Merle Curti and the Significance of Peace Research in American History

Abstract

This article investigates Curti's long and distinguished professional interest in peace history. Relying on Lawrence Wittner's research note, “Merle Curti and the Development of Peace History,” which appeared in the January 1998 issue of Peace & Change, the author expands the discussion with extensive use of Curti's unpublished correspondence. The author critically analyzes Curti's publications in the field in the 1930s, his support for World War II, and his encouragement to younger scholars to continue researching and publishing in peace history as a means of advancing human civilization.

Peace History: An Introduction

“…The horrors of the Great War, together with the promising new experiments in international organization that it had occasioned, help to account for this new interest. Initially, largely independent of each other, scholars such as A. C. F. Beales (1931) in England, Merle Curti (1929Curti ( , 1936Curti ( , 1985 see also Howlett, 2000 andWittner, 1998) in the United States, Christian Lange (1919) in Norway, Jacob ter Meulen (1917Meulen ( , 1929Meulen ( , 1940; see also van den Dungen, 1995van den Dungen, , 1996 and Bart de Ligt (1931, 1933, 1934 in The Netherlands and Walther Schücking (1909) and Viktor Engelhardt (1930) in Germany documented and analysed ideas and movements concerning world peace, frequently on a historically very broad canvas. Together, they produced a body of literature and established an informal network that can be regarded as the first phase in the emergence and establishment of peace history.…”