Download or read book Civilians and Warfare in World History written by Nicola Foote and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-08-23 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the role played by civilians in shaping the outcomes of military combat across time and place. This volume explores the contributions civilians have made to warfare in case studies that range from ancient Europe to contemporary Africa and Latin America. Building on philosophical and legal scholarship, it explores the blurred boundary between combatant and civilian in different historical contexts and examines how the absence of clear demarcations shapes civilian strategic positioning and impacts civilian vulnerability to military targeting and massacre. The book argues that engagement with the blurred boundaries between combatant and non-combatant both advance the key analytical questions that underpin the historical literature on civilians and underline the centrality of civilians to a full understanding of warfare. The volume provides new insight into why civilian death and suffering has been so common, despite widespread beliefs embedded in legal and military codes across time and place that killing civilians is wrong. Ultimately, the case studies in the book show that civilians, while always victims of war, were nevertheless often able to become empowered agents in defending their own lives, and impacting the outcomes of wars. By highlighting civilian military agency and broadening the sense of which actors affect strategic outcomes, the book also contributes to a richer understanding of war itself. This book will be of much interest to students of military studies, international history, international relations and war and conflict studies.
Download or read book Civilians and War in Europe 1618 1815 written by Erica Charters and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Civilians and War in Europe 1618–1815 is a comprehensive, interdisciplinary look at the role of civilians in early modern warfare, from the Thirty Years War to the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Drawing on works by scholars in art, literature, history, and political theory, the contributors to this volume explore the continuities and transformations in warfare over the course of two hundred years, examining topics central to civilian and war dynamics, including incarceration, cultures of plunder, billeting, and wartime atrocities, in addition to the larger legal practices and philosophical underpinnings of warfare and its aftermath. Showcasing the complex ways civilians were involved in war—not just as anguished sufferers, but as individuals who fought back, who profited, and who negotiated for their own needs—Civilians and War in Europe probes what it meant to be a civilian in countries deeply involved in conflict.
Download or read book Targeting Civilians in War written by Alexander B. Downes and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2011-05-15 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Accidental harm to civilians in warfare often becomes an occasion for public outrage, from citizens of both the victimized and the victimizing nation. In this vitally important book on a topic of acute concern for anyone interested in military strategy, international security, or human rights, Alexander B. Downes reminds readers that democratic and authoritarian governments alike will sometimes deliberately kill large numbers of civilians as a matter of military strategy. What leads governments to make such a choice? Downes examines several historical cases: British counterinsurgency tactics during the Boer War, the starvation blockade used by the Allies against Germany in World War I, Axis and Allied bombing campaigns in World War II, and ethnic cleansing in the Palestine War. He concludes that governments decide to target civilian populations for two main reasons—desperation to reduce their own military casualties or avert defeat, or a desire to seize and annex enemy territory. When a state's military fortunes take a turn for the worse, he finds, civilians are more likely to be declared legitimate targets to coerce the enemy state to give up. When territorial conquest and annexation are the aims of warfare, the population of the disputed land is viewed as a threat and the aggressor state may target those civilians to remove them. Democracies historically have proven especially likely to target civilians in desperate circumstances. In Targeting Civilians in War, Downes explores several major recent conflicts, including the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Civilian casualties occurred in each campaign, but they were not the aim of military action. In these cases, Downes maintains, the achievement of quick and decisive victories against overmatched foes allowed democracies to win without abandoning their normative beliefs by intentionally targeting civilians. Whether such "restraint" can be guaranteed in future conflicts against more powerful adversaries is, however, uncertain. During times of war, democratic societies suffer tension between norms of humane conduct and pressures to win at the lowest possible costs. The painful lesson of Targeting Civilians in War is that when these two concerns clash, the latter usually prevails.
