Conquering Peace: From the Enlightenment to the European Union

Stella Ghervas' book "Conquering Peace" explores the idea of a unified Europe in attempts to engineer lasting peace since the eighteenth century. She argues that European thinkers and leaders have fostered the idea of European unification to prevent future wars, using the work of philosophers and statesmen such as Abbé de Saint-Pierre, Rousseau, Kant, Tsar Alexander I, Woodrow Wilson, Winston Churchill, Robert Schuman, and Mikhail Gorbachev. The book illustrates how peace as a value shaped the idea of a unified Europe long before the EU came into being, and how the EU emerges as a step in the quest for a less violent world.

\n Format: Hardback
\n Length: 528 pages
\n Publication date: 26 March 2021
\n Publisher: Harvard University Press
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A fresh perspective on war and diplomacy in Europe is presented in this text, which explores the concept of a unified continent in efforts to achieve long-lasting peace since the eighteenth century.

Political peace in Europe has historically been elusive and transient. Stella Ghervas demonstrates that since the eighteenth century, European thinkers and leaders have pursued the idea of European unification in their quest for lasting peace.

This text spans intellectual and political history, drawing on the works of philosophers such as Abbé de Saint-Pierre, who penned an early eighteenth-century plan for perpetual peace, as well as figures like Rousseau and Kant, as well as statesmen such as Tsar Alexander I, Woodrow Wilson, Winston Churchill, Robert Schuman, and Mikhail Gorbachev. Ghervas identifies five significant conflicts since 1700 that have inspired visionaries to advocate for peace systems in Europe: the War of the Spanish Succession, the Napoleonic Wars, World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. Each of these moments generated a "spirit" of peace among monarchs, diplomats, democratic leaders, and ordinary citizens. The engineers of peace gradually constructed mechanisms and institutions aimed at preventing future wars.

Arguing for continuities from the ideals of the Enlightenment to the institutions of the European Union and beyond, Conquering Peace illustrates how peace as a value shaped the idea of a unified Europe long before the EU's inception. The EU is often criticized for hindering sovereignty and for its democratic deficits. However, when viewed in the long-term context of peacemaking history, this European society of states emerges as something else entirely: a step toward a less violent world.

\n Weight: 958g\n
Dimension: 167 x 243 x 53 (mm)\n
ISBN-13: 9780674975262\n \n