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The Civilianization of War

Distinguishing between civilians and combatants is a central aspect of

modern conflicts. Yet such distinctions are rarely upheld in practice.
The Civilianization of War offers new ways of understanding civilians’
exposure to violence in war. Each chapter explores a particular approach
to the political, legal or cultural distinctions between civilians and com-
batants during twentieth-century and contemporary conflicts.
The volume as a whole suggests that the distinction between combatants
and non-combatants is dynamic and often unpredictable, rather than
fixed and reciprocally understood. Contributors offer new insights into
why civilian targeting has become a strategy for some, and how in
practice its avoidance can be so difficult to achieve. Several discuss
distinct population groups that have been particularly exposed to war-
time violence, including urban populations facing aerial bombing, child
soldiers, captives and victims of sexual violence. The book thus offers
multiple perspectives on the civil–military divide within modern con-
flicts, an issue whose powerful contemporary resonance is all too
apparent.

Andrew Barros is Associate Professor of History at the University of

Quebec in Montreal.
Martin Thomas is Professor of Imperial History and Director of the
Centre for the Study of War, State and Society at the University of
Exeter.
 Human Rights in History

Edited by
Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann, University of California, Berkeley
Samuel Moyn, Yale University, Connecticut

This series showcases new scholarship exploring the backgrounds of human rights
today. With an open-ended chronology and international perspective, the series
seeks works attentive to the surprises and contingencies in the historical origins
and legacies of human rights ideals and interventions. Books in the series will
focus not only on the intellectual antecedents and foundations of human rights,
but also on the incorporation of the concept by movements, nation-states,
international governance and transnational law.

A full list of titles in the series can be found at:

www.cambridge.org/human-rights-history
The Civilianization of War
The Changing Civil–Military Divide,
1914–2014

Edited by
Andrew Barros
University of Quebec in Montreal

Martin Thomas
University of Exeter
University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom
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Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108429658
DOI: 10.1017/9781108643542
© Cambridge University Press 2018
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
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First published 2018
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Barros, Andrew, 1963– editor. | Thomas, Martin, 1964– editor.
Title: The Civilianization of War : the changing civil-military divide,
1914–2014 / edited by Andrew Barros, Martin Thomas.
Description: Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY :
Cambridge University Press, 2018. | Series: Human rights in history |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018011121 | ISBN 9781108429658 (alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Civilians in war – History – 20th century. | Civilians
in war – History – 21st century.
Classification: LCC U21.2 .C5137 2018 | DDC 306.2/7–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018011121
ISBN 978-1-108-42965-8 Hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of
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accurate or appropriate.
 Contents

List of Tables page viii

List of Contributors ix
Acknowledgements x
Introduction: The Civilianization of War and
the Changing Civil–Military Divide, 1914–2014 1
andrew barros and martin thomas

Part I Who Fights? Combatants, Mobilization and the

Changing Nature of War 21
Part Ia The ‘Total War’ Era, 1914–1945 22
1 Doing the Necessary: The Declaration of London and
British Strategy, 1905–1915 23
john ferris
2 Fighting the Fifth Column: The Terror in Republican
Madrid during the Spanish Civil War 47
julius ruiz
3 Moscow 1941: The Rise and Fall of the Soviet People’s
Militia (Narodnoe Opolchenie) 64
jean lé vesque

Part Ib The Cold War and Decolonization, 1945–2000 81

4 The Collapsing Civil–Military Divide in Wars of
Decolonization: Two Case Studies from the Indochina
War (1945–1954) 82
christopher goscha
5 Parallel Ambiguities: Prisoners during the Algerian War
of Independence 100
raphaëlle branche

v
vi Contents

6 East Pakistan/Bangladesh 1971–1972: How Many

Victims, Who, and Why? 116
christian gerlach
7 ‘I Wasn’t a Boy, I Was a Soldier’: Militarization and
Civilianization in Narratives of Child Soldiers in Africa’s
Contemporary Conflicts, c. 1990–2010 141
stacey hynd

Part II A Moving Target: Strategic Bombing and

Civilians, 1916–2014 163
8 The Problems of Opening Pandora’s Box: Strategic
Bombing and the Civil–Military Divide, 1916–1939 165
andrew barros
9 Bombing Civilians Scientifically: Operational Research
in Bomber Command, 1941–1945 181
victor bissonnette
10 Creating a Cordon Sanitaire: US Strategic Bombing and
Civilian Victimization in the Korean War 196
alexander b. downes
11 The CIA’s Drone War and the Civilianization
of Warfare 221
christopher fuller

