Advocating a new transnational labor history, Elizabeth McKillen identities some of the key transnational forces of the Wilsonian era and shows how understanding these forces can contribute to a more encompassing labor history. The outbreak of World War I, a result of the failure of both great power diplomacy and the collapse of socialist solidarity, marked the end of one era of internationalism. The League of Nations and the International Labor Organization (ILO), products of World War I, marked the advent of another. Between 1910 and 1920, international class organizations, continental labor solidarity, and transnational working-class connections shaped world history as never before.

McKillen rejects the view of Woodrow Wilson as a man of peace slowly driven to war by pressure from the hawks; rather she argues that Wilson and mainstream political leaders moved rather quickly toward war, only slowed by popular opposition. According to McKillen, historians have underestimated the leftist antiwar forces because they came from such disparate sources. The extraordinary extent to which Wilson courted support for his wartime policies from Samuel Gompers and the American Federation of Labor (and later the ILO) shows the weight he attached to labor both in the United States and internationally. Although Wilson armed for war under the guise of preparedness, the years of neutrality also gave American leftists time to develop an antiwar culture that bound together otherwise unattached groups.

Outside of the opposition to the war expressed in their election campaigns, American socialists contributed significantly to the antiwar movement by recalling a recent history with which many were familiar. First, beginning in 1910 with the start of the Mexican Revolution, American socialists witnessed, from the inside, how easily Wilson's professed interest in spreading democracy transformed itself into a campaign to expand free trade, crush left-wing forces, and promote U.S. business interests. America's “imperialistic” policies in the Mexican Revolution left many socialists hostile and distrustful of Wilson. Second, socialist declarations publicly expressed deep suspicion at the prospect of fighting alongside Britain and Russia. Socialists took advantage of the strong diasporic composition of the party (Irish migrants who did not want their sons to die for the British empire, Jews and Poles who would not sacrifice their children to defend the czar). Socialists continually exposed these weak spots in the Wilsonian coalition.

Third, socialists' public denunciation of the war allowed them to serve as brokers for a variety of antiwar tendencies within the American labor movement and as catalysts for an antiwar culture that bound together antiwar organizations. McKillen detects the growth of an antiwar culture of women's organizations and within the miners' union and several municipal labor federations. Many American socialists felt that their refusal to support the war in the Saint Louis socialist convention of 1916 positioned them to mediate among the belligerents. Thus, beginning in 1918 with the first AFL delegations to Britain and continuing in 1919 in Bern with the reconvening of the socialist international, American trade unionists and socialists found themselves drawn into the world of peace conferences and international labor meetings.

As war approached, the Socialist Party became a meeting ground for opponents of the war. Within the Socialist Party could be found many antiwar members of the AFL and supporters of the new newly formed Labor Party. Socialists too tried to widen their range of appeal. In 1916 the presidential candidacy of Allan L. Benson offered an intriguingly gendered perspective on militarism, while demanding a referendum on war and putting a high priority on the passage of women's suffrage to oppose the war. Foreign socialists developing in an antiwar direction, such as Labor Party leader Arthur Henderson, rejected Gompers while conferring with antiwar American socialists.

McKillen not only identifies factors in labor history operating at the transnational level but shows how these factors can emerge from local processes. As McKillen sees it, transnational structures are not layer cakes: they do not rest on a “local” foundation, followed by several “state” level layers, topped by transnational icing. Instead, local and transnational factors inform an entire structure. For example, during World War I, AFL head Samuel Gompers embraced a doctrine of “corporatism” that assumed American workers and employers could get together to solve their differences peacefully; at the transnational level, these same assumptions governed Wilsonian diplomacy. Workers challenged both simultaneously. Gompers intervened in conflicts between AFL national craft unions and central or municipal labor, restricting the power of central labor councils to strike and to organize, and severely limiting their voting power within the AFL. Chicago workers' revolts against this new order often took the form of struggle against Wilson's strike policy but also against his foreign policy. Socialists mobilized Irish and Polish allies and levied criticism against the policies of both Wilson and Gompers. At the local level, the revolt against the reorganization and centralization of the AFL produced a militant strike movement; at the transnational level, Wilson's failure to support an Irish revolution led to a working-class foreign policy that rejected the League.

In a work of such scope and erudition, it seems churlish to complain about an omission. Nonetheless it is surprising that Frenchman Albert Thomas is not mentioned. Thomas was a prowar socialist with widespread political connections. During the war he had run the nationalized railways and was an unabashed champion of government intervention in the economy. He was the first president of the ILO and an enthusiastic advocate of a strong ILO. His sudden death in 1921 was a great blow to the organization.

McKillen is an enthusiastic advocate of transnational history, and this book advances her cause. It is richly documented and keenly analytic. Space forbids a full discussion of many of the issues she raises. Everyone interested in transnational labor history should read it.