Ressource pédagogique : Jean-Michel Turcotte - Just a Scrap of Paper? Western Military Officers, Humanitarianism and the Shaping of International Humanitarian Law, 1864–1907

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This presentation takes a look at my new book project focusing on the history of the Geneva Conventions. The first Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field signed in August 1864 has defined for first time the concept of international humanitarian law (IHL). The Convention, modified thereafter in 1906 and in the Hague Conventions, addressed humanitarian protection to soldiers and civilians in wartime. Scholars have often presented the development of IHL as the result of efforts made by lawyers, jurists, diplomates, the International Committee of the Red Cross—and other pacifist and internationalist actors in order to bringing humanity in warfare. Military actors, however, though being directly involved in international discussion as well as in the practice of IHL in war appear only on the margins of scholarship from both fields of humanitarianism and military history. Existing literature often argued that American and European military authorities had opposed, or at least have been unsympathetic, to the IHL since 1864 by advancing militarist arguments such as “military necessity” and the danger of limiting their action on the battlefield, and by committing numerous violations of IHL in wartime. My project challenges this argument by questioning the role played by military experts, and high officers in international debates related to IHL. This research interests in the cases of the United States, Germany, France and Britain.

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• Droit international (341)

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