A History Of Peace: One Million bce - 2108 ce

Compiled by Bart Brodsky

One Million Years bce: Are We Bonobos or Chimps?

Chimpanzees and their close cousins, the bonobos (pygmy chimpanzees), diverge into separate ecological niches, distinct gene pools. While chimpanzees use aggression to solve social conflicts, bonobos emphasize peace and love, much like the hippies of the 1960s. Why do the bonobos choose peace? Perhaps it is their matriarchal culture, or the relative availability of food, or their liberal use of sex to dispel aggression. Since both chimps and bonobos share over 98% of their DNA with human beings and are our closest living relatives, studying their behavior may provide clues to our own.

2000 bce: Dove of Peace First Appears

The dove, a universal symbol of peace and salvation, figures prominently in the Old Testament story of Noah's Ark. When Noah releases a dove and it returns with an olive leaf, he knows that floodwaters are receding and that his long journey is almost at an end.

599 bce: Jains Advocate Nonviolence

Compassion for all living things is central to the East Indian philosophy of Jainism. Jains practice inactivity and absolute nonviolence (ahimsa), and many are strict vegetarians. Some Jain monks and nuns wear face masks to avoid accidentally inhaling small organisms. The killing of any person, even the worst criminal, is unimaginably abhorrent.

27 bce – 180 ce: Pax Romana

Pax Romana (Latin for "Roman Peace") is the Roman Empire's long period of relative peace and minimal military expansion during the first and second centuries CE. The interior of the Empire remains largely unsullied by warfare but is not without conflict, as emperors frequently have to quell rebellions. Since the relative peace and affluence of the citizens of Rome come in part at the expense of their colonies, the question remains: What price empire?

30 ce (ad): Sermon on the Mount

Christian pacifists draw on Jesus' Sermon on the Mount as evidence of his philosophy of pacifism. The Sermon also contains the Lord's Prayer and the injunctions to "resist not evil" and "turn the other cheek," as well as Jesus' version of the Golden Rule. Jesus lives these words, surrendering himself to be crucified, and forbidding his followers from defending him.

600 ce: May Peace Be Upon You

Muhammad teaches his followers to offer each other the greeting, "May peace be upon you" (In Arabic, As-salaamu Alaikum), and it is soon used by Muslims throughout the world. Jews offer each other a remarkably similar greeting, Shalom Aleichem, "Peace be with you." So why the blood feud? Mideast Jewish and Arab tribes diverged just a few thousand years prior—barely the blink of God's eye—so their DNA is almost identical. And doesn't God admonish "Peace"?

1500 ce (ad): Christian Peace Churches Arise

Socially active Christian churches, including the Brethren, Mennonites, Amish, Hutterites, and Quakers, explicitly advocate pacifism. Pacifist churches vary on whether physical force can ever be justified for protection or self-defense. But all agree that violence on behalf of a country or a government is prohibited, helping establish the tradition of the "conscientious objector."

1795: Emmanuel Kant's Philosophy of Peace

Emmanuel Kant becomes the first modern thinker to articulate a working philosophy of peace with the publication of "Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch." Kant's essay includes practical specifics such as "No Secret Treaty of Peace Shall Be Held Valid in Which There Is Tacitly Reserved Matter for a Future War," and "National Debts Shall Not Be Contracted with a View to the External Friction of States." It's fairly safe to assume that George W. Bush never read Kant.

1865: Students Organize Peace Studies

Following the U.S. Civil War, students pursue peace studies in campus clubs at U.S. colleges. A similar movement appears in Sweden by the late 19th century. These are student-originated discussion groups, however, not sponsored by colleges themselves, anticipating the student-led "free speech movement" of the 1960s. Formal academic programs in peace studies do not begin until 1948, and then only at select colleges.

1918: World War I Ends

World War I (1914-1918) destroys the lives of 40 million Europeans and Americans and is dubbed "The War to End All Wars." At its conclusion, the fond hope of war-weary survivors is that war would henceforth be unthinkable. Few of us today understand how the petty quarrels of Balkan royalty could precipitate such mass devastation. Or how an unthinkable war could happen again just 20 years later.

