MICK MCSHANE is roused by a band whose socialism laces every line of every song with commitment and raw passion
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Stop the War - the historical case
WILL PODMORE recommends an outstanding analysis of imperial violence that holds vital lessons for today’s anti-war movements
Jeremy Corbyn joins a demonstration in Parliament Square, London, by the Stop the War August 18, 2021
New releases from Mountain, Soul Asylum and Michael McDermott
ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
They Called It Peace: Worlds of Imperial Violence
Lauren Benton, Princeton University Press, £35
THIS is an outstanding work which shows how empires cause a state of permanent war across the globe. They have sought to justify their wars with the ritual claim that their “limited” violence prevents catastrophic violence.
In part I Lauren Benton outlines the imperial regime of plunder in early European overseas conquests and in the militarised garrisons that advanced European power. This world of plunder is, as she acknowledges, still the world in which we live.
In part II, A World of Armed Peace, she covers 1750 to 1900. The phrase “armed peace” does not accurately describe what she rightly calls a “regime of violence.”
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