You may not think you are interested in the Rotary International. But if you are interested in informal empire, globalism, or the overlap between internationalism and cultural diversity, you need to read this book. It turns out the Rotarians were not the small-minded, parochial Babbitts of Sinclair Lewis’s imagination. They were in fact internationalists whose language of cooperation, nonpartisan business professionalism, and human fellowship helped pave the way for American-style global capitalism. In this important book, Brendan Goff gives us not just the story of an international businessmen’s movement but also a critical examination of the tensions and contradictions of establishing informal international networks in a world governed by national interests, empires, and racial hierarchies. Concentrating on the years 1905 to 1945, Goff dissects the emergence of a transnational class of businesspeople brought together by common commitment to service, nonpartisanship, and internationalism.
The first Rotary Club was founded in Chicago in 1905 and quickly spread across the United State. Initially focused on professional networking, the clubs soon adopted a community service ethos that emphasized cooperation and goodwill both at home and around the world. Their explicit transnationalism offered an alternative to toxic nationalism in an era of shifting international relations. In 1929, Rotary International (RI) had 3,178 clubs, one-quarter of which were outside the United States, with at least one club in 45 independent nations (and many more in European and US territories) from Asia to Africa to the Middle East and to South America. Rotarians were nonstate, nonmarket actors who eschewed nationalism and competition, even as their message of professional managerialism often bolstered national foreign policy and commercial goals.
Based on RI archives in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, the book offers valuable case studies of clubs in Tokyo, Havana, and Wichita, Kansas, while also examining the RI’s relationship to US foreign policy, the cultural endurance of Wilsonianism, and gender and racial hierarchies. Goff’s consideration of how the language of pluralism and tolerance intersected with US racism is masterful, reminding us that antiracism and racism have always existed in uneasy balance. Inclusion of some meant the exclusion of others. American Rotarians’ commitment to tolerance and diversity was genuine, but it took a back seat to white supremacist norms in US-based clubs. The RI was selectively interracial in practice, rejecting applications from Black businessmen in Haiti and Jamaica until the 1960s while embracing clubs from Asia and Latin America.
The chapters on Japan and Cuba are instructive. The businessmen of Japan and Cuba both hoped to use the nonpartisan, nonpolitical clubs to further their reputations and get the word out about their products and culture. Japanese clubs endeared themselves to the RI community with impressive presentations and books celebrating Japanese culture and traditions; American Rotarians embraced these and were thrilled by Japanese proclamations of world peace and understanding. Japanese aggression in Manchuria and China thus created dissonance in the 1930s, although Japanese Rotarians continued to maintain there was nothing amiss, defending Japan’s aggressive actions as Wilsonian. After the US embargo, the Japanese voted to disband their Rotary Clubs with confusion and regret. By 1949, however, they had reassembled and were welcomed back into the RI community.
The Havana Rotarians likewise embraced nonpartisanship and internationalism, while also using the club to network in the international community. But Havana Rotarians had a more difficult time dealing with US tariff policies that hurt Cuba’s economic development and belied the internationalism at the heart of the Rotarian mission. Nationalistic and political, US sugar tariffs represented the opposite of everything the RI stood for. Both Cuban and US Rotarians pooh-poohed the existence of US imperialism, holding up their transnational cooperation as proof that the United States was not imperialist. As Goff suggests, this served to dramatize how US imperialism actually worked.
Goff’s careful consideration of the limits and possibilities of the RI’s internationalism could not be more relevant. As the world today reembraces nationalism and stokes polarization, and as we face climate catastrophe and a pandemic, the thorny problems discussed in this book are at the heart of any attempt to renew an internationalist ethos of cooperation, service, and nonpartisanship. While the RI’s internationalism ultimately bolstered US-style global capitalism, it was also able to get people to embrace cooperation and condemn unrestrained individualism while also disrupting “the hierarchies of race as an organizing principle of both US domestic politics and business practices” (85). Perhaps there are some lessons here for us. I highly recommended this book, and don’t just read the introduction. The best material and analyses are in the chapters.
