Freedom's battle : the origins of humanitarian intervention /

Freedom's battle : the origins of humanitarian intervention /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:	Bass, Gary Jonathan, 1969-
Edition:	1st ed.
Imprint:	New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.
Description:	x, 509 p. ; 24 cm.
Language:	English
Subject:	Humanitarian intervention -- History. Humanitarian intervention -- Case studies. Humanitarian intervention. Case studies. History.
Format:	Print Book
URL for this record:	http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/7302686

Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:	9780307266484 0307266486
Notes:	Includes bibliographical references (p. 383-481) and index.
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.

Description
Summary:	Why do we sometimes let evil happen to others and sometimes rally to stop it? Whose lives matter to us? These are the key questions posed in this important and perceptive study of the largely forgotten nineteenth-century "atrocitarians"--some of the world's first human rights activists. Wildly romantic, eccentrically educated, and full of bizarre enthusiasms, they were also morally serious people on the vanguard of a new political consciousness. And their legacy has much to teach us about the human rights crises of today.<br> <br> 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.<br> <br> Military missions in the name of human rights have always been dangerous undertakings. There has invariably been the risk of radical destabilization and the threatening blurring of imperial and humanitarian intentions. Yet Bass 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.<br> <br> Timely and illuminating, Freedom's Battle challenges our assumptions about the history of morally motivated foreign policy and sets out a path for reclaiming that inheritance with greater modesty and wisdom.
Physical Description:	x, 509 p. ; 24 cm.
Bibliography:	Includes bibliographical references (p. 383-481) and index.
ISBN:	9780307266484 0307266486