Interpretation and Method Empirical Research Methods and the Interpretive Turn

296 ANALYZING DATA

This memorandum indicates the power of the peace movement to continue its contestation of

security policies and norms, and it also attests to the power of dominant narratives, which shaped

the government’s refusal to move more aggressively on movement demands for disarmament and

arbitration.

ASSESS SECONDARY EVIDENCE

The process of assessing secondary evidence is also a process of “historiographic construction.”

Historiographies review the secondary work that has been done on a particular topic and may also

set these works within a broader political context of scholarship. In my work, several extremely

helpful historiographies of peace movements and interwar diplomacy had already been published.

These enabled me to see, for example, that scholarship on the interwar period moved from an

emphasis on charismatic and influential leaders during the 1950s, to structural analyses during

the 1960s and 1970s, to a reassessment of multiple causes during the 1980s. The historiographies

assisted in the critique of dominant narratives; allowed me to reflect on the practices of the times,

which encouraged my own reinterpretation; and made it possible for me to set my interpretation

among those of others and argue why a reinterpretation was warranted.

CHOOSE SOURCES FROM DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES

Especially if one is constructing an alternative narrative, it is critical to examine a wide variety of

sources from different perspectives. For the case of interwar peace movements, I was struck that

many scholars of the interwar period did not examine peace movement documents yet were con-

tent to make judgments about the movements. These judgments, it seemed, were based primarily

on conventional wisdom and/or leaders’ assertions that the movements were troublesome, naive,

or dangerous. In other words, they were based on “dominant narratives” that were not themselves

called into question and analyzed. Those who did examine peace movement as well as govern-

ment documents tended to focus on specific events during the period, such as the World Disarma-

ment Conference of 1932. Peace movement historians sometimes examined official documentation

as well as a variety of group archives, but they tended to analyze the former selectively. Was it

possible to escape completely the problems inherent in the selective examination of documents?

For this particular case (or series of cases, depending on how one looks at the interwar period),

there had to be some justifiable method for choosing to examine some documents and not others.

In part, my strategy followed from the questions I was asking about peace movement influence.

In part, however, it also followed from the process of archival research. I first began to examine

British peace group archives at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Later,

when I looked at Foreign Office documentation at the Public Record Office (PRO) and the papers

of key players at the British Library, I found that I could document interaction between govern-

ments and peace groups for some events and not others, or document the impact of previous

events on debates about later ones, so these findings and experiences guided my subsequent re-

search. For example, I had little idea arriving in London that the Geneva Protocol would play such

a huge role in the minds of peace groups and be such a thorn in the side of Foreign Secretary

Austen Chamberlain and his successors. This became evident during the course of my research.

DEVISE A METHOD OF SELECTION WHEN SOURCES

ARE TOO NUMEROUS

Despite my argument against the sort of selectivity noted above, scholars had excellent reasons

for being selective in those ways. Far too many primary sources (let alone secondary sources) on