Pacifism (Military History)

Introduction
Along with other “isms” such as feminism, pacifism was coined in the late 19th to early 20th centuries to describe a set of beliefs and movements that had existed long before they were named. As with other ideologies, pacifism might more rightly be called “pacifisms.” Adherents can be found across the political and ideological spectrum. The idea that human beings can solve their differences without murdering each other has deep roots in recorded human history. Among the major religions created during the so-called axial age (the period from 800 to 200 BCE), Buddhism and Taoism in ancient India and China professed humanitarian and peaceable relations as the basic good of human behavior; in the Western tradition, the Sermon on the Mount attributed to Jesus Christ provided a foundation for pacifist thinking. Until the 19th century in the Euro-American world, pacifism remained largely a religious, moral, and/or intellectual philosophy and was practiced by religious sects such as the Quakers and Mennonites. However, following the end of the Napoleonic Wars (1814–1815), secular organizations, societies, and movements emerged in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Europe. Arguments made by these groups varied. Absolute pacifists who eschewed war under any and all circumstances insisted that Jesus’ admonition to “turn the other cheek” trumped all practical considerations. During the post-Enlightenment period, however, emerging industrial societies in Europe developed secular arguments: that advanced societies could solve international problems through legal and diplomatic means; that interdependent economies would suffer from military violence; that governments increasingly based on democratic participation rejected dynastic aggression as a measure of national greatness; and that legal mechanisms could be developed among states as they had within states to solve conflicts. Peace societies formed during the 19th century were largely middle class and male in membership; however, by the 1890s socialist organizations and feminist societies joined in the mix, bringing very different perspectives on how to preserve or achieve peace. For most socialists, the redistribution of wealth and power in capitalist societies was the prerequisite; women’s groups largely believed that peace and justice would emerge when women became fully educated citizen participants. The Great War (1914–1918), which peace societies had valiantly tried to prevent, transformed pacifism, as did the unexpected emergence of Gandhian nonviolence in the Indian national movement. In the 20th century, peace societies ranged from groups such as nongovernmental organizations advocating the League of Nations or the United Nations to organizations promoting social and environmental justice. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the nuclear weapons race between the Soviet Union and the United States, arms control emerged as a central feature of peace activism, whereas once it had not been emphasized out of fear of arousing nationalist sarcasm. Peace movements since the 1960s have often been shaped by opposition to an ongoing war (Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan), not as an overarching effort to establish global nonviolence. Given the realities of 20th-century interstate warfare, peace activists are usually not denounced as childish utopians but are chided for not believing that peace is kept through strength and preparedness.
Classic Overviews
This section contains selected titles reflecting the approach to the study of peace activism in the period between the two world wars of the 20th century. Authors including Irwin Abrams (Abrams 1938), Merle Curti (Curti 1972), and A. C. F. Beales (Beales 1971) recovered unknown historical origins of peace activism that were essentially ignored by diplomatic and political historians. Coudenhove-Kalergi 1926 and Madariaga 1929 argued for the realism of peace institutions from the viewpoint of in-service diplomats in their explorations of historical precedents. Faries 1915 captured the moves toward internationalism that emerged from civil society initiatives in the 19th century. Inter-Parliamentary Union 1939 and Ruyssen 1954–1961 are works by organizers and activists in pre-1914 and post-1919 peace societies representing German, Scandinavian, and French collaboration. These reflect the efforts of engaged citizens in ceaseless efforts to establish a European community through international legal and institutional creation. Jacob ter Meulen, librarian at The Hague Peace Palace, built and used its important assemblage of peace documents stretching back to the Middle Ages, and his three-volume history developed from a PhD dissertation at Zurich (see ter Meulen 1917–1940). Merze Tate, a rare example of an African American woman who obtained a doctorate in the late 1930s, wrote a historical analysis of efforts to control the world arms race and their shortcomings (see Tate 1942). Her often-ignored scholarship addressed issues still alive in modern scholarship—how to attain and enforce arms reductions and elimination.
Abrams, Irwin. “A History of European Peace Societies, 1867–1899.” PhD diss., Harvard University, 1938.
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Elegant scholarship that the author chose to leave unpublished with the outbreak of war in 1939. A counterpart to Merle Curti’s coverage of the American peace movement (Curti 1972) informed in part by survivors of the pre-1914 pacifist efforts.
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Beales, A. C. F. The History of Peace. New York: Garland, 1971.
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Originally published in 1931 (London: G. Bell). A first effort to narrate the development of modern peace organizations in the decades following the Napoleonic Wars. A scholarly work, but clearly aimed at educating the public about the alternatives created by 19th-century Europeans and Americans that would have avoided the Great War.
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Coudenhove-Kalergi, Richard Nicolaus. Pan-Europe. New York: Knopf, 1926.
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Originally published in 1923 (Vienna: Pan-Europa-Verlag). A European diplomat whose vision of an organized Europe was a major contribution to peace-thinking between the wars, and even with the outbreak of war, he remained convinced of the future of an organized system to render war obsolete in Europe.
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Curti, Merle. Peace or War: The American Struggle, 1636–1936. New York: Garland, 1972.
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An overview by the leading US scholar who essentially defined the study of peace history in the United States. Curti authored several other works, beginning in the 1930s, on peace and pacifism in US history.
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Faries, J. C. Rise of Internationalism, 1829–1913. New York: W. D. Gray, 1915.
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An early and authoritative review of the commercial, economic, public health, scientific, and pragmatic institutions that began to evolve in modern Europe as a result of the first Industrial Revolution and the spread of international capitalism.
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Inter-Parliamentary Union. The Inter-Parliamentary Union from 1889 to 1939. Lausanne, Switzerland: Payot, 1939.
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The authoritative history written by Ludwig Quidde and Christian Lange, two major activists and leaders of the Union.
