Women's International Activism during the Inter-War Period, 1919–1939 by Ingrid Sharp Matthew Stibbe

Author:Ingrid Sharp, Matthew Stibbe [Ingrid Sharp, Matthew Stibbe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781351585309
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2018-10-18T00:00:00+00:00

Nationalism, internationalism and women’s leadership

Although Catholic women participated enthusiastically in international organisations, nationalism remained a strong motivator for many. In the case of the ASF, nationalism encouraged international engagement. International engagement, in turn, provided an avenue for women to demand greater rights in France. The ASF had been involved in international organisations for decades, and members renewed ties with their international partners once the war ended. However, the war’s devastation of Europe produced concerns about international engagement that had not existed before the war. Rather than simply being an arena to exercise French power, the world had become a very dangerous place at a time when French power seemed to be in decline. One ASF speaker warned that despite the ‘marvelous accomplishments’ France could achieve when faced with an enemy, it was ‘no longer invulnerable’. The ‘European soul’, France’s included, was fragile and ‘easily swayed by the influence of disorderly powers’.24

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the ASF held many talks about the economic and political decline France seemed to be experiencing. In one such talk given in 1920, Mme Le Roy Liberge decried the financial deal that France had been granted under the Treaty of Versailles as well as what she saw as general mismanagement in the French economy.25 In January 1924, the ASF published an article suggesting that the French economy was too dependent on Britain and Germany, especially for its energy supplies. The article called on the French nation to become self-sufficient so that it would not need to import much of anything. It suggested that French colonies would be central to the development of economic self-sufficiency.26 At least, by the 1930s, these women’s concerns about France’s economic and political condition were well founded. Gordon Wright argues that by 1939, France had lost its ‘military superiority, diplomatic predominance’ and ‘independence of action’.27 This left France with few options as Germany began regaining power by the mid 1930s.

Germany was only one of many threats French Catholics feared in the post-World War I years. In the context of a French state weakened economically, militarily and spiritually by war, Catholic women also feared the impact of globalisation. Before World War I, Catholic women felt mostly positive toward trends that facilitated global cooperation. In the aftermath of World War I, globalisation seemed as much of a threat as an opportunity. Catholics no longer dealt only with home-grown ideological competition such as communism and spiritualism, but also with religions coming from Asia and the Middle East. Henri Massis, a prominent French intellectual, warned ASF members in 1925 that Europe not only suffered from a political and material crisis but also from ‘moral disarray’. ‘Wilsonian utopias’ had failed, and Europeans were seized with worry about the future. He feared that many were turning toward philosophies imported from Asia, particularly Buddhism, which now joined anarchism and Bolshevism as threats to Christian civilisation.28

The Countess Keranflec’H-Kernezne, a long-time member of the ASF, echoed Massis’ concerns that Europe suffered under the ‘yellow peril’, the ‘Muslim peril’ and the ‘Asian peril’.

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