Part III Civilian Protection and International Norms and

Organizations: When and How Much? 241
12 Turn Everyone into a Civilian: René Cassin and the
UNESCO Project, 1919–1945 243
andrew barros
13 Human Rights Is the Continuation of War by Other
Means: The United States and the Creation of the United
Nations Human Rights Commission, 1945–1948 260
olivier barsalou
14 The United Nations, Decolonization and Violence
against Civilians in the French and British Empires 278
martin thomas
 Contents vii

15 The ‘Protection of Civilians’: Peacekeeping’s New Raison

d’Être? 301
fré dé ric mé gret

Index 320
 Tables

3.1 Number of Recruits of Volunteer Units by District

as of 18 November 1941 page 72
3.2 Comparative Characteristics of Volunteers in One
Division of Narodnoe Opolchenie and Two Fighters
Battalions 75
6.1 Rates of Direct Killings and Refugees in East Pakistan/
Bangladesh 1971 137
10.1 Major US Air Campaigns of the Korean War 200
10.2 Major North Korean Towns Damaged by Air Attack
in November 1950 202
10.3 Bomb Damage Assessment of Destruction to Twenty-Two
North Korean Towns at the End of the Korean War 203

viii
 Contributors

andrew barros, Department of History, University of Quebec in

Montreal
olivier barsalou, Law Department, University of Quebec in
Montreal
victor bissonnette, Department of History, University of Quebec in
Montreal
raphaëlle branche, University of Rouen
alexander b. downes, Department of Political Science, George
Washington University
john ferris, Department of History, University of Calgary
christopher fuller, Department of History, University of
Southampton
christian gerlach, Historical Institute, University of Bern
christopher goscha, Department of History, University of Quebec
in Montreal
stacey hynd, Department of History, University of Exeter
jean lé vesque, Department of History, University of Quebec in
Montreal
fré dé ric mé gret, Faculty of Law, McGill University
julius ruiz, School of History, University of Edinburgh
martin thomas, Department of History, University of Exeter

ix
 Acknowledgements

This collection is primarily the result of two research workshops convened

to investigate the plight of civilian populations caught up in inter- and intra-
state conflicts. The first of these was held at the University of Exeter on
22–23 March 2012. Exeter’s Centre for the Study of War, State and
Society and the University’s Innovation Centre provided key backing for
this first event.
The second workshop took place at the University of Quebec in
Montreal on 8 September 2012. We would like to thank Stathis
Kalyvas, Peter Holquist and Isabel Hull for their invaluable contribution
to the success of the workshop and this project. We would also like to
thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
and the University of Quebec in Montreal’s History Department and the
Institute of International Studies of Montreal for their generous financial
support of the workshop. Our thanks also go to the British Academy and
the Leverhulme Trust, each of which has supported the entire civilianiza-
tion of warfare project from its inception.
Finally, we are grateful to several friends and colleagues who have offered
vital assistance at various project stages. To Lorne Breitenlohner, Robert
Gerwarth, Pierre Grosser, Talbot Imlay, Peter Jackson, David Kennedy,
Helen Kinsella, Joe Maiolo, Richard Overy, Andrew Thorpe and
Alexandra Walsham: thank you. We owe a special debt of gratitude to
Alexander Downes for his unstinting advice, the genesis of which was
a panel at the International Studies Association in Montreal in 2011.
This published collection has also greatly benefitted from the comments
of the two anonymous reviewers for Cambridge University Press, for which
we thank them.

x
 Introduction: The Civilianization of War and
the Changing Civil–Military Divide,
1914–2014

Andrew Barros and Martin Thomas

International and intra-state conflicts have become more deadly for civi-
lians over the past 120 years. This ascending arc of civilian fatalities since
1900 forms part of a larger twentieth- and twenty-first-century phenom-
enon increasingly identified as the ‘civilianization of war’.1 Wars between
states as well as civil conflicts within them have seen non-combatants
systematically targeted. It is civilians who suffer a large proportion of
security force violence, insurgent attacks and counter-insurgent repres-
sion. At the time of writing, affording better protections to the most
vulnerable population groups, including women, adolescent males,
ethno-religious minorities and displaced persons, remains the most diffi-
cult task in conflict limitation and peace enforcement. A first step in
pursuit of these objectives is to study this ‘civilianization of war’, in
which civilians are often not just the principal victims of intra-state
conflict but its foremost targets as well. The aim of this study is thus to
demonstrate the ways in which the distinction between civilians and
military forces – what we call the civil–military divide – has changed,
whether in thought or in practice.
What does the distinction between civilians and soldiers, comba-
tants and non-combatants, amount to in theory or in practice?
The increasing complexity of this question quickly becomes clear
when one looks at the debate over the ratio of civilian to military
losses in various conflicts over the last century. A 2009 study by
Adam Roberts showed the ratio for the war in Bosnia Herzegovina
(1991–95) to be roughly 2:3, while in Iraq (beginning in 2003) it was

1
Andreas Wegner and Simon J. A. Mason, ‘The Civilianization of Armed Conflict: Trends
and Implications’, International Review of the Red Cross, 90 (2008): 835–52. For the
question’s inherent complexity and contradictions see Helen M. Kinsella, The Image before
the Weapon: A Critical History of the Distinction between the Combatant and the Civilian
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011).