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Madariaga, Salvador de. Disarmament. London: Oxford University Press, 1929.
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The eminent Spanish scholar-diplomat published an original historical examination of the idea of reducing or eliminating weaponry as the arms control discussions sanctioned by the Versailles Treaty entered into their last possible moment for success in interwar Europe.
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Ruyssen, Théodore. Les sources doctrinales de l’internationalisme. 3 vols. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1954–1961.
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The author, a major French peace activist before 1914 and in the interwar years a legal scholar and president of l’Association de la Paix par le Droit as well as the international League of Nations Societies, examines the intellectual basis for European international institutions. Ruyssen came to peace activism and scholarship from studies of Immanuel Kant’s philosophy.
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Tate, Merze. The Disarmament Illusion: The Movement for a Limitation of Armaments to 1907. New York: Macmillan, 1942.
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A dissertation that was published as a book by one of the first African American women to receive a doctorate in history, the book examines failed efforts to prevent war through international arms limitation agreements.
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ter Meulen, Jacob. Der Gedanke der internationalen Organisation in seiner Entwicklung. 3 vols. The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1917–1940.
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Volume 1 of the work summarizes the ideas of the major peace thinkers from 1300 to the French Revolution. Volume 2 (1919) describes the growth of Anglo-American and some European peace societies in the 19th century to 1870. Volume 3 (1940) covers 1870 to 1889 and features the evolution of international law and legal projects to maintain peace. Ter Meulen, librarian at The Hague Peace Palace, developed this classic work from his dissertation at Zurich, where he became interested in the peace initiatives of the early 20th century around the Hague Peace Conferences.
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Modern Essay Collections
Two of these collections, Abrams 1988 and Holl and Kjelling 1994, provide handy guides to the Nobel Peace Prize winners, demonstrating the changes since 1901 (when the first awards were announced) in what the prize committee values as contributions to peace. Canavero, et al. 2008 (in Italian); Petricioli, et al. 2004; and Vaïsse 1993 emerged from conferences where participants were invited to engage the topic of peace research from any perspective of their choice. On the other hand, Fleury, et al. 2003 and Ziemann 2008 develop the themes of peace and human rights and peace and social movements. Chatfield and van den Dungen 1988 and Wank 1978 present original essays that tie peace movements to political pressures and lobby groups. Van den Dungen 1985 presents works about peace activist movements in the later 20th century forming in response to the threat of the nuclear bomb and the arms race.
Abrams, Irwin. The Nobel Peace Prize and the Laureates: An Illustrated Biographical History, 1901–1987. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1988.
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A useful guidebook, especially helpful for teaching purposes with photographs and excerpts from speeches of Nobel peace laureates. The biographies are situated in the historical context of their moment.
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Canavero, Alfredo, Guido Formigoni, and Giorgio Vecchio, eds. Le sfide della pace: Istituzioni e moviment intellettuali e politici tra Otto e Novecento. Papers presented at a conference held at the University of Parma, 25 January 2008. Milan: LED, 2008.
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Scholarly essays examining political, legal, economic, and intellectual arguments from the 19th and 20th centuries from the Hague Conferences to the roles of religion in attaining organized peace. A result of a conference inspired by the Italian constitution, which states that Italy repudiates war as a means of destroying the freedom of other peoples and as a means of resolving international controversies.
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Chatfield, Charles, and Peter van den Dungen, eds. Peace Movements and Political Cultures. Papers presented at a conference held at Bad Tatzmannsdorf and Stadtschlaining, Austria, in August 1986. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1988.
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An important essay collection that situates peace organizations in the context of their national and political moments. A result of a conference that drew scholars from Europe and the United States.
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Fleury, Antoine, Carole Fink, and Lubor Jílek, eds. Les droits de l’homme en Europe depuis 1945/Human Rights in Europe since 1945. Papers presented at the 19th International Congress of Historical Sciences, Oslo, Norway, August 2000. Bern, Switzerland: P. Lang, 2003.
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The recent history of peace has broadened to encompass the evolution of the idea of human rights and security, and this collection reflects the newest scholarship of that trend.
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Holl, Karl, and Anne C. Kjelling, eds. The Nobel Peace Prize and the Laureates: The Meaning and Acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize in the Prize Winner’s Countries. Frankfurt am Main and New York: Peter Lang, 1994.
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A research tool that complements Abrams 1988.
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Petricioli, Marta, Donatella Cherubini, and Alessandra Anteghini, eds. Les Etats-Unis d’Europe: Un projet pacifiste/The United States of Europe: A Pacifist Project. Bern, Switzerland: Lang, 2004.
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An essay collection that includes recent scholarship by a new generation of research scholars with bilingual contributions.
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Vaïsse, Maurice, et al., eds. Le pacifisme en Europe: des années 1920 aux années 1950. Papers presented at a conference held at Reims, France, 3–5 December 1992. Brussels: Bruylant, 1993.
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Essays divided by decades by a variety of established European scholars focusing on national peace movements in the various decades under review; authoritative and well balanced among the various political organizations but largely ignores gender.
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van den Dungen, Peter, ed. West European Pacifism and the Strategy for Peace. Papers from a colloquium held in Paris, September 1982. New York: St Martin’s, 1985.
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Essays selected from papers at a colloquium that attempt to establish a historical context for renewed European peace activism but equally interesting for the point of view of engaged scholars.
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Wank, Solomon, ed. Doves and Diplomats: Foreign Offices and Peace Movements in Europe and America in the Twentieth Century. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1978.
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This collection connects public-citizen lobbying with decision makers in governments to examine the impact that peace arguments might make on official policy when the former offered practical arguments.
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Ziemann, Benjamin, ed. Peace Movements in Western Europe, Japan and the USA during the Cold War. Papers presented at “Peace Movements since 1945 in Comparative Perspective,” held in Bochum, Germany, on 28–30 October 2005. Essen, Germany: Klartext Verlag, 2008.
