Sarah Wambaugh

Background

Sarah Wambaugh was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the daughter of Eugene Wambaugh, a lawyer and later professor at Harvard law school, and Anna S. Hemphill.

Education

After graduating from Radcliffe College with the A. B. in 1902, Wambaugh continued studies there in government and history until 1906. In 1916 she returned to Radcliffe, receiving the M. A. the next year in international law and political science.

Career

She worked with the Women's Educational and Industrial Union in Boston and participated in the woman suffrage movement. During World War I, Wambaugh served as executive secretary of the Massachusetts branch of the Women's Peace Party. It was at this time that she became interested in plebiscites. This process, under which the people of a geographical area may resolve a public question or determine their autonomy or relationship to another country through a direct vote, was generally associated with the idea of self-determination proclaimed by Woodrow Wilson. Wambaugh discovered that little had been written on the subject, and in 1917 she received a small grant from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to explore this issue. Her Monograph on Plebiscites, With a Collection of Official Documents, prepared for the technical experts at the Paris Peace Conference, was published in 1920. This work, which examined plebiscites from the time of the French Revolution, won Wambaugh an immediate worldwide reputation. While studying at the London University School of Economics and at Oxford in 1920, Wambaugh was asked to join the staff of the newly established League of Nations, which then had its offices in London. She served until January 1921 on the administrative commissions and minorities section of the Secretariat. Thereafter, she was an ardent exponent and defender of the League. From 1922 to 1924 Wambaugh studied territorial problems, observed a plebiscite in Upper Silesia, and served as an adviser for the League on the Saar Basin and the Free City of Danzig. In 1925-1926 she and her father worked for the Peruvian government, he as counsel and she as an adviser, in administering the Tacna-Arica plebiscite, which resolved the conflicting territorial claims of Peru and Chile. For the United Nations she served as adviser to a mission sent to observe elections in Greece in 1945-1946 and helped devise procedures for plebiscites in Jammu and Kashmir in 1949. Wambaugh also taught periodically, holding positions as assistant in history and government at Radcliffe, 1903-1906; instructor in history for one semester at Wellesley College, 1921-1922; and lecturer (the first woman so honored) at the Academy of International Law at The Hague, 1927. She also lectured at the Institute for Advanced International Studies at Geneva in 1935. She bolstered her reputation as an authority on plebiscites with the publication of La pratique des plébiscites internationaux (1928), Plebiscites Since the World War (1933), and The Saar Plebiscite (1940), and she popularized the procedure in magazine articles. She also lectured extensively on the achievements of the League's specialized agencies and commissions, disarmament efforts, the shortcomings of the neutrality policy of the United States in the 1930's, and on war and its elimination. The success of the governing commission in the Saar, which completed its work efficiently despite tense conditions, proved to her satisfaction that international administrative machinery could be applied to any problem anywhere. Wambaugh maintained that a "family of nations" could be attained. Although she had rarely participated in organized campaigns to promote League membership for the United States in the interwar period, she became fully involved after 1940 in developing the United Nations idea by working through the Commission to Study the Organization of Peace. In the postwar era she became convinced that a world state with a police force would be needed to prevent conflict. She died in Cambridge, Massachussets.

Achievements

• Her most notable work came in 1934 and 1935 when she served under League auspices first as one of three commissioners to draft a plan for the Saar plebiscite and later as an adviser and member of the commission that administered the voting.

Works

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• book

  • A Monograph on Plebiscites

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • The Doctrine of National Self-Determination: A Study of the Theory and Volume Practice of Plebiscites, With a Collection of Documents, Vol. 1 (Classic Reprint)

    (The purpose of all government is order for the state, in ...)

  • The Doctrine Of National Self-Determination V1: A Study Of The Theory And Practice Of Plebiscites (1919)

    (This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

  • The Doctrine of National Self-Determination, Vol. 1: A Study of the Theory and Practice of Plebisciteswith a Collection of Official Documents (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from The Doctrine of National Self-Determination,...)

  • The Saar Plebiscite
  • A monograph on plebiscites,: With a collection of official documants, (Publications of the Carnegie endowment for international peace, Division of international law, Washington)

Politics

She believed in practical, rational, and democratic approaches to international problems and remained convinced that the League's achievements in its plebiscite work had tested the validity of her assumptions.

Connections

She never married.

Father:

Eugene Wambaugh

Mother:

Anna S. Hemphill