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Peace in Their Time: The Origins of the Kellogg-Briand Pact
The Kellogg-Briand Pact, signed on August 27, 1928, was an important landmark in the "peace fever" which swept the United States and Europe after World War I. Peace in Their Time is a highly readable account of the events leading up to the signing of the pact and their implications for American diplomacy.
After World War I, private peace groups proliferated and rapidly became a significant force in American politics. These groups' activities were regarded by the Harding and Coolidge administrations as a bungling interference with the regular conduct of diplomacy. Ultimately, however, President Coolidge yielded to domestic pressure and the efforts of French foreign minister Aristide Briand to conclude a peace treaty. A protracted series of negotiations between the United States and France resulted in the multilateral Kellogg-Briand Pact, the treaty to "outlaw war."
The Kellogg-Briand Pact, Mr. Ferrell writes, was the peculiar result of some very shrewd diplomacy and some very unsophisticated popular enthusiasm for peace. In analyzing the forces that produced the treaty, Peace in Their Time reveals significant aspects of American foreign policy in the interwar period.
After World War I, private peace groups proliferated and rapidly became a significant force in American politics. These groups' activities were regarded by the Harding and Coolidge administrations as a bungling interference with the regular conduct of diplomacy. Ultimately, however, President Coolidge yielded to domestic pressure and the efforts of French foreign minister Aristide Briand to conclude a peace treaty. A protracted series of negotiations between the United States and France resulted in the multilateral Kellogg-Briand Pact, the treaty to "outlaw war."
The Kellogg-Briand Pact, Mr. Ferrell writes, was the peculiar result of some very shrewd diplomacy and some very unsophisticated popular enthusiasm for peace. In analyzing the forces that produced the treaty, Peace in Their Time reveals significant aspects of American foreign policy in the interwar period.
- GenresHistory
293 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1952
About the author
Robert H. Ferrell
76 books9 followersRobert Hugh Ferrell was an American historian and author of several books on Harry S. Truman and the diplomatic history of the United States. He served in the U.S. Army Air Forces during the Second World War and was an intelligence analyst in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War. He received a B.S. in Education from Bowling Green State University in 1946 and a PhD from Yale University in 1951, where he worked under the direction of Samuel Flagg Bemis and his dissertation won the John Addison Porter Prize. He went on to win the 1952 Beer Prize for his first book, Peace In Their Time, a study of the making of the Kellogg-Briand Pact.
He taught for many years at Indiana University in Bloomington, starting as an Assistant Professor in 1953 and rising to Distinguished Professor of History in 1974. He has held several notable visiting professorships, including Yale University in 1955 and the Naval War College in 1974.
He taught for many years at Indiana University in Bloomington, starting as an Assistant Professor in 1953 and rising to Distinguished Professor of History in 1974. He has held several notable visiting professorships, including Yale University in 1955 and the Naval War College in 1974.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 13, 2024
On 27 August 1928, a large crowd gathered outside the Quai d’Orsay in Paris, the home of France’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Inside, a large group of statesmen and other worthies were crowded in the Salle de I’Horloge, or the Clock Room, for the signing of a momentous agreement. Named for Frank Kellogg, the United States Secretary of State, and Aristide Briand, the French Foreign Minister, it committed its signatories to nothing less than a complete ban on war as an instrument of national policy. One by one, representatives from France, the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and nearly a dozen other nations affixed their signatures to the document, with another thirty-one nations agreeing to adhere to it by the time the pact took effect in July 1929. When it did so, the president of the United States, Herbert Hoover, declared that its influence “will be felt in a large proportion of all future international acts."
International events would soon disappoint such hopes. Even as Hoover expressed his optimism about its influence, two of its signatories, the Soviet Union and China, were preparing for a border war in Manchuria that appeals to the Kellogg-Briand Pact did nothing to avert. Two years later, another signatory, imperial Japan, would launch a full-scale conquest of the region, starting a chain of events that would culminate in the greatest war in human history, one that led commentators in the decades since to denounce the treaty as a product of sheer naivete. As Robert Ferrell demonstrates in his astute account of the pact’s creation, though, such criticisms overlook both the subtle goals that motivated its drafting and the spirit of the times which acclaimed its signing.
Ferrell sees the latter as the genesis for the pact. As he notes, the early years of the 20th century witnessed the establishment of several peace organizations in both the United States and Europe. Though disheartened by the outbreak of the First World War, they were determined to make the most of the widespread desire of peace after its end in order to push for their goal of ending all wars. Among those committed to this goal was Salmon O. Levinson, a corporate attorney who was motivated by the outbreak of war in 1914 to outlaw armed conflicts between nations. Piggybacking off postwar disarmament efforts, he won support from a number of influential individuals on both sides of the Atlantic for his ambitious efforts.
Not everyone was fully behind Levinson’s agenda, however. Among those whose support was at best qualified were the French, for whom security concerns were paramount. Ferrell explains nicely the challenges France faced in this regard, as the alliance system the French had relied on in the prewar era was in popular disrepute through its association with the conflict. Though France enjoyed success in the 1920s in signing defense agreements with nearly a half-dozen European countries, the dream of French policymakers was a mutual defense pact with the United States, the nation whose intervention in the war had proved essential for France’s victory. This was the genesis of the Pact of Perpetual Friendship, which Ferrell argues was nothing less than a “negative military alliance” intended to make impossible American neutrality in a future war between France and Germany.
