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7 - Regular War, Irregulars, and Savages

from Part II - Concepts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2021

By
Pablo Kalmanovitz
Edited by
Peter Schröder
Peter Schröder
Affiliation:
University College London
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Summary

One of the most appalling uses of standards of civilization in international legal history is the two-tiered construction of the laws of war in the nineteenth century. The international legal profession in Europe and other ‘civilized nations’ took ‘savages’ to be incapable of showing restraint in warfare, and as such beyond the pale of the limiting rules of civilized, regular warfare. International lawyers sanctioned the deployment of unlimited violence by European powers against non-Europeans in colonial wars; legal norms that were well established in European practice, such as giving quarter to combatants and sparing women and children from deliberate attacks, were deemed inapplicable in such radically asymmetrical wars.1

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Chapter
Information
Concepts and Contexts of Vattel's Political and Legal Thought , pp. 141 - 160
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

Further Reading

Anghie, A., ‘Vattel and colonialism: Some preliminary observations’, in Chetail, V. and Haggenmacher, P. (eds.), Vattel’s International Law in a XXIst Century Perspective (Leiden, 2011), 237–253.Google Scholar
Best, G., Humanity in Warfare (New York, 1980).Google Scholar
Hunter, I., ‘Vattel’s Law of Nations: Diplomatic casuistry for the protestant nation’, Grotiana 31 (2010), 108–140.Google Scholar
Kalmanovitz, P., The Laws of War in International Thought (Oxford, 2020).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mégret, F., ‘From “savages” to “unlawful combatants”: A postcolonial look at international humanitarian law’s “other”’, in Orford, A. (ed.), International Law and Its Others (Cambridge, 2006), 265–317.Google Scholar
Neff, S., War and the Law of Nations: A General History (Cambridge, 2005).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pitts, J., Boundaries of the International: Law and Empire, (Cambridge, MA, 2018).Google Scholar
Rech, W., Enemies of Mankind: Vattel’s Theory of Collective Security (Leiden, 2013).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scheipers, S., Unlawful Combatants: A Genealogy of the Irregular Fighter (Oxford, 2015).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmitt, C., The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum (New York, 2003).Google Scholar
Whitman, J., The Verdict of Battle: The Law of Victory and the Making of Modern War (Cambridge, MA, 2012).Google Scholar

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