Freedom's Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention

by Gary J. Bass

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.

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 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 Byron, Bentham, Madison, Gladstone, Dostoevsky, and Theodore Roosevelt among them.

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.

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.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, World History

509 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Gary Bass, a professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University, is the author of The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide (Knopf); Freedom's Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention (Knopf); and Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals (Princeton).

The Blood Telegram was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in general nonfiction and won the Council on Foreign Relations' Arthur Ross Book Award, the Lionel Gelber Prize, the Asia Society's Bernard Schwartz Book Award, the Cundill Prize in Historical Literature, the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations' Robert H. Ferrell Book Prize, and the Ramnath Goenka Award in India. It was also a New York Times and Washington Post notable book of the year, and a best book of the year in The Economist, Financial Times, The New Republic, and Kirkus Reviews. Freedom's Battle was a New York Times notable book of the year and a Washington Post best book of the year.

Bass has written articles for International Security, Philosophy & Public Affairs, The Yale Journal of International Law, The Michigan Law Review, Daedalus, NOMOS, and other journals, as well as numerous book chapters in edited volumes. A former reporter for The Economist, Bass has written often for The New York Times, as well as writing for The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and other publications.

Reviews

[D. · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author demonstrates that humanitarian intervention is not a modern invention, but it has roots that go at least as deep into 19th century politics and international relations. Three historic cases are analyzed: Greek War of Independence (1821-1832), when an Allied force of British, French and Russian vessels defeated an Ottoman armada in the Battle of Navarino; expedition of Austrian, British, French, Prussian and Russian forces into Syria during the 1860 Druze–Maronite conflict; and Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878, where Russia was driven by the ideas of pan-Slavism and protection of the Christian population on the Balkans.
Indeed, certain events of the 19th century were paralleled during the crises of the next century. While speaking about the Ottoman atrocities in Bulgaria, Disraeli called such atrocities "inevitable, when wars are carried on in certain countries, and between certain races" and was unwilling to intervene, same as Warren Christopher, Bill Clinton's Secretary of State, some 117 years later spoke in Congress about "atrocities on all sides" in Bosnia. Disraeli dismissed the consular report about the situation in Bulgaria as based on "coffee-house babble brought by an anonymous Bulgarian", and Neville Chamberlain later referred to Nazi Germany's ambitions in Czechoslovakia as a "quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing".
Gary Bass suggests that because "massacres turn out to be the regular way of the world, the world will need a regular response to them". And when Slobodan Milosevic insisted on the national sovereignty as the right of the government to do whatever it wishes within its borders, he was forgetting the fact that a century ago Serbians appealed to the European powers for rescue in the same way that the Kosovars appealed to the US and NATO in 1998-1999.

[John Hopkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here is an enlightening and valuable history that should be disturbing to those who cheered President Trump's America-first-and-only nationalism. It shows individuals of courage and vision doing battle with inertia and narrow concepts of national interest that so often have overshadowed humanitarian concerns. I also enjoyed learning more about the role that an emerging free press played in the a great debates of the Victorian era. I'll be looking for Professor Bass's latest work for help in understanding the current news from South Asia.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

The historical part - humanitarian interventions and wars in the 19th century - was interesting. But the modern part - the lessons of the 19th century and how they can be applied today - got a little preachy.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reviews four instances of actual, near or pretend 'humanitarian intervention' in the 19th century (Greece, Syria, Bulgaria, Armenia - some reflection on Cuba), both as lessons for today and to suggest that such action is hardly a new idea.

Nice to read some well-researched, non-contemporary case studies, but unimpressed with Bass's conclusions, which are mostly (a) obvious, (b) irrelevant to contemporary global order, or (c) contradictory. Might have been more useful as a mediation on norm entrepreneurship.

[Fredrick Danysh · Rating 3 out of 5]

An academic dissertation on what some call humanitarian intervention and others could call imperialism. A century of intervention by the major world powers are discussed.

[Kes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book focusing on humanitarian interventions in the Ottoman Empire in the 1800s - there are three examples cited (Greeks, Syrians, and Bulgarians), and these follow massacres. It focuses a lot on the actual politics - the domestic activists, pressing their governments; the Great Powers (Britain, France, Russia, Austria-Hungary, Prussia) trying to advance their own interests (to varying success - the author argues that the British intervention in Greece at the behest of the public was contrary to national British interests).

The examples felt a tad limiting, but it's an interesting insight into that period of history.

3.5/5 stars

[Mike Cross · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not certain that this is the complete origins of humanitarian intervention, but the author does a fantastic job of illustrating in-depth three cases. Maybe a little too in=depth. Very good book.

[Evan Binos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting insight in the significant role played by the British public in the Greek war of independence

[Corin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just started this book, but his opening premise put me off a bit. While I understand his point that humanitarian intervention is not a new thing, using the Victorian Era as some kind of guiding light seems far-fetched both because it was also an era of colonialism, and because the world was so different then that there is simply no comparison. Perhaps humanitarian intervention is more controversial now because, with ostensible aggressor and aggressee living next door to each other and oftentimes each having a case to make, right and wrong are not so stark... or maybe it's because globalism and the internet have given us the tools to gain information in more depth and therefore form our own opinions rather than believing as we are told by potentially imperialistic the powers that be. I look forward to seeing how the rest of the book goes... I don't doubt that wrestling all of this data and these ideas into a single book was a great challenge!

[Walt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gary Bass has written an innovative book that broadens the idea of humanitarian intervention. Though we might like to regard contemporary anti-genocide campaigns as unique achievements of our times, Freedom's Battle offers a striking and original argument that activists and politicians of the 19th century paved the way with a series of interventions to stop the slaughter of innocents. Bass's new and provocative reading of 19th-century political history teaches us how to better react to the genocides in our world

[Lisa]

my professor!

[Khorberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Is a good historical overview, but neglects to address the issue of how lessons of 19th century humanitarianism can be applied today.

[Marcus · Rating 2 out of 5]

Couldn't finish it. A textbook.