Aware of America’s traditional wariness of “entangling alliances,” Briand sought to win support for his pact by appealing to the outlawry movement. Ferrell spends considerable space recounting the meetings between a handful of well-connected individuals, many of whom shuttled across the Atlantic in order to drum up support. Such efforts increased the pressure on the Coolidge Administration to respond, which Kellogg ultimately did with a counterproposal for a multilateral treaty outlawing war. Hoisted with his own petard, Briand had little choice but to agree to it if he wanted to preserve both American relations and his own reputation as a man of peace, though with “reservations” that ensured that any such agreement did not deprive France of her right to self-defense.
These reservations highlight the skepticism, if not outright cynicism, with which the treaty’s prospects were viewed by its signatories. And this skepticism seemed more than justified by subsequent events. Ferrell stops short of examining in detail the pact’s subsequent discrediting by the outbreak of warfare in the decade that followed, preferring to emphasize instead its lessons it offers about the impact of public opinion on foreign policy. Given the book’s origins as Ferrell’s doctoral dissertation, such caution is understandable, and it does not detract in the least from the scholarship that soon such a hallmark of his long and distinguished career as a historian. And it is this scholarship which is why his book has remained such a useful account of its subject. Though more recent works such as Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro’s The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World have offered a more positive case for its legacy, for those seeking an account of the Kellogg-Briand Pact’s origins and development this book still rewards reading thanks to the skill with which Ferrell recounts the diplomacy that led to it.
International events would soon disappoint such hopes. Even as Hoover expressed his optimism about its influence, two of its signatories, the Soviet Union and China, were preparing for a border war in Manchuria that appeals to the Kellogg-Briand Pact did nothing to avert. Two years later, another signatory, imperial Japan, would launch a full-scale conquest of the region, starting a chain of events that would culminate in the greatest war in human history, one that led commentators in the decades since to denounce the treaty as a product of sheer naivete. As Robert Ferrell demonstrates in his astute account of the pact’s creation, though, such criticisms overlook both the subtle goals that motivated its drafting and the spirit of the times which acclaimed its signing.
Ferrell sees the latter as the genesis for the pact. As he notes, the early years of the 20th century witnessed the establishment of several peace organizations in both the United States and Europe. Though disheartened by the outbreak of the First World War, they were determined to make the most of the widespread desire of peace after its end in order to push for their goal of ending all wars. Among those committed to this goal was Salmon O. Levinson, a corporate attorney who was motivated by the outbreak of war in 1914 to outlaw armed conflicts between nations. Piggybacking off postwar disarmament efforts, he won support from a number of influential individuals on both sides of the Atlantic for his ambitious efforts.
Not everyone was fully behind Levinson’s agenda, however. Among those whose support was at best qualified were the French, for whom security concerns were paramount. Ferrell explains nicely the challenges France faced in this regard, as the alliance system the French had relied on in the prewar era was in popular disrepute through its association with the conflict. Though France enjoyed success in the 1920s in signing defense agreements with nearly a half-dozen European countries, the dream of French policymakers was a mutual defense pact with the United States, the nation whose intervention in the war had proved essential for France’s victory. This was the genesis of the Pact of Perpetual Friendship, which Ferrell argues was nothing less than a “negative military alliance” intended to make impossible American neutrality in a future war between France and Germany.
Aware of America’s traditional wariness of “entangling alliances,” Briand sought to win support for his pact by appealing to the outlawry movement. Ferrell spends considerable space recounting the meetings between a handful of well-connected individuals, many of whom shuttled across the Atlantic in order to drum up support. Such efforts increased the pressure on the Coolidge Administration to respond, which Kellogg ultimately did with a counterproposal for a multilateral treaty outlawing war. Hoisted with his own petard, Briand had little choice but to agree to it if he wanted to preserve both American relations and his own reputation as a man of peace, though with “reservations” that ensured that any such agreement did not deprive France of her right to self-defense.
These reservations highlight the skepticism, if not outright cynicism, with which the treaty’s prospects were viewed by its signatories. And this skepticism seemed more than justified by subsequent events. Ferrell stops short of examining in detail the pact’s subsequent discrediting by the outbreak of warfare in the decade that followed, preferring to emphasize instead its lessons it offers about the impact of public opinion on foreign policy. Given the book’s origins as Ferrell’s doctoral dissertation, such caution is understandable, and it does not detract in the least from the scholarship that soon such a hallmark of his long and distinguished career as a historian. And it is this scholarship which is why his book has remained such a useful account of its subject. Though more recent works such as Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro’s The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World have offered a more positive case for its legacy, for those seeking an account of the Kellogg-Briand Pact’s origins and development this book still rewards reading thanks to the skill with which Ferrell recounts the diplomacy that led to it.
June 7, 2020
This book is an incredibly well-written account of what could easily have been the most boring topic in American history. I picked up this book hoping it would put me to sleep; I was sorely disappointed. All credit goes to Ferrell for making this interesting and engaging. If you had told me prior to reading this that I would have been riveted by a question of which pen Secretary of State Frank Kellogg used to sign the ultimately toothless treaty banning war in 1928, I would have scoffed. And yet there I was, eagerly considering the implications of a solid gold pen against one crafted from a single eagle's feather. This book is marvelously dated; if one is looking for a critical analytical account of U. S. history, they may have justifiable reservations about Ferrell's account, written in 1952. If, however, you are interested in a quaint narrative of international diplomacy during the roaring twenties, written during America's next economic boom of the 1950s, before the Civil Rights movement, the Cold War, or the Internet, this book really delivers.
December 9, 2021
The best study of the Kellogg-Briand pact that attempted to outlaw War in the 1920s.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews