Peace in the Past

Peace studies today often focuses on contemporary issues and very recent (21^st or late 20^th century) history; but we can learn a lot about current habits of visualising peace and peacebuilding by exploring imaginaries and approaches from many different periods and places. For that reason, team members have been researching conceptions of peace and manifestations of peacebuilding from antiquity to the present day. 

• Student Kara Devlin decided to dig deep into narratives of peace from Scottish and English perspectives during the Medieval period, and as part of this work she created a timeline of peace treaties which she introduces in the video available here. Her interactive timeline can be accessed via this link, with an explanation of her goals, data and methodology here. The aim is to make Medieval peace-making more visible and to give users an opportunity to explore Medieval visualisations of peace-making in practice.
• Kara also did some comparative research on how the visualisation of peace differed in the Medieval and Early Modern period across Europe, comparing retributive justice processes, local mechanism, religious conceptions and the connection between peacebuilding and nationhood in Scotland and France. You can read some of her reflections, via a literature review, in Royal Beheadings and Christian Peace Committees.
• Other team members have explored ancient Greek representations of peace, and modern re-imaginings of ancient women’s experiences of post-conflict recovery. We have also learnt from students in a parallel module who have been studying ancient peace treaties and pockets of peace in Lucan’s epic poem, and setting new agenda for ancient peace studies.
• Unsurprisingly, some work has been done on conscientious objection – from its roots in the origins of Quaker non-violence all the way through to manifestations in the 20^th century, here, here and here.
• Several team members have explored the Northern Ireland peace process from different angles:
  • https://peacemuseum.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/2023/07/08/twenty-five-years-of-the-good-friday-agreement-and-the-challenges-of-grassroots-peacebuilding/
  • https://peacemuseum.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/2023/08/30/the-hidden-costs-of-unification/
  • https://vpp.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/2023/04/14/the-republic-of-ireland-and-the-northern-irish-conflict/
  • https://peacemuseum.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/2022/06/26/cambridge-union-debate-where-does-northern-ireland-belong/
  • https://peacemuseum.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/2022/06/18/fractured-peace-a-visual-representation/
• Other past peace processes (some more successful, others fragile or failed or outright oppressive) include the legacy of partition for India and Pakistan, the stalemate following the Korean War, Colombia’s long road to peace, and colonial legacies and memorialisation in Sri Lanka.
• We also learnt about the peacebuilding potential of archives and archiving from guest lecturer Sarai Aharoni.
• Visualising Peace student Claire Percival offers some reflections here on what the disciplines of History and Social Anthropology could learn from each other in their approach to peace studies.