Freedom's battle : the origins of humanitarian intervention / Gary J. Bass.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bass, Gary Jonathan, 1969-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Humanitarian intervention--History.

Humanitarian intervention.

Humanitarian intervention--Case studies.

History.

Genre:

Case studies.

Physical Description:

x, 509 pages ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.

Summary:

Gary Bass shatters the myth that the history of humanitarian intervention began with Bill Clinton, or even Woodrow Wilson, and shows, instead, that there is a tangled international tradition, reaching back more than two hundred years, of confronting the suffering of innocent foreigners. Bass describes the political and cultural landscapes out of which these activists arose, as an emergent free press exposed Europeans and Americans to atrocities taking place beyond their shores and galvanized them to act. He brings alive a century of passionate advocacy in Britain, France, Russia, and the United States: the fight the British waged against the oppression of the Greeks in the 1820s, the huge uproar against a notorious massacre in Bulgaria in the 1870s, and the American campaign to stop the Armenian genocide in 1915. He tells the gripping stories of the activists themselves: Byron, Bentham, Madison, Gladstone, Dostoevsky, and Theodore Roosevelt among them. Bass also demonstrates that even in the imperialistic heyday of the nineteenth century, humanitarian ideals could play a significant role in shaping world politics. He argues that the failure of today's leading democracies to shoulder such responsibilities has led to catastrophes such as those in Rwanda and Darfur--catastrophes that he maintains are neither inevitable nor traditional.--From publisher description.

Contents:

Introduction

Humanitarianism or imperialism?

Media and solidarity

The diplomacy of humanitarian intervention

Greeks

The Greek revolution

The Scio massacre

The London Greek committee

America and the Greeks

Lord Byron's war

Canning

The Holy alliance

A rumor of slaughter

Navarino

Syrians

France under the second empire

The massacres

Public opinion

Occupying Syria

Mission creep

Bulgarians

The Eastern question

Pan-slavism

Bosnia and Serbia

Bulgarian horrors

The Russo-Turkish war

The Midlothian campaign

Conclusion

Armenians

The uses of history

The international politics of humanitarian intervention

The domestic politics of humanitarian intervention

A new imperialism?.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 383-481) and index.

ISBN:

9780307266484

0307266486

OCLC:

183265486