The practice of humanitarian intervention – that is to say, of military intervention in the internal affairs of a sovereign state to stop the mass atrocities and the violation of humanitarian norms – is commonly situated within the international politics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Yet recent scholarship has identified the roots of humanitarian intervention in the nineteenth century. In this context, the practice of enforcing the abolition of the slave trade is pivotal, because it established the concept of humanitarian intervention as a recognized instrument in international politics. Closely intertwined with imperial and colonial projects, enforcing abolition however shaped also more general legal debates of when and how “civilized” states should intervene in a humanitarian crisis. Insofar these debates went far beyond the sole issue of intervening military against the slave trade, but significantly connected and shaped various fields of nineteenth century humanitarianism.
Fabian Klose is Chair-Professor of International History and Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Cologne. His research focuses on the history of decolonization, international humanitarian law, human rights, and humanitarianism in the 19th and 20th centuries. On the history of human rights and humanitarianism he has published Human Rights in the Shadow of Colonial Violence. The Wars of Independence in Kenya and Algeria (Philadelphia 2013), The Emergence of Humanitarian Intervention. Ideas and Practice from the Nineteenth Century to the Present (Cambridge 2016) and recently In the Cause of Humanity. A History of Humanitarian Intervention in the Long Nineteenth Century (Cambridge 2022). He is Co-founder of the Cologne Bonn Academy in Exile (CBA) and Managing Director of the newly founded Cologne Centre for Advanced Studies in International History and Law (CHL).
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