Preparing for War on Civilians: Blockade, Bombing, and the Interwar International Order

November 6th, Centre for History of Sciences Po H-101
1 Place St Thomas d'Aquin, 75007 Paris
12h30-14h00
Speaker: Boyd VAN DIJK, Centre for History of Sciences Po, Senior Researcher in the ERC Advanced Grant project The Global War on Civilians 1905-1945

In this lecture, the interwar period is explored as a formative era that forged the modern framework for civilian protection, even as civilians became primary targets of indiscriminate warfare through economic sanctions, blockades, and aerial bombardment. Rather than simply reiterating E.H. Carr’s claim of international law’s “failure,” this period is presented as a crucible in which key concepts such as civilian immunity, proportionality, military objectives, civilian objects, and the right to humanitarian assistance were first articulated, conceptualized, contested, and globalized—though unevenly designed, practiced, and enforced.
From Haile Selassie’s dramatic 1936 appeal to the League of Nations to international outrage over Guernica, Shanghai, and Addis Ababa, international law provided states, activists, and organizations with a powerful vocabulary for justification, condemnation, and mobilization.
This emerging legal language proved strategically crucial by establishing expectations of restraint that, while sometimes violated, could never be entirely dismissed.
Despite their importance, these early norms remained fragile, hierarchical, and exclusionary—often in more complex ways than current historiography suggests. The interwar legacies of regulating blockade and bombing—as protective shields, weapons, and tools of legitimacy—continue to shape contemporary debates on civilian targeting, sieges, and starvation.

[Registration is obligatory, due to the limit of seats.]