1
2 Introduction

5:1 or possibly as low as 3:1.2 Similarly, over the last century, high
levels of internal displacement and forced population removal have
been recurrent features of intra- and interstate conflict. From the
traumatic population exchanges that accompanied the Greco-
Turkish War (1919–22) to the displacement of European popula-
tions in the aftermath of the Second World War, civilians have been
compelled to move under threat of violence or discrimination as
a direct consequence of prior conflict.3 So, too, the territorial parti-
tions triggered by the end of European colonial dominion in the
Indian sub-continent, in Palestine and elsewhere were accompanied
by systematic targeting of refugee populations by security forces and
sectarian vigilante groups.4 What do such instances of mass violence
against civilians imply? While civilian casualties have risen markedly
relative to military ones, that does not signify the inevitable failure of
protections in place for civilian populations, or an inexorable shift
towards new forms of conflict in which all risk being targeted.
As important as the methodological debates around these calcula-
tions and the growing complexity of this phenomenon are, it is the
tremendous variation in the proportion of civilian casualties that
captures the reader’s attention and is the focus of this work.
It draws on case studies from conflicts in diverse regions and settings
over the last century to investigate why, during this period of rising
civilian casualties, the civil–military distinction is so dynamic and
unpredictable.5
The extent to which civilians are protected in war depends substantially
on that divide’s local forms and practices, a phenomenon analysed by the
chapters in the book’s first section. As the chapters demonstrate, the
nature of armed conflicts is closely related to the extent to which civilian

2
Adam Roberts, ‘The Civilian in Modern War’, Yearbook of International Humanitarian
Law, 12 (2009): 19–33.
3
See, for example, Bruce Clark, Twice a Stranger: How Mass Expulsion Forged Modern Greece
and Turkey (London: Granta, 2007); Richard Bessel and Claudia B. Haake (eds.),
Removing Peoples: Forced Removal in the Modern World (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2011); Peter Gatrell, The Making of the Modern Refugee (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2013).
4
For contrasting viewpoints: Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem
Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Ilan Pappé, The Ethnic
Cleansing of Palestine (London: One World, 2007); Joya Chatterji, The Spoils of Partition:
Bengal and India, 1947–1967 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007);
Haimanti Roy, Partitioned Lives: Migrants, Refugees, Citizens in India and Pakistan,
1947–1965 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013); Panikos Panayi and
Pippa Virdee (eds.), Refugees and the End of Empire: Imperial Collapse and Forced
Migration in the Twentieth Century (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
5
Some of these challenges are discussed in Alex J. Bellamy, ‘Supreme Emergencies and the
Protection of Non-Combatants in War’, International Affairs, 80 (2004): 829–50.
 Introduction 3

populations are mobilized, becoming integral to combatants’ war efforts.

This theme runs throughout the chapters but is especially prominent in
the book’s second section, which is devoted to aerial bombing.
The development of long-range bombing aircraft was made possible by
new technologies that arose at the beginning of the twentieth century, and
their devastating strategic objective, directly attacking the home front,
threated to collapse the distinction between combatants and civilians.
A third theme is the matter of civilian protections and their enforcement.
The aim here is to explain whether – and why – systems of laws, treaties,
the work of international organizations (IOs) and non-governmental
organizations (NGOs), and other factors favouring the respect of norma-
tive standards hold any sway once conflicts break out. Highlighting
interactions between these three themes, the chapters thus help identify
what lies behind the tremendous variations in the treatment of civilians in
conflict.
Our study of the civilianization of war begins with the First World
War’s outbreak in 1914, a point of departure for fundamental changes
in the way wars were fought and, in consequence, for the reconceptuali-
zation of the distinction between civilians and soldiers. Modern industrial
war, conducted by intra-continental alliances based in the global ‘north’
(primarily Eurasia, North America and their imperial peripheries),
demanded unprecedented sacrifices from all social strata. Political sys-
tems and societies of every stripe were pushed to the breaking point.
Never before had industrialized nations invested and mobilized so
much of their human, financial and material resources in the service of
war.6
These transitions signified the emergence of ‘Total War’, a form of
inter-societal conflict that implicated civilians more directly as economic
producers, as cultural embodiments of an idealized home front, and, most
pertinent to us here, as targets for attack, notably through the develop-
ment of strategic blockade and bombing.7 Nor did ‘total war’ end neatly
alongside armistice agreements and treaty settlements. Violence per-
sisted, much of it internecine and inter-ethnic, in what some scholars
describe as the ‘Greater War’ that encompasses the conflict’s unsettling

