Skip to main content
  • Book
  • © 2012

Liberal Internationalism

The Interwar Movement for Peace in Britain

Palgrave Macmillan

Authors:

Part of the book series: Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies (RCS)

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check for access.

Table of contents (9 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xi
  2. Innovation: Arming the League with Air Power

    • Michael C. Pugh
    Pages 69-88
  3. Resistance: Pacifism and the Power of Defiance

    • Michael C. Pugh
    Pages 89-109
  4. Imperialism: Economic Security and Sanctions

    • Michael C. Pugh
    Pages 110-131
  5. Revisionism: Rearmament and Peaceful Change

    • Michael C. Pugh
    Pages 132-153
  6. Back Matter

    Pages 167-244

About this book

The book investigates the role of popular liberal internationalism as a social movement in Britain using Gramscian and Foucauldian ideas of civil society. It addresses the use of force for peace through an examination of the impact of civil society actors in popular liberal internationalism between the world wars.

Reviews

"In this excellent book, Pugh very clearly establishes the role and significance of social and political movements in the development of foreign and defence policy [...] I commend this book to all who want to understand why peace movements

and other social movements for progressive social change are important." - International Peacekeeping

'With impeccable scholarship, Michael Pugh offers novel insights into interwar liberal internationalism in Britain. Erudite and authoritative, this account will rightly become an indispensable point of reference for students and scholars alike.'

- Richard Caplan, Professor of International Relations, University of Oxford, UK

'This is an important and erudite book. The 1930s are often seen as a 'lost decade' in

which appeasement led inevitably to the Second World War. Michael Pugh's careful

reading of the period reveals a much more complex story in which peace movements

had considerable success in laying down the foundations of what would later become

the rationale for international peace-support interventions and collective security.

This work is a useful antidote to many of the a-historical books on international

relations that assume the world began in 1989.'

Roger Mac Ginty, Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Manchester, UK

'Michael Pugh has produced a compelling, thought-provoking and highly readable assessment of the importance and lasting impact of interwar 'liberal internationalism' as a 'complex movement at once humane and superior, tolerant and dogmatic, universalistic and imperial'. While many of its leading intellectual proponents were later denigrated as hopelessly 'naïve' and 'idealistic', Pugh reveals a movement not only with a strong ethical dimension but one capable of 'pragmatic adaption to changes in international and domestic circumstances'. Above all, this is a study of liberal internationalism as an influential, if diverse and complex, social movement for peace. As such, and as Pugh persuasively shows, any assessment of its true impact and influence requires a longer-term historical perspective, one that extends well beyond the interwar period itself.'

- Mats Berdal, King's College London, UK

Authors and Affiliations

  • University of Bradford, UK

    Michael C. Pugh

About the author

MICHAEL PUGH is Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Bradford, UK, Leverhulme Emeritus Fellow (2011-12) and editor of the journal International Peacekeeping. He has written extensively on peace and conflict and is the co-editor, with Neil Cooper and Mandy Turner, of Whose Peace? Critical Perspectives on the Political Economy of Peacebuilding (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).

Bibliographic Information

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access