Waging War and Making Peace

Matthew D'Auria, Rolf Petri, Jan Vermeiren (eds): Waging War and Making Peace. European Ways of Inciting and Containing Armed Conflict, 1710–1960, Berlin, De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2025, ISBN 9783110763911, pp. 410.

Why was the idea of Europe seen as a reason for negotiating new peace orders? And why was Europe no less frequently invoked as a compelling reason to start another war? War has been a constant feature of Europe’s history, shaping a shared European space. However, efforts to reduce the destructiveness of war, leading to the development of Jus ad bellum and international law, have also been key to defining Europe. The authors dissect the semantics of ‘Europe’ shaped within discourses on war and peace from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. They tackle several aspects relating to such issues, including imagined wars, the post-1815 security order, ‘otherized’ Russians and Muslims, the European double standards of international law, pacifist discourses, and ‘Europe’ in war propaganda and in the resistance movements during the Second World War.

Authors: Matthew D’Auria, Beatrice de Graaf, Florian Greiner, Arthur Guezengar, Mark Hewitson, Giulia Iannuzzi, Marijana Kardum, Sam Kuijken, Silvia Madotto, Michele Mioni, Gavin Murray-Miller, Rolf Petri, Marek Stanisz, Ulrich Tiedau, Jan Vermeiren, Michael Wintle.