Europe: Penn and Europe
Andrew Lane reflects on William Penn’s essay of 1693
A century before the Napoleonic wars, and two centuries before the first and second world wars, Quaker William Penn proposed a parliament through which the princes and states of Europe could resolve disputes nonviolently. Penn’s 1693 essay, ‘Towards the present and future peace of Europe’, was the first proposal for a confederation of European states written in the English language. It has been referred to in some recent articles and letters in the Friend, and is worthy of closer study.
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