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This important collection of essays essentially rejects earlier peace histories as incomplete and lacking social context and analyzes the more recent movements as organizations with multilayered agendas—connecting peace with feminism, ecological movements, anti-neoliberalism, and movements for social change. Ziemann’s introduction singles out the kind of analysis done by Martin Ceadel (see British and Continental Pacifism), whose work has been viewed as the most significant analysis of the forms of peace activity—separating pacifism from “pacifisicism.” Ziemann argues that the older histories took peace, an essentially social movement, and tried to make it into an influential political argument that did not question the bases of the power structure but sought to modify it.
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International Peace Histories
Peter Brock’s many studies, represented here by one title (Brock 1972), earned him the informal title of “dean” of the field. His work on Europe and the United States is an essential starting point for anyone interested in peace history. Carter published the first major scholarly examination of the post–World War II struggle to contain militarism and Cold War brinksmanship (Carter 1992). Cooper 1991, Grossi 1994, and van der Linden 1987 explore and assess the growth of international peace activism in the 19th century. Van der Linden is the most detailed and encyclopedic; Cooper covers the long 19th century from the points of view of intellectual argument and organized societies; and Grossi emphasizes the quarter century before 1914 and situates the social roots of peace activists. Winter 2006 is an idiosyncratic set of essays that presents unrelated episodes in European and international history from the late 19th century through the World’s Fairs of the 1930s to expose the least-explored areas of peace history. Wittner 1993–2003, a three-volume history of the efforts across the globe to contain the use of the atomic and hydrogen bombs and to abolish nuclear weapons, is the standard work, based on scholarship that is global in scope.
Brock, Peter. Pacifism in Europe to 1914. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972.
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The recognized authoritative survey of the development of pacifism from the Protestant Reformation with an emphasis on religious ideologies.
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Carter, April. Peace Movements: International Protest and World Politics since 1945. London and New York: Longman, 1992.
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Considered the standard scholarly source of the topic, covering the increasing expression via mass protests against traditional power politics.
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Cooper, Sandi E. Patriotic Pacifism: Waging War on War in Europe, 1815–1914. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
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A survey and analysis of the social and intellectual roots of national and international organizations committed to reorganizing the European anarchy into a system capable of preventing war and negotiating interstate differences. Broad definition of pacifism as it evolved over the century.
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Grossi, Verdiana. Le pacifisme Européen 1889–1914. Brussels: Bruylant, 1994.
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A well-revised and carefully researched dissertation that demonstrates the social origins of most peace activists and their organizations.
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van der Linden, W. H. The International Peace Movement 1815–1874. Amsterdam: Tilleul, 1987.
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In over 1,200 pages, the author describes every peace group that he located in European archives, local and national, in the first three-quarters of the 19th century, providing encyclopedic data about these organizations.
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Winter, Jay. Dreams of Peace and Freedom: Utopian Moments in the 20th Century. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006.
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A set of idiosyncratic essays by the well-known author of the impact of the memories of war. Explored—at World’s Fairs usually—at moments when ideas and inventions that cut across nationalist assertiveness hinted at a world of competition instead of military violence.
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Wittner, Lawrence S. The Struggle Against the Bomb. 3 vols. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993–2003.
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The most authoritative and closely researched study of the movement by a scholar/activist/author whose personal involvement and sympathy for the Japanese victims of the atomic bombs enables him to enrich his narrative and turn abstract names into real people and ideas.
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British and Continental Pacifism
Martin Ceadel’s work (Ceadel 1980, Ceadel 2000) is viewed as the most recent standard of the study of peace activism in Britain, and it explores the content of the peace argument as well as its political efficacy. Laity 2001 fills in the 19th-century background, which showed a very diverse, expanding group of organizations opposing naval expenditures and imperial expansion. Morris 1972 approaches antiwar politics from the labors of the Liberal Party and its efforts to avoid entry into World War I. Vellacott 2007 demonstrates how the war succeeded in curbing democratic expression, particularly in stopping feminist pressures in their tracks. Norman Ingram published the first major study of French 20th-century pacifism (Ingram 1991), in which he divided the movement into “old” and “new” pacifism, based on whether their programs were rooted in legal and liberal internationalism or in movements more closely tied to social change and democratization of society. Roger Chickering published a pioneer study of German pacifism (Chickering 1975), launching a research field in the United States and in Germany, evidenced by Scheer 1981, which explores both liberal and socialist traditions. Chickering in particular makes clear the immense difficulties of a peace movement in Wilhelmian Germany. In contrast, Alice Cooper’s study of post-1945 German pacifism (Cooper 1996) reveals the contours of the most energetic movement in all of Europe. The tiny nation of Belgium hosted a little-known peace movement that produced one of Europe’s most influential peace and socialist leaders, Henri La Fontaine. Lubelski-Bernard 1977 remains the only comprehensive examination of the extensive background of Belgian activism and uses La Fontaine’s papers to good effect.
Ceadel, Martin. Pacifism in Britain, 1914–1945: The Defining of a Faith. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.
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A first effort to chronicle the life of British pacifism in which the author divides its adherents into the categories of pacifists who completely rejected war and pacifists who detested war but saw it as occasionally necessary but worked to prevent its outbreak. His argument was that most British activists fell into the latter category, and this position has generated considerable discussion.
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Ceadel, Martin. Semi-Detached Idealists: The British Peace Movement and International Relations, 1854–1945. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
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Well-regarded, carefully researched discussion of the groups and movements that made up the almost uninterrupted movement to prevent war; the cyclical fortunes of organizations are analyzed in terms of contexts (decline during World War I and glorious revival in the 1920s and 1930s), analysis of the various strands of peace activism—conscientious objectors, internationalists, absolutists, and practical pacifists. Useful in conjunction with Heloise Brown (see Brown 2003, cited under Women and Peace), who adds a balance about the special contributions of women.
