Equally vulnerable: liberal internationalism, the traffic in women and children, and the non-politics of race

Journal article

Scholars interested in the history of international thought usually assume that the ideas of racial equality and shared humanity were not officially fused in global discourse until the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). By contrast, this article maintains that a "nonpolitical" version of this fusion occurred three decades earlier when the League of Nations substituted the term "traffic in women and children" for what had, until then, been known as "the white slave traffic." Unlike the League's mandate system–which explicitly relied upon a racist language of civilizational improvement to justify not extending the principle of "self-determination" to colonized peoples–the racial equality of vulnerability associated with the League's anti-trafficking campaign could accommodate civilizational and racial difference in the name of protecting all women and children, "whatever be their color." This article examines how the liberal internationalism preferred by League founders amplified "nonpolitical" issues like trafficking. It then follows the shift from racial to non-racial terminology and probes the emergence of the League's anti-trafficking campaign. Such an examination, I argue, provides a glimpse into the development of a liberal internationalist language in which racial equality coexisted with, and helped facilitate, global racial hierarchy in the name of humanity, a language with far-reaching implications for our day.

Authors: Morefield, J

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Journal: Humanity
• Volume: 16
• Issue: 1-2
• Pages: 1-24
• Publication date: 2026-03-26
• Acceptance date: 2025-10-04
• EISSN: 2151-4372
• ISSN: 2151-4364
• Language: English
• Keywords: rule of colonial difference; humanity; liberal internationalism; white slave traffic; the traffic in women and children; global racial hierarchy; global color line; abolitionism; League of Nations