The ‘Africa Blue Books’ at Versailles

2019 ◽  
pp. 145-166
Author(s):  
Christopher Gevers
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
First World War ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
World War ◽  
Non Fiction ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

This chapter tells the story of the silencing of crimes committed against Africans from international criminal law’s founding moment at Versailles in 1919. While British ‘Atrocity Blue Books’ were central to the call for criminal prosecutions of Germans after the war, the two Blue Books concerning crimes committed against Africans were inexplicably excluded from the report of the Commission on the Responsibility for the Authors of the War. This chapter explores the conditions of their erasure—both at Versailles and in the subsequent histories of the First World War and international criminal law—and considers what might happen if they were included within the fields’ dominant historical narrative. In both respects C.S. Forrester’s 1935 novel The African Queen and its myriad afterlives, in fiction, non-fiction, and film, prove a productive analogue as these texts intersect in interesting ways, both in content and form.

The Principle of Complementarity: A Reflection on Its Meaning, Origin and Types in International Criminal Law

2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-94
Author(s):  
Muyiwa Adigun
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
World War ◽  
International Criminal Tribunals ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Domestic Courts ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
First World ◽  
Principle Of Complementarity

The principle of complementarity is one of the most important concepts in international criminal law as it defines the relationship between international criminal tribunals and domestic courts. Certain claims have been made in respect of this concept thus this study examines the correctness of the claims made. The study finds that the concept is claimed to have originated from the sciences and that its expression in international criminal law has taken a distinctive form different from that in the sciences, that it is traceable to the First World War and that there are at least about four categories of the concept. The study, however, argues that while the concept originated from the sciences, its expression in international criminal law is no different from that in the sciences, that it is traceable to the trial of Peter von Hagenbach in 1474 (the Breisach Trial) and that there are at least five categories of the concept. The study therefore concludes that the claims made are incorrect.

The (Failed) Attempt to Try the Kaiser and the Long (Forgotten) History of International Criminal Law: Thoughts Following The Trial of the Kaiser by William A Schabas

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 159-186
Author(s):  
Ziv Bohrer
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
First World War ◽  
Second World War ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
World War ◽  
International Criminal Tribunals ◽  
History Of ◽  
Second World ◽  
First World

The conventional historic account maintains that international criminal law (ICL) was ‘born’ after the Second World War. This account is incomplete, as William Schabas's book, The Trial of the Kaiser (2018), captivatingly shows by richly portraying the (aborted) First World War initiative to try the German Kaiser before an international tribunal. However, this article (after providing an overview of Schabas's book) argues that Schabas's account of a First World War ICL ‘birth’ is also incomplete. ICL during the First World War era was but one link in a much longer historical chain. The essay demonstrates this fact by presenting certain elements of the long (forgotten) history of ICL, which provide answers to questions that have been left unanswered, not only by the conventional account (of a Second World War ICL ‘birth’) but also by Schabas's account (of a First World War ICL ‘birth’). As the article discusses, the unveiling of a greater ICL history indicates that international criminal tribunals are not a modern innovation, and reveals the origins of ‘crimes against humanity’, of ‘aggression’ and of the universal jurisdiction doctrine. The essay further discusses reasons for the non-remembrance of the long history of ICL, the importance of acknowledging that history, and the likelihood of it becoming widely acknowledged in the near future.

End of War or End of State? 1918 in the Public Memories of Post-Communist Croatia and Serbia

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Tea Sindbæk Andersen ◽  
Ismar Dedović
Keyword(s):  
Public Memory ◽  
Positive Outcome ◽  
First World War ◽  
History Textbooks ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
World War ◽  
War Memory ◽  
The Public ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

Abstract This article investigates the role of 1918, the end of the First World War, and the establishment of the Yugoslav state in public memories of post-communist Croatia and Serbia. Analysing history schoolbooks within the context of major works of history and public discussion, the authors trace the developments of public memory of the end of the war and 1918. Drawing on the concepts of public memory and historical narrative, the authors focus on the ways in which history textbooks create historical narratives and on the types of lessons from the past that can be extracted from these narratives. While Serbia and Croatia have rather different patterns of First World War memory, the authors argue that both states have abandoned the Yugoslav communist narrative and now publicly commemorate 1918 as a loss of national statehood. This is somehow paradoxical, since the establishment of the South Slav State in 1918 was supposedly an outcome of the Wilsonian principle of national self-determination. In Serbia, the story of loss is packed in a fatalistic narrative of heroism and victimhood, while in Croatia the story of loss is embedded in a tale of necessary evils, which nevertheless had a positive outcome in a sovereign Croatian state.