Download or read book Civilians in a World at War 1914 1918 written by Tammy M. Proctor and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2010-08-30 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: World War I heralded a new global era of warfare, consolidating and expanding changes that had been building throughout the previous century, while also instituting new notions of war. The 1914-18 conflict witnessed the first aerial bombing of civilian populations, the first widespread concentration camps for the internment of enemy alien civilians, and an unprecedented use of civilian labor and resources for the war effort. Humanitarian relief programs for civilians became a common feature of modern society, while food became as significant as weaponry in the fight to win. Tammy M. Proctor argues that it was World War I—the first modern, global war—that witnessed the invention of both the modern “civilian” and the “home front,” where a totalizing war strategy pitted industrial nations and their citizenries against each other. Civilians in a World at War, 1914-1918, explores the different ways civilians work and function in a war situation, and broadens our understanding of the civilian to encompass munitions workers, nurses, laundresses, refugees, aid workers, and children who lived and worked in occupied zones, on home and battle fronts, and in the spaces in between. Comprehensive and global in scope, spanning the Eastern, Western, Italian, East African, and Mediterranean fronts, Proctor examines in lucid and evocative detail the role of experts in the war, the use of forced labor, and the experiences of children in the combatant countries. As in many wars, civilians on both sides of WWI were affected, and vast displacements of the populations shaped the contemporary world in countless ways, redrawing boundaries and creating or reviving lines of ethnic conflict. Exploring primary source materials and secondary studies of combatant and neutral nations, while synthesizing French, German, Dutch, and English language sources, Proctor transcends the artificial boundaries of national histories and the exclusive focus on soldiers. Instead she tells the fascinating and long-buried story of the civilian in the Great War, allowing voices from the period to speak for themselves.
Download or read book What Every Person Should Know About War written by Chris Hedges and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Acclaimed New York Times journalist and author Chris Hedges offers a critical -- and fascinating -- lesson in the dangerous realities of our age: a stark look at the effects of war on combatants. Utterly lacking in rhetoric or dogma, this manual relies instead on bare fact, frank description, and a spare question-and-answer format. Hedges allows U.S. military documentation of the brutalizing physical and psychological consequences of combat to speak for itself. Hedges poses dozens of questions that young soldiers might ask about combat, and then answers them by quoting from medical and psychological studies. • What are my chances of being wounded or killed if we go to war? • What does it feel like to get shot? • What do artillery shells do to you? • What is the most painful way to get wounded? • Will I be afraid? • What could happen to me in a nuclear attack? • What does it feel like to kill someone? • Can I withstand torture? • What are the long-term consequences of combat stress? • What will happen to my body after I die? This profound and devastating portrayal of the horrors to which we subject our armed forces stands as a ringing indictment of the glorification of war and the concealment of its barbarity.
Download or read book Warfare in World History written by Michael S. Neiberg and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Covering the major periods of military history, Neiberg details the evolution of technology in weaponry as well as the social, political, and cultural forces at the heart of these key conflicts. From the pre-gunpowder era to the wars of liberation fought across the Third World, this ... survey focuses not only on the famous and heroic, but also on the countless millions who have fought for these causes throughout history.
Download or read book Civilians in the Path of War written by Mark Grimsley and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2002-01-01 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Antologi. Bogens 9 historikere har gennemgået mere end 2.500 års befolkningskonflikter og deres forskellige indflydelse på det civile samfund. Hvert behandlet afsnit undersøger ikke alene, hvad de militære styrker gjorde ved civilbefolkningen i operationsområdet, men hvorfor de gjorde det og hvorledes de retfærdiggjorde deres handlinger.
Download or read book Bombing Civilians written by Toshiyuki Tanaka and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From British bombing in Iraq in the early 1920s to the most recent conflicts in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon, this detailed analysis explores the history of indiscriminate bombing, examining the fundamental questions of how strategies of mass killing originated and have been employed for decades. The book includes contributions from scholars in the US and Europe as well as a bold new argument by Japanese historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa claiming that it was the Soviet invasion rather than atomic bombing that led to the Japanese surrender of the Pacific.
