Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2023, East Asian Studies

This thesis discusses the role of the gold standard in Japan's shift to militarism in the 1930s. Since its adoption in Japan in 1897, the gold standard and the price stability inherent in it had advantaged Japanese creditors and helped them finance Japan's empire in Asia. At home, however, the gold standard generated deflation and prevented the Bank of Japan from responding to economic turmoil with interest rate decreases. Japan's ill-advised return to gold in January 1930—amidst a recession—caused the nationalist and fiscally expansionist Rikken Seiyukai party to gain the upper hand in public opinion over the liberal internationalist and fiscally conservative Rikken Minseito party. This economic miscalculation was a major—perhaps the major—reason for the overwhelming loss of the liberal internationalists in the 1932 elections, setting Japan on its path to militarism. The paper begins with an outline of the history of money in Japan prior to 1897, using Japanese-language materials from the Japanese Currency Museum in Tokyo. Next, it provides a theoretical description of the gold standard and its variants and follows the history of the gold standard in Japan from its adoption in 1897 through 1932. It ends with an analysis of the interaction between the economic situation in the late 1920s and early 1930s and the shift to militarism in Japanese politics at that time.

Committee: Ian Sheldon (Advisor); Christopher Reed (Committee Member); Hajime Miyazaki (Committee Member) Subjects: Asian Studies; Economic History

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2020, History (Arts and Sciences)

A proper understanding of liberal internationalism requires an appreciation of both its domestic and international aspects. This dissertation reconstructs and evaluates the debates on international order that occurred within the most influential non-state foreign policy organizations in Britain and the United States between the 1930s and the 1950s—the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA) and the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The members of these two organizations played an integral role in the project to contrive a coherent intellectual framework for the largely incoherent and contentious system of liberal internationalism that the Allies had tried to impose in 1919. One of the hallmarks of liberal states is the prominence of non-state elites in the policymaking process. These non-state elites—just as much as the liberal internationalism they played an indispensable role in propagating—played a crucial role in the formation of a new foreign policy orthodoxy within the United States and Great Britain. But the nature and extent of the relationship between the liberal state and its non-state elites is contentious. In contrast with liberal and Marxist theorists—who argue that the liberal state is weak in comparison with either civil society or capitalist interests—I argue that the relationship between the liberal state and the CFR/Chatham House was one of symbiosis rather than of simple domination by one over the other. While the state in each instance was always the senior partner and always decided policy, the CFR and Chatham House nevertheless provided useful—arguably indispensable—functions for the liberal state in the formation and implementation of foreign policy. The fatal contradiction of liberal internationalism was that it simultaneously relied on strict legalism while also refusing to provide an answer to the most important legal question of both domestic politics and international relations: which institutions and individuals hold the (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Peter John Brobst (Advisor); Ingo Trauschweizer (Committee Member); Chester Pach (Committee Member); Nukhet Sandal (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; European History; History; International Law; International Relations; Modern History; World History

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2012, History (Arts and Sciences)

The Balfour Declaration of 1917 committed the British government to supporting the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, but it also represented key shifts in the empire as a whole in the wake of World War I. Political changes enacted after the war, such as the creation of the League of Nations and later the British Commonwealth, were mirrored by a shift in the rationale for Britain's imperial holdings and allowed Zionist supporters to institutionalize their ideology. Many in Whitehall believed that the Zionist program would aid in creating a stable Middle East friendly to British interests; policies originating from the Colonial Office often reflected this belief. These edicts did not always translate into viable policies on the ground in Palestine, however, as the High Commissioner had to reconcile them with complex regional tensions. British rule in Palestine underscores both the power and pitfalls of an ideologically-motivated grand strategy.

Committee: John Brobst PhD (Committee Chair); Patrick Barr-Melej PhD (Committee Member); Paul Milazzo PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: European History; History; Middle Eastern History; Modern History; World History

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2012, History

Wilsonian liberal internationalism has provided a consistent, sustaining ideological basis for U.S. foreign policy since America's entry into the First World War. Since Woodrow Wilson's day, however, the credo he originated has undergone several substantial reformulations in response to changing circumstances—reformulations that necessarily involved successive reinterpretations of those precepts that comprise the credo: the imminent threat to international order; democratic self-determination, collective security, an integrated world economic system, and American exceptionalism. Through an historical study of liberal internationalists from the American peace movement, the organizations they created, and the political leaders they sought to influence, the origins, divergent evolution, and demise of alternative Wilsonian systems can be understood. Between 1917 and 1968, internationalists in the American peace movement significantly shaped an ongoing process of formulating and reformulating Wilsonian ideals, variously cooperating with dominant policy-making elites or promoting alternative Wilsonian foreign policy prescriptions as they did so. The overall picture, then, is one of contending internationalist elites that can trace their intellectual roots back to Wilson, even as they clashed over the ultimate meaning of his legacy. Liberal internationalism originated as a response to World War I. In conjunction with internationalists from the peace movement, Wilson formulated and promoted the first iteration of Wilsonianism—and, in a number of ways, planted the seeds of future conflict over its interpretation. That conflict would arise only in the second half of the twentieth century, however, with the emergence of two subsequent reformulations of Wilson's ideals. The first of these was a progressive Rooseveltian interpretation that emerged in the years just before and during World War II. The second, a more conservative interpretation, came together in the late nineteen (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: David Hammack PhD (Committee Chair); Alan Rocke PhD (Committee Member); Kenneth Ledford PhD (Committee Member); Pete Moore PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; History; International Law; International Relations; Peace Studies