Peace

• 1. Introduction

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  Peace is a state of harmony in the absence of hostility and violence, yet no single definition holds it still. The Roman historian Tacitus captured the cruelest version in his work Agricola. Through the Caledonian chieftain Calgacus he wrote: "To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace." The same word that names a temple garden also names the silence after slaughter. So what does peace actually mean when one culture's harmony is another's oppression? Why has it been forged as often through marriage and money as through goodwill? And how do you measure something widely perceived as intangible? This documentary follows the word peace across religion, diplomacy, scholarship, and the inner life, where it keeps changing shape depending on who is holding it.

• 2. The Word And Its Roots

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  The term 'peace' originates from the Anglo-French pes and the Old French pais, recorded in the 11th century with meanings of peace, reconciliation, silence, agreement. Behind those lies the Latin pax, carrying senses of compact, treaty of peace, tranquility, and absence of hostility. The word entered English greetings around the year 1300 as a translation of the Hebrew shalom. That Hebrew word comes from a verb meaning 'to be complete, whole', and 'peace' is only a partial translation of it. Shalom, cognate with the Arabic salaam, also carries justice, good health, safety, well-being, prosperity, equity, security, good fortune, and friendliness. It even serves as the simple greetings 'hello' and 'goodbye'. Many languages fold peace into welcome and parting. The Hawaiian word aloha works this way, as does salaam. In English, peace turns up as a farewell mainly for the dead, in phrases like 'rest in peace' or 'peace out'. From around the year 1200, European references also used the early English term in the sense of 'quiet', describing calm and meditative relationships free of quarreling. That inward sense, being 'at peace' in one's own mind, is the quiet seed of a whole separate tradition explored later.

• 3. Married Into Harmony

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  Around 800 BCE, a Greek princess named Hermodike I married the king of Phrygia, and around 600 BCE another, Hermodike II, married the king of Lydia. Both women came from the house of Agamemnon, and both kings ruled in what is now Turkey. These were diplomatic peace deals sealed by royal marriage, and their effects outlasted any treaty. Through the union with Phrygia, the Greek alphabet passed into Greek hands. Through Lydia came the pioneering use of coinage as currency. Both innovations spread rapidly to surrounding nations through trade and cooperation. Peace, in this telling, was less a dove than a delivery system for the alphabet and the coin.

• 4. Forms And Enforcers

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  Societal peace splits into at least two forms. One is a simple silence of arms, the bare absence of war. The other is that absence accompanied by justice, mutual respect, respect for law, and good will. Holding either form has fallen largely to institutions of force. The police are a constituted body empowered by a state to enforce the law, protect lives and possessions, and prevent crime and civil disorder, with powers that include arrest and the legitimized use of force. They are usually public sector services funded through taxes, kept separate from the military, though gendarmerie are military units charged with civil policing. Outward-facing security belongs to the national security apparatus, which guards against foreign threats and aggression. Those threats range from military or cyber attacks by other states to terrorist attacks by violent non-state actors, narcotic cartels, and natural disasters like floods and earthquakes. Systemic drivers run deeper still, including economic inequality, political exclusion, climate change, and nuclear proliferation. To answer them, the security of a nation is split into economic, energy, physical, environmental, food, border, and cyber dimensions. Since 1945, the United Nations and the United Nations Security Council have aimed to resolve conflicts without war, even as nations have entered numerous military conflicts in the years since.

• 5. The Apparatus Of Idealism

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  The League of Nations was created at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, emerging from the advocacy of Woodrow Wilson and other idealists during World War I. Its Covenant was folded into the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, and the League sat in Geneva until World War II dissolved it and the United Nations replaced it. High hopes for the League in the 1920s gave way to disillusion in the 1930s as it struggled against Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Japan. Sir Alfred Eckhard Zimmern, regarded as one of the most influential intellectuals of the League, drew on the classics alongside scholars like Gilbert Murray and Florence Stawell, a circle nicknamed the 'Greece and peace' set. The same hope for informed public opinion produced bodies like the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House in London. In 1919, Aberystwyth in Wales gained the first professorship of international politics, named for Woodrow Wilson. That late-19th-century idealism also revived an ancient ritual. Led by Pierre de Coubertin, it culminated in 1896 in the first modern Olympic Games. The peacekeepers the UN later sent into ceasefires, the 'Blue Helmets' awarded United Nations Medals as international decorations, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1988.

• 6. Prizes And Scholarships

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  Since 1901, the Nobel Peace Prize has stood as the most prestigious peace honor, awarded by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, a group of five chosen by the Norwegian parliament. Alfred Nobel's will directs it to whoever has done the most for fraternity between nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the promotion of peace congresses. Cecil Rhodes wrote in 1901 that the object of his Rhodes Scholarships was that an understanding between three great powers would render war impossible. That peace purpose shaped the scholarships through the first half of the 20th century and revived under Rhodes House Warden Donald Markwell, a historian of war and peace. The same vision influenced Senator J. William Fulbright in shaping the Fulbright fellowships, and reached forward to the Schwarzman Scholars to China, created by Stephen A. Schwarzman in 2013. Named honors multiplied elsewhere. The International Gandhi Peace Prize, awarded by the Government of India, launched in 1995 on the 125th anniversary of Gandhi's birth and carries Rs. 10 million in cash, a plaque, and a citation. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Peace Prize first launched in 2009 under the directive of the caliph Mirza Masroor Ahmad. The Student Peace Prize runs biennially, and every first week of November the Sydney Peace Foundation presents the Sydney Peace Prize for peace with justice, human rights, and non-violence.

• 7. Faiths And The Long Peace

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  In ancient Greek-speaking areas the virtue of peace was personified as the goddess Eirene, and in Latin-speaking areas as the goddess Pax, sculpted as a full-grown woman with a horn of plenty and scepter, sometimes a torch or olive leaves. Christians read a messianic prophecy in the title 'Prince of Peace', and in the Gospel of Luke Zechariah celebrates his son John as one who will 'guide our feet into the way of peace'. St. Francis of Assisi, disillusioned with his military service during Pope Innocent III's Fourth Crusade, urged his disciples toward the beatitude 'Blessed are the peacemakers'. Peace Churches such as the Mennonites and Quakers practice nonresistance and refuse warfare. In Judaism, Shalom is one of the names for God, so sacred that saying it is prohibited in the bathroom. The Amida prayer, recited three times each day, begins and ends with supplications for peace, and the Book of Isaiah promises swords beaten into plowshares and the wolf living with the lamb. Buddhists hold that peace comes by ending pain and suffering, which stem from cravings, aversions, and delusions, addressed through the Four Noble Truths. Islam derives from the root salam, meaning peace, and the Quran teaches that hearts find comfort in the remembrance of Allah. These convictions have at times been matched by long stretches of worldly calm. Sweden has held peace and neutrality since 1814, Switzerland an official policy of neutrality since 1815. The isolationist Edo period in Japan ran from 1603 to 1868, some 265 years, while Pax Romana lasted 190 or 206 years.