Europe's Utopias of Peace

Europe's Utopias of Peace explores attempts to create a lasting European peace in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars and the two world wars, each of which exceeded the previous in terms of the level of violence and scale of destruction. The book charts the 250 year cycle of violent European conflicts followed by new utopian formulations for peace. The utopian illusion was that future was predictable and rules could prescribe behaviour in conflicts to come. Bo Strath examines the reiterative bicentenary cycle since 1815 of postwar of never again-prewar-war where each new postwar built on a design of a project for European unification. The narrative sets out the key historical events and the continuous struggle with nationalism, and links them to legal, political and economic thought. Biographical sketches of the most prominent thinkers and actors provide the human element to this survey of the search for a European political economy promoting peace and welfare. Europe's Utopias of Peace presents a new perspective on the ideological, legal, economic and intellectual conditions that shaped Europe since the 19th century and presents this in a global context. It challenges the conventional narrative on Europe's past as a progressive enlightenment heritage and highlights the ambiguities of the legacies that pervade the institutional structures of the contemporary Europe, and the mentalities to govern it: warfare in tandem with welfare and property with poverty. The long term historical perspective it offers will be invaluable for any student of contemporary Europe or modern European history.