Nonviolence: Twenty-Five Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea
By Mark Kurlansky
Modern Library Chronicles, 2006
Hardcover, 203 pgs., $21.95

In an opening verbally reminiscent of the Tao Te Ching, writer Mark Kurlansky informs us there is no word for nonviolence, except as an abnegation. Unlike the Taoist text, however, the ineffability is not due to a transcendent quality, but rather to its inability to rise above its reputation as a rather fanciful idea. Marginalized as a concept, non-violence in its most effective form mostly goes unsung, indeed unnoticed.

Kurlansky, a writer known for making otherwise pedestrian subjects fascinating with such books as Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World and Salt: A World History, offers a peculiar entree into an arena that for him is unusually philosophical. In his facts-you-might-find-interesting style he offers up a chronology of infamous conflicts and the attendant conscripts that opted out of the eye-for-an-eye response.

The author states unequivocally that the first Christians “are the earliest group that renounced warfare in all its forms and rejected all its institutions…. Jesus was seen as dangerous because he rejected not only warfare and killing but any kind of force.” That was a position inconvenient for both Jews and Romans. After the crucifixion, a splinter group led by the apostle Paul announced itself “uncompromisingly dedicated to pacifism.” From here, the strength of the concept waxes and wanes among various Christian factions until Constantine, who prior to going into battle with Roman forces, reputedly had a dream in which Christ instructed him to carry the sign of the cross into battle. Such an action, up until then, would have been judged blasphemous. But heeding his vision, Constantine won the battle and Christianity has since been regularly appropriated for various and sundry campaigns of carnage.

Kurlansky provides examples from subsequent Christian and Islamic states, in which the rallying point was to portray the adversary as evil in the context of the corresponding belief system. In other words, religion, an instrument for non-violence, with Muslims as well as Christians, was turned on its head.

But the main focus of Kurlansky’s disquisition is centered in Christendom, taking us through European conflicts, British imperialism, America’s founding fathers, and slavery. At each stage there were groups who banded together for peaceful solutions. Correspondingly there are stories of about-faces under duress, such as once-pacifist abolitionists who justified force and violence based on the lack of humanity in their opponents.

Were this a novel, and nonviolence the protagonist, the outlook at this point would seem pretty grim. But Kurlansky then provides some rare, but uplifting, tales of success against such storied villains as the Nazis, the English in India, and the segregationists of the American South. Indeed, there are techniques and strategies that have triumphed against what most of us would perceive as insurmountable odds.

As promised in the title, the author enumerates 25 lessons — which would better be termed observations, the kind that you could put on “a-thought-a-day” calendar. Many of these have as much to do with war as with nonviolence.

Ironically, the book’s weakness has an upside. A few mentions of Gandhi and Islam notwithstanding, the history presented here is mostly Western — an unapologetic exclusion of most of the world. This myopia reminds Americans that there is a long and varied tradition of non-violence in this country, a history that is too rarely referenced or drawn upon.

As with his previous topics, Kurlansky succeeds at producing a work of interest. Nonetheless, a more extensive reference to histories of other cultures — a chronicle of their alternatives to confrontation, would suggest a sagacity more in keeping with the title of the book.