They Called It Peace: Worlds of Imperial Violence

Co-sponsored by the The Remarque Institute, The NYU Department of History and the Institute for Public Knowledge

Join us for a book talk and discussion of They Called It Peace, Lauren Benton’s sweeping new account of imperial violence and global order from the fifteenth through the twentieth centuries. Benton traces how practices of plunder and truce making fueled the rise of European empires and set up civilian massacres. She shows that efforts to limit violence against Indigenous communities helped Europeans stage and justify vast campaigns of dispossession. Uncovering the legal logic of imperial atrocities, They Called It Peace holds lessons for ongoing attempts to limit “small wars.”