This course provides an examination of history of humanitarian aid, ideologies and actors in wartime from the mid-19th and to the mid-20th century. It focuses on central topics such as international law, militarization and modern politics. The course offers an in-depth study of relevant historiography and debates in the field. The aim is to focus on reading, discussing relevant work and archival material, writing a paper and providing an oral presentation. This seminar is useful for students who interest in humanitarian studies with a particular focus on international law and military history. It also introduces students to the vocabulary useful for the understanding of humanitarianism by discussing approaches, explanations and interpretations of the major scholars, and the documents they use to write this history. It presents the main events, the actors, ideas, institutions, and questions. It helps make sense of the current situation of humanitarian aid in wartime, which is complex and controversial, and which represents an increasingly large domain of social life and public action.Central questions will be how humanitarian ideologies, actors and institutions reflected on warfare during the particular violent period from the Crimean War to the Korean conflict what role has wars and conflicts in the development of humanitarianism and international law and what interactions could we dress between humanitarian and military actors in modern war. Special attention will be dedicated to the work of the International Committee of the Red Cross as a global wartime humanitarian actor. We will also look at the shaping and the growing role of the international humanitarian law from 1864 to 1949 on different armed conflicts. Transnational aspects will be emphasized in this course. At the end of the course, participants should be capable of critically discussing the merits of different approaches and debates within the field of humanitarian history.
- Kursleiter*in: Dr. Jean-Michel Turcotte