massive carnage, The Search for Negotiated Peace is the gripping story of the events that moved high profile American and European citizens, particularly women, into the international peace movement. This small, transatlantic network put forth proposals for changing the international system of negotiation. They supported non-annexationist war aims and attempted to discredit nations’ secret diplomacy, militarism and narrowly nationalistic practices. Instead, they wanted to develop a ‘new diplomacy.’
David Patterson skillfully develops the interactions of many of the notable leaders of the movement, including Jane Addams, Aletta Jacobs, and Rosika Schwimmer, into an absorbing narrative that brings together the various strands of women's history, international diplomatic history, and peace history for the first time. The Search for Negotiated Peace is an essential read for anyone interested in the social history of World War I and the foundations of citizen activism today.
Testimonies
Praise for The Search for Negotiated Peace: Women’s Activism and Citizen Diplomacy in World War I
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Patterson’s study, weaving diplomatic records with private papers, provides a thorough appreciation of that unpopular but far-seeking commitment where women’s initiatives were crucial. It shows what was visionary and "utopian" in 1914 became received wisdom by war’s end.
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[A] welcome contribution to the fields of peace and diplomatic history . . . One of the book’s strengths is its focus on the interplay of the women’s longstanding domestic reform agendas and their international diplomatic efforts to bring the war to an end and to negotiate postwar reforms.
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In this engaged and insightful narrative of the internationally-minded citizens’ peace movement of the Great War era, David Patterson helps us appreciate that we can, indeed must, study flawed efforts to achieve peace in past times to help us fashion a more humane and peaceful world for the future.
SANDI E. COOPER
Author of Patriotic Pacifism: Waging War on War in Europe, 1815-1914
RACHEL WALTNER GOOSSEN
Washburn University,
in Peace & Change
FRANCES H. EARLY
Author of A World Without War: How U.S. Feminists and Pacifists Resisted World War I