scholarly journals Tales of the Horrors of War: Analysing Select Indian Fictions on World War I

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Md Shahnawaz ◽  
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
First World War ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
World War ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Non Fiction ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The World ◽  
Indian Men ◽  
First World

Conscription of Indian men from different states and ethnicities were recruited to fight in the First World War for the British in foreign lands, while Indian resources kept the Allies going. The discursive reduction of it quantified India to merely numbers, of soldiers given, soldiers lost, tons of food sent, and money spent. The Indian Movement for Independence as an act of political negotiation with the British masters had warranted the cultural amnesia of the Indian intellectual class about the War’s impact to focus on the more vital demand, and how easily were all the unwanted marks of the War hidden and left behind. Thus, my paper will examine the representation of War in India and identify the ways in which Indian involvements in the War remain unacknowledged in the contemporary period through select works of fiction and non-fiction by Indian authors. Therefore, it is a pressing concern that much of the information about the World War I from an Indian perspective is lost, or is on the verge of being lost forever, because of the general apathy towards the preservation of such materials. This engagement with the First World War is not acknowledged the way it should be, since most of these works are not even categorized or identified as ‘war literature’ even if their sole concern remained precisely that. It is also important in this regard to understand the inclusion of the World War I in the silences and the omissions. Therefore, I will analyse select literary texts by Indian authors to evaluate the intersections of fiction and history alongside the enunciation of the unknown/forgotten voices of the marginalized people in the World War I.

scholarly journals The Great War: Cinema, Propaganda, and The Emancipation of Film Language

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-156
Author(s):  
Christina Stojanova
Keyword(s):  
Media Studies ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Non Fiction ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The World ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
The Great War ◽  
Film Language ◽  
First World

AbstractThe relation between war and cinema, propaganda and cinema is a most intriguing area, located at the intersection of media studies, history and film aesthetics. A truly tragic moment in human history, the First World War was also the first to be fought before film cameras. And while in the field, airborne reconnaissance became cinematic (Virilio), domestic propaganda occupied the screen of the newly emergent national cinemas, only to see its lucid message challenged and even subverted by the fast-evolving language of cinema. Part one of this paper looks at three non-fiction films, released in 1916:Battle of Somme, With Our Heroes at the Somme(Bei unseren Helden an der Somme) andBattle of Somme(La Bataille de la Somme), as paradigmatic propaganda takes on the eponymous historical battle from British, German and French points of view. Part two analyses two war-time Hollywood melodramas, David Wark Griffith’sHearts of the World(1918) and Allen Holubar’sThe Heart of Humanity(1919), and explains the longevity of the former with the powerful “text effect” of the authentic wartime footage included. Thus, while these WWI propaganda works do validate Virilio’s ideas of the integral connections between technology, war and cinema, and between cinema and propaganda, they also herald the emancipation of post-WWI film language.

An Avant-garde Theological Generation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon Kirwan
Keyword(s):  
Social Engagement ◽  
First World War ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
World War ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
First World

This book offers a clearer understanding of the nouvelle théologie, an influential French reform movement that flourished during the 1930s and 1940s, championed ressourcement, or, a ‘return to the sources’, and hoped to build a certain rapprochement with modernity by appropriating the historical method, aspects of phenomenology, and social engagement. Comprised of theologians and philosophers from the Jesuit theologate Fourvière in Lyon and the Dominican house at Le Saulchoir in Belgium, they were led by such figures as Henri de Lubac, Jean Daniélou, Marie Dominique Chenu, and Yves Congar. After identifying a lacuna in the secondary literature, the book remedies certain historical deficiencies by constructing a history more sensitive to the wider intellectual, political, economic, and cultural milieu of the French interwar crisis, that establishes continuity with the Modernist crisis and the First World War. It examines the modern French avant-garde generations that shaped intellectual and political thought in France. The historical narrative examines various stages of older generational influence on the development of the nouveaux théologiens, including the influence of the Modernists as well as older generations of Jesuit and Dominican mentors. Moreover, the effects of the First World War are examined, as is their religious formation in the 1920s, the emergence of their wider generation during the crisis years of the 1930s, and their own participation in the wider intellectual thirst for revolution. It explores the 1940s, when the generation of 1930 rose to prominence and the global triumph of their thought during the 1960s.

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