Peace movements became a part of the national landscapes of British, American, and European politics in the nineteenth century, reaching their peak during the European arms race of 1889-1914. This study examines the history of European peace movements from the end of the Napoleonic wars to the beginning of the First World War, analysing their methods and influence, and examining their ideological underpinnings and internal conflicts.

Despite the liberalized reconfiguration of civil society and political practice in nineteenth-century Europe, the right to make foreign policy, devise alliances, wage war and negotiate peace remained essentially an executive prerogative. Citizen challenges to the exercise of this power grew slowly. Drawn from the educated middle classes, peace activists maintained that Europe was a single culture despite national animosities; that Europe needed rational inter-state relationships to avoid catastrophe; and that internationalism was the logical outgrowth of the nation-state, not its subversion. In this book, Cooper explores the arguments of these "patriotic pacifists" with emphasis on the remarkable international peace movement that grew between 1889 and 1914. While the first World War revealed the limitations and dilemmas of patriotic pacifism, the shape, if not substance, of many twentieth-century international institutions was prefigured in nineteenth-century continental pacifism.

The clash between concepts of pacifism and perceptions of citizenship has long provoked fierce argument. Sparked by presentations from life-long pacifist Elise Boulding and political scientist Guenter Lewy, the debate in this volume is passionate and profound, ranging across such issues as the political role of pacifists and the character of American pacifism since World War II.

Veteran scholar and peace activist David Cortright offers a definitive history of the human striving for peace and an analysis of its religious and intellectual roots. This authoritative, balanced, and highly readable volume traces the rise of peace advocacy and internationalism from their origins in earlier centuries through the mass movements of recent decades: the pacifist campaigns of the 1930s, the Vietnam antiwar movement, and the waves of disarmament activism that peaked in the 1980s. Also explored are the underlying principles of peace - nonviolence, democracy, social justice, and human rights - all placed within a framework of 'realistic pacifism'. Peace brings the story up-to-date by examining opposition to the Iraq War and responses to the so-called 'war on terror'. This is history with a modern twist, set in the context of current debates about 'the responsibility to protect', nuclear proliferation, Darfur, and conflict transformation.

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. This book explores the pervasive influence of pacifism on Victorian feminism. It provides an account of Victorian women who campaigned for peace, and of the many feminists who incorporated pacifist ideas into their writing on women and gender. The book explores feminists' ideas about the role of women within the empire, their eligibility for citizenship, and their ability to act as moral guardians in public life. It shows that such ideas made use – in varying ways – of gendered understandings of the role of force and the relevance of arbitration and other pacifist strategies. The book examines the work of a wide range of individuals and organisations, from well-known feminists such as Lydia Becker, Josephine Butler and Millicent Garrett Fawcett to lesser-known figures such as the Quaker pacifists Ellen Robinson and Priscilla Peckover.