Causes of War

This is the fifth volume in a series charting the causes of war from 3000 BCE to the present day, written by a leading international lawyer. While contextualised in the conflicts and patterns of the period, this work, as drawn directly from the treaties and the negotiations which led up to them, shows what made both war and peace. The period covered in this volume, 1800 to 1850, brings this series into the start of the modern world. From the Napoleonic Wars through to the international mechanisms that followed, the first efforts at global cooperation to maintain peace between the major powers were unique. So too, the spread of colonialism, the expansion of the United States, the weakening of the Ottoman Empire, and the disintegration and reforming of South America. Each of these external actions that were often linked to war, were mirrored by changes within societies, as the values each society fought for often became just as contentious within countries, as they were between them.