Henri La Fontaine (1854–1943): Prix Nobel de la Paix 1913.By PierreVan den Dungen. Brussels, Belgium: Editions <scp>SAMSA</scp> , 2022. 478 pages. 30 Euros (paperback). ISBN: 978–2875934024

The culmination of three years of intensive archival work at Belgium's Fondation Henri La Fontaine and the Mundaneum, Pierre van den Dungen's richly detailed study of Henri La Fontaine draws on a vast array of personal letters, diaries, speech excerpts, official correspondences, and publications to provide a complete biography of the Belgian internationalist that examines all aspects of his life, while placing an emphasis on his storied pacifist career. A member of the Department of History, Arts, and Archaeology at the University of Brussels, van den Dungen is the author of biographies of other Belgian and Dutch political and social leaders such as Hubert Pierlot, Hubert Biermans, and Louis Bertrand. In addition, he has collaborated on a new history of Belgium and on other European syntheses of the history of the press. This biography, in French, takes a thematic approach to La Fontaine's life, beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century with his familial history. This first section sets up a network of familial connections spanning the European continent and its colonial holdings, most notably in the Belgian Congo. Van den Dungen pays special attention to the ways La Fontaine's mother and sister shaped his views on women and their roles in society, as well as the impact they had on his personal relationships, including his marriage at the age of fifty-nine to Mathilde Lhoest. Of particular interest in this section were the discussions of La Fontaine's paternalist feminist views that on the one hand exalted women's education as a means of liberation, while on the other reinforced traditional values and rules of gender dynamics in his marriage. The next section examines the other love of La Fontaine's life: music, in particular the music of German composer Richard Wagner. Although somewhat buried in the content, the impact art, music, and the research of those subjects had on La Fontaine's views of humanity perhaps provides an inroad to an underexplored avenue for peace studies. This section of the biography demonstrates La Fontaine's wide involvement in the European cultural world at the turn of the last century, painting an apropos image of a liberal, educated bourgeois man beginning his trajectory towards becoming an icon of international pacifist thought. Here, readers come into contact with La Fontaine's broad social networks, his linguistic abilities, and his somewhat surprising disinterest in learning or using Esperanto as an official international language. While rich in detail, the number of names presented in this section could perhaps be overwhelming for a nonspecialist of the period. The biography's third section continues the trend of mapping La Fontaine's extensive international connections, this time through his involvement with the Freemasons. The shortest section of the book, perhaps due to Denis Lefebvre's recently published Henri La Fontaine, franc-maçon (Éditions de la Fondation Henri La Fontaine, 2019), it is here where explicit mention of La Fontaine's pacifist associations first appears. The section is followed by a series of photographs illustrating La Fontaine's private and public lives. These photographs, newspaper clippings, and the title pages of works by La Fontaine provide a personal touch to the biography and serve as a nice divider between the sections focused on the private aspects of La Fontaine's life versus his more public-facing personas. The largest, and perhaps most useful section for peace scholars, is section four of the biography. Subdivided into seven chapters, it covers La Fontaine's career in law and politics, his pacifist views and activism, his Nobel Prize, and his work for peace during the First and Second World Wars until his death in 1943. The brief discussion of his law career traces the development of La Fontaine's involvement in international law and its uses for the creation and maintenance of international peace. The exploration of his criticisms of antisemitism in response to the Dreyfus Affair ties nicely into those examining La Fontaine's associations with international peace leagues such as the Ligue des droits de l'homme (Human Rights League). The following two subsections delve into La Fontaine's socialist and feminist ideologies. His intellectual perspectives on the interconnectedness of socialism, feminism, and pacifism, most notably in his views on providing high-quality pacifist-based education for women and the working classes, give opportunities for peace scholars to integrate contemporary ideologies and practices of gender and labor into their work. Van den Dungen himself notes there is more work to be done on organizations such as the Bischoffsheim technical school for women, where La Fontaine served on the Board of Governors. The following three subsections are perhaps of most use for peace scholars as they delve into the work done by La Fontaine and his networks to further the cause of peace. The first of