The origins of war prevention
Subtitle: the British peace movement and international relations, 1730-1854
By: Martin Ceadel.
Publisher: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Oxford; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 587
Subjects: Peace movements -- Great Britain -- History.; International relations -- History.
Description: This book makes an original contribution to international relations and British politics. It identifies for the first time the dominant pre-modern theory of international relations, which fatalistically assumed that war was beyond human control. It then shows how this theory was undermined from the 1730s onwards, with the consequence that a debate began about how best to prevent war, in which a vocal minority argued that war as an institution for settling disputes could be abolished.

Britain led the way in this repudiation of fatalism and exploration of pacific alternatives: it produced the world's first peace movement (which appeared in the mid-1790s as a response to the French wars) and the first enduring national peace association (the Peace Society, founded in 1816 and active for nearly a century); and it was the first country to allow peace thinking (for example, as expounded by Richard Cobden) to enter its political mainstream.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [541]-561) and index.