European Parliament Strasbourg” by Erich Westendarp. CCO via Pixabay
2018 marks the 325th anniversary of the publication of William Penn’s Essay towards the Present and Future Peace of Europe, which proposed, among other things, the establishment of a European Parliament. Best remembered as the founder of Pennsylvania, Penn spent most of his life in England and remained deeply concerned about the fate of religious and political liberty across Europe. He proposed his “European Diet, Parliament, or Estates” as a way of promoting peaceful coexistence and breaking out of the cycle of nearly constant European war. A fresh look at Penn’s Essay is a task well worth undertaking, as refugee crises, fears of autocracy in Hungary and Poland, and the future of Brexit continue to roil European waters.
Like its twentieth-century counterpart, William Penn’s proposal for a European Parliament emerged out of an intimate familiarity with the reality of violence and war. In 1644, the year of Penn’s birth, the English Civil War was already two years old. By 1693, when Penn wrote his Essay, the War of the Grand Alliance had been raging for five years. And when Penn was struck down by a stroke in 1712, the War of the Spanish Succession had already been underway for more than a decade.
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