Democratic peace as a historical phenomenon

This essay discusses the democratic peace as a historical phenomenon. The fact of democratic peace, as it is being described and accounted for by democratic peace theory, it first argues, is essentially a historical finding. It depends on the interpretation of past events and emerges from a systematic investigation of these events. But as transpires from the four books that the essay reviews, democratic peace is more than an historical finding. Democratic peace is an historical phenomenon too: a historically situated way of imagining peace that arose in a particular time, in particular historical circumstances, and that shaped up into tangible international practices in the way that it did because it arose in those circumstances. "The absence of war among democracies" describes the historical finding, but it does not suffice as a description of the democratic peace as a historical phenomenon.