Disciplinary Views Of War: Peace History

This entry is a subentry of Disciplinary Views Of War.

Only recently have some historians begun to integrate peace research into scholarship as a legitimate alternative perspective on the past. Previously, to the extent that pacifists, peace advocates, and peace movements were even included in historical monographs and textbooks, they were usually treated negatively—denounced as misguided idealism or even traitorous.

Since the 1960s, however, the number of peace history scholars has grown significantly. The field itself—defined as the historical study of nonviolent efforts for peace and social justice—has become widely recognized, accepted as a subfield of the discipline of history, and as part of a larger multidisciplinary approach known as Peace Studies.

In 1995, the primary professional association, the Peace History Society (PHS; formerly the Conference on Peace Research in History) had nearly 300 members, mainly in the United States and Canada. Founded in 1964 after the Cuban Missile Crisis, the organization grew during the Vietnam War, and again during the international tensions of the late 1970s and early 1980s. An affiliate of the American Historical Association, recognized as a significant nongovernmental organization by the United Nations, the Peace History Society sponsors sessions at the annual conferences of leading historical associations. It also publishes a newsletter and a quarterly journal, Peace & Change: A Journal of Peace Research.

Peace historians generally see themselves as engaged scholars, involved in the study of peace and war, and in efforts to eliminate or at least restrict armaments, conscription, nuclear proliferation, colonialism, racism, sexism, and war. As a social reform movement, the work of peace historians presents alternatives to the policies they oppose.

Peace history can be classified into three categories. First, conflict management, which involves achieving peace through negotiation, mediation, arbitration, international law, and arms control and disarmament. Second, social reform, which involves changing political and economic structures and traditional ways of thinking. Third, a world order transformation, which incorporates world federation, better economic and environmental relationships, and a common feeling of security.

The discipline's basic focus has been historical analysis of peace and antiwar movements and individuals, international relations, and the causes of war and peace. Two pioneering works in the field were Merle Curti, Peace or War: The American Struggle, 1636–1936 (1936), and Arthur A. Ekirch, Jr., The Civilian and the Military: A History of the American Antimilitarist Tradition (1956).

In the 1960s, a new generation of peace historians, seeking to understand and legitimate past movements for peace and social justice, produced monographs about peace movements and biographies of pacifists and other social activists. Among the pathbreaking works were the 328‐volume reprint series, The Garland Library of War and Peace (1973–75), edited by Charles Chatfield, Blanche Wiesen Cook, and Sandi Cooper; Peter Brock's study of religious sectarian views, Pacifism in the United States: From the Colonial Era to the First World War (1968); Sondra R. Herman's study of peace advocates, Eleven Against War (1969); Charles Chatfield, For Peace and Justice: Pacifism in America, 1914–1941 (1971); Lawrence S. Wittner, Rebels Against War: The American Peace Movement, 1933–1983 (1969, 2nd ed. 1984); and the PHS‐sponsored reference work, Biographical Dictionary of Peace Leaders (1985), edited by Harold Josephson.

Numerous monographs surveyed the secular and religious peace movements in the United States in the decades between the 1880s and the 1960s. One of the most prolific authors was Charles DeBenedetti. Before his early death, DeBenedetti edited a work about Peace Heroes in Twentieth‐Century America (1986); wrote a synthesis and textbook, The Peace Reform in American History (1980); and started a study of the Vietnam antiwar movement, An American Ordeal (1990), (completed by Charles Chatfield). A memorial conference to DeBenedetti resulted in Melvin Small and William D. Hoover, eds., Give Peace a Chance: Exploring the Vietnam Antiwar Movement (1992).

New subspecialties have appeared in the 1990s, including studies of women and peace, such as Harriet Hyman Alonso, Peace as a Women's Issue (1993); and studies of conscientious objection, such as Charles C. Moskos and John Whiteclay Chambers II, The New Conscientious Objection (1993).

The new frontiers in the field today also include transnational studies such as Lawrence S. Wittner's trilogy, The Struggle Against the Bomb: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement Through 1953, 3 vols. (1993– ); the relationship between political culture and peace movements, as in Charles Chatfield and Peter van den Dungen, eds., Peace Movements and Political Cultures (1988); and the linking of peace movements with social movement theory, as in Charles Chatfield with Robert Kleidman, American Peace Movement (1992).

A recent debate, initiated in the January 1995 issue of Peace & Change, involves the degree of influence peace history has had on foreign policy or attitudes toward international relations, and whether peace history should seek greater acceptance and influence within mainstream American history or emphasize a separate, activist ethos.

[See also: Pacifism.]

Bibliography

• Blanche Wiesen Cook, ed., Bibliography on Peace Research in History, 1969.
• John Whiteclay Chambers II, ed., The Eagle and the Dove: The American Peace Movement and United States Foreign Policy, 1900–1922, 1976; 2nd ed. 1991.
• Berenice Carroll, Jane E. Mohraz, and Clinton Fink, eds, Peace and War: Guide to Bibliographies, 1982.
• Merle Curti, Reflections on the Genesis and Growth of Peace History, Peace & Change (Spring 1985).
• Charles F. Howlett, The American Peace Movement: History and Historiography, 1985.
• Charles F. Howlett, The American Peace Movement: References and Resources, 1991.
• Charles Chatfield, ed., Peacemaking in American History, OAH Magazine of History (Spring 1994).
• Frances Early, A World Without War: How U.S. Feminists and Pacifists Resisted World War I, 1997