Does Peace Lead to War?: Peace Settlements and Conflict in the Modern Age

by Matthew Hughes, Matthew S. Seligmann

Many of the major wars of the twentieth century emerged from the ruins of previous peace settlements. French hostility to the Treaty of Frankfurt of 1871 contributed to the tense political climate that culminated in the First World War; German resentment of the Treaty of Versailles helped to create the conditions necessary for Hitler's attempt to reshape Europe by force in the Second World War. Likewise the Cold War had its roots in the outcome of the titanic Russo-German struggles of 1914-17 and 1941-5 - the former created the Bolshevik regime which signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and the latter brought the Soviet armies to the River Elbe and the Soviet leadership to the negotiating table at Yalta and Potsdam. Beyond Europe, post-1945 wars in Korea, China, the Middle East and Indochina all had their origins in failed peace settlements. Why did peace so often collapse in this period? What was the causality that led from peace to war? Drawing on a series of case studies, Matthew Hughes and Matthew S. Seligmann provide a comprehensive and cohesive study that answers the question of why peace has so often failed in the modern era. The searching analysis of the key themes of peace and war has implications for conflict resolution across the globe.

Genres: History

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Dr Matthew Hughes is Professor of Military History at Brunel University London, in England.

Hughes studied at the School of Oriental and African Studies and at the London School of Economics. He completed his ESRC-funded PhD in 1995 under the supervision of Professors Brian Bond and Brian Holden Reid in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London on the strategy surrounding the British campaign in Palestine in the First World War in Palestine. He has a PGCE in History from Cardiff University. After working as an intern with the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Professor Hughes lectured at the universities of Northampton and Salford before coming to Brunel University in 2005. Professor Hughes has been a British Academy funded visiting fellow at the American University in Cairo, the American University in Beirut, and at Tel Aviv University. He spent two years as the Marine Corps University Foundation-funded Maj-Gen Matthew C. Horner Distinguished Chair in Military Theory at the US Marine Corps University, Quantico, 2008-10. His latest monograph on British counter-insurgency in Palestine in the 1930s entitled Britain's Pacification of Palestine: the British Army, the Colonial State, and the Arab Revolt, 1936-1939 (2019) was published with Cambridge University Press. He was the editor of the Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research (2004-8). He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a former Chair of Council of the Army Records Society (2014-18), and is a judge for the Society for Army Historical Research's annual Templer Medal prize (2003-4, 2007-8, 2018-). He sits on the editorial boards of the British Journal of Military History and Middle Eastern Studies and is a judge for the latter's annual Elie Kedourie prize. He is currently an external examiner for the Higher Diploma awarded by Maynooth University to the Junior Command and Staff Course with the Military College, Irish Defence Forces, and a Visiting Lecturer and examiner at the University of Buckingham.