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This book is an attempt at a comprehensive presentation of the history of humanitarian intervention in the long nineteenth century, the heyday of this controversial doctrine. It starts with a brief presentation of the present situation and debate. The theoretical first part of the book starts with the genealogy of the idea, namely the quest for the progenitors of the idea in the sixteenth and seventeenth century which is a matter of controversy. Next the nineteenth century ‘civilization-barbarity’ dichotomy is covered and its bearing on humanitarian intervention, with its concomitant Eurocentric/Orientalist gaze towards the Ottomans and other states, concluding with the reaction of the Ottomans (as well as the Chinese and Japanese). Then the pivotal international law dimension is scrutinized, with the arguments of advocates and opponents of humanitarian intervention from the 1830s until the 1930s. The theoretical part of the book concludes with nineteenth century international political theory and intervention (Kant, Hegel, Cobden, Mazzini and especially J.S. Mill). In the practical second part of the book four cases studies of humanitarian intervention are examined in considerable detail: the Greek case (1821-1831), the Lebanon/Syria case (1860-61), the Balkan crisis and Bulgarian case (1875-78) in two chapters, and the U.S. intervention in Cuba (1895-98). Each cases study concludes with its bearing on the evolution of international norms and rules of conduct in instances of humanitarian plights. The concluding chapter identifies the main characteristics of intervention on humanitarian grounds during this period and today’s criticism and counter-criticism.
04 Crimes Against Humanity 098-112 3/12/10 10:11 Page 98 4 Humanitarian intervention We have seen in the preceding chapters that the concept of crimes against humanity implies a limit to state sovereignty. It is natural, therefore, that discussion of the concept, and especially of its beginnings, should make reference to an earlier tradition within international law to which that same limit is germane – I mean the tradition of humanitarian intervention. In fact, the principle of humanitarian intervention stands not only at the origin of the offence of
(This chapter is extracted from Crimes against Humanity: Birth of a Concept , Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2011) We have seen in the preceding chapters * that the concept of crimes against humanity implies a limit to state sovereignty. It is natural, therefore, that discussion of the concept, and especially of its beginnings, should make reference to an earlier tradition within international law to which that same limit is germane – I mean the tradition of humanitarian intervention. In fact, the principle of humanitarian intervention stands not
(This article was first published on ‘Normblog’, 24 March 2010) An article by Mark Mazower for the journal World Affairs may seem, at first, to strike an odd note. It characterizes the concept of humanitarian intervention as ‘dying if not dead’ and links this judgement with the hypothesis of a ‘new era of pragmatism ... in the making’ that sounds as though it might have the author’s approval. For me there is a jarring element in that coupling. Humanitarian intervention is an option that is available when the assumed protections of state sovereignty have
Humanitarian intervention – that is, military intervention aimed at saving innocent people in other countries from massive violations of human rights (primarily the right to life) – entered public consciousness around 1990 as never before in the course of the twentieth century. It has earned a central place in scholarly research and in the preoccupations of decision-makers and international organizations and has captured the imagination of the wider public in a
External interventions in local society took place in very different ways in early medieval Europe. Their intensity depended, to a large degree, on the extent of claims made by central authorities and other powers, such as lay aristocrats or heads of religious institutions. In the early ninth century, for example, Frankish rulers of the Carolingian family attempted to control everyday life even within local society – a remarkable and far-reaching intention. The new norms written down for this purpose in capitularies, conciliar records and episcopal statutes are
Intervention in Egypt contrasted dramatically with recent campaigns in Africa and Afghanistan. It involved the largest expeditionary force despatched by Britain since the Crimean War and achieved a decisive outcome in less than two months, that is, from the passing of a vote of credit by the House of Commons for an expeditionary force (27 July 1882) to the crushing victory at
aim of the aggregation of societies established by nature is ‘mutual assistance in order to perfect themselves [states] and their condition’. 26 The duties to humanity become the nooumental link between civil and international society which champions a principle of humanitarian intervention. However, the question remains as to whether it is a moral or a legal duty. Vattel considers specific
“Interventions” was the organizing term for the presentations of three Baldwin scholars at the Modern Language Association Convention in Chicago in January of 2019. Baldwin’s travels and activities in spaces not traditionally associated with him, including the U.S. South and West, represent interventions of a quite literal type, while his aesthetic and critical encounters with these and other cultures, including twenty-first-century contexts of racial, and racist, affect—as in the case of Raoul Peck’s 2016 film I Am Not Your Negro—provide opportunities to reconsider his work as it contributes to new thinking about race, space, property, citizenship, and aesthetics.
Contrary to international law, international political theory and political philosophy paid scant attention to the ethics of intervention in the long nineteenth century. 1 As for humanitarian intervention per se, there is nothing, apart from cursory remarks by John Stuart Mill and Giuseppe Mazzini. On the wider question of intervention and non-intervention we will refer to their views and to those of Kant, Hegel and Cobden. Based on today’s distinction