The Multiple Geographies of War Captivity

Chapter 3 proposes to define prisoners of war as forced migrants. Although the notions of circulation and imprisonment seem antithetical, this chapter posits that spatial displacements were at the heart of the experience of war imprisonment. It is often forgotten that prisoners of war, by definition, moved, and that this mobility was systemic. For anyone captured at sea, phases of detention on land alternated with internment on anchored or moving ships. The circulations of prisoners of war within, between, and across empires are all part of the same system. By comparing metropolitan, Atlantic, and Caribbean mobility, the shared features of the eighteenth-century state, at home and in the colonies, are highlighted. The prisoners’ strategies to play the system are, it is argued, a side-effect of the limitations of the reach of the state.

Epilogue: Napoleon the Prisoner of Peace

This epilogue sheds new light on a famous case. Napoleon was labelled in 1815 as a permanent prisoner of war, an individual at war against the civil society of European nations, even though France was then at peace with the rest of Europe. This status of the prisoner of the international community was a novelty. It also drew on eighteenth-century discussions, and it established a precedent. The status of Napoleon in St Helena was never settled, because the famous captive always refused the label that was assigned to him. Around Napoleon, a miniature and inverted society of prisoners took shape on St Helena, a society that was structured by his presence and that of his small retinue.

Conclusion

In this book, I have highlighted the creative tension between the state imperative of military conflict, on the one hand, and the emergence of powerful moral and legal norms that emphasized the need to wage civilized and humane wars, on the other. For most of the time, this tension between the growth of violence and the preservation of life was productive. For example, the differentiation between civilians and combatants, and the exceptional status of women and children were acknowledged by legal writers. These principles were implemented in administrative regulations and international agreements from the beginning of the eighteenth century. These exemptions could always be revoked, and practices were highly contingent throughout the period. But in the eighteenth century, the customary laws of war, the law of nations, and humanitarian patriotism encouraged the states to try to get the upper hand on the moral front and treat their prisoners better than their enemies did theirs. In itself, this account contrasts with the Francophobic and Anglophobic perspectives explored by other historians....

The Anatomy of the War Prison

Chapter 4 turns to prison buildings. These spaces of detention were, until the last quarter of the eighteenth century in Britain, and for the whole period in France, not purpose-built for prisoners of war. This absence of specialization tells us something important about the distance between the legal construction of the category of the prisoner of war and actual practices of internment. The chapter shows that war prisons must be understood in the same conceptual framework as prison ‘reform’ in the eighteenth century. Paying attention to the materiality of the prisons also entails looking at the multiple ways in which prisoners reconfigured these spaces, adapting or even destroying them.

Defining the Prisoner of War in International Law: A Comparative Approach

The present-day category of the prisoner of war, in the form inherited from the international conventions of the twentieth century, needs to be deconstructed. One way of doing this is to confront official legal and administrative labels, and the ways in which they operated. This chapter considers the limits of international legal norms, which fail to encapsulate the complexity of the category. The focus is on groups whose very belonging to the category of the prisoner of war was questioned in the eighteenth century. Were the distinctions between ‘civilian’ and ‘combatant’ meaningful? How did they operate in practice? Were concepts of national belonging, ethnicity, religion, gender, or class important criteria for determining the treatment of captives? This chapter emphasizes the contingency of the category ‘prisoner of war’, its lack of clarity, and the dependence on particular situations to give it specific definition.

Introduction

The prisoner of war inhabits a third space between friendship and enmity. This book aims at understanding this peculiar social institution, and the specific form it took in the eighteenth century. The introduction analyses the normative framework and its limitations, and posits that emphasis must be placed on how war captivity actually worked. It also argues that it provides a vantage point from which we can re-examine the history of the state at war in the eighteenth century. Finally, the introduction contends that two perspectives must be taken up about the war prison, both as an autonomous space and as an observatory of the society that creates it.

War Captivity and Social Interactions

Using the conceptual framework provided by prison sociologists, and focusing on everyday interactions, this chapter questions whether a structure of social order existed inside the war prison: forms of social relations and conflict regulation that were ‘indigenous’ to the carceral world. Rather than the laws of war, it is the laws of the prison that are the focus. While war prisons were violent spaces, the transactions between guards and prisoners varied considerably, from riots to corruption. A focus on the social relations which existed behind the walls of war prisons allows us to interrogate how closed off these institutions really were; in reality, war prisons were deeply connected to host societies, as is demonstrated by the study of escapes and prison markets.

The Reinvention of Society?

War is not just destruction and coercion: new ‘social spaces’ are invented and reproduce themselves in wartime. In captivity zones and prison camps, pre-existing social categories might not be seen as relevant or did not operate in the same way as other contexts, and different conceptions of the social order could clash. This is not to say, however, that durable social differences did not exist, and that war captivity permitted a free-flowing and constant reinvention of society. There were limits to the redefinition of social categories, which need to be examined more closely. The extreme cases of prisoners on parole on the one hand, and of the black combatants who were enslaved on the other, show that people’s ability to play with labels ascribed by the state was socially differentiated.

Hate or Love Thy Enemy? Humanitarian Patriotism

In the eighteenth century, the principle of a moral universalism in time of war triumphed: war was fought on the moral ground as well as on the battlefield. This chapter argues that the language of humanitarian patriotism encapsulates the tensions within the discourse that aimed to make war more ‘civilized’ by treating the enemy ‘humanely’. The chapter demonstrates the political, moral, and practical ambiguities that were entailed by the act of bringing relief to enemies in wartime. Public discussion revolved around the ‘just’ treatment of alien enemies in captivity. The study of philanthropic campaigns for improving the treatment of prisoners of war and the sending of missionaries into prisons demonstrate the particularity of the prisoner of war, as an enemy and a fellow human being.