Preventing 'a great moral evil': Jean de Bloch's the Future of War as Anti-revolutionary Pacifism

Jean de Bloch (1836-1902), a late-nineteenth-century liberal internationalist and author of The Future of War (1898), shared with pacifists a desire to prevent the recurrence of great-power war in Europe. His book predicted that such conflict would cause massive economic dislocation and human suffering, possibly leading to socialist revolution, and must therefore be considered 'impossible' or, in other words, unthinkable. Bloch's argument was underpinned by his views of European society, especially in relation to evolution, modernity, socialism and technological progress. Despite the significance of Bloch's contribution to thinking on peace, war and international relations, historians hitherto have not seriously examined these aspects of his work.