Neutrality and Anti-Imperialism: A New Synthesis for the 1920s

This presentation will discuss how World War I disrupted traditional notions of neutrality in the United States. After the war, a movement comprised of scholars, journalists, peace activists, and “anti-monopolist” US Senators worked together to articulate a new conception of US neutrality. Unlike the more widely discussed international war outlawry movement, this national movement focused narrowly on one radical conclusion: that protection of capitalist interests had motivated World War I, and thus, that the US government must permanently disavow the right to protect those interests in order to prevent war’s future recurrence.