September 30, 1938: "Peace in our time."

The hopeful phrase attributed to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain will soon be remembered in irony, as a testament to the folly of appeasement. Chamberlain's Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler is supposed to guarantee peace by providing Germany with Lebensraum or "living space," but Hitler's occupation of Sudetenland begins the very next day, and World War II soon follows.

1945 – 2008(?): Pax Americana

Recalling Pax Romana of the Roman Empire, Pax Americana ("American Peace") is the period of relative peace following World War II coinciding with the military and economic dominance of the United States. Although a third World War is avoided, however, the U.S. and its allies are involved in territorial conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, South America, the Baltic, Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere around the world.

Pax Americana is praised by supporters of U.S. foreign policy but damned by its critics. The neoconservative think tank, Project for the New American Century, uses the term to justify U.S. militarism in a September 2000 document, "Rebuilding America's Defenses." But the term is also used to describe how the U.S. bullies client states and exercises reckless aggression. Case in point, Iraq, with one million civilians dead and four million homeless.

In 2008 Newsweek commentator Fareed Zakaria declares that the crippling costs of maintaining a global police force, combined with the economic rise of China and India, signal the end of Pax Americana. What next for the bankrupt superpower?

January 2, 1947: Gandhi's Peace March Begins

Mahatma Gandhi begins his famous march for peace in East-Bengali to protest British rule. Gandhi ultimately inspires millions to the cause of peace and social justice, including Martin Luther King, Robert F. Kennedy, and John Lennon. Tragically, like Gandhi, these soldiers for peace in turn become the targets of assassination.

1948: Academic Peace Studies Commence

As the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union commences, the first credentialed Peace Studies program in America is established at Indiana's Manchester College. Ultimately, over 250 colleges and universities in North America will offer Peace Studies programs, many conferring graduate or undergrad degrees. Critics condemn such programs as "incoherent, incapable of being a serious topic of study, and loaded with political bias." Do the critics mean to imply that war is "unbiased"? Isn't organized killing extreme bias? Better to ask: Under what circumstances is violence justifiable? What price human life? How can conflicts be resolved peacefully?

1955: Folk Singer Pete Seeger Blacklisted

Pete Seeger, peace activist and folk singer ("Where Have All The Flowers Gone," "We Shall Overcome") is called before the House Un-American Activities Committee and questioned about his political associations. Citing his right to free speech under the First Amendment, Seeger refuses to name names and is sentenced to a year in jail. He only serves four days but is blacklisted and kept off radio and television in the U.S. for the next seventeen years. Despite this, Seeger's popularity grows throughout the 60s, due in large part to his rousing anti-war anthems, favorites of Vietnam War era peaceniks.

1958: Peace Symbol's First Public Appearance

International icon of the 60s anti-war movement and a perennial counterculture favorite, the peace symbol makes its first public appearance. Artist Gerald Holtom designs the peace sign for Great Britain's Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War in anticipation of their planned April 4 demonstration. Good show, Brits!

October 6, 1963 Haile Selassie Addresses the U.N.

Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie eloquently invokes the highest ideals of the United Nations in support of an Africa free of colonial rule. "The preservation of peace and the guaranteeing of man's basic freedoms and rights require courage and eternal vigilance.... This Organization and each of its members bear a crushing and awesome responsibility: to absorb the wisdom of history and to apply it to the problems of the present, in order that future generations may be born, and live, and die, in peace."

August 15 – 18, 1969 Woodstock!

More than 450,000 youthful participants congregate at Yasger's Farm in rural New York for one glorious weekend of peace, love, and good vibrations, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. Thirty-two of the best-known rock and folk musicians attract seemingly endless throngs, and the gates are thrown open to all. Billed as "Three Days of Peace and Music," the promoters emphasize "peace" to discourage violence—and attendees joyfully oblige! Admittedly, Woodstock is "a state of mind," and no attempt to recreate the festival will ever quite capture the magic of that moment. While cynics point to Woodstock as the height of boomer naiveté, Rolling Stone magazine regards it as one of the greatest events in music history, and some visionaries even declare it to be the dawn of a New Age.

