New book “In the Cause of Humanity” in Open Access

Fabian Klose, “In the Cause of Humanity”. Eine Geschichte der humanitären Intervention im langen 19. Jahrhundert, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2019.

The question of whether, when and how the international community should respond to violations of humanitarian norms and related humanitarian crises is undoubtedly one of the much-discussed issues on today’s international policy agenda. However, it was not only at the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first centuries that this problem suddenly emerged from nowhere, but already during the course of the long nineteenth century it was controversially dealt with.

In my recently published German book “In the Cause of Humanity. A History of Humanitarian Intervention in the long Nineteenth Century” I am looking at various case studies such as the fight against the slave trade (1807-1890), the military interventions of the major European powers to protec Christian minorities in the Ottoman Empire (1827-1878) and the intervention of the United States in the Cuban War of Independence (1898) to investigate the emerging doctrine of humanitarian intervention as an instrument in international politics. A central key role in this development was played by the armed international struggle against the slave trade as the archetype of humanitarian intervention. Thus, the long nineteenth century can be characterized as the genuine “century of humanitarian intervention”, in which military interventionism under the banner of humanity was significantly linked with colonial and imperial projects.

Due to the very generous support by the Monograph Publishing Funds of the Leibniz Association, for which I am deeply grateful, “In the Cause of Humanity” is simultanously published in Open Access. If you are interested you can now read and download the complete book at: http://bit.ly/CauseOfHumanity

New Blog “Europe Across Borders” by Johannes Paulmann

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The blog Europe Across Borders is a forum for historical research on Europe across borders from around 1500 to the present. It advances historical knowledge in present scholarly and public debates.

como-2015_040The blog posts cross and reflect boundaries not merely between nation states or cultures but also between social, economic, religious, ethnic, gender, and other entities. The blog thus fosters research on the dynamics in Europe from the early modern period into the twentieth century and the immediate past. The blog is open to a broad variety of topics, both with regard to methodological approaches and fields of research. Methodologically, it brings together approaches such as comparative studies, the study of transfer processes and entanglements, the histoire croisée, or international, imperial and global history. Beyond that, the blog takes up all fields of cultural, political, social, economic, environmental and intellectual history throughout Europe in the modern period. It is especially interested in providing a fresh picture on Europe’s place in a globalising world.

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