Download or read book A History of the Laws of War Volume 2 written by Alexander Gillespie and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2011-10-07 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique new work of reference traces the origins of the modern laws of warfare from the earliest times to the present day. Relying on written records from as far back as 2400 BCE, and using sources ranging from the Bible to Security Council Resolutions, the author pieces together the history of a subject which is almost as old as civilisation itself. The author shows that as long as humanity has been waging wars it has also been trying to find ways of legitimising different forms of combatants and ascribing rules to them, protecting civilians who are either inadvertently or intentionally caught up between them, and controlling the use of particular classes of weapons that may be used in times of conflict. Thus it is that this work is divided into three substantial parts: Volume 1 on the laws affecting combatants and captives; Volume 2 on civilians; and Volume 3 on the law of arms control. This second book on civilians examines four different topics. The first topic deals with the targetting of civilians in times of war. This discussion is one which has been largely governed by the developments of technologies which have allowed projectiles to be discharged over ever greater areas, and attempts to prevent their indiscriminate utilisation have struggled to keep pace. The second topic concerns the destruction of the natural environment, with particular regard to the utilisation of starvation as a method of warfare, and unlike the first topic, this one has rarely changed over thousands of years, although contemporary practices are beginning to represent a clear break from tradition. The third topic is concerned with the long-standing problems of civilians under the occupation of opposing military forces, where the practices of genocide, collective punishments and/or reprisals, and rape have occurred. The final topic in this volume is about the theft or destruction of the property of the enemy, in terms of either pillage or the intentional devastation of the cultural property of the opposition. As a work of reference this set of three books is unrivalled, and will be of immense benefit to scholars and practitioners researching and advising on the laws of warfare. It also tells a story which throws fascinating new light on the history of international law and on the history of warfare itself.
Download or read book Killing Civilians written by Hugo Slim and published by . This book was released on 2010-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When civilians suffer in war, it is often a deliberate act. Massacres, rape, displacement, famine, and disease are the strategic decisions of political and military leaders who make civilians their targets in order to gain the upper hand in battle. Yet there still exists the precious and fragile belief-ingrained in modern international law-that unarmed and innocent people should be protected in war, even if, in practice, the principle of civil immunity is often ignored or rejected. Hoping to rectify this injustice, Hugo Slim uses detailed historical and contemporary examples to reveal the many ways civilians suffer in war. A leading commentator on international humanitarian action and the protection of civilians in war, Slim analyzes the anti-civilian ideologies that encourage and perpetuate suffering and exposes the exploitation of moral ambiguity that is used to sanction extreme hostility. At what point does killing civilians become part of winning a war? Why are some methods of killing used while others are avoided? Bolstering his claims with hard fact, Slim argues that civilian casualties are not only morally reprehensible but also bad military science. His book is a clarion call for action and a passionate defense of civil immunity, a concept that is more urgent and necessary today than ever before.
Download or read book The Lessons of Terror written by Caleb Carr and published by Random House. This book was released on 2002-01-15 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Lessons of Terror, novelist and military historian Caleb Carr examines terrorism throughout history and the roots of our present crisis and reaches a provocative set of conclusions: the practice of targeting enemy civilians is as old as warfare itself; it has always failed as a military and political tactic; and despite the dramatic increases in its scope and range of weapons, it will continue to fail in the future. International terrorism—the victimization of unarmed civilians in an attempt to affect their support for the government that leads them—is a phrase with which Americans have become all too familiar recently. Yet while at first glance terrorism seems a relatively modern phenomenon, Carr illustrates that it has been a constant of military history. In ancient times, warring armies raped and slaughtered civilians and gratuitously destroyed property, homes, and cities; in the Middle Ages, evangelical Muslims and Christian crusaders spread their faiths by the sword; and in the early modern era, such celebrated kings as Louis XIV revealed a taste for victimizing noncombatants for political purposes. It was during the Civil War that Americans themselves first engaged in “total war,” the most egregious of the many euphemisms for the tactics of terror. Under the leadership of such generals as Stonewall Jackson, the forces of the South tried to systematize this horrifying practice; but it fell to a Union general, William Tecumseh Sherman, to achieve that dubious goal. Carr recounts Sherman’s declaration of war on every man, woman, and child in the South—a policy that he himself knew was badly flawed, had nothing to do with his military successes (indeed, it hampered them), and brought long-term unrest to the American South by giving birth to the Ku Klux Klan. Carr’s exploration of terror reveals its consistently self-defeating nature. Far from prompting submission, Carr argues, terrorism stiffens enemy resolve: for this reason above all, terrorism has never achieved—nor will it ever achieve—long-term success, however physically destructive and psychologically debilitating it may become. With commanding authority and the storyteller’s gift for which he is renowned, Caleb Carr provides a critical historical context for understanding terrorist acts today, arguing that terrorism will be eradicated only when it is perceived as a tactic that brings nothing save defeat to its agents.