6
An indispensable one-volume study of the Great War is David Stevenson, Cataclysm:
The First World War as Political Tragedy (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2005).
7
The subject of total war is exhaustively analysed in five Cambridge University Press
volumes, including Roger Chickering and Stig Förster (eds.), Great War, Total War:
Combat and Mobilization on the Western Front, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2000). Also see the arguments about the nature of total war in
Talbot Imlay, ‘Total War’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 30 (2007), 547–70;
Andrew Barros, ‘Strategic Bombing and Restraint in “Total War”, 1915–1918’,
Historical Journal, 52 (2009), 413–31.
4 Introduction

aftermath. Their efforts brought little immediate reward. For many, the
First World War lingered on in smaller regional conflicts, in revolutionary
upsurges and counter-revolutionary backlashes, and in more widespread
paramilitarism.8 Others reacted by spurning state violence altogether.
Transnational movements, many of them internationalist in inspiration,
strove to ensure that such global conflict would never recur. Diplomatic
efforts were even made to restrict, outlaw or eliminate war altogether, the
Kellogg–Briand Treaty of 1928 foremost among them. Disarmament,
albeit fleetingly, became a shared political goal and a popular rallying cry.
The infant League of Nations, meanwhile, represented a new form of
standing IO, one that made fostering peace and protecting civilians
(particularly threatened ethnic minority groups) central to its global
mission.9
Many recent studies have also argued that the interwar period sig-
nified the arrival of NGOs on the international scene, notably the
panoply of lobby groups campaigning against armaments and their
indiscriminate use. The impetus behind this turn to disarmament
was, in part, a matter of ethical judgement and ideological preference;
in part, a matter of economic and strategic calculation. Whichever was
the case, while the distinction between the military and the civilian was
badly eroded by the war, its innate value was debated and publicly
defended by a growing number of states and organizations during the
1920s and beyond.10
The advent of another global conflict unleashed an even greater trans-
formation in the codification of civilians, refugee populations, displaced
persons and other victim groups. Informed by the failings of the League of
Nations and the collapse of the post-1919 peace, the victors in
this Second World War endorsed stronger collective security systems

8
Robert Gerwarth and John Horne (eds), War in Peace; Paramilitary Violence in Europe after
the Great War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Robert Gerwarth,
The Vanquished (London: Allen Lane, 2016).
9
Eric D. Weitz, ‘From the Vienna to the Paris System: International Politics and the
Entangled Histories of Human Rights, Forced Deportations, and Civilizing Missions’,
American Historical Review, 113:5 (2008), 1313–43; Susan Pedersen, ‘Back to the League
of Nations’, American Historical Review, 112:4 (2007), 1091–117; Carole Fink, Defending
the Rights of Others; The Great Powers, the Jews, and International Minority Protection,
1878–1938 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Bruno Cabanes,
The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918–1924 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2014). For a revisionist view of the Kellogg-Briand Treaty see Oona
A. Hathaway and Scott J. Shapiro, The Internationalists; How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War
Remade the World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017).
10
See the seminal studies by Zara Steiner, Lights that Failed; European International History,
1919–1933 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) and The Triumph of the Dark;
European International History, 1933–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) and
Susan Pedersen, ‘Back to the League’.
 Introduction 5

and a United Nations organization (UN) invested with greater powers

than its predecessor. Much of the UN’s initial workload involved the
rehabilitation and relief of civilian populations in occupied territories.11
But even as these tasks of social reconstruction proceeded, the collective
security arrangements outlined by the wartime Allies were refashioned
into the Cold War’s adversarial alliance blocs. Hidebound by the domi-
nant powers within its executive Security Council, the UN mirrored these
Cold War divisions. At the same time, the geopolitical focus of conven-
tional warfare in the second half of the twentieth century was shifting
south and eastward. Nuclear weapons raised the stakes involved in
a direct conflict between the superpowers. Less so elsewhere: both the
use of the atomic bomb and subsequent plans to drop further ‘field’
weapons occurred in Asia. This reflected more than US and European
strategic thinking about East Asian regional flashpoints from Korea to
Vietnam; it carried ugly racial undertones as well.12
Set against this fraught atomic peace, the spectacular late twentieth-
century collapse of European colonialism ushered in an era of tremen-
dous violence in the developing world. From South East Asia to the
Caribbean, formal colonial empire disintegrated in the thirty years after
1945. Even in dependent territories in which open warfare was averted,
labour coercion, racial discrimination and consequent human rights
abuses were endemic. In other colonial regions – among them
Indonesia, Indochina, and much of North, East and Southern Africa –
wars of decolonization were characterized by a massive mobilization of
colonized populations but relatively little mobilization by Europe’s
declining colonial powers.13 Europeans may have been less directly
affected by the end of the empires built in their name, but decolonization,
its partitions, its violence and its bitter legacies wrought as much global
geopolitical change to the international system as the twentieth century’s
world wars.14 Although slow to register at first, decolonization also

