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"Centripetal Attraction" in a Centrifugal World: The Pacifist Vision of Elihu Burritt
- Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal
- University of Pennsylvania Press
- Volume 11, Issue 1, Winter 2013
- pp. 176-191
- 10.1353/eam.2013.0003
- Article
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Beginning in the 1840s, the American peace advocate Elihu Burritt envisioned the peoples of different countries coming together in a "congress of nations" that would advance "universal brotherhood" and obviate the need for war. But this vision of peaceful internationalism was challenged by the rampant warfare and nationalism of the mid-nineteenth century. Ultimately, the bloodiness that accompanied the waning Age of Revolutions prompted Burritt to advocate a more homogenizing alternative to the congress of nations—Anglo-American empire—as the preferred pathway to peace.