these sections covers what van den Dungen notes as the most overlooked aspect of La Fontaine's life and career: his involvement with creating and promoting the Institut International de Bibliographie, today known as the Mundaneum. This fascinating content flows easily into van den Dungen's next section on La Fontaine's career as president of the International Peace Bureau and his prewar pacifist activism surrounding the creation of what became the International Court of Justice at the Hague. Van den Dungen details La Fontaine's pacifist ideologies and his opposition to both bourgeois and socialist ideas of peace on the eve of the First World War. Somewhat ironically, considering the title of the book, the discussion of La Fontaine's Nobel Prize in 1913 is only a small part of van den Dungen's treatment of La Fontaine's pacifist career. He draws attention to the uniqueness of it being awarded to La Fontaine for his actions as an individual versus as the director of an organization in the prewar years, before shifting the discussion to examine La Fontaine's somewhat tumultuous relationship with the Carnegie Endowment for Peace and other members of the International Peace Bureau during the First World War and in its aftermath. La Fontaine's disappointment with the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, despite his hopes in President Woodrow Wilson's promises of a new world order, segues nicely into an overview of La Fontaine's work at and for the League of Nations. Here, La Fontaine's engagement with Europe's colonial empires is briefly summarized, with the focus placed on his paternalistic views towards colonial subjects. While he supported the journey of colonized peoples in Africa and Asia to become “civilized,” his unwillingness to promote total independence stands in stark contrast to his support for the newly established nations of Europe to gain an equal seat at the international diplomatic table. The brief notes on La Fontaine's admiration for Mohandas Gandhi, his opposition to the Zionist goals of a Jewish state, and remarks on the Armenian Genocide provide starting points for further research. These sections conclude by exploring La Fontaine's rejection of integral pacifism that sought to prevent war by any means necessary, including collaboration, throughout the 1930s, in favor to remaining dedicated to legal forms of pacifism centered on international organizations such as the League of Nations. His determination to remain relevant in the fight for peace despite his age and seemingly outdated style of pacifism takes readers into the Second World War as La Fontaine, and Europe at large, confronts Hitler's plans for a new world order. The final section of van den Dungen's biography details La Fontaine's time in exile during the First World War, primarily focusing on his extended stay in the United States. The relegation of this information to the end of the book is perhaps most useful for scholars of European and American pacifism and international relations during the First World War. In addition, readers are able to get a sense of the difficulties La Fontaine encountered as an unofficial ambassador for both Belgium and peace while traveling across the United States. While he saw himself as a guardian of internationalism and viewed the United States as a model for postwar Europe, La Fontaine's own writings and letters testify to the difficulties he had convincing others of the same ideas. Van den Dungen makes this especially clear in his overview of La Fontaine's journey to get his The Great Solution: Magnissima Charta into print, noting that it was not published in the original French until 2019! Van den Dungen's offering of his work not only as a new biography of La Fontaine himself, but also as a new bibliography for future studies of topics, themes, organizations, and persons mentioned, is generous to scholars of La Fontaine, Belgian pacifism and peace leagues, and their place in Belgian society during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The thematic approach to the book, while useful for scholars or educators seeking to study a specific aspect of La Fontaine's life, makes it difficult to keep track of the chronology of La Fontaine's life and career. This is particularly true when it comes to tracing the trajectory of his pacifist career and beliefs through the First World War. One positive aspect of this editorial decision, however, is that it would make it easy for educators to assign relevant sections of the book for students to read, versus the entire biography, assuming their students have the ability to read French. Additionally, the incredible amount of detail is at times overwhelming. Readers may get lost in the slew of names, places, and monetary sums collected and spent by La Fontaine and the organizations with which he worked, making it difficult to keep track of the “plot” of the section. The footnotes and bibliographical information for the work are available as either a separate volume or through the publisher's open access “annex”: https://www.calameo.com/read/0062394626bf4688dab13. The author declares no conflicts of interest.