11
See, for instance, Gerard Daniel Cohen, In War’s Wake: Europe’s Displaced Persons on the
Postwar Order (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); Tara Zahra, The Lost Children:
Reconstructing Europe’s Families after World War II (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2011); Jessica Reinisch, The Perils of Peace: The Public Health Crisis in Occupied
Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
12
Matthew Jones, After Hiroshima: The United, States, Race, and Nuclear Weapons in Asia,
1945–1965 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
13
Differences in the level of colonial state violence perpetrated by differing imperial powers
are assessed by Benjamin E. Goldsmith and Baogang He, ‘Letting Go without a Fight:
Decolonization, Democracy and War, 1900–94’, Journal of Peace Research, 45:5 (2008),
587–611.
14
Martin Thomas and Andrew S. Thompson, ‘Empire and Globalisation: From “High
Imperialism” to Decolonisation’, International History Review, 36:1 (2014), 153–65.
6 Introduction

changed the operational focus and juridical basis of the UN and its
affiliate aid agencies.15
Despite the Cold War stasis, the post-1945 period witnessed significant
advances in international humanitarian law, some of them related to the
belated recognition of developing world societies as actors within an
international system whose parameters were defined not by the end of
empire but by the preceding Second World War.16 From the Holocaust
to the horrors of Rwanda in 1994, the past century’s genocides also
fuelled efforts – tragically, always after the fact – to criminalize the target-
ing of communities on the basis of ethnicity or other presumed cultural
attachment. From the 1948 Genocide Convention to the codification of
the UN’s ‘Responsibility to Protect’ doctrine in the early 2000s, ‘huma-
nitarian interventionism’, its impulse well captured in the phrase ‘saving
strangers’, has tested the limits of international cooperation and, with it,
the ethical standards of states and societies.17
This era was marked at its 1945 opening by the arrival of nuclear
weapons. Although their use has been threatened on several occasions,
they have not been used since, and thus fall outside the scope of this study.
Equally, the proliferation and use of weapons of mass destruction has
become an extremely important issue, but is marginal to the violence
witnessed over the last century and, therefore, to the approach adopted
here.18
By investigating these critical transitions in the nature and practice of
war over the last century, this chapter offers an alternative perspective on
current, twenty-first-century conflicts. The turmoil in Afghanistan
evinces factors often seen as ‘northern’ (modern forces relatively well
15
Roland Burke, Decolonization and the Evolution of International Human Rights
(Philadelphia, PA: Pennsylvania University Press, 2013); Carol Anderson, Eyes off the
Prize: The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944–1955
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Meredith Terretta, ‘“We had been
fooled into thinking that the UN watches over the entire world”: human rights, UN Trust
Territories, and Africa’s decolonization’, Human Rights Quarterly, 34:2 (2012), 329–60.
16
Christopher J. Lee (ed.), Making a World after Empire: The Bandung Moment and Its
Political Afterlives (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2010); Martin Thomas, Fight or
Flight: Britain, France, and Their Roads from Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2014).
17
Useful introductions to the issues are Nicholas J. Wheeler, Saving Strangers:
Humanitarian Interventionism in International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2002); Cristina J. Badescu, ‘Authorizing Humanitarian Intervention: Hard Choices in
Saving Strangers’, Canadian Journal of Political Science, 40:1 (2007), 51–78; Virginia
Page Fortna, ‘Does Peacekeeping Keep Peace? International Intervention and the
Duration of Peace after Civil War’, International Studies Quarterly, 48:2 (2004), 269–92.
18
For non-use of nuclear weapons since 1945 see Nina Tannenwald, The Nuclear Taboo;
The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons since 1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2008). For the greater risk of the use of nuclear weapons in Asia see
Jones, After Hiroshima.
 Introduction 7

