The Quaker Peace Testimony and its Contribution to the British Peace Movement: An Overview

This article attempts the first overview of the contribution of Quakerism to the British peace movement from its eighteenth-century origins to the present day. It emphasizes that the Society of Friends did much to make pacifism acceptable in Britain, and was the principal backer of the peace movement in the century following the end of the Napoleonic Wars. It shows how Quakers, although divided by the First World War and eclipsed by an upsurge in non-Quaker activism, reaffirmed their pacifism and did as much for the peace movement during the inter-war years as any small religious body could have done. And it argues that, as the peace movement lost momentum after the Second World War, Quakers played an increasingly important role despite an increasing diversity in their interpretation of their peace testimony

The London Peace Society and absolutist–reformist relations within the peace movement, 1816–1939

This article revisits the author's pioneering archival work on the world's leading peace association of the nineteenth century, the London Peace Society (LPS), to focus on its distinctive strategy for dealing with the fact that from the outset, the peace movement had two distinct wings, absolutist (the small core of pacifists) and reformist (the rather larger penumbra of pacificists). Unlike other early such associations, which adopted different membership strategies, the LPS catered to both wings but in a two‐tier hierarchy: Its top tier, the national committee that determined its policy, was strictly pacifist and rejected even defensive war, but no such stringency of belief was required of the bottom tier of ordinary members, which therefore contained many pacificists. Top‐tier pacifism served the LPS well for half a century, in particular enabling it to outperform its American counterpart, but for the next half‐century caused it to fall between two stools by disappointing absolutists as well as reformists. It was tacitly abandoned as the LPS plunged into steep decline on passing its centenary and was repudiated on the eve of the Second World War

‘Foreshadows and repercussions’: histories of air war and the recasting of cities and citizens

In the preface to the 1941 edition to his 1908 novel, The War in the Air, H. G. Wells wrote: ‘I told you so. You damned fools’. The books discussed here illustrate how, in the few intervening decades, air war moved from a fearful vision into reality, and detail the varied experiences and consequences of the aerial bombardment of cities and civilians. The histories of air power and the aerial bombardment of cities have centred on the Second World War, moving from the humanising endurance of Londoners during the Blitz to the entirely dehumanised horror of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The texts reviewed here extend the histories of air war and highlight the city and the home as a target for bombing while remaining the place where people carried on their daily lives

Pacifism in Fin-de-Siècle Austria: The Politics and Limits of Peace Activism

The late Habsburg Monarchy produced two of the most renowned peace activists of their day: Bertha von Suttner and Alfred Fried. In comparison to these two Nobel Peace laureates, the main association of Austro-pacifism – the Österreichische Friedensgesellschaft (ÖFG) – is less well known. The article concentrates on this organization, which had been founded in 1891, and it draws attention to the political and intellectual environment in which it operated. The ÖFG originated in the milieu of Austro-German liberalism, but had an ambivalent rapport with liberal politics. The Austro-pacifists' focus on supranational principles and dynastic loyalty sat uneasily with the national dimensions of Cisleithanian politics. The obstacles encountered by the ÖFG illustrate wider aspects of the political culture of fin-de-siècle Austria, ranging from the question of militarism in Austrian society to the challenges created by socialist and nationalist movements. As a whole, the article highlights the inherent limitations of Austro-pacifism, as reflected in its quest for respectability and its acceptance of the social and political order

Planning permanent air raid precautions: architecture, air war and the changing perceptions of British cities in the late 1930s

This article considers how the imagination and expectation of future air raids impacted upon the perception of the built environment, and asks how the boundaries between peace and war, and thus military and civilian, began to be dissolved in this context. It examines the interactions between architects, planners and government officials about how the design of cities and buildings might change in an age of air power. By looking at changes and continuities either side of the 1938 Munich crisis, it examines how the civilian space of cities was recast in anticipation of war

A broken silence? Mass Observation, Armistice Day and ‘everyday life’ in Britain 1937–1941

Between 1937 and 1941 the social survey organization Mass Observation collected material on the ways that the British people experienced and thought about the commemorative practices that marked the anniversary of the Armistice of 1918. What they found was that while people were largely united in their observation of the rituals of remembrance, their thoughts and feelings about these practices were diverse. For some, the acts of commemoration were a fitting way to pay tribute to both the dead and the bereaved. For others, these acts were hypocritical in a nation preparing for war. This article draws on the Mass Observation material to trace some of the diverse ways that remembrance was embodied in everyday life, practised, experienced and understood by the British people as the nation moved once again from peace to war, arguing that studies of the practices of remembrance alone tell us little about how they have been understood by participants

Waging peace: militarising pacifism in Central Africa and the problem of geography, 1962

Despite the discipline having undergone a ‘peace turn’ in recent years, the history of the peace movement itself remains curiously under explored by geographers. This paper retraces the World Peace Brigade and its collaboration with the Northern Rhodesian independence movement in 1962. I argue that the Brigade offers geographers important insights into how ideas of peace have been circulated, adapted and even resisted. The paper suggests that geography poses a distinct conceptual problem for peace movements, which must simultaneously operate beyond conventional forms of territorial politics while remaining sufficiently flexible in the political arena for their strength and relevance. In Central Africa this meant the Brigade developed two, ultimately incompatible, conceptions of peace: an internationalist one that stressed world community, and a local one that adapted pacifism for nationalist movements. I suggest this case study has two implications for peace research in geography. First, it encourages us to remain attentive to the big stories of peace and, specifically, the way in which the peace movement has been a historically important conduit for a range of internationalist ideas. Second, the histories of waging peace (peace armies, civil disobedience, etc.) allow us to critically interrogate the co-constitutive geographies of violence and nonviolence while retaining peace as a distinct category around which to promote political engagement

Understanding non-governmental organizations in world politics: the promise and pitfalls of the early ‘science of internationalism’

The years immediately preceding the First World War witnessed the development of a significant body of literature claiming to establish a ‘science of internationalism’. This article draws attention to the importance of this literature, especially in relation to understanding the roles of non-governmental organizations in world politics. It elaborates the ways in which this literature sheds light on issues that have become central to twenty-first century debates, including the characteristics, influence, and legitimacy of non-governmental organizations in international relations. Amongst the principal authors discussed in the article are Paul Otlet, Henri La Fontaine and Alfred Fried, whose role in the development of international theory has previously received insufficient attention. The article concludes with evaluation of potential lessons to be drawn from the experience of the early twentieth century ‘science of internationalism’