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Chickering, Roger. Imperial Germany and a World without War: The Peace Movement and German Society 1892–1914. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975.
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The standard examination of this theme in the history of a nation largely viewed as unremittingly committed to militarist solutions and to a militarized civil society. Chickering brings to life the people who attempted to shape a different national discourse in an effort to curb bellicosity in Germany.
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Cooper, Alice. Paradoxes of Peace: German Peace Movements since 1945. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996.
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From 1945 through united Germany after 1990, Cooper describes the variegated nature of peace lobbying in postmilitarist Germany, which became the locus of the most energized peace movement in Europe. She connects the social roots of peace groups to the international environment in a work that demonstrates the impact of popular groups on policy formation.
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Ingram, Norman. The Politics of Dissent: Pacifism in France 1919–1939. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
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The standard study of French peace movements in the interwar years distinguishing between an “older” form of peace argument (largely arising in the 19th century) and the newer versions that were shaped by the Great War.
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Laity, Paul. The British Peace Movement, 1870–1914. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
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A succinct and reliable description of the development of one of the more successful and important peace movements in prewar Europe. Laity clearly delineates the differences among the various groups that campaigned against aggressive foreign policies.
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Lubelski-Bernard, Nadine. “Les Mouvements et les idéologues pacifistes en Belgique, 1830–1914.” PhD diss., Université Libre de Bruxelles, 1977.
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A solid study of a movement that produced many of the most-respected peace and internationalist leaders in Belgium and the international movement using sources that were scattered across a variety of archives.
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Morris, A. J. Anthony. Radicalism against War 1906–1914: The Advocacy of Peace and Retrenchment. London: Longman, 1972.
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The radical section of the Liberal party in prewar Britain struggled to encourage policies opposing the use of war and violence abroad and to focus on social change at home. Analyzes the impact of various pacifist groups on policymakers.
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Scheer, Friedrich-Karl. Die Deutsche Friedensgesellschaft (1892–1933). Organisation, Ideologie, politische Ziele: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Pazifismus in Deutschland. Frankfurt: Haag & Herchen Verlag, 1981.
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A thorough narrative of facts and dates, essentially a published dissertation at Ruhr-Universität Bochum based on solid archival work. A useful bibliography of major German pacifist authors, both liberal and socialist.
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Vellacott, Jo. Pacifists, Patriots and the Vote: The Erosion of Democratic Suffragism in Britain during the First World War. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
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An eminent feminist historian, whose earlier works examined the peace activism of Bertrand Russell and Catherine Marshall, demonstrates the impact of the war on reducing democratic participation, especially in undermining the well-developed women’s suffrage movement, which believed it was on the edge of victory, on the eve of the war.
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North American Peace Movements
Peace movements in North America have a huge bibliography, a few of which are noted below. Chatfield and Kleidman 1992 and DeBenedetti 1980 provide the standard information on the movements while Calvin Davis’s works (see Davis 1962) tie citizen initiatives to the diplomatic representations of the government at the two Hague Peace Conferences. Marchand 1972 and Mollin 2006 present peace activism in the context of social movements, with Mollin focusing on the left and left-liberal US groups. Socknatt 1987 is the standard study of Canadian organizations. Lawrence Wittner, whose scholarship on peace movements remains among the most significant in the United States, published a solid analysis of the reconfiguration of peace movements after the Great War (Wittner 1969) that remains useful for 21st-century scholars seeking insightful analysis.
Chatfield, Charles, and Robert Kleidman. The American Peace Movement: Ideals and Activism. New York: Twayne, 1992.
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An update of Charles DeBenedetti’s work (see DeBenedetti 1980) that incorporates sociological theory to examine the motivation of membership in peace societies written largely by the most eminent US scholar of American peace history.
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Davis, Calvin DeArmond. The United States and the First Hague Peace Conference. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1962.
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See also The United States and the Second Hague Peace Conference: American Diplomacy and International Organization, 1899–1914 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1975). Highly regarded examinations of the pressure from citizen groups exercised on US diplomats who were among those most committed to the Hague Peace processes of all the diplomats present.
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DeBenedetti, Charles. The Peace Reform in American History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980.
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Long considered the standard analysis of the long trajectory of peace arguments and organization in the United States.
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Marchand, C. Roland. The American Peace Movement and Social Reform, 1898–1918. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972.
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One of the earliest and still reliable contemporary studies to explore the ties between progressive social reform and peace activism in the United States.
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Mollin, Marianne. Radical Pacifism in Modern America: Egalitarianism and Protest. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2006.
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Focusing on the period from 1910 to 1970, the author shows the cyclical nature of the left side of pacifism in the United States, with connections to other social movements and gender awareness.
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Socknatt, Thomas. Witness against War: Pacifism in Canada, 1900–1945. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987.
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A successful overview of the development of peace societies and arguments as these changed with both foreign considerations and domestic social developments. The author argues that consensus opinion traces pacifism to a minority Christian position in the early church that then grew in the 20th century in Canada and elsewhere into a secular and pragmatic ideology with significant impact on policymaking.
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Wittner, Lawrence S. Rebels Against War: The American Peace Movement, 1941–1960. New York: Columbia University Press, 1969.
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One of the first scholarly analyses of the ways in which peace movements, following the disaster of World War II, revived and were transformed into organizations with highly focused agendas, given the novel weaponry of the atomic age.
