EBOOK Patriotic Pacifism:Waging War on War in Europe, 1815-1914

Despite the liberalized reconfiguration of civil society and political practice in        nineteenth-century Europe, the right to make foreign policy, devise alliances, wage        war and negotiate peace remained essentially an executive prerogative. Citizen        challenges to the exercise of this power grew slowly. Drawn from the educated middle        classes, peace activists maintained that Europe was a single culture despite        national animosities; that Europe needed rational inter-state relationships to avoid        catastrophe; and that internationalism was the logical outgrowth of the        nation-state, not its subversion. In this book, Cooper explores the arguments of        these "e;patriotic pacifists"e; with emphasis on the remarkable international peace        movement that grew between 1889 and 1914. While the first World War revealed the        limitations and dilemmas of patriotic pacifism, the shape, if not substance, of many        twentieth-century international institutions was prefigured in nineteenth-century        continental pacifism.