American women's destiny, Asian women's dignity: Trans-Pacific activism of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, 1886--1945

This dissertation examines the trans-Pacific activism of the World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and its overseas affiliates, particularly the Japanese Union. Unlike many previous studies of transnational women's activities that focus on trans-Atlantic interactions and Western women, this research highlights the agency of Asian women and transnational exchanges of women in the United States, Japan, China, and other Asian nations.; Through the analysis of the multidirectional and multilayered flows of institutions, ideology, and practices of social reforms from the United States to Asia, from Asia to the United States, and within Asia, this study demonstrates how American and Asian women negotiated the assumed universal applicability of American style reform plans, challenged prescriptions about power and hierarchy, and yet still strived to construct a transnational sisterhood despite their own nationalistic concerns. Even though the WCTU women ostensibly promoted global sisterhood under the maternalistic slogan, "organized mother's love," the networks of the WCTU developed hand in hand with imperialism promoted by male leaders. Its close identification with realpolitik often left power relations and hierarchies untouched and even reproduced ideas about the center and margin along the lines of imperialism---as evidenced by Western women's domination and peripherization of Asians in an international women's community and by Japanese women's self-acclaimed leadership in Asia. The trans-Pacific sisterhood developed with tensions of racism, imperialism, rivalry, and resistance to colonization.; By treating women of both America and Asia as active agents in global interactions, this dissertation examines both the strength and weakness of the trans-Pacific sisterhood through analysis of what elements hindered them from constructing an international sense of "we," and how, if at all, they overcame them from the late 19th century to the end of World War II.