ABSTRACT
The birth and evolution of European and Anglo-American peace societies and movements is a theme that runs through the nineteenth century, but attention will also be paid to developments that occurred elsewhere in the world. Ideas and organizations devoted to nonviolence and peace unquestionably flourished during this period, and they both reflected the interdependence of nations and contributed to a fledgling sense of international community. Sandi Cooper, in her history of European pacifism, identifies three nineteenth-century periods of development. Peace movement scholars and historians sometimes go to considerable lengths to distinguish between nonviolence and pacifism. Religion has depressingly often been a cause of divisiveness, violence, and warfare. But it also contains fertile tendencies toward nonviolence and pacifism. It is easy to overlook or be unaware of some “peaceful facts” near at hand, such as that neither Sweden nor Switzerland has engaged in any war since the time of Napoleon, nor Iceland since 1256.