Download or read book The Civilianization of War written by Andrew Barros and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-09 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why are civilian populations targeted in modern wars despite laws and ethical claims insisting on civilian protections? This book offers answers.
Download or read book Soldiers Citizens and Civilians written by A. Forrest and published by Springer. This book was released on 2008-11-27 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars affected millions of people's lives across Europe and beyond. Yet the extent to which the constant warfare of the period 1792-1815 shaped everyday experience has been little studied. This volume of essays discusses the formative experience of these wars for men and women, as soldiers, citizens and civilians.
Download or read book Civilian Warriors written by Erik Prince and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-10-28 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The founder of Blackwater offers the gripping true story of the world’s most controversial military contractor. In 1997, former Navy SEAL Erik Prince started a business that would recruit civilians for the riskiest security jobs in the world. As Blackwater’s reputation grew, demand for its services escalated, and its men eventually completed nearly 100,000 missions for both the Bush and Obama administrations. It was a huge success except for one problem: Blackwater was demonized around the world. Its employees were smeared as mercenaries, profiteers, or worse. And because of the secrecy requirements of its contracts with the Pentagon, the State Department, and the CIA, Prince was unable to correct false information. But now he’s finally able to tell the full story about some of the biggest controversies of the War on Terror, in a memoir that reads like a thriller.
Download or read book War How Conflict Shaped Us written by Margaret MacMillan and published by Random House. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is peace an aberration? The New York Times bestselling author of Paris 1919 offers a provocative view of war as an essential component of humanity. NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW “Margaret MacMillan has produced another seminal work. . . . She is right that we must, more than ever, think about war. And she has shown us how in this brilliant, elegantly written book.”—H.R. McMaster, author of Dereliction of Duty and Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World The instinct to fight may be innate in human nature, but war—organized violence—comes with organized society. War has shaped humanity’s history, its social and political institutions, its values and ideas. Our very language, our public spaces, our private memories, and some of our greatest cultural treasures reflect the glory and the misery of war. War is an uncomfortable and challenging subject not least because it brings out both the vilest and the noblest aspects of humanity. Margaret MacMillan looks at the ways in which war has influenced human society and how, in turn, changes in political organization, technology, or ideologies have affected how and why we fight. War: How Conflict Shaped Us explores such much-debated and controversial questions as: When did war first start? Does human nature doom us to fight one another? Why has war been described as the most organized of all human activities? Why are warriors almost always men? Is war ever within our control? Drawing on lessons from wars throughout the past, from classical history to the present day, MacMillan reveals the many faces of war—the way it has determined our past, our future, our views of the world, and our very conception of ourselves.
Download or read book Civilians and Modern War written by Daniel Rothbart and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-08-06 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the issue of civilian devastation in modern warfare, focusing on the complex processes that effectively establish civilians’ identity in times of war. Underpinning the physicality of war’s tumult are structural forces that create landscapes of civilian vulnerability. Such forces operate in four sectors of modern warfare: nationalistic ideology, state-sponsored militaries, global media, and international institutions. Each sector promotes its own constructions of civilian identity in relation to militant combatants: constructions that prove lethal to the civilian noncombatant who lacks political power and decision-making capacity with regards to their own survival. Civilians and Modern War provides a critical overview of the plight of civilians in war, examining the political and normative underpinnings of the decisions, actions, policies, and practices of major sectors of war. The contributors seek to undermine the ‘tunnelling effect’ of the militaristic framework regarding the experiences of noncombatants. This book will be of much interest to students of war and conflict studies, ethics, conflict resolution, and IR/Security Studies.
Download or read book Great War Total War written by Roger Chickering and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-09-11 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: World War I was the first large-scale industrialized military conflict, and it led to the concept of total war. The essays in this volume analyze the experience of the war in light of this concept's implications, in particular the erosion of distinctions between the military and civilian spheres.
