Angell argued that in a modern economy no economic benefit could be generated even by successful wars of conquest... Angell's argument showed, beyond reasonable doubt, that war and territorial expansion are not, in general sensible policies. His views have often been derided on the basis that they were falsified by the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, which was pursued to the bitter end even though it destroyed the global market economy that had formed the backdrop to his analysis. But in reality the outcome proved him right. Of course, Germany, the power most influenced by the arguments of Clausewitz and his successors, reaped nothing but grief from the war. But the attempts of the victorious allies to exact reparations, extend their colonial influence and so on were also entirely futile, exactly as Angell had predicted.

The root of the problem is very simply stated: if there were no sovereign independent states, if the states of the civilized world were organized in some sort …

In 1909, he published a little book of some hundred pages, Europe's Optical Illusion, and he awoke one morning to find himself famous.

Political nationalism has become for our age the most important thing in the world, more important than civilization, humanity, decency, kindness, pity; more i…

I had imagined that the prelates of the Galilaeans were under greater obligations to me than to my predecessor. For in his reign many of them were banished, pe…

[The right] may never bring prayer back to schools, but it has rescued all manner of rightwing economic nostrums from history's dustbins. Having rolled back th…

China has been long one of the richest, that is, one of the most fertile, best cultivated, most industrious, and most populous countries in the world. It seems…