Against Massacre: Humanitarian Interventions in the Ottoman Empire 1815-1914.

• Author: Senisik, Pinar
• Position: Book review

Against Massacre: Humanitarian Interventions in the Ottoman Empire 1815-1914

By Davide Rodogno

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012, 391 pages, ISBN 9780691151335.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

THE CONCEPT of humanitarian intervention and international practice in the nineteenth and early twentieth century is the subject of Against Massacre: Humanitarian Interventions in the Ottoman Empire 1815-1914 by Davide Rodogno. This book addresses the European roots of humanitarian intervention and rejects the mainstream argument that humanitarian intervention is a practice of international relations that emerged after the end of the Cold War. Rodogno's emphasis, rather, is on the fact that the roots of humanitarian intervention can be traced back to the nineteenth century. He defines humanitarian intervention as a "coercive diplomatic and/or a group of states inside the territory of a target state" (p. 2). The book comprises ten chapters and concentrates mainly on the political and legal aspects of the European involvement into the internal affairs of the Ottoman Empire.

In this book's Introduction, Rodogno argues that "nineteenth-century humanitarian interventions were not necessarily products of increasing democracy, a free press, and the increasing importance of the principle of self-determination" (p. 17). Instead, Rodogno seeks to demonstrate the connection between the "Eastern Question" and the history of the humanitarian intervention by arguing that the "Eastern Question" played a central role in the coercive interventions of the European powers on behalf of Christian subjects of the Ottoman Empire. In the first chapter, Rodogno deals with the international context of nineteenth-century humanitarian interventions. In the second chapter, based on nineteenth-century British and French writings, articles, and pamphlets, he focuses on the European perceptions concerning the Ottomans as well as explores the reasons for the exclusion of the Ottoman Empire from the so-called "Family of Nations." Chapter 3 investigates the military intervention of the European states in Ottoman Greece from 1821 to 1833. The European intervention into the local conflicts between the Druzes and Maronites in the 1860s is the subject matter of chapter 4. In the fifth and ninth chapters, he analyses interferences and interventions of the European powers into the internal affairs of the island of Crete. Chapter 7 focuses on the British and American government's...