Book reviews

Leonard Blussé. Strange company: Chinese settlers, mestizo women, and the Dutch in VOC Batavia . xiii, 302 pp. Dordrecht: Foris Publications, 1986. (Verhandelingen van het Kononklijk Instituut voor Taal‐, Land‐ en Volkenkunde, 122.) Guilders 35.

John S. Guy. Oriental trade ceramics in South‐East Asia, ninth to sixteenth centuries. With a catalogue of Chinese, Vietnamese, and Thai wares in Australian collections, xiv, 161 pp. Singapore, etc: Oxford University Press, 1986. (Oxford in Asia Studies in Ceramics.) £47.50.     

Embracing the Language of Human Rights: International Women's Organisations,Feminism and Campaigns Against the Marriage Bar,c.1919–1960

This article considers four international women's organisations – the International Council of Women, the International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship, the International Federation of University Women and the Open Door International – and their campaigns for the right of married women to undertake paid work. It examines how each organisation adopted and engaged with the language of human rights in the late 1920s and 1930s. It is argued that after 1948, precisely because of its formal adoption by the UN, the language of human rights became less usable as a way to make the point that women still faced inequalities, and so other framings became more significant. This article contributes to historiographies on international women's organisations, offers a detailed discussion of their activism against the marriage bar, and challenges the conventional chronology of the concept and language of human rights.