Over on Quo­ra, a ques­tion that is more fas­ci­nat­ing than it might at first appear: What wars in his­to­ry were fought in the name of Quak­erism (Soci­ety of Friends)?:

This ques­tion is nei­ther sar­cas­tic nor rhetoric. As many peo­ple insist that vio­lence and atroc­i­ties are an inher­ent part of reli­gions, that reli­gions would cause wars, I real­ly want to know  if that is the truth. Per­son­al­ly I believe reli­gions can be peace­ful, such as in the cas­es of the Quak­ers and the Baha’i, but I might  be wrong. 

The obvi­ous answer should be “none.” Quak­ers are well-known as paci­fists (fun fact: fake can­non used to deceive the ene­my into think­ing an army is more for­ti­fied than it actu­al­ly is are called “Quak­er guns.”) Indi­vid­ual Quak­ers have rarely been quite as unit­ed around the peace tes­ti­mo­ny as our rep­u­ta­tion would sug­gest, but as a group it’s true we’ve nev­er called for a war. I can’t think of any mil­i­tary skir­mish or bat­tle waged to ral­ly­ing cries of “Remem­ber the Quakers!”

And yet: all of mod­ern civ­i­liza­tion has been shaped by war. Our polit­i­cal bound­aries, our reli­gions, our demo­graph­ic make-up – even the lan­guages we speak are all rem­nants of long-ago bat­tles. One of the most influ­en­tial Quak­er thinkers, the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry min­is­ter John Wool­man, con­stant­ly remind­ed his brethren to con­sid­er those lux­u­ries that are the fruit of war and slav­ery. When we broad­en the scope like this, we’ve been involved in quite a few wars.

We like to remem­ber how William Penn found­ed the colony of Penn­syl­va­nia as a reli­gious refuge. But the king of Eng­land held Euro­pean title to the mid-Atlantic seaboard because of region­al wars with the Dutch and Swedes (and lat­er held onto it only after a much larg­er war with the Cana­di­an French settlements).

The king’s grant of “Penn’s Woods” was the set­tle­ment of a very large war debt owed to Penn’s father, a wealthy admi­ral. The senior William Penn was some­thing of a scoundrel, play­ing off both sides in ever-shifting royalist/Roundhead see­saw of pow­er. When the musi­cal chairs were over he was on the side of the win­ner, who owed him and lat­er his son. The admi­ral’s longest-lasting accom­plish­ment was dis­obey­ing orders and cap­tur­ing Jamaica for the British (Bob Mar­ley sang his songs of oppres­sion and injus­tice in Eng­lish because of Sir William).

By most accounts, William Penn the younger was fair and also bought the land from local Lenape nations. Most­ly for­got­ten is that the Lenape and Susque­han­nock pop­u­la­tion had been dev­as­tat­ed in a recent region­al war against the Iro­quois over access to beaver-trapping ter­ri­to­ries. They were now sub­ject nations to the Iro­quois Con­fed­er­a­cy, which skill­ful­ly played glob­al pol­i­tics by keep­ing the Eng­lish and French colo­nial empires in enough strate­gic ten­sion that both left the Iro­quois home­land alone. It was in the Iro­quois’s best inter­est to have anoth­er British colony on their south­ern flank and who would make a bet­ter buffer than these ide­al­is­tic paci­fists? The Lenape land reim­burse­ment was sec­ondary con­sid­er­a­tion to con­ti­nen­tal pol­i­tics from their per­spec­tive. (One could eas­i­ly make a case that the bio­log­i­cal geno­cide of indige­nous Amer­i­ca by dis­eases brought over by uncar­ing colonists was also a form of war.)

 

The thou­sands of acres Penn deed­ed to his fel­low Quak­ers were thus the fruits of at least four sets of wars: colo­nial wars over Euro­pean claims to the Delaware Val­ley; debt-fueled Eng­lish civ­il wars; Eng­lish wars against Span­ish Caribbean colonies, and Native Amer­i­can wars fought over access to com­mer­cial resources. Much of orig­i­nal Quak­er wealth in suc­ceed­ing gen­er­a­tions is indebt­ed to the huge land trans­fer in the 1680s, either direct­ly (we still hold some valu­able real estate) or indi­rect­ly (the real estate’s sale could be fun­neled into promis­ing businesses).

Not all of the fruits of war were sec­ond­hand and coin­ci­den­tal to Friends them­selves. Many wealthy Friends in the mid-Atlantic colonies had slaves who did much of the back­break­ing work of clear­ing fields and build­ing hous­es. Many of those oppressed souls were put into bondage in Africa as pris­on­ers of war (John Wool­man would prob­a­bly point out that slav­ery itself is a form of war). That quaint old brick meet­ing­house set back on a flower-covered field? It was prob­a­bly built at least in part by enslaved hands.

Today, it’s impos­si­ble to step free of war. Most of our hous­es are set on land once owned by oth­ers. Our com­put­ers and cell phones have com­po­nents mined in war zones. Our lights and cars are pow­ered by fos­sil fuels. And even with solar pan­els and elec­tric cars, the infra­struc­ture of the dai­ly liv­ing of most Amer­i­cans is still based on extrac­tion and con­trol of resources.

This is not to say we can’t con­tin­ue to work for a world free of war. But it seems impor­tant to be clear-eyed and acknowl­edge the debts we have.