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Women and Peace
This section includes titles that reflect the new analysis of peace history that emerged following the flowering of women’s history and gender analysis. The involvement of women in peace organizations, initially omitted in earlier studies of movements, as well as the often-remarkable differences in approaches to peace when a feminist argument is included explains the importance of this category. Addams 2007 confronts the classical position that seems to equate peace with the absence of war by a discussion of the positive bases for organized peace; in this new edition, the editors provide a succinct analysis of Addams’s innovative approach. Alonso 1993 and Blackwell 2004 are the standard histories of the 20th-century women’s peace movements in the United States, but Blackwell improves the narrative with an original exploration of the contributions of African American women and their mixed reception in the dominant white women’s movement. Early 1997 is a prize-winning book exploring the little-known women’s Bureau of Legal Advice during World War I, which essentially helped men avoid the draft. In contrast, the newer work Patterson 2007 is a larger overview of international women’s efforts to stop the war in progress. Bortolotti 1985 pioneered women’s history in Italian scholarship and introduced Italian readers to the overlooked ties among socialist, feminist, and pacifist women in the 19th century. Brown 2003 improves on Ceadel and Laity (see Ceadel 1980, Ceadel 2000, and Laity 2001, all cited under British and Continental Pacifism) by demonstrating the unique work of British women in peace activism. Useful for teaching as well as for lively writing is Swerdlow 1993, which describes how US women used the “motherhood angle” to humiliate the angry male inquisitors of the US House Un-American Activities Committee as they tried to label women activists as “communists” or “traitors.” The important theme of women confronting a patriarchal order is vividly presented here. Kuhlman 2008 reflects the impact of gender analysis on peace research that is typical of a newer generation of woman scholars.
Addams, Jane. Newer Ideals of Peace. Edited by Berenice A. Carroll and Clinton F. Fink. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007.
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Originally published in 1907 (New York: Macmillan). Considered an innovative argument that integrated a social, demographic, and cultural analysis into early-20th-century peace positions both of peace activists and of nations for whom peace was a negative concept: the absence of war. Addams, as did most women activists in varying degrees, understood the achievement of peace in the social and political context of an era and not merely as a temporary arrangement among transitory allies.
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Alonso, Harriet. Peace as a Women’s Issue: A History of the U.S. Movement for World Peace and Women’s Rights. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1993.
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Original contribution exploring role of women in 20th-century US efforts to organize international peace—the standard source of the topic.
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Blackwell, Joyce. No Peace without Freedom: Race and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, 1915–1975. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004.
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Solid examination of the work of African American women to carve a place for the issue of race in the women’s peace movement in the 20th-century United States.
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Bortolotti, Franca Pieroni. La donna, la pace, l’Europa: L’Associazione internazionale delle donne dalle origini alla prima guerra mondiale. Milan: Franco Angeli, 1985.
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Pioneering work by a leading Italian feminist scholar exploring ignored work of women in the first decades of united Italy with a heavy emphasis on the contributions of socialist women.
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Brown, Heloise. “The Truest Form of Patriotism”: Pacifist Feminism in Britain, 1870–1902. Manchester, UK, and New York: Manchester University Press, 2003.
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Brown balances the claims of British peace historians about the marginal significance of women activists and unearthed individuals and groups whose far-seeing grasp of contemporary politics produced a sophisticated analysis of international tensions. These activists, much as women in other cultures, were engaged in numerous reform activities and did not practice a purist approach.
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Early, Frances. A World without War: How U.S. Feminists and Pacifists Resisted World War I. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997.
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A prize-winning analysis of the small Bureau of Legal Advice, which was run by a few women aiding people to avoid conscription, linking it to the larger, more-lasting American Civil Liberties Union.
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Kuhlman, Erica. Reconstructing Patriarchy after the Great War: Women, Gender, and Postwar Reconciliation between Nations. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
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Elaborating on the well-established understanding that—despite the “liberation” of women resulting from state needs during the Great War and despite the achievement of the ballot—the reestablishment of traditional male/female roles was easily accomplished, especially in Germany and the United States.
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Patterson, David S. The Search for Negotiated Peace: Women’s Activism and Citizen Diplomacy in World War I. London: Routledge, 2007.
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An inclusive examination of women’s citizen diplomacy with heavy emphasis on US women but inclusive of European activists whose efforts to end the fighting in the Great War prefigured methods of peace movements in the 20th century.
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Swerdlow, Amy. Women Strike for Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical Politics in the 1960s. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
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The famed confrontation of the US House Un-American Activities Committee by a group of ordinary middle-class mothers and housewives worried about the health and safety of their children in a nuclear age helped undermine the committee’s authority. Swerdlow demonstrates that feminine appearances and social clichés about women served the peace movement.
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International League for Peace and Freedom
Bussey and Tims 1980 and Foster 1989 present surveys of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, the first large-scale 20th-century women’s peace organization, founded in 1915, a history updated by Schott 1997.
Bussey, Gertrude, and Margaret Tims. Pioneers for Peace: Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom 1915–1965. London: WILPF, 1980.
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Pioneer attempt to chronicle the history of the first international women’s peace organization created in the 20th century, born in World War I from an effort to stop the struggle and find a negotiated peace. An “official” history endorsed by the organization.
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Foster, Catherine. Women for All Seasons: The Story of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1989.
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Straightforward history of the organization, heavily oriented toward US women, including interviews with aging members. Foster served as a legislative director of WILPF.
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Schott, Linda. Reconstructing Women’s Thoughts: The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom before World War II. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997.
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The intellectual analysis of women’s approach to peace in which social, rather than biological, arguments led to separate women’s peace organizations.
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Essay Collections
Higgonet, et al. 1987 and Pierson 1987 are two now-standard essay collections including authors who explore women, gender, social change, and peace campaigning in the 19th and 20th centuries, including perspectives from eastern Europe.
Higgonet, Margaret R., Jane Jenson, Sonya Michel, and Margaret Collins Weitz, eds. Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars. Papers presented at the Workshop on Women and War, held at Harvard University on 8–10 January 1984. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987.
