Introduction

Abstract

The introduction presents the book’s most important arguments and methodology. It suggests an alternative way of thinking about the Conventions’ history and explains what motivated the drafters to establish the most important rules for armed conflict ever formulated. In making the Conventions, they sought to contest European imperial rule, challenge state sovereignty, fight Cold War rivalries, ensure rights during wartime, reinvent the concept of war crimes, and prepare for (civil) wars to come. This alternative reading of the making of humanitarian law has crucial implications for our understanding of the history and theory of international law in wartime today.