A Violent Peace

The newly born League of Nations confronted the post-WWI world—from growing stateless populations to the resurgence of right-wing movements—by aiming to create a transnational, cosmopolitan dialogue on justice. As part of these efforts, a veritable army of League personnel set out to shape “global public opinion,” in favor of the postwar liberal international order. Combining the tools of global intellectual history and cultural history, A Violent Peace reopens the archives of the League to reveal surprising links between the political use of modern information systems and the rise of mass violence in the interwar world. Historian Carolyn N. Biltoft show how conflicts over truth and power that played out at the League of Nations offer broader insights into the deeper nature of totalitarian regimes, which used media flows to demonize a whole range of “others.”
 
A meditation on instability in information systems, the allure of fascism, and the contradictions at the heart of a global and violent modernity, A Violent Peace paints a rich portrait of the emergence of the age of information—and all its attendant problems.