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An international collection of authors provides one of the earliest shifts from women’s history to gender analysis and broadly examines the role of gender in times of war and peace with attention to the national cultural context of gendered behavior.
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Pierson, Ruth Roach, ed. Women and Peace: Theoretical, Historical, and Practical Perspectives. London: Croom Helm, 1987.
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Innovative essay collection, among the earliest in modern peace and women’s history to bring together authors from East and West to evaluate women’s work as peace campaigners.
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Biographies
The life of the important peace pioneer, Bertha von Suttner, in Hamann 1996 is the only available biography translated into English of the woman who encouraged Alfred Nobel to set up the Peace Prize. Oldfield 1989 is a very accessible set of short biographies of activist women and is useful in classroom teaching.
Hamann, Brigitte. Bertha von Suttner: A Life for Peace. Translated by Ann Dubsky. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1996.
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Originally published as Bertha von Suttner: Ein Leben für den Frieden (Munich: Piper, 1987). Biography of the leading woman peace activist, known internationally, in the years from 1889 to 1914; Alfred Nobel’s assistant and friend who convinced him to establish the Peace Prize and author of the best-selling Die Waffen nieder (Lay down your arms), which sold millions of copies and was translated into sixteen languages by the time of her death. Suttner was a 1905 Nobel Peace Prize winner.
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Oldfield, Sybil. Women Against the Iron Fist: Alternatives to Militarism, 1900–1989. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1989.
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Accessible and informative; each chapter introduces a major woman activist or writer who opposed militarism. Emphasizes well-known British women. Very useful for undergraduates.
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Nonviolence, Conscientious Objection, and Civil Disobedience
This set of works reflects the importance of civil society and group decision to work for political and social change without the use of violence. Such an approach does not prevent the application of violence against protesters but still argues in favor of nonviolent resistance. Classically associated with Gandhi’s movement in India (which presumably was influenced by the writings of Leo Tolstoy and the Hindu and Christian traditions, perhaps also by the methods of English suffragists), Sharp 1973 provides a comprehensive overview of the methodologies of nonviolence and has been cited in movements in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s and in Tunisia and Egypt in 2011. The main work of the 20th-century parent of nonviolent philosophy, de Ligt 1989 (originally published in 1937), is included here with an updated introduction by Peter van den Dungen. In some ways, de Ligt represents a European version of Gandhianism. The impact of Gandhian strategies on US antiwar movements, especially reflected in the War Resisters League, is clearly laid out by Bennett 2003, a recent examination of this important group in US peace movements. Applications of nonviolent means in the assault on the Communist states in eastern Europe are well presented in the Roberts and Ash 2009 essay collection. Similarly, Bracco 2003 presents little-known uses of nonviolence in the largely bloody Algerian war against France, an early application in North Africa. Varieties of conscientious objection and nonviolent resistance are analyzed and summarized in Brock 2002 and Goossen 1997.
Bennett, Scott. Radical Pacifism: The War Resisters League and Gandhian Nonviolence in America, 1915–1963. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2003.
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The book proves the crucial role of the War Resisters League in the US peace movement by showing how its advocacy of Gandhian methods applied to war prevention and resistance supplanted the traditional reliance on religious and moral argument. Gandhi’s approach introduced a proactive means of delivering the message.
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Bracco, Hélène. Pour avoir dit non: actes de refus dans la guerre d’Algérie, 1954–1962. Paris: Paris-Méditerranée, 2003.
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The image of French determination to hold on to Algeria, reinforced by the famous Pontecorvo film The Battle of Algiers, is balanced here by an investigation of those who would not fight.
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Brock, Peter, ed. Liberty and Conscience: A Documentary History of the Experiences of Conscientious Objectors in America through the Civil War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
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Selected documents of lesser-known refusals to fight from the earlier history of the United States.
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de Ligt, Bart. The Conquest of Violence: An Essay on War and Revolution. Translated by Honor Tracy. Pluto, 1989.
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Originally published in 1935 (Paris: G. Mognolet & Storz). First English translation published in 1937 (London: Routledge), with an introduction by Aldous Huxley; new introduction by Peter van den Dungen. Dutch in origin, often compared to Erasmus, de Ligt was a leading social activist and philosopher in the interwar period, struggling to find a way to resist the Nazi threat and appeal through peaceful civic action. Drawing on Christian Socialist roots, he shaped a path between violent revolutionary change and rigid state control.
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Goossen, Rachel W. Women Against the Good War: Conscientious Objection and Gender on the Home Front, 1941–1944. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.
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An important contribution to the ways in which gender shaped the participation of women as conscientious objectors during World War II. Solid addition to the literature on the history of peace and gender. Exemplars of nonviolent resistance against the unjust state. Powerful work for undergraduate teaching.
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Roberts, Adam, and Timothy Garton Ash, eds. Civil Resistance and Power Politics: The Experience of Non-violent Action from Gandhi to the Present. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
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The use of nonviolent protest to delegitimize authoritarian rule in the last three decades of the 20th century, largely in eastern Europe, is the focus of this essay collection. The various means used by groups (e.g., the Solidarity movement in Poland) are examined by a collection of authors for their efficacy.
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Sharp, Gene. The Politics of Nonviolent Action. 3 vols. Boston: Porter Sargent, 1973.
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Regarded as the major modern guidebook to build popular resistance in a modern community against state power, Sharp’s work built on a long tradition of advocates of the way to transform authoritarianism without becoming authoritarian. (See de Ligt 1989, for instance).
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Films
The PBS film A Force More Powerful (York 2000) provides six half-hour summations of the use of nonviolent political opposition in the 20th century drawn from every continent. Weapons of the Spirit (Sauvage 2007) captures the quiet courage of the 5,000 Christian citizens of the French village Le Chambon-Sur-Lignon, guided by Pastor André Trocmé, who saved the lives of thousands of Jews and dissenters who were hunted by the Vichy French and the Gestapo during World War II. The film illustrates the text of Hallie 1985, a scholarly examination of the resistance in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon.
