Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs Season 4, Episode 8: Prof. Lauren Benton, They Called it Peace: Worlds of Imperial Violence
Apr 8, 2025
Lauren Benton, a Yale historian and legal scholar, dives deep into the dark legacies of imperial violence. She discusses how European powers masked their violent conquests as efforts for peace, revealing the brutal mechanics of colonial expansion. Benton examines the paradox of 19th-century peace movements, which relied on organized violence. The conversation also touches on the cyclical nature of imperialism, the moral complexities of indigenous resistance, and how the rhetoric of power continues to shape modern conflicts today.
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Episode notes
Small Wars Reveal Perpetual Violence
- Small wars represent a constant, pervasive drumbeat of violent conflicts rather than rare exceptions.
- Traditional global history focuses too much on large wars, missing the ongoing small scale violence of empires.
Privatized Violence Fueled Empire
- Early European empires relied heavily on licensed private actors to conduct raids and violence.
- This privatization was crucial to imperial expansion and control in far-flung territories.
Lawful Extreme Imperial Violence
- Imperial powers used legal justifications to unleash extreme violence after small conflicts, framing it as lawful.
- Failure to surrender often led to mass killings justified as necessary for order.
