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63 results

Page 1 of 4

  • 1 - Towards a history of humanitarian intervention
  • Edited by Brendan Simms, University of Cambridge, D. J. B. Trim, University of Reading
  • Book: Humanitarian Intervention
  • Published online: 18 April 2011
  • Print publication: 07 April 2011, pp 1-24
  • View extract

    Summary

    If it bee objected … that God hath appointed limits and boundes to everie nation, and that we may not as it were thrust in our sickle into their harvest, neither is my counsell to the contrarie, that under pretence of ayde we should invade … an other nation, or chalenge their jurisdiction … but rather that we should cut short … any tyrant afflicting his own people, any king throwing downe the props and stayes of his common wealth.

    Vindiciae, contra tyrannos, first English edition (1588)

    It is too late in the day … to tell us that nations may not forcibly interfere with one another for the sole purpose of stopping mischief and benefitting humanity.

    John Stuart Mill, 1849

    Is it permissible to let gross and systematic violations of human rights, with grave humanitarian consequences, continue unchecked?

    If humanitarian intervention is, indeed, an unacceptable assault on sovereignty, how should we respond … to gross and systematic violations of human rights that offend every precept of our common humanity?

    Kofi Annan, UN Secretary-General, September 2000

    The essays in this book sketch out the long-term history of what, since the nineteenth century, has been termed ‘humanitarian intervention’ – that is, action by governments (or, more rarely, by organisations) to prevent or to stop governments, organisations, or factions in a foreign state from violently oppressing, persecuting, or otherwise abusing the human rights of people within that state.

  • 4 - ‘A false principle in the Law of Nations’: Burke, state sovereignty, [German] liberty, and intervention in the Age of Westphalia
  • Edited by Brendan Simms, University of Cambridge, D. J. B. Trim, University of Reading
  • Book: Humanitarian Intervention
  • Published online: 18 April 2011
  • Print publication: 07 April 2011, pp 89-110
  • View extract

    Summary

    You hope, Sir, that I think the French deserving of Liberty? I certainly do. I certainly think that all men who desire it, deserve it. It is not the reward of our Merit or the acquisition of our industry. It is our Inheritance. It is the birthright of our species … A positively Vicious and abusive Government ought to be changed and, if necessary, by Violence, if it cannot be (as is sometimes it is the case), Reformed.

    Edmund Burke to Charles-Jean-François Depont, November 1789

    A more mischievous idea cannot exist than that any degree of wickedness, violence and oppression may prevail in a country, that the most abominable, murderous and exterminatory rebellions may rage in it, or the most atrocious and bloody tyranny may domineer, and that no neighbouring power can take cognizance of either or afford succour to the miserable sufferers.

    Edmund Burke to Lord Grenville, Beaconsfield, 18 August 1792

    To many International Relations theorists and historians of international law, the Treaties of Westphalia which brought the Thirty Years' War to an end in 1648 represent a watershed in thinking about state sovereignty. Before then, the orthodoxy runs, European diplomacy was characterised by the post-Reformation antagonism between Catholicism, especially Counter-Reformation Catholicism, and various forms of Protestantism. Thereafter, so the argument continues, states accepted that religion was the preserve of the ruler; the principle of cuius regio, eius religio, which the Treaty of Augsburg had established in 1555, and which stipulated that populations should adopt the religion of their rulers, was put on a permanent footing.

Humanitarian Intervention
  • Humanitarian Intervention
  • A History
  • Edited by Brendan Simms, D. J. B. Trim
  • Published online: 18 April 2011
  • Print publication: 07 April 2011
  • View description
    The dilemma of how best to protect human rights is one of the most persistent problems facing the international community today. This unique and wide-ranging history of humanitarian intervention examines responses to oppression, persecution and mass atrocities from the emergence of the international state system and international law in the late sixteenth century, to the end of the twentieth century. Leading scholars show how opposition to tyranny and to religious persecution evolved from notions of the common interests of 'Christendom' to ultimately incorporate all people under the concept of 'human rights'. As well as examining specific episodes of intervention, the authors consider how these have been perceived and justified over time, and offer important new insights into ideas of national sovereignty, international relations and law, as well as political thought and the development of current theories of 'international community'.
  • 6 - ‘Ministers of Europe’: British strategic culture, 1714–1760
    • By Brendan Simms, Reader in the History of International Relations Peterhouse, Cambridge
  • Edited by Hamish Scott, University of St Andrews, Scotland, Brendan Simms, University of Cambridge
  • Book: Cultures of Power in Europe during the Long Eighteenth Century
  • Published online: 17 July 2009
  • Print publication: 05 July 2007, pp 110-132
  • View extract

    Summary

    During the past twenty years historians have once again begun to look at eighteenth-century British history in its European context. Much of the discussion centres on the question of whether or not eighteenth-century Britain was an ‘ancien régime’ on continental lines. There has also been important work on Britain's role in the European state system. Yet many historians remain reluctant to integrate the implications of Britain's great power status for their subject. Jonathan Clark, who first sparked the ‘ancien régime’ debate, pays very little attention to foreign policy, concentrating instead on high politics and religion. His second broadside, Revolution and Rebellion, included only a brief belated acknowledgement of its importance. This trend has been accentuated by the current historiographical preoccupation with the imperial dimension to eighteenth-century British history. Peter Marshall, for example, speaks of ‘a nation defined by empire’. Kathleen Wilson has written of a ‘sense of the people’ which was primarily imperial and colonial. Yet as one recent critic has noted, Wilson's very stimulating work makes virtually no reference to the ‘world of European politics’ within which the imperial themes she described were played out.

    This is surprising, because the European balance of power, and Britain's position within it, rather than taxation, popular unrest, confession, elections or colonial expansion, was the central political preoccupation of eighteenth-century Britain. It was by far the largest single subject of debate in parliament.

Cultures of Power in Europe during the Long Eighteenth Century
  • Cultures of Power in Europe during the Long Eighteenth Century
  • Edited by Hamish Scott, Brendan Simms
  • Published online: 17 July 2009
  • Print publication: 05 July 2007
  • View description
    This volume seeks to get behind the surface of political events and to identify the forces which shaped politics and culture from 1680 to 1840 in Germany, France and Great Britain. The contributors, all leading specialists in the field, explore critically how 'culture', defined in the widest sense, was exploited during the 'long eighteenth century' to buttress authority in all its forms and how politics infused culture. Individual essays explore topics ranging from the military culture of Central Europe through the political culture of Germany, France and Great Britain, music, court intrigue and diplomatic practice, religious conflict and political ideas, the role of the Enlightenment, to the very new dispensations which prevailed during and after the French Revolution and the Napoleonic watershed. The book will be essential reading for all scholars of eighteenth-century European history.

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