Hallie, Philip. Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of the Village of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There. New York: Harper and Row, 1985.
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Authoritative dual biography of André and Magda Trocmé, the Protestant couple in a small southern French Huguenot town who organized protective havens for Jews, orphans, Communists, and dissidents in Vichy France.
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Sauvage, Pierre,dir. Weapons of the Spirit, 1986. DVD. Los Angeles: Le Chambon Foundation, 2007.
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Pierre Sauvage, born of parents saved by the citizens of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, returned to interview elderly survivors whose Protestant religion and history of resistance against oppression convinced them to save lives from an unjust political order.
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York, Steve, dir. A Force More Powerful. DVD. Washington, DC: York Zimmerman, 2000.
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Original footage from India (the Salt March of Gandhi); student sit-ins in Nashville, Tennessee, against segregated lunch counters; Danish resistance under Nazi occupation; and the origins of the Solidarity movement in Poland (1980), South African resistance, and Chilean opposition to the military state.
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Documentary Collections
This section includes a selection of documentary collections illustrating the long history of pacifism, some with analytical introductions that guide the reader through the context of the material. The Chatfield and Ilukhina 1994 anthology is the result of early collaboration between Soviet and US historians, following the International Congresses of the Historical Sciences in 1985 and 1990 where contacts were made to facilitate intellectual exchange as the Cold War was winding down. Cook, et al. 1971 recovers documents in the forms of essays, treatises, movement statements, and editorials, covering several thousand years of largely Western history. Most documents are in English; others remain in their original languages. Heyn 1997 is a rare effort to catalog the medieval European bases of peace-thinking. Addams 2002–2003 extracts some of the leading documents from Jane Addams’s long and important life as a social and peace activist from the immense microfilm collection of her papers. Mayoux and Mayoux 1992 is notable as an unusual statement of antiwar activism in France during World War I, and it offers a window into the usually overlooked community of teachers and social workers that Mayoux represented. Trocmé and Trocmé 2007 illustrates the amazing work of the Protestant pastor, his wife and family, and the entire village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in France as they defied Vichy orders, protected Jews and political refugees, and eventually had to flee the Gestapo. Young 2010 is included as a guide to contemporary documents not found in the earlier works noted in this category.
Chatfield, Charles, and Ruzanna Ilukhina, eds. Peace/Mir: An Anthology of Historic Alternatives to War. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1994.
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Joint project of the US Council on Peace Research in History and the Soviet Institute of Universal History developed in 1989 to 1991 to select the essential texts in world traditions concerned with ensuring peace. Selections begin in classical Greece and include representative documents from succeeding civilizations and centuries. Soviet edition published in Moscow, 1993.
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Addams, Jane. The Selected Papers of Jane Addams. 2 vols. Edited by Mary Lynn McCree Bryan, Barbara Bair, and Maree de Angury. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002–2003.
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Covering the years from 1860 to 1888, the papers are valuable for ease of access to the vast store of documents connected to the life and work of Jane Addams—part of the project that produced the complete microfilm collection.
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Cook, Blanche W., Charles Chatfield, and Sandi E. Cooper, eds. The Garland Library of War and Peace: A Collection of 360 Titles Bound in 328 Volumes. New York: Garland, 1971.
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In addition to reprints of classical and modern works on peace history, this collection includes a number of original anthologies covering peace projects of the medieval period, the 17th and 18th centuries, and 19th-century movements, both international and nation based; and anthologies emphasizing a peace theme such as nonviolence. The series offered a launching point for the expansion of peace research in the latter half of the 20th century.
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Heyn, Udo. Peace Making in Medieval Europe: A Historical and Bibliographical Guide. Claremont, CA: Regina, 1997.
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An important research tool for examining the various modes of peace-thinking in premodern Europe, a recent effort at illuminating a little-known topic.
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Mayoux, François and Marie Mayoux. Instituteurs pacifistes et syndicalistes: Mémoires de F. Mayoux. Charmalières, France: Canope, 1992.
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Important testimony of the resistance to the official story of the French government in World War I by organized teachers, some of whom were fired or tried for advocating defeat.
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Trocmé, Magda, and André Trocmé. Figures de résistance. Edited by Pierre Boismorand. Paris: Cerf, 2007.
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Two of the 20th century’s most successful nonviolent resisters are presented in selected texts. Useful in conjunction with Hallie 1985 and Sauvage 2007 (both cited under Films) and an interesting companion to Mayoux and Mayoux 1992 demonstrating the different requirements of resistance in the two world wars.
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Young, Nigel, ed. The Oxford International Encyclopedia of Peace. Vol. 4. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
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Largely 20th-century official documents creating peace bilateral and multilateral conditions but also some well-known private initiatives such as the Russell-Einstein Manifesto of 1948.
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Bibliographies and Reference Works
The establishment of the Conference on Peace Research in History in 1963 (now the Peace History Society in the United States) inspired the effort to systematize the literature of the past and provide research direction to scholars in the new field, such as the edited reference works Carroll, et al. 1983; Cook 1969; Cook, et al. 1971 (cited under Documentary Collections); Josephson, et al. 1985; and Kuehl 1983. The 1905 Handbuch (Fried 1972) was among the earliest efforts to systematize knowledge of the pre-1914 peace movement, and Donat and Holl 1983 serves the same purpose for post-1945 movements in German-speaking areas. The bibliography Carter, et al. 1966 is the standard (to that date) collation of studies of passive resistance, in both military and civil instances. Van den Dungen 1990 is an annotated presentation of ter Meulen’s classic summation of four centuries of international law, peace-thinking, and peace movements and theories, making this older work accessible. Young 2010 is a four-volume study of peace that contains documents, bibliography, and analytical essays. It is both historical and contemporary, but it emphasizes recent over historical data.
