Preparing for War: The Making of the 1949 Geneva Conventions: (The History and Theory of International Law)

The 1949 Geneva Conventions are the most important rules for armed conflict ever formulated. To this day they continue to shape contemporary debates about regulating warfare, but their history is often misunderstood.For most observers, the drafters behind these treaties were primarily motivated by liberal humanitarian principles and the shock of the atrocities of the Second World War. This book tells a different story, showing how the final text of the Conventions, far from being an unabashedly liberal blueprint, was the outcome of a series of political struggles among the drafters. It also concerned a great deal more than simply recognizing the shortcomings of international law revealed by the experience of war.To understand the politics and ideas of the Conventions' drafters is to see them less as passive characters responding to past events than as active protagonists trying to shape the future of warfare. In many different ways, they tried to define the contours of future battlefields by deciding who deserved protection and what counted as a legitimate target. Outlawing illegal conduct in wartime did as much to outline the concept of humanized war as to establish the legality of waging war itself.Through extensive archival research and critical legal methodologies, Preparing for War establishes that although they did not seek war, the Conventions' drafters prepared for it by means of weaving a new legal safety net in the event that their worst fear should materialize, a spectre still haunting us today.

Table of Contents:
1: Introduction 2: The Twisted Road to Geneva 3: Making the Civilian Convention 4: Internationalizing Civil and Colonial Wars 5: Fighters in the Shadow 6: Indiscriminate Warfare: Bombing, Nuclear Weapons, and Starvation 7: Preparing for the Worst 8: Conclusion

About the Author :
Boyd van Dijk is an Oxford Martin Fellow at the University of Oxford. He was previously a McKenzie Fellow at the University of Melbourne, Australia and has also taught at the London School of Economics, King's College London, Queen Mary, and the University of Amsterdam.

Review :
Preparing for War. The Making of the Geneva Conventions offers us a thick historical contextualization of pressing issues. In sum, van Dijk's reverse-weaving provides us a much more nuanced picture of not only what was included but also of what was excluded from the fabric of the 1949 Conventions. It offers, I suggest, an illustrative template of what contemporary international legal history should look like as it brings together the lessons learned from more than two decades of rich scholarship on the relationship between comparative legal history, on the one hand, and politics, the theory and history of international law, and imperialism, on the other. The best legal history illuminates outcomes while resisting celebratory or cynical determinism. Dr van Dijk's new history of the Geneva Conventions and humanitarianism in war is a masterpiece of methodological and conceptual sophistication. Through meticulous archival research and critical analysis, van Dijk recovers a multitude of voices and possibilities in the making of the law of war we have, and the ways we might imagine its unrealized potential. In Preparing for War, Boyd van Dijk provides a most welcome update to the history of international humanitarian law. The hallmark of this deeply researched analysis of the 1949 Geneva Conventions is its simultaneous attention to politics and history. In exposing the constant tension between politics and humanitarianism, van Dijk reminds us of the perpetually unfinished nature of the project of humanizing war. Van Dijk's riveting book is the culmination of a decade of new histories of international law, marking the arrival of professional research methods and independent critical analysis to the study of international law's most hallowed texts: the Geneva Conventions. Van Dijk's account of the drafting of the Conventions reveals them to be the products not merely of humanitarian ideals inspired by the horrors of war, but also of fierce Cold War contests and colonial rivalries. Highly recommended. Nothing was inevitable in the drafting of the Geneva Conventions, Boyd van Dijk argues in this important and exciting revisionist work. The author's expansive multi-lingual archival research enables him to reconceive this history by tracing the genealogy of the drafting, revealing the Articles' contingency. Drafters had directly experienced the brutality of total war, and this informed their efforts to protect civilians. Women, like French resistance fighter Andrée Jacob, played crucial roles. Cold War politics mattered, but adversaries nevertheless collaborated on matters that served their common interests. This outstanding work will influence the next generation of writing on the Geneva Conventions. Boyd van Dijk has written a superb political and legal history of the making of the four Geneva Conventions. Preparing for War is a fascinating read. Dr Boyd van Dijk takes us to the heart of the negotiations and lets us see into the minds of the key players. Van Dijk's book is excellent for exposing this dynamic in relation to the geneva conventions and for unearthing some of the politics behind those crucial treaties. Preparing for War is a compelling read. It is powerfully written and offers us the richest and most nuanced account of the negotiations leading to adoption of the Geneva Conventions currently on offer. Preparing for War - The Making of the Geneva Conventions is a book no international humanitarian law scholar should miss. It is a truly interdisciplinary piece of scholarship, which masterfully handles history, political science and international law in telling the story of the drafting and negotiation of the 1949 Geneva Conventions. Boyd van Dijk's Preparing for War offers a rich historical account of the drafting process of the 1949 Geneva Conventions which goes beyond the usual triumphalist rhetoric and uncovers the behind the scenes strategies, struggles and coincidences. Boyd van Dijk has done an invaluable job. He presents in detail the diverse controversies and opposing opinions amongst different states, whether in or outside the Western, Eastern, or 'Third World' blocs, that arose during the discussion and writing of the fourth Convention and rewriting the first, second and third. In doing so he made his book a priceless contribution to the history of humanitarianism, the laws of warfare, the Red Cross, and international relations.