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The classical position One of the oldest rules of the law of war provides for the protection of the civilian noncombatant population and forbids making civilians the direct object of attack. 1 This rule appears in the Hague Regulations’ ban on the bombardment of undefended places, the requirement that an attacking officer should
Introduction Anticipating a campaign in the spring and summer of 1855 and hence many more casualties, the War Department realized the medical department needed more doctors. Given the outcry over poor medical care, the government decided to recruit experienced civilian doctors rather than commissioning newly graduated surgeons. The civilian doctors would run their own hospitals and have complete control over the female nurses. Two civilian hospitals were established in Turkey, the first in Smyrna and the second
The second German republic is the best Germany ever: liberal, stable, prepared to balance out social differences and with citizens actively engaged in public life. How did this career from the ugly German to moral superpower come about? 1 It is common to use the term ‘civilian power’ to describe Germany’s conception of its role in the world after the Second World War. Since its beginning in 1949, the foreign policy of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) has been driven by its rejection of Germany’s militarist past and its integration into the liberal
Civilians into Soldiers is an examination of British Army life during the Second World War. Drawing on a wealth of official records and servicemen’s personal testimonies it explores the ways in which male civilians were turned into soldiers through the techniques by which they were inducted into military culture. The book demonstrates that the body was central to this process. Using strict physical regimes, the military authorities sorted men into bodily types that reflected their cultural assumptions and sought to transform them into figures that they imagined to be ideal. However, soldiers’ bodies were often far from ideal and served to frustrate these designs. While recruits were willing to engage in practices and routines that they found desirable they also resisted the army’s demands by creating subversive bodily cultures. The book follows the chronological experiences of army personnel, from their recruitment and training to their confrontations with wounding and death, tracing the significance of the body throughout. It analyses the extent to which the British Army organised compliance and relied on consent to achieve its objectives, the ways in which resistance was manifested and experienced, and what can be drawn from these instances by way of larger observations about wartime society in general. By examining soldiers’ embodied experiences it also illuminates broader issues of gender, class, national identity and emotional life. As such, it makes a major contribution to military history, medical history and the social and cultural history of Britain in the Second World War.
• 4 • Civilians and military service Introduction In October 1914 Holcombe Ingleby and his wife received the news that their son Clement, a Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, was on his way to the Front. As Ingleby explained to Clement, they hoped ‘that you will bear yourself like a man’, but could not help worrying ‘that anything may happen to you’. However, such fears were cancelled out by larger considerations: ‘the business has to be faced, and any man who doesn’t offer himself at this moment to his country is a cur’.1 Many – perhaps most
I Introduction and Taqrīẓ – Shaykh Gibril F. Haddad In the name of God, the All-Beneficent, the Most Merciful. Gentle reader, Peace upon those who follow right guidance! I am honoured to present the following fatwā or ‘response by a qualified Muslim Scholar’ against the killing of civilians written by the Oxford-based Malaysian jurist of the Shāfi‘ī School, my inestimable teacher, Shaykh Muhammad Afifi al-Akiti, and entitled Defending the transgressed by censuring the reckless against the killing of civilians . The Shaykh authored it in a
differing interpretations – and permits no easy solutions. Although few would conceive ‘militarisation’ as a binary contest between ‘military’ and ‘civil’ parties, the varying impact of this multifaceted process is most apparent in soldier–civilian interactions in several interconnected spheres. Older scholarship, primarily concerned with institutional structures, sought to establish how and when the authority of military personnel extended to civil, fiscal and judicial affairs. Debate focused especially on the origin, nature and development of territorialised military
, we note how attitudes in the humanitarian field have also transformed. Of course, we focus on victims of war and their need for social recovery – an essential part of the rehabilitation process in past centuries but mostly forgotten in recent decades. And we pay special attention to the care of civilian victims of armed conflict. We discuss symbolic healing, too, the last and essential component of
Thousands of people died in Rotterdam during the Second World War in more than 300 German and Allied bombardments. Civil defence measures had been taken before the German invasion of the Netherlands in May 1940 and these efforts were intensified during the country’s occupation as Allied bombers attacked Rotterdam’s port, factories, dry docks and oil terminals. Residential neighbourhoods were also hit through imprecise targeting and by misfired flak grenades. Inadequate air raid shelters and people’s reluctance to enter them caused many casualties. The condition of the corpses and their post-mortem treatment was thus co-constituted by the relationship between the victims and their material circumstances. This article concludes that an understanding of the treatment of the dead after war, genocide and mass violence must pay systematic attention to the materiality of death because the condition, collection and handling of human remains is affected by the material means that impacted on the victims.
Introduction In contemporary crises, a key aim of international humanitarian action is the protection of the civilian population. In the same contexts in which the protection needs of the local population are greatest, staff members of international humanitarian agencies may also come under threat themselves. Thus the organisations that seek to keep the local civilian population safe from physical violence are at the same time seeking to keep