Carroll, Berenice A., Clinton Fink, and Jane E. Mohraz, eds. Peace and War: A Guide to Bibliographies. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio. 1983.
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A comprehensive, annotated historical guide to bibliographies on peace and war published from 1785 through 1980, drawing together materials from humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and the professions. Including 1,398 entries from thirty countries and more than fifteen languages, it is useful for academics in peace research areas, religious groups, government agencies, and activist organizations
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Carter, April, David Hoggett, and Adam Roberts, eds. Non-Violent Action: A Selected Bibliography. London: Housmans, 1966.
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A selective presentation of works on passive, nonviolence actions that moved peace studies from international to civil arenas.
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Cook, Blanche W., ed. Bibliography on Peace Research in History. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 1969.
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The Conference on Peace Research in History commissioned the compiler to present a basic guide for student and faculty researchers to support undergraduate, graduate, and faculty scholarship. Preface by Charles Barker.
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Donat, Helmut, and Karl Holl, eds. Die Friedensbewegung: Organisierter Pazifismu in Deutschland, Österreich und in der Schweiz. Düsseldorf: Econ Taschenbuch Verlag, 1983.
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The editors assembled publications, both historical and contemporary, on peace activism in German-speaking areas, a work inspired in part by the outburst of peace movement activity in West Germany.
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Fried, Alfred Hermann, ed. Handbuch der Friedensbewegung. New York: Garland, 1972.
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Originally published in 1905 (Vienna: Oesterreichischen Friedensgesellschaft). An authoritative guide to the early-20th-century European peace movement.
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Josephson, Harold, Sandi Cooper, Solomon Wank, et al., eds. Biographical Dictionary of Modern Peace Leaders. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1985.
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Brief biographies of deceased peace activists with a Euro-American focus and an emphasis on the 19th and 20th centuries; intended to complement Kuehl 1983.
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Kuehl, Warren, ed. Biographical Dictionary of Internationalists. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1983.
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Brief biographies of deceased internationalists, defined as individuals with pacifist leanings but with a diplomatic or legalistic point of view or position.
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van den Dungen, Peter, ed. From Erasmus to Tolstoy: The Peace Literature of Four Centuries, Jacob ter Meulen’s Bibliographies of the Peace Movement before 1899. New York: Greenwood, 1990.
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Jacob ter Meulen was the bibliographer at The Hague Peace Palace library and a major scholar of peace history in Europe. Van den Dungen’s presentation is valuable for peace history, political science, and international relations and is a good guide to The Hague holdings.
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Young, Nigel J., ed. The Oxford International Encyclopedia of Peace. 4 vols. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
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Likely to remain the standard source in print for the historical and contemporary universes embraced by peace commitments—from absolute nonviolence advocates to international actors and treaties.
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Periodicals and Journals
For a complete list of periodicals and journals, consult Young 2010 (cited under Bibliographies and Reference Works), Volume 3, pp. 467–470. Peace studies journals tend to be interdisciplinary and not focused on history. The Bulletin of Peace Proposals was a nearly twenty-year effort to capitalize on the growth of peace activism during and after the Vietnam War and examines the range of discussion connected to creating a safer world order. The International Journal of Peace Studies, the organ of the International Peace Research Association, created a world tribunal for scholars and activists to discuss proposals reflecting the visions of the entire globe. It incorporated social, political, economic, and environmental movements; its broad sweep of peace studies is similar to Peace & Change. Another interdisciplinary journal with very scholarly contributions is Peace Research: The Canadian Journal of Peace and International Studies, which also seeks a broad international vision. Security and legalistic approaches to peace are largely examined in the Journal of Peace Research, the organ of the Oslo International Peace Research group. Two journals that approach the issue from a more scientific base are Peace and Conflict, which privileges psychological analyses of conflict and violence, and the new Peace Economics, which invites multidisciplinary analyses from scientific, mathematical, economic, and practical points of view. The British Peace News is a useful historical source covering nearly forty years of peace activism before and after World War II and through the Vietnam era.
Bulletin of Peace Proposals.
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Organ of the International Peace Research Institute (Oslo); a very useful source for peace issues from the 1970s to 1992.
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International Journal of Peace Studies.
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Journal of the International Peace Research Association (IPRA); a scholarly site for discussion of largely contemporary approaches to peaceful solutions—broadly defined—including social and environmental as well as international ties. Connected to IPRA as well as the Journal of Peace Education, which covers questions of adopting peace analyses into school and university curricula.
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Journal of Peace Research.
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Publication of the Oslo International Peace Research Institute; a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal covering international security, conflict resolution, and peace studies, broadly defined. Bimonthly.
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Peace & Change.
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Sponsored by the Peace History Society and the Peace and Justice Studies International; a peer-reviewed journal originating in a newsletter of the Conference on Peace Research in History in 1963–1964, the journal includes scholarly analyses of historical and contemporary issues.
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Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology.
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Focus on peace studies with a special commitment to the psychological aspects of personal, political, and international approaches.
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Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy.
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A peer-reviewed journal devoted to the advancement of Peace Economics and Peace Science. It covers both positive and normative studies about issues related to peace, conflict, and conflict management. Publishing both theoretical and empirical papers, the journal welcomes contributions from an interdisciplinary community, including scholars from disciplines such as economics, political science, regional science, mathematics, and history.
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Peace News.
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Originally the organ of the Peace Pledge Union, it changed from a weekly paper to a journal of War Resisters International and includes information from a variety of groups. A valuable source for a longitudinal examination of how peace organizations evolve in response to contemporary conditions.
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Peace Research: The Canadian Journal of Peace and International Studies.
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Semiannual organ published by the Canadian Mennonite University, it is the unique journal of Canada covering the whole arena of peace studies.
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