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COPYRIGHT 2000 Professors World Peace Academy
The genealogy of the classic peace proposals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have to some degree left open the question of the influence each had upon the other. The originality of all or part of the plans has also been in some dispute. This paper is a contribution to the clarification of these issues, and does so by providing evidence of the influence that the Abbe de Saint-Pierre, William Penn, John Bellers, and Jeremy Bentham had upon the evolution of the 'Plan' for world peace.
DEDICATION
Contemporaries of the Abb[acute{e}] de Saint-Pierre, and of his English counterparts William Penn, John Bellers, and Jeremy Bentham, largely ridiculed or dismissed their plans for European or world peace as utopian. From the perspective of today, however, they appear not so much as the products of well-intentioned but na[ddot{i}]ve dreamers than as imaginative and practical anticipations of a future which has seen the gradual adoption of their schemes (which often comprised, besides the abolition of war, also a host of domestic reform issues).
One of the most outstanding characteristics of Alex Shtromas as a scholar and advocate of international peace and world order was his far-sightedness. To be in his presence could often be an exciting experience since he seemed to be in possession of the script of the future. Even if, inevitably, it often tended to unfold differently, his belief in the inevitability and necessity of change and his criticisms of social scientists for their rather conservative and unimaginative approach has been fully justified (spectacularly so in the case of his predictions about the evolution of the Soviet Union and world communism).
This forward-looking and dynamic perspective and the inferences he derived from it at times resulted in his adoption of unconventional, controversial and even provocative political opinions which could relegate his views to the periphery of the academic (and activist) communities to which he related. Such was the case, perhaps, with Soviet/Communist Studies and Peace Studies/Research, and the British peace movement of the 1970s and early 1980s.
As remarkable as his orientation towards the future, was the way in which he put forward and defended his bold and courageous views--with passion and conviction, boundless energy, and with infectious enthusiasm and wholehearted support for any new venture which he believed would help the cause. Such was the case, for instance, for his involvement with the Professors World Peace Academy (PWPA) and its journal. Indeed, some of his best work was published in the pages of this journal, starting with the very first issue (Autumn 1984). Many fellow Sovietologists and peace researchers would have taken exception to the thesis which he advanced in his memorable article, To Fight Communism: Why and How?, starting with its combative title.
Alex Shtromas was an exceptional scholar who was unable to write anything boring--or anything which would not involve some practical application. The early peace research community firmly believed that the motto of the modern academy--to publish or to perish--held particular validity for the new profession. His own publications were very much offered in this spirit. No scholar's library--what an impressive library it was, and what a delight to join him there, and experience the astonishing command he had of the information, learning and wisdom it contained!--could have been further away from the ivory tower.
Future historians of the 20th century, of the Cold War and of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the communist system will be able to honor his work as containing one of the most accurate analyses and one of the most impressive forecasts in the social sciences which that century has witnessed. They will have to correct the impression, almost universally asserted today, that the rapid demise of the Soviet Union and the communist system was wholly unforeseen and took everyone by surprise. Alex Shtromas was among the very few who was entitled to express surprise at everyone else's surprise. Even so, nothing could have been further from his mind than to go round admonishing his erstwhile scholarly and political opponents and victoriously proclalming 'I told you so!'
It is, of course, no coincidence that a native of Lithuania--one of those many countries whose independence was so cruelly crushed for most of the 20th century by the 'evil empire' of the Soviet Union--would be especially sensitive to the issues of national self-determination, freedom, and independence. Perhaps more than any other writer on world order and global governance, Alex Shtromas stressed the centrality and durability of the notion of nationhood as a key component of any realistic, viable and lasting future world order system. In this respect he was also far ahead of many scholars of international relations and modern history who, since the end of the Cold War, have been forced to (re-)discover the importance of ethnicity and nationhood, not least on that continent for which these troublesome concepts and the powerful forces they are able to unleash were widely believed to have become obsolete.
