They Called It Peace: Worlds of Imperial Violence by Lauren Benton. Princeton University Press, 2024, 304 pp.
War, major state-on-state conflict, litters the expanse of history. Lauren Benton’s They Called It Peace is not about those wars. Instead, she writes about what happens in between wars, showing that no matter how its defined, the absence of war is anything but peaceful. Benton, a Yale University professor of history and recipient of the Toynbee Prize for significant contributions to global history, focuses on what scholars and military historians call limited conflict, which are operations other than war, or more simply “small wars.” She dives into history to determine if small wars are necessary, why they are classified as such when they occur during peacetime, and why they and their effects are conceptually minimized. To frame her work, Benton defines small wars as conflicts small in scale, undeclared, and brief in duration. She notes that small wars come alone or in series and can even span vast areas, informing the reader that the very “smallness” of these wars should not be assumed.
Her work on small wars is not the first on the subject; however, she addresses it from an angle rarely taken. Unlike most historians who aim to draw insights for practitioners of war, her approach examines the history of violence between war and peace to understand small wars’ rationales and continuities through time. For lessons learned, she cautions, look elsewhere.
Examining small wars in the last five hundred years, Benton finds they were necessary, convenient, slippery in justification, and difficult to control. Seeing commonalities and continuities in behavior and logic, she divides her analysis across two periods of history. She identifies the first period as a World of Plunder in the age of empires.
Tracing patterns of violence from the fifteenth through the mid-eighteenth century, she finds plunder and massacre aplenty. Small wars in the World of Plunder stretched across regions and polities. She asserts they conformed to and shaped the laws that governed them. She posits that patterns grew from a common dialogue of violence between colonizer and indigenous populations, for violence—a language intelligible by all—became the medium of negotiation. Furthermore, in that medium a willing dialogue occurred to mutual advantage. She concludes that for the period of Plunder, various forms of limited violence became increasingly codified and legitimized to the world.
Moving to the mid-eighteenth through the twentieth century, she points to the growing appeal of small wars and their propensity to atrocity. She asserts that once legitimized, small wars became the tool for consolidating empires in a period she calls a World of Armed Peace. She claims small wars in this period became the beating heart of global order.
Assessing European discussions on the law of just war during the period, she points to an important shift in thinking that moved small wars beyond a medium for negotiation. Europeans envisioning global order came to see small wars as a means to stability. Their logic evolved thus: Use small wars to remove the cause of violence to safeguard the future from violence all together. She notes the irony of the logic and shows through historical accounts that more, not less violence, actually occurred. Such logic, she demonstrates, informed governance decisions and set legal precedents, enabling justification for preemptive self-defense and reprisals at the edge of empires. Following this shift, she argues small wars often escalated beyond control and caused human suffering akin to full-scale war. She concludes that slippery justifications for small wars in the hunt for security normalized atrocity and apathy toward such wars during the period of Armed Peace. This explains why small wars have spanned and challenged the thresholds between war and peace.
Throughout Benton’s work, four themes characteristic to small wars ring loud. First, there exists a lack in vocabulary with respect to the use of force between war and peace. Second, laws of war for small wars are vague, inadequate, and easy to skirt. Third, history shows that in spite of policymakers’ intentions, small wars tend to have big societal impacts. Fourth, and most importantly, continuities exist between small wars of the past and of today.
Benton’s sources are solid, comprehensive, and appropriate to the task. She defines her understanding about the nature and causes of war from recognized classical military scholars. She utilizes historically proximate personal letters, reports, government documents, and accounts to gain deep insight into the thinking and feelings of contemporaries of the time. She synthesizes scholar and historian works to examine the time, events, causes, outcomes, and interrelationships to effectively find commonalities and continuities over time. She wisely includes contemporary news and reports to link the past with today.
Her work contributes to the study of warfare and sends messages to four distinct audiences. For scholars, it advises that work remains on the causes and structures that enable small wars. For policymakers, it warns that small does not necessarily mean less and that small wars can fail as an alternative to full-scale war with respect to human suffering. For lawmakers, They Called It Peace calls for a reevaluation of the adequacy of current laws for armed conflict specific to conflict outside of declared war. Finally, for the public, it shouts a chilling reminder that humankind possesses a regrettably high tolerance for violence between war and peace.
Overall, Benton presents strong arguments about small wars that highlight the continuities of thought between the age of empires and today. Furthermore, her work adds contemporary relevance by connecting the dubious justifications of today’s small wars to those of the age of empires. The arguments, evidence, and themes covered by her work leads the reader to ask the critical question: Is it morally right to continue the small war practices of the past?
They Called it Peace is a worthy read for historians, social scientist, scholars, politicians, and practitioners of war alike. It leaves readers with a deeper appreciation for the genesis and costs of small warfare in the last half millennia.
Lieutenant Colonel Terry Nail, USAF