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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Looking for some peace and hope in American history., January 4, 2004
This book is not a history of peace movements in America. Rather, it begins and calls others to continue the much larger task of viewing American history through a peacemaker?s lens. Yes, this is revisionist history, but unlike some other examples of that genre, it avoids leaving its readers in cynicism and despair. For, as it casts its view back, beginning with a chapter on Native Americans, ?The Original Peacemakers,? it finds some measured reasons for hope. As might be expected, the book does undertake some ?deconstruction.? It asks us to question the ?myth of redemptive violence,? which its authors and others, notably Walter Wink, claim is the lens through which most Americans, academics and other citizens alike, view their own history. According to this myth, Americans are essentially nonviolent but sometimes, reluctantly, have to resort to it to bring about some overriding common good. According to Juhnke and Hunter, however, this is an unnecessarily ?deterministic interpretation of history?; it not only undervalues the role individual and institutional choice have played in the past but also keeps us from looking for peaceable solutions in the future. Their task being reconstructive as well as deconstructive, Juhnke and Hunter examine such solutions in the past. For example, they point out that ?Americans are remarkably well informed of the details of the Boston Tea Party of December 17,1773, while we are quite ignorant about the success of the people in Philadelphia who at the same time were nonviolently persuading the British captain to take the East India tea back to England.? The authors also examine examples of how wars have been averted, ?as in 1799 when President John Adams moved to end the ?Quasi-War? with France and in 1807 when President Thomas Jefferson avoided war with England by a strategy of economic embargo.? The search for peaceful solutions in our history has not been limited to a few romantic idealists, Juhnke and Hunter assert. On the other hand, we need to credit the influence idealists often do have. To cite a more recent example, ?Americans need to reexamine the notion that President Ronald Reagan brought about the end of the nuclear arms race with his hard-line rhetoric and military build-up of 1981-85. We need to take account of the decisive influence of peace-minded anti-nuclear scientists, especially Andrei Sakharov, upon Soviet leader Michael Gorbachev to take dramatic and unilateral disproportional steps toward disarmament.? Issues and events in this book are treated chronologically. In addition to the topics referred to above, chapters deal with the anti-slavery movement, the civil war, reconstruction, rights of women and workers, world wars 1 and 2, civil rights, the cold war, and ecology. The college teachers who wrote this book undoubtedly hoped it would find its way into American history classrooms; its chapters are generously footnoted. This should not deter more general readers such as myself, however, for their writing style is clear and unclogged by academic jargon; moreover, as they move through history, they provide enough detail so that their argument can be followed by a reader relatively unfamiliar with the events, issues, and movements they discuss. Carol Hunter teaches at Earlham College in Indiana, and James Juhnke has recently retired from Bethel College in Kansas; with their Quaker and Mennonite affiliations, both Christian liberal arts colleges have a longstanding and vibrant peace tradition.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Looking for some peace and hope in American history., January 4, 2004
This book is not a history of peace movements in America. Rather, it begins and calls others to continue the much larger task of viewing American history through a peacemaker?s lens. Yes, this is revisionist history, but unlike some other examples of that genre, it avoids leaving its readers in cynicism and despair. For, as it casts its view back, beginning with a chapter on Native Americans, ?The Original Peacemakers,? it finds some measured reasons for hope. As might be expected, the book does undertake some ?deconstruction.? It asks us to question the ?myth of redemptive violence,? which its authors and others, notably Walter Wink, claim is the lens through which most Americans, academics and other citizens alike, view their own history. According to this myth, Americans are essentially nonviolent but sometimes, reluctantly, have to resort to it to bring about some overriding common good. According to Juhnke and Hunter, however, this is an unnecessarily ?deterministic interpretation of history?; it not only undervalues the role individual and institutional choice have played in the past but also keeps us from looking for peaceable solutions in the future. Their task being reconstructive as well as deconstructive, Juhnke and Hunter examine such solutions in the past. For example, they point out that ?Americans are remarkably well informed of the details of the Boston Tea Party of December 17,1773, while we are quite ignorant about the success of the people in Philadelphia who at the same time were nonviolently persuading the British captain to take the East India tea back to England.? The authors also examine examples of how wars have been averted, ?as in 1799 when President John Adams moved to end the ?Quasi-War? with France and in 1807 when President Thomas Jefferson avoided war with England by a strategy of economic embargo.? The search for peaceful solutions in our history has not been limited to a few romantic idealists, Juhnke and Hunter assert. On the other hand, we need to credit the influence idealists often do have. To cite a more recent example, ?Americans need to reexamine the notion that President Ronald Reagan brought about the end of the nuclear arms race with his hard-line rhetoric and military build-up of 1981-85. We need to take account of the decisive influence of peace-minded anti-nuclear scientists, especially Andrei Sakharov, upon Soviet leader Michael Gorbachev to take dramatic and unilateral disproportional steps toward disarmament.? Issues and events in this book are treated chronologically. In addition to the topics referred to above, chapters deal with the anti-slavery movement, the civil war, reconstruction, rights of women and workers, world wars 1 and 2, civil rights, the cold war, and ecology. The college teachers who wrote this book undoubtedly hoped it would find its way into American history classrooms; its chapters are generously footnoted. This should not deter more general readers such as myself, however, for their writing style is clear and unclogged by academic jargon; moreover, as they move through history, they provide enough detail so that their argument can be followed by a reader relatively unfamiliar with the events, issues, and movements they discuss. Carol Hunter teaches at Earlham College in Indiana, and James Juhnke has recently retired from Bethel College in Kansas; with their Quaker and Mennonite affiliations, both Christian liberal arts colleges have a longstanding and vibrant peace tradition.
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by Robert D. Schulzinger
by Richard H. Immerman
by Stephen Oates
