The British Peace Movement 1870 1914

This is the first detailed scholarly study of the late Victorian and Edwardian peace movement, the campaigns of which made a significant impact on political debate, especially during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1), the Bulgarian Atrocities campaign (1876-8), Britain's conflict in Egypt (1882), the South African War (1899-1902), and the intensifying international crisis before 1914. The movement's activists included Richard Cobden, Herbert Spencer, Keir Hardie, J. A. Hobson, and Norman Angell. Among the first to benefit from the opening of the Peace Society Archive, the book focuses on the specialized associations at the heart of the peace movement. Paul Laity identifies the existence of different programmes for the achievement of a just, permanent peace, and offers a new interpretation of the reaction of peace campaigners to war in 1914. At the same time, his book makes an important and original contribution to the history of popular politics and political ideas in Britain.

This book has two aims: to tell for the first time the story of the most significant pacifist movement of modern times - that of Britain in the era of the two World Wars - and, in doing so, to develop a means of analysis that can be applied to pacifist movements in other countries and at other times. Its theme is that, whereas the First World War encouraged British pacifists to believe that their rejection of all war was justified in political terms, the approach of the Second forced them increasingly to realise that it was an absolutist faith which did not stand or fall by its practical consequences.

Fredsbevægelse; Fredskampagne; 1. Verdenskrig 1914-1918.

An innovative study of the pre-history of the League of Nations, tracing the pro-League movement's unexpected development.

Militarism has traditionally been regarded as a phenomenon of the political right. As this book demonstrates, however, various groups on the political left in Britain during the years before the Great War were able to accommodate, and even assimilate, militaristic ideas, sentiments, and policies to a remarkable degree.

The First World War was an epic event of huge proportions that lasted over four years and involved the armies of more than twenty nations, resulting in 30 million casualties, including more than 8 million killed. Set against the backdrop of this massive carnage, The Search for Negotiated Peace is the gripping story of the events that moved high profile American and European citizens, particularly women, into the international peace movement. This small, transatlantic network put forth proposals for changing the international system of negotiation. They supported non-annexationist war aims and attempted to discredit nations’ secret diplomacy, militarism and narrowly nationalistic practices. Instead, they wanted to develop a ‘new diplomacy.’ David Patterson skillfully develops the interactions of many of the notable leaders of the movement, including Jane Addams, Aletta Jacobs, and Rosika Schwimmer, into an absorbing narrative that brings together the various strands of women's history, international diplomatic history, and peace history for the first time. The Search for Negotiated Peace is an essential read for anyone interested in the social history of World War I and the foundations of citizen activism today.

G.R. Searle's narrative history breaks conventional chronological barriers to carry the reader from England in 1886, the apogee of the Victorian era with the nation poised to celebrate the empress queen's golden jubilee, to 1918, as the 'war to end all wars' drew to a close.