While the concept of nonviolence is an ancient concept, it is only in the last few hundred years that scholars have attempted to develop a theory of nonviolent resistance. And it was not until the writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. that such a theory has fully matured into what is known as "compassionate nonviolent resistance." The purpose of this research is to document the evolution of nonviolent resistance from colonial America to its height with Reverend King.
Political expressions of nonviolence originated in the United States as early as the 1650s with the establishment of the Quaker church by Margaret Fell and George Fox (Nagler, 1982:73). The Quaker church opposed the use of personal violence as well as participation in wars between states.
The Quaker principle of nonviolence was put to a test in the political arena in 1681. In that year, William Penn was deeded the area now known as Pennsylvania by the British crown. William Penn had ascribed to the Quaker church and incorporated many of the nonviolent principles into the administration of the colony. In what was labeled the "Holy Experiment," Penn pared down the number of capital crimes to only murder and treason, far fewer than among any other colony, and held that when Indians came to trial, half the jurors should be Indian (Cooney and Michalowski, 1977:21).
In the 1840s, the concept of nonviolence evolved into a theory of political resistance by Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau was opposed American aggressions in the Mexican-American war and refused to pay war taxes as a measure of his resistance. Although Thoreau was briefly imprisoned, the number of tax resistors expanded (Hedeman, 1983:63).
Thoreau popularized his notion of nonviolent resistance in the landmark essay, "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience." Nonviolent resistance is conceptualized by Thoreau primarily in negative terms. He argues, "It is not a man's duty, as a matter of ...