Hegemonic Peace and Empire

<p>This book examines the language and the ideology of the Pax Romana the Pax Britannica and the <em>Pax Americana</em> within the broader contexts of 'hegemony' and 'empire'. It addresses three main themes: a conceptual examination of the way in which hegemony has been justified; a linguistic study of how the notion of <em>pax</em> (usually translated as peace) has been used in ancient and modern times; and a study of the international orders created by Rome and Britain.</p><p>Using an historiographical approach the book draws upon texts from Greco-Roman antiquity and sources from the nineteenth twentieth and twenty-first centuries to show how the pax ideology has served as a justification for hegemonic foreign policy and as an intellectual exercise in power projection. From Tacitus' condemnation of what he described as 'creating a wilderness and calling it peace' to debates about the establishment of a <em>Pax Americana</em> in post-Saddam Hussein's Iraq the book shows not only how the governing elite in each of the three hegemonic orders prescribed to a loose interpretation of the <em>pax</em> ideology but also how their internal disagreements and different conceptualisations of pax have affected the process of 'empire-building'.</p><p>This book will be of interest to students of international history empire and International Relations in general.</p>