sensitized to international norms yet often inflicting high civilian casual-

ties) alongside factors often seen as ‘southern’ (highly mobilized insur-
gent forces making use of technology and international norms as weapons
in their campaign). If these asymmetries are relatively well known,19 this
chapter pinpoints something else. When contemporary conflicts are
framed in the setting of their twentieth-century antecedents, the essential
continuity between them lies in the highly dynamic manner in which the
changing nature of war, belligerent mobilizations and international norms
reshape each conflict’s civil–military divide.
To understand how the changing nature of war expanded and con-
tracted the division between civilians and soldiers, one next needs to
explore its connections with two related factors. The first is the relation-
ship between the military and home fronts, a connection most easily
understood in terms of mobilization. As the experiences of 1914–18
illustrated with dreadful clarity, forms of inter- and intra-state conflict
are to a large extent determined by the resources that are mobilized for
them.20 Regimes, be they democratic or authoritarian, integrate the
domestic population, the home front, into their calculations when plan-
ning or engaging in conflict.21 The economic potential and cultural
integrity of a civilian population must be upheld. Conversely, the same
calculation pertains for all warring parties, making a nation’s mobilization
a key target for its enemies, one that modern technology has often made
all the easier to strike.22
There is another aspect of mobilization that adds to its significance in
a study of civil–military divides. The greater wartime demands imposed
on home front civilians strained social cohesion, imposing the need for
countervailing efforts to ensure that communities did not crack under the
burdens they were forced to shoulder. Monitoring the home front in order
to better sustain it thus became a crucial element in a belligerent’s strat-
egy. The conflict’s objectives and the means and costs that came with

19
Thoughtful assessments include Michael L. Gross, ‘Asymmetric War, Symmetrical
Intentions: Killing Civilians in Modern Armed Conflict’, Global Crime, 10:4 (2009),
320–36; Victor Asal et al., ‘Killing Civilians or Holding Territory? How to Think about
Terrorism’, International Studies Review, 14 (2012), 475–97. For the changing nature of
war see Hew Strachan and Sibylle Scheipers (eds), The Changing Character of War
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
20
John Horne, ‘Introduction: Mobilizing for Total War, 1914–1918’, in John Horne (ed.),
State, Society and Mobilization during the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997), 1–17.
21
See, for example, Pierre Grosser, Traiter avec le diable ? Les vrais enjeux de la diplomatie au
XXIe siècle (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2013).
22
An important example of this dynamic of escalation at work is the Allied blockade of the
Central Powers during the First World War. See, for example, Stevenson, Cataclysm and
the chapter herein by John Ferris.
8 Introduction

their attainment have increasingly been subjected to the test of popular

support. While efforts to sustain national or communal unity can be
largely matters of rhetoric and propaganda, the greater need to justify
decisions for war carries over into the wartime requirement to explain the
suffering being endured. It bears emphasis that the creation of the League
of Nations and the UN owed much to wartime calculations by the Allies
regarding the need to legitimize the immense sacrifices being demanded
of their populations.23 Moving into the late twentieth century, a crucial
policy lesson of the war in Vietnam for many in Washington was that in an
age of mass communication, public opinion would tolerate only so much
sacrifice. Public sufferance tended to diminish when the conflict lacked
the existential significance to the United States of, say, the Second World
War.24 Stirring or sustaining popular support or mobilizing human and
material resources for a conflict judged by many to be not only inessential,
but indefensible, proved near impossible. Mobilization also provides
a link to the third and most recent factor in the civilianization of war:
international norms.
The very notion that civilians deserve different protections in armed
conflict from those afforded to combatants raises difficult ethical ques-
tions. For, as Maja Zehfuss reminds us, the implication behind this
distinction is that certain forms of killing remain permissible while others
do not. Recognizing civilians’ special claims to protection might be taken
to imply that non-combatants do not contribute to the war efforts con-
ducted in their name. Conversely, suggesting that the violence to which
civilians are frequently exposed in war should somehow be ‘proportion-
ate’ to the strategic objectives sought by their attackers risks putting
civilian populations at even greater risk.25 These considerations have
become increasingly important over the past century as a system of
international protections for civilians has widened.
The late nineteenth century witnessed something of a golden age in
international law, although the capstone legislative instruments of
the day – the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 – focused primarily

23
See Steiner, The Lights that Failed; Mark Mazower, Governing the World; The History of an
Idea (New York, NY: Penguin, 2012); Grosser, Traiter.
24
The legal ramifications of the public’s sufferance are explored by John Hart Ely, War and
Responsibility: Constitutional Lessons of Vietnam and Its Aftermath (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1995). The opposite phenomenon of ‘compassion fatigue’
within societies subjected to repeated war imagery is examined in Liam Kennedy and
Caitlin Patrick (eds), The Violence of the Image: Photography and International Conflict
(London: I.B. Tauris, 2014). For the Vietnam War’s ‘lessons’, see Grosser, Traiter,
chapter 2.
25
Maja Zehfuss, ‘Killing Civilians: Thinking the Practice of War’, British Journal of Politics
and International Relations, 14 (2012), 423–40.
 Introduction 9

on regulating the violence done to combatants rather than civilians.

