Description
Book SynopsisSpecter of Peace advances a novel historical conceptualization of peace as a process of “right ordering” that involved the careful regulation of violence, the legitimation of colonial authority, and the creation of racial and gendered hierarchies. The volume highlights the many paths of peacemaking that otherwise have hitherto gone unexplored in early American and Atlantic World scholarship and challenges historians to take peace as seriously as violence. Early American peacemaking was a productive discourse of moral ordering fundamentally concerned with regulating violence. The historicization of peace, the authors argue, can sharpen our understanding of violence, empire, and the early modern struggle for order and harmony in the colonial Americas and Atlantic World. Contributors are: Micah Alpaugh, Brendan Gillis, Mark Meuwese, Margot Minardi, Geoffrey Plank, Dylan Ruediger, Cristina Soriano and Wayne E. Lee.
Trade Review"These essays illustrate how different perceptions of peace and violence develop from socially constructed understandings of these concepts that, in turn, have often led to misunderstandings rooted in cultural difference. While studies of these misunderstandings, specifically, have previously received little scholarly attention of the colonial Atlantic, this compilation illuminates the importance and need for these studies. The traditional focus on violence has masked the presence and power of peace. The authors in this volume address this deficit and illustrate the central role peace and peacemaking played in affecting imperial and colonial relations in the American Atlantic from the Age of Exploration and Conquest through the Age of Revolutions." Shayna Mehas, Elon University, in World History Connected 17.1 https://worldhistoryconnected.press.uillinois.edu/17.1/br_mehas.html
Table of ContentsForeword Wayne E. Lee Acknowledgments Notes on Contributors Introduction: The Relevance of Peace in Early American History Michael Goode 1 Imperial Peace and Restraints in the Dutch-Iberian Wars for Brazil, 1624–1654 Mark Meuwese 2 “In Peace with all, or at least in Warre with None”: Tributary Subjects and the Negotiation of Political Subordination in Greater Virginia, 1676–1730 Dylan Ruediger 3 Violent Restraint: Keeping Peace in British America and India Brendan Gillis 4 Peace, Imperial War, and Revolution in the Eighteenth-century Atlantic World Geoffrey Plank 5 Nonviolence, Positive Peace, and American Pre-revolutionary Protest, 1765–1775 Micah Alpaugh 6 “Avoiding the Fate of Haiti”: Negotiating Peace in Late-Colonial Venezuela Cristina Soriano 7 The Lessons of Loo Choo: The Historical Vision of American Peace Reformers, 1815–1837 Margot Minardi Afterword: Peace and the End(s) of American History John Smolenski Index
