Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on the concepts of civil disobedience and nonviolence in Henry David Thoreau, Mohandas K. Gandhi and Abdul Ghaffar Khan's writings and ideas contextualizing them in terms of abolitionism in the United States and the independence movements in Asia. It investigates the European matrices of peace and nonviolence, which will be described through an analysis of the ideas of Simone Weil on the problem of war, Aldo Capitini on religious nonviolence, Danilo Dolci on the reverse strike and Norberto Bobbio on institutional pacifism. The book discusses the heterogeneous development of the approaches to research in this field and on the origins of the first academic institutions oriented to the study of peace. It analyses the leading contemporary authors on peace and nonviolence: Johan Galtung, a European sociologist; and Gene Sharp, an American philosopher.