The international reach of the Hague Conventions was a significant
departure, even so. This impulse to extend legal regulation beyond
national frontiers owed much to the quickening pace of globalization.
As states became increasingly interdependent, their need for
a functioning and efficient system of international laws to regulate their
commercial, cultural and political interactions increased. As with the
changing nature of warfare and the importance of mobilization, the
First World War’s advent marked a watershed for international law,
testing its parameters, applicability and global potential.26
The subsequent century has seen an institutionalization of international
norms concerning the treatment of combatants and non-combatants, the
accelerated development of which is traceable to this first global conflict
of the twentieth century. Numerous international conventions regarding
civilians, prisoners of war, nuclear and chemical weapons, genocide and
other facets of armed conflict have since been signed. With them has
come a variety of IOs, including tribunals and specialist monitoring
groups. The result is that even states that disregard international norms
paradoxically remain attentive to the reach of this increasingly visible arm
of the international system. Indeed, the actions of such rule-breakers have
set the agenda for recalibrations and extensions of international law.
Clearly, then, the civil–military divide cannot be properly understood
without an examination of the role of norms, their influence on how
conflicts are pursued, and their success or failure in protecting civilians.
This collection’s case studies into the civilianization of war use the
interaction of these three factors – the ways in which wars are fought,
the mobilization of home fronts and the growing role of international
norms – to elucidate the civil–military divide’s constantly shifting form.
Before turning to an assessment of each chapter’s contribution, it is worth
saying a little more about the three disciplines from which they are drawn.
The following chapters bring together case studies written by scholars
from international history, political science and international law. Each
discipline illuminates important aspects of the civil–military divide, and
yet they are rarely brought together, as here, in a sustained collaboration.
To fully appreciate the interdisciplinary nature of this enterprise, and the
extent to which it is able to become something greater than the sum of
these three parts, it is necessary to examine each discipline’s approach to
the civil–military divide.

26
For the First World War’s impact on international law, and vice versa, see Isabel V. Hull,
A Scrap of Paper; Breaking and Making International Law during the Great War (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 2014).
10 Introduction

Sharp fluctuations in the civil–military divide suggest a need to reval-

uate the two views that dominate current scholarly debates over this issue.
Each of these interpretative approaches might be loosely defined around
two terms derived from political science. The first springs from realist
assessments of necessity and the logic behind it. The second is ‘construc-
tivism’. The former emphasizes the importance of states, the competition
intrinsic to international systems and the considerations of material
power and strategic advantage that determine interstate rivalries.
Viewed from that perspective, any normative distinction between civi-
lians and soldiers gains traction only to the extent that it serves the
interests of powerful states. The more global a compact is, the greater
the agreement between states it requires. Conversely, states may deem it
essential to defend their civilians and/or target those of their opponents by
threatening to retaliate or otherwise resort to force. While necessity can be
used to explain the spectrum of possible state actions, it does not offer any
insight into why nations move so quickly and frequently along it. When
the conflict involves non-state actors, it also assumes they operate using
a similar logic of necessity and, underlying that, rationality.27 Yet, in cases
of irregular warfare wherein the interconnections between civilian popu-
lations and military forces blur the distinctions between the two, the
necessity argument becomes harder to sustain, and its predictive power
is greatly diminished.
The constructivist perspective stresses the power of ideas relative to the
material factors central to realism. The ideas it sees as mattering are
related to issues of attitude formation, knowledge construction and con-
sequent cultural outlook. This suggests that it is these more intangible
factors that shape the behaviour of individuals, organizations, govern-
ments and, ultimately, the international system. While acknowledging the
inadequacies of international norms and juridical protections of civilian
status, constructivists point to a slowly emerging transnational network of
controls, signified by a growing system of international laws,
a proliferation of regulatory institutions and NGOs, and critical shifts in
global opinion, particularly since 1945. The combined weight of these
elements, it is averred, imposes limits on what state and non-state actors
can do in situations of conflict. Seen from this vantage point, the
civil–military divide not only retains its relevance but is gradually widen-
ing as more laws, advocacy groups and other opinion-makers work to
uphold it.28 This linear perspective is somewhat at odds with the marked
27
See, for example, Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical
Illustrations (New York, NY: Basic Books, 4th edition, 2006).
28
Wesley W. Widmaier and Susan Park, ‘Differences beyond Theory: Structural, Strategic,
and Sentimental Approaches to Normative Change’, International Studies Perspectives, 32
 Introduction 11

