Nonviolence characterizes the daily life the Semai of Malaysia. They do not war and they do not feud.
Image by Kiran Kreer.


"After searching the worldwide ethnographic literature for several months, I was able to locate 74 societies that are clearly non-warring. The Semai of Malaysia are a good example. Nonviolence characterizes daily life. They do not war and they do not feud. Even when confronted with slave-raiders in the past, their response was to flee into the forest. The Mardu of Australia are another example. Anthropologist Robert Tonkinson observes that 'peaceful intergroup relations are imperative for long-term survival. . . . The Mardu have no word for either ‘feud’ or ‘warfare,’ and such forms of group violence are totally lacking there. 

"The non-warring societies list is far from exhaustive. It doesn’t, for example, include pacifist “enclave societies”—groups existing within larger societies—like the Amish or the Quakers. The list also excludes nations that have avoided warfare for long periods of time. Iceland has been at peace for more than seven centuries. Sweden has not been to war in more than 170 years. Costa Rica, a nation surrounded by violent instability, abolished its military after World War II. 

"Even omitting these societies, both my list and the list of peaceful cultures found by the Embers point to the same conclusion: Not all societies make war. These findings debunk the belief that war is intrinsic to humankind." - Douglas P. Fry

Article: Worlds Without War

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