Racial Equality at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference: Humanitarian Rhetoric and Japanese Imperial Expansion

When the League of Nations, the precursor to the United Nations, was founded at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 in the wake of the First World War, a charter was established to govern the relationships between member states. During the drafting process of the charter, the Japanese delegation at the conference proposed a racial equality clause to be added. Japan was the only state at the time to do so. However, the clause itself was not motivated by true racial equality of nations and was instead designed to safeguard the Empire of Japan’s strategic interests from Western encroachment. This paper will examine the context in which the Japanese delegation put forth the racial equality clause, as well as the reasons why it was necessary for the Japanese to do so in an early-twentieth century context.