Review
"A New Yorker Best Book We've Read This Year"
"Shortlisted for the Cundill History Prize, McGill University"
"Finalist for the PROSE Award in World History, Association of American Publishers"
"a radical and important book."---Christopher Kissane, Irish Times
"A nimble and provocative history."---Michael Ledger-Lomas, Jacobin
"Benton...uses harrowing case studies from around the world, and contextualizes events within the work of contemporary intellectuals." ― New Yorker
"The book offers a strikingly original account not only of the significance of the proliferation of small wars across the globe; but of how what came to be called 'international law' was deployed by European powers . . . a remarkable achievement."---Anthony Pagden, Journal of Early Modern History
"A thoughtful short history of imperial violence. . . . Recommended." ― Choice Reviews
"The book spans centuries of history, delving into accounts of imperialist violence from Asia to South America, often focusing on lesser-known victims of imperialist violence."---Sophie Squire, Socialist Worker
"Highly original."---David Lorimer, Paradigm Explorer
"No one has been more articulate than Benton in showing how ‘the regime of armed peace mapped clear pathways from lawful interventions with modest objectives to brutal campaigns of dispossession and extermination. . . a move from treating individuals as criminals to defining whole communities as natural enemies.’"---Ron Slate, On the Seawall
"An encouraging turning point in the revision of the whole history of European imperialism . . . ground-breaking."---Leonardo Clausi, The Political Quarterly
"A wonderful survey of the interplay of legal ideas and violence in European empires from the early modern era to the present."---William Smiley, Legal History JOTWELL
Review
“With characteristic lucidity, subtlety, and grace, Lauren Benton highlights how the boundary between private violence and public war was perpetually blurred and renegotiated across the imperial world. They Called It Peace demonstrates that small wars have had outsized consequences for world order both in the past and enduringly into the present.”—David Armitage, author of Civil Wars: A History in Ideas
“Elegantly and grippingly written, They Called It Peace works brilliantly with its complex material, bringing out the great range of forms of imperial violence that have proliferated in the space between all-out war and all-out peace and using them to power deeply original historical arguments. Lauren Benton connects contemporary political theory and its categories with raids and treaty making in a way that is unusual, always illuminating and never forced. The topicality of this rigorous and exciting book is obvious: as Benton shows, we live in a world shaped by the legacy of ‘small wars’ and by their persistence in the present.”—Christopher Clark, author of The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914
“Our greatest historian of empire and law is at the height of her powers in this breathtaking reinterpretation of ‘small wars’ that did—and do—massive damage. Lauren Benton reads canonical writers against the backdrop of patterned and routine force across centuries and hears those often omitted from self-congratulatory stories of how the violent weaned themselves from their violence. The results decisively rebuke those exaggerating breakthroughs for humanity or peace in a world of contestation and domination—past and present.”—Samuel Moyn, author of Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War
“An important global reinterpretation of the relationship between violence, empire, and law.”—Heidi J. S. Tworek, author of News from Germany: The Competition to Control World Communications, 1900–1945
About the Author
Lauren Benton is the Barton M. Biggs Professor of History at Yale University and recipient of the Toynbee Prize for significant contributions to global history. Her books include A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400–1900 and (with Lisa Ford) Rage for Order: The British Empire and the Origins of International Law, 1800–1850.
