War and Peace in the Western Political Imagination

Roger Manning says that the politico-military practices within ancient Greece and, to a lesser extent, Rome, informed subsequent western attitudes towards war and its myriad consequences. The distinctiveness of Dr Manning’s approach to this well-known subject is his emphasis on peace rather than war and his main thrust concerns how the notion of peace was hampered and retarded by societies organised principally for the exercise of armed aggression. The conclusions support Michael Howard’s idea that the ‘invention of peace’ was a nineteenth-century phenomenon. Long periods without conflict were usually impossible to achieve because ancient, medieval and early modern societies glamourised and encouraged martial solutions. War became institutionalised and economically profitable both for the individual, who sought ransom and booty, and the state, which looked to capture territory, population and industrial resources. Gradually, the development of the rule of law reduced inter-personal violence but, throughout and beyond the period in question, inter-state war was economically profitable and desirable, provided that the seat of fighting was exported to foreign territories and victory resulted. For the successful, the corollary was empire

Ancient history · Economic history · Empire · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Population · Ransom · Sociology · State (computer science · Victory · Demography · Global Peace and Security Dynamics · History · Law · Violence, Religion, and Philosophy · War, Ethics, and Justification