Waging war for peace
Sylvain Venayre
Sylvain Venayre has been a professor of Contemporary History at the University of Grenoble Alpes since 2013. A specialist in 19th century history, his work focuses on the history of movement (travel, tourism, military expeditions), as well as the history of the imagination, sensibilites and emotions. His publications include Une guerre au loin (Les Belles Lettres, 2016), Jardin des colonies (with Thomas B. Reverdy, Flammarion, 2017), Histoire du monde au XIXe siècle (with Pierre Singaravélou, Fayard, 2017) and Les Guerres lointaines de la paix (Gallimard, 2023). Also a comic book writer, his latest book was published by Delcourt: Les crieurs du crime, with Hugues Micol (2024). He edits the series "Histoire dessinée de la France" (La Découverte/La Revue dessinée), for which he co-authored the first volume with Etienne Davodeau: La Balade nationale in 2017, and the "La Découverte-Delcourt" series of humanities and social sciences books in comic book form.
© Claire Delfino
On Tuesday, May 5th, 2026, at the headquarters of MSF (14-34 avenue Jean Jaurès, 75019), the CRASH team was delighted to welcome Sylvain Venayre, professor of contemporary history and writer, for a conference on the distant wars of the 19th century and the debates they continue to spark today. This exchange was prepared and moderated by Rony Brauman.
The first humanitarian conventions and conferences took place in a Europe that had, to some extent, moved away from wars. Contrary to their predecessors, Europeans of the 19th century, or at least most of them, did not directly experience war. The telegraph and the printing press, however, provided them with the means to be informed, with the emergence of the daily press and war correspondents.
A founder of the Red Cross, Gustave Moynier, wrote in 1899, as if to describe a new sensibility towards war: “The descriptions provided by the daily news place, as it were, the dying on the battlefields before the readers’ very eyes and make resound in their ears, alongside the songs of victory, the agonising cries of the poor, mutilated men who fill the ambulances.”
The ‘century of peace’, as it appeared to Europeans at the time, was in reality a century of never-ending wars led by the Europeans in the rest of the world – wars of which they themselves became mere spectators.
Some of these “peacetime” wars were also, in certain instances, “humanitarian wars,” carried out by coalitions whose justifications resonate familiarly in our own ears: restoring order, bringing peace, eradicating slavery, etc. Free trade, often praised as a factor of peace, was in practice enforced at gunpoint.
In Les Guerres lointaines de la paix. Civilisation et barbarie depuis le XIXe siècle (Gallimard), Sylvain Venayre, a historian specialised in the 19th century, recounts these expeditions and reports on the fierce controversies they gave rise to. The author of numerous scholarly works, as well as graphic novels and historic comic books, he will give a conference on these distant wars of the 19th century and the debates they continue to elicit today.
To cite this content :
Sylvain Venayre, “Waging war for peace”, 5 mai 2026, URL : https://msf-crash.org/en/conferences-debates/waging-war-peace
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