October 15, 1969: Two Million People Demand Peace

The Peace Moratorium in protest of the Vietnam War is the largest demonstration in U.S. history to date, with an estimated two million people involved. In towns and cities throughout the country, students, working people, school children, and retirees all take part in religious services, school seminars, street rallies and meetings. Wars—and peace demonstrations, too—are still televised in 1969.

1989: Dalai Lama Awarded Nobel Peace Prize

Tenzin Gyatso, the fourteenth and current Dalai Lama, exiled by the Chinese government from his native Tibet since 1959, is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for pacifist activities. The charismatic Dalai Lama continues to spread Buddhism and rally world opinion in favor of a Free Tibet.

July 11, 2001: "Department of Peace" Proposal Killed

Democratic congressman Dennis Kucinich first introduces a bill to create a cabinet-level department in the executive branch of the federal government: The Department of Peace. A newly created cabinet post, "Secretary of Peace," would be charged with preventing both domestic and foreign violence through enlightened social policies. A handful of progressive Democrats sign on, but Republicans attack the idea as impractical. In the same year Congress authorizes spending almost $300 billion for military defense, but public schools still have to raise cash with bake sales. Now that's impractical!

February 15 – 16, 2003: World's Largest Anti-war Protest

In an attempt to forestall the imminent U.S. invasion of Iraq, millions of demonstrators participate in a coordinated day of protests in 800 cities around the globe. According to BBC News, between six and ten million people take part in protests in up to sixty countries; other estimates range from eight million to thirty million. The biggest protests take place in Europe. The protest in Rome involves around 3 million people and is listed in the 2004 Guinness Book of World Records as the largest anti-war rally in history. We don't know what surprises us more: the magnitude of the protests or the systematic underreporting in major media.

February 5, 2008: Global Peace Center Proposed

A San Francisco ballot initiative would convert Alcatraz Island from a symbol of "punitive incarceration and macabre tourism" into a magnet for the arts and enlightenment, a "Global Peace Center" on par with the Taj Mahal or the Parthenon. Over 55,000 San Francisco residents vote to support this expansive vision of peace, but opponents defeat the initiative by labeling it costly and impractical. Undeterred, Global Peace Foundation organizers pledge to return this measure to the ballot.

March 19, 2008: 5th Anniversary of Iraq War Ignored

Corporate media largely ignores anti-war protests on the 5th anniversary of Iraq War. In Maryland Iraqi veterans pour their hearts and guts out at the Winter Soldier conference, trying to describe the horrors of war. In London up to 50,000 people march against the war. In Los Angeles there are up to 10,000 marchers. Rainy Portland brings out another 12,000. Hundreds more try to block the Chevron refinery in Richmond, California. Yet corporate media maintains a virtual news blackout. According to a Christian Science Monitor reporter, "major news outlets treated this 'National Day of Action' as though it did not exist."

May 12, 2008: "The Most Peaceful Time"

Newsweek quotes a University of Maryland study showing deaths from wars of all kinds to be declining. Harvard's Steven Pinker, crunching the numbers, declares that we are probably living "in the most peaceful time of our species' existence." Of the remaining war casualties, 80 percent come from Afghanistan and Iraq. Not included in these statistics are the victims of climate change and inadequate disaster relief. Today over 50,000 people die in a 7.9 temblor centered in China's Sichuan province. Over 6898 classrooms collapse, and substandard construction is implicated in the deaths of countless school children.

2108: Mideast Peace?

Based on 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain's assertion that U.S. troops could be in Iraq for up to 100 years or more, Mideast peace may not be realized until 2108 or later. Unless....

Photos: http://www.ringospictures.com/index.php?page=20080315

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