In his conception of a world order based on free nations (which implies the restoration of the self-determination and independence of many nations) Alex Shtromas was a follower of Immanuel Kant, the great German philosopher whose essay on Perpetual Peace he liked to refer to and whose tenets he frequently quoted, particularly the second preliminary article which specifies the need for national freedom. He did so, for instance, in a fundamental article which was published in this journal in March 1990, entitled The Future World Order and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination and Sovereignty. Following a quotation from Kant he wrote, "...the liberal-democratic right of every nation to self-determination and sovereignty will have to be included into the [global] commonwealth's constitution as its principal element (p. 43)." It is interesting to observe that many contemporary theorists of international relations who, in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union and other dictatorial states, have red iscovered Kant's essay are focusing on--and mostly agreeing with--the first of his definitive articles (interpreted today as the need for governments to be democratic) and largely ignore--or reject--the no less crucial preliminary article referred to.
Alex Shromas was not only a faithful follower and staunch defender of Kant's views on the continued importance of the nation as the basis for any system of world peace, but also an excellent interpreter of that requirement in the present international situation. Indeed, it seems that the illustrious native of K[ddot{o}]nigsberg (since 1945, Kaliningrad) has found in the native of Kaunas, a mere 200 km across the border in Lithuania (and some 200 years after Perpetual Peace was first published in 1795), his most articulate modern acolyte.
Kant's slim essay is widely regarded as the most profound and enduring of the many plans for perpetual peace which the 18th century, in particular, brought forth. While Kant's plan appeared at the end of the century, the most famous one for a long time--the Abb[acute{e}] de Saint-Pierre's Project for Perpetual Peace--which popularised (and also rather discredited) the very expression perpetual peace, appeared at the beginning of the century. One of the merits of his plan was that it inspired others to address the subject, not least Rousseau who distilled Saint-Pierre's prolix work into a much more lucid and inviting one, to which he later added his own comments. According to at least one authority, Saint-Pierre's scheme also influenced Kant. "It is impossible not to believe that Kant had it before him when he wrote his pregnant appeal, Zum ewigen Frieden (1795)," asserted C. E. Vaughan (The Political Writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962 repr., Vol. 1, p. 363).
The following contribution is no more than an extended footnote on the genealogy of the classical plans for world peace. The article is an elaboration of a speech given at a colloquium (held in Cherbourg and Saint Pierre Eglise in France) commemorating the 250th anniversary of the death of Saint-Pierre in 1993. It is dedicated to the memory of a dear friend who, in what turned out to be one of his last messages to the present author, characterised him as an 'archaeologist of peace'. Alex Shtromas himself was, not unlike Kant, a brilliant 'architect of peace' but one who, moreover, was no mean builder himself of that great and growing edifice.
WILLIAM PENN
For historians of the classical peace plan tradition, the year 1993 signified not only the 250th anniversary of the death of the abb[acute{e}] de Saint-Pierre who during his lifetime had already achieved fame (and incurred ridicule) on account of his plan for perpetual peace (first published in 1712) but also two further anniversaries, this time across the Channel: the 300th anniversary of William Penn's Essay Towards the Present and Future Peace of Europe and the 150th anniversary of the posthumous publication of Jeremy Bentham's Plan for an Universal and Perpetual Peace. It seems that of those three anniversaries only Saint Pierre was publicly commemorated through the colloquium which took place in September 1993 in Cherbourg and Saint-Pierre Eglise.
In the genealogy of the classical peace projects it is frequently asserted or assumed, without any evidence, that earlier writings inspired or influenced later ones. Alternatively earlier writings are overlooked altogether. Although it has been noted that Saint-Pierre's A Project for Settling an Everlasting Peace in Europe (title of the first English edition, published in 1714) "...appeared only 15 years [sic] after Penn's Essay," [1] few authors have speculated on any influence which Penn's work may have had on Saint-Pierre. Certainly in the literature on the Frenchman, the Englishman is frequently ignored. [2] In Drouet's biography--generally regarded as the best and most reliable--the only reference to Penn is in a short and unfortunate footnote: "One can furthermore add to the list of the abb[acute{e}]'s predecessors:...W Perin, An Essay on the Present and Future Peace (1693)." [33]
A few years before Drouet, F. W. Hirst had concluded his discussion of Penn,...
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