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The Quaker Renaissance and the Origins of the Modern British Peace Movement, 1895–1920
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 July 2014
Extract
Few in Britain were suprised by Quaker opposition to the Great War; the Society of Friends had traditionally condemned war and violence. Many, however, were startled by the nature and intensity of Quaker resistance, which far exceeded anything they had previously attempted. One possible explanation for the militancy of the Society's anti-war stand certainly would be the prospect of enforced military service, a contingency that had not seriously confronted Friends since the seventeenth century. However, this article will argue that the attitudes and actions of Quaker war-resisters were most significantly influenced by a revitalization of the peace testimony that had remained dormant for nearly a century. In her study of Victorian Quakers, Elizabeth Isichei has already noted that the “patterns of world history have made pacifism, which was a peripheral importance in the nineteenth century, one of Quakerism's … central beliefs, and, for some, its most essential element.” The aim here is to show how this development not only transformed British Quakerism, but also gave the Society of Friends—a religious body of less than 20,000 members—a crucial role in shaping the first significant peace movement of the modern era.
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References
1 Isichei, Elizabeth, Victorian Quakers (London 1970), p. xxvi.Google Scholar
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12 Ibid., letters from M.L. Cooke, March 1896, 69 and from Francis Thompson, April 1896, pp. 92-93.
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59 Grubb to Jones, 22 May 1915, ibid. For the report of the Committee on Young Men of Enlistment Age, see MPYMF, 1915, pp. 193-94. Also see The Friend, 28 May and 4 June 1915 for a summary of Yearly Meeting proceedings.
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69 The quotation is from a letter critical of H.M. Wallis's activities, ibid., 19 Nov. 1915, pp. 872-73. For examples of letters from “war-Friends,” see ibid., 20 Aug. 1915, pp. 652-54; 3 Sept. 1915, p. 687; 10 Sept. 1915, p. 707; 5 Nov. 1915, pp. 844-45; and 19 Nov. 1915, pp. 871-873.
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83 For this and much of what follows, I am indebted to Dr. Jo Vellacott for generously sharing with me both her broad knowledge as a leading scholar of the modern peace movement and her deep understanding of the Society of Friends.
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120 “Capitalism and War” (Report of Comm. Ill, Appendix I), ibid., pp. 17-20. The SOS's view of social revolution seemed to be moderating in the post-war period, probably in reaction to events in the Soviet Union. For example, from March through October 1919 The Ploughshare was subtitled “A Quaker Organ of Social Revolution”; in November 1919 it became “A Journal of Hope.”
121 “The Life of the Society of Friends in View of Present Demand” (Report of Comm. V), Peace Testimony, p. 5 and Hodgkin, , “Character and Basis of the Testimony,” AFC, Official Report, pp. 48–49.Google Scholar
122 “Life of the Society of Friends” (Report of Comm. V), Peace Testimony, p. 52. For Quakers in the interwar peace movement see Ceadel, , Pacifism in Britain, pp. 62–315 passim.Google Scholar
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