Skip to main content

Emancipation, Humanity, and Peace: A Response

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law, Volume 24 (2021)

Part of the book series: Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law ((YIHL))

Abstract

This chapter responds to commentaries on the author’s recent book Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War. The coverage includes whether the international laws of war were substantially humanized in principle or in practice before recently, how to revisit and rehabilitate the peace movements of the nineteenth century (and after), and what moral criterion furnishes the evaluative standard for the progress of the humanization of war today.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 129.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Moyn 2021; Chap. 5 by Jones and Shah in this Volume; Chap. 6 by Lustig in this Volume.

  2. 2.

    Meron 2000.

  3. 3.

    See Chap. 6 by Lustig in this Volume.

  4. 4.

    Benvenisti and Lustig 2020.

  5. 5.

    Like others, I eagerly await Kempf forthcoming to learn more.

  6. 6.

    Moyn 2021, pp. 97–103.

  7. 7.

    Ibid., p. 31.

  8. 8.

    Jones 2021.

  9. 9.

    Koskenniemi 2003.

  10. 10.

    See Chap. 6 by Lustig in this Volume.

  11. 11.

    Chen 2022.

  12. 12.

    Knaap forthcoming.

  13. 13.

    I intended both of these points as correctives to my colleagues, who begin their account of antiwar internationalism in 1918 and scant grassroots mobilization in making it possible before and since that date. See Hathaway and Shapiro 2017.

  14. 14.

    See also Moyn 2020a.

  15. 15.

    See Chap. 5 by Jones and Shah in this Volume.

  16. 16.

    Alexander forthcoming, p. 13.

  17. 17.

    Ibid.

  18. 18.

    Consider, in this connection, the much-noted declaration of Martin Kimani, the Kenyan ambassador to the United Nations at the start of the current Ukraine crisis, who argued that postcolonial states are best-positioned to call on moral grounds for territorial revision in the international system—but have learned that war in its name ought to be repudiated because it essentially never advances justice.

  19. 19.

    See, e.g., Moyn 2008, rpt. as Moyn 2014, Chapter 2, or Moyn 2020b.

References

Articles, Books and Other Sources

  • Alexander A (forthcoming) The Ethics of Violence: Recent Literature on the Creation of the Contemporary Regime of Law and War. Journal of Genocide Research

    Google Scholar 

  • Benvenisti E, Lustig D (2020) Monopolizing War: Codifying the Laws of War to Reassert Governmental Authority, 1856–1874. European Journal of International Law 31: 127–69

    Google Scholar 

  • Chen X (2022) The Imagination of Alternatives: The History of International Arbitration in the Late Nineteenth Century 1863–1888. Ph.D. diss. European University Institute, Florence

    Google Scholar 

  • Hathaway O, Shapiro SJ (2017) The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World. Simon and Schuster, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Jones C (2021) The War Lawyers: The United States, Israel, and Juridical Warfare. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Kempf E (forthcoming) Humanitarian Calculus: The Making and Meaning of Weapons Prohibitions in International Law, 1868–1925. Ph.D. diss. University of California, Berkeley

    Google Scholar 

  • Knaap A (forthcoming) Judging the World: International Courts and the Legal Origins of World Organization, 1899–1966. Ph.D. diss, Harvard University

    Google Scholar 

  • Koskenniemi M (2003) The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870–1960. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Meron T (2000) The Humanization of Humanitarian Law. American Journal of International Law 94: 239–78

    Google Scholar 

  • Moyn S (2008) Spectacular Wrongs. The Nation, October 13

    Google Scholar 

  • Moyn S (2014) Human Rights and the Uses of History. Verso Books, London/New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Moyn S (2020a) From Aggression to Atrocity: Rethinking the History of International Criminal Law. In: Heller KJ et al. (eds) Oxford Handbook of International Criminal Law. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Moyn S (2020b) The Road to Hell. American Affairs 4: 1

    Google Scholar 

  • Moyn S (2021) Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, New York

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Samuel Moyn .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2023 T.M.C. Asser Press and the authors

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Moyn, S. (2023). Emancipation, Humanity, and Peace: A Response. In: Krieger, H., Kalmanovitz, P., Lieblich, E., Mignot-Mahdavi, R. (eds) Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law, Volume 24 (2021). Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law. T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6265-559-1_7

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6265-559-1_7

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-6265-558-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-6265-559-1

  • eBook Packages: Law and CriminologyLaw and Criminology (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics