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 | Against Massacre: |
Against Massacre looks at the rise of humanitarian intervention in the nineteenth century, from the fall of Napoleon to the First World War. Examining the concept from a historical perspective, Davide Rodogno explores the understudied cases of European interventions and noninterventions in the Ottoman Empire and brings a new view to this international practice for the contemporary era. While it is commonly believed that humanitarian interventions are a fairly recent development, Rodogno demonstrates that almost two centuries ago an international community, under the aegis of certain European powers, claimed a moral and political right to intervene in other states' affairs to save strangers from massacre, atrocity, or extermination. On some occasions, these powers acted to protect fellow Christians when allegedly "uncivilized" states, like the Ottoman Empire, violated a "right to life." Exploring the political, legal, and moral status, as well as European perceptions, of the Ottoman Empire, Rodogno investigates the reasons that were put forward to exclude the Ottomans from the so-called Family of Nations. He considers the claims and mixed motives of intervening states for aiding humanity, the relationship between public outcry and state action or inaction, and the bias and selectiveness of governments and campaigners. An original account of humanitarian interventions some two centuries ago, Against Massacre investigates the varied consequences of European involvement in the Ottoman Empire and the lessons that can be learned for similar actions today. Davide Rodogno is Fonds National Suisse Research Professor at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva. He is the author of Fascism's European Empire. "A timely, ambitious, and clearheaded account of the complex history of humanitarian intervention in the nineteenth century. Rodogno astutely shows how European humanitarianism fed on views of the Ottoman Empire as barbaric and moribund, and its Christian subjects as uniquely deserving of sympathy. Stressing the selectivity of interventions and the mixed motives of their agents, Rodogno traces the interplay between public opinion, the journalism that fueled it, and European states' imperial and geopolitical agendas."--Jennifer Pitts, University of Chicago "This excellent book offers a fresh and imaginative look at the history of humanitarian intervention by focusing on European action or inaction in the Ottoman Empire during episodes of violence against some of its Christian populations. Its well-researched and nuanced analysis illuminates the theory and practice of such interventions that remain very relevant for our own day. It also recasts through this prism the much-vexed 'Eastern Question' in highly original ways."--Aron Rodrigue, Stanford University "Against Massacre is a comprehensive and readable account of the first modern humanitarian interventions by Western powers in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire. While the new 'responsibility to protect' norm is making more impact than Rodogno concedes, he is right to suggest that broad consensus on military action in mass atrocity cases will long be elusive: the nineteenth-century legacy of selective response lives on."--Gareth Evans, cochair, International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty Acknowledgments ix Series:
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