ESIL Interest Group History of International Law

ESIL Interest Group History of International Law

Friday 28 January 2022

BOOK: Fabian KLOSE, In the Cause of Humanity: A History of Humanitarian Intervention in the Long Nineteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2021)

Image Source: CUP

Book description:

In the Cause of Humanity is a major new history of the emergence of the theory and practice of humanitarian intervention during the nineteenth century when the question of whether, when and how the international community should react to violations of humanitarian norms and humanitarian crises first emerged as a key topic of controversy and debate. Fabian Klose investigates the emergence of legal debates on the protection of humanitarian norms by violent means, revealing how military intervention under the banner of humanitarianism became closely intertwined with imperial and colonial projects. Through case studies including the international fight against the slave trade, the military interventions under the banner of humanitarian aid for Christian minorities in the Ottoman Empire, and the intervention of the United States in the Cuban War of Independence, he shows how the idea of humanitarian intervention established itself as a recognized instrument in international politics and international law.

Table of Contents:

Introduction
1. Interventionism and humanitarianism under the sign of internationalism
2. The struggle against the Atlantic slave trade and the emergence of a humanitarian understanding of intervention
3. Humanitarian intervention and its solidification as an imperial and colonial practice
Epilogue: Perspectives on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries
Bibliography

Source: CUP