'Small' violence at the threshold of war and peace, with Lauren Benton

Visualising War and Peace

In this episode, Alice interviews Lauren Benton, Professor of History and Law at Yale University. Prof Benton specialises in global legal history and the history of European empires. She has a raft of publications to her name, on the intersection between the British empire and the origins of international law, on piracy and protectionism, and on slavery and colonisation, among other topics.

Her work in this space has involved researching many forms of violence that fall short of full-blown war, and this has culminated in her most recent book, published in 2024 by Princeton University Press, titled They Called it Peace: Worlds of Imperial Violence. Covering 500 years of history, from 1400-1900, it shines a spotlight on the many forms of violence (from raiding and enslaving to small wars and sudden massacres, all hallmarks of European imperialism) that regularly took place during times of so-called peace – calling into question how we categorise and define both peace and war.

In the podcast we dig into the book's findings, as Lauren outlines her interest in writing a different kind of global history which incorporates different cultures and perspectives and which looks beyond 'great battles' and the classic war stories we are all used to reading.

She helps us grapple with the whole spectrum of what she calls 'violence at the threshold of war and peace', noting that so-called 'small' wars have never had small impacts on the people involved. We discuss truces and their potential to drive, not just end, conflict; and Lauren outlines the violence inherent in many peace-keeping responses and 'protection emergencies', which securitise, other and control people, especially in the context of imperial power.

Lauren draws attention to the role that domestic households have long played in the 'constant drumbeat' of recurring violence that accompanies imperialism, and also to the intersection of 'regimes of armed peace' and racism. We discuss ancient and modern examples, reflecting on how blurred the boundary between war and peace often is. And we discuss what is at stake in exactly how we categorise and name different forms of violence, as e.g. full-blown war, insurgency, a 'special operation', or peacekeeping.

Lauren underlines the extent to which we continue to anticipate and accept ‘small wars’ as ‘a structural, even expected, condition of interpolity relations’; and she notes the tragic irony of our assumption that it is only by conducting this kind of supposedly ‘protective’ violence that we might achieve future peace.

We hope you enjoy this fascinating conversation about recurring patterns of conflict that history often overlooks. For a version of our podcast with close captions, please use this link. For more information about individuals and their projects, please visit the University of St Andrews' Visualising War website and the Visualising Peace Project.
Music composed by Jonathan Young
Sound mixing by Zofia Guertin

Chapters

1. 'Small' violence at the threshold of war and peace, with Lauren Benton (00:00:00)

2. marker 1 (00:37:23)