variations in the civil–military divide that are outlined in the chapters to

come. Ironically, as in the case of strategic realism outlined earlier, the
growing interconnectedness that stems from the civilianization of war
makes it harder still to predict a progression towards sharper, more rigidly
upheld distinctions between combatants and non-combatants, between
violence actors and civilians.
Realists focus on states, assessments of material power and foreign
interests, and the cost–benefit calculation of actions. Conversely, non-
state actors occupy an important place in constructivist thinking, as do
the role of ideas and a cost–benefit analysis that is centred on the appro-
priateness of an action in relation to prevailing norms and the actor’s
identity.29 The civil–military divide in the context of the civilianization of
war falls between these stools. Both the growing presence of a ‘norms
discourse’ and the increasingly entangled nature of the civilian and mili-
tary render calculations and their consequences increasingly difficult and
hard to predict.
Added to this is the historical record from which much of this work is
drawn. One of the strengths of this collection is that it highlights the
important recent work done by international historians on the violence
of the last century that has yet to be integrated into the studies of many
political scientists. The geographic, thematic and chronological diversity
of this international history raises additional challenges by departing from
a narrow set of classic accounts of Eurocentric conflicts that have domi-
nated International Relations (IR) to integrate the wars of decolonization
that predominated in Asia and the global South.30

(2012): 123–34. The classic statement of the neorealist perspective is Kenneth N. Waltz,
Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979). Also see Ernest
R. May, Richard Rosecrance, and Zara Steiner (eds), History and Neorealism (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2010). For fairly ‘realist’ and ‘constructivist’ views of the
civil–military divide see Alexander Downes, Targeting Civilians in War (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 2008) and Charlie Carpenter, ‘Innocent Women and Children’:
Gender, Norms and the Protection of Civilians (London: Routledge, 2006). It should also be
noted that there is an important ‘realist’ response to the ‘constructivist’ critique that
offers an explanation of the rise of international organizations, NGOs, and international
cooperation in general.
29
Jeffrey L. Dunoff and Mark A. Pollack, ‘International Law and International Relations:
Introducing an Interdisciplinary Dialogue’, in Jeffrey L. Dunoff and Mark A. Pollack
(eds), Interdisciplinary Perspectives on International Law and International Relations
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), esp. 5–18, and ‘Reviewing Two
Decades of IL/IR Scholarship: What We’ve Learned, What’s Next’, ibid., 626–61.
We would also like to thank Alex Downes for his comments in general and on this issue
in particular.
30
The historical literature is now considerable: see, for example, Mark Mazower, ‘Violence
and the State in the Twentieth Century’, American Historical Review, 107(2002),
1158–78; Rana Mitter, Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II, 1937–1945 (New York,
NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013); Richard Saull, ‘Locating the Global South in
12 Introduction

Judging the influence of norms on decision makers is perhaps nowhere

more difficult than in the case of civil conflicts, in which social structures
not only are at issue but often break down in the intensity of intra-societal
conflicts. While there may be no unifying theory to account for such wars,
their increasing frequency suggests that the turn to violence appears
instrumentally beneficial, even logical, to many participants.31
The study of civil wars by Stathis Kalyvas, a specialist in comparative
politics, highlights the extraordinary variation in the nature and extent of
violence generated by these armed conflicts. Kalyvas’ concentration on
the processes of micro-violence that shape the local dynamics of killing
offers additional perspectives to those of IR realists and constructivists.32
He focuses on the interaction between actors within the conflict: incum-
bent authorities, insurgents and civilians. Kalyvas’ fundamental preoccu-
pation is with how and why civilians interact with incumbents and
insurgents, with the process by which they become enmeshed in the
conflict, potentially turning to violence and becoming combatants. His
study of civil wars rests on an understanding of micro-level decisions such
as how local communities calculate their interest when faced with the
alternatives of collaborating with or resisting belligerent forces in highly
insecure environments. Framed in this light, the matter of allegiance,
often treated as a pre-existing explanatory factor for the violence held to
typify civil wars, emerges instead as a more contingent and endogenous
phenomenon.33 Micro-histories of this type indicate that there are ‘a host
of endogenous mechanisms, whereby allegiances and identities tend to
result from the war or are radically transformed by it’. This is one example
of a larger point: that what are often seen as the cleavages and disputes
that provoke a conflict are not sufficient to explain the motivations of
those engaged in violence.34 In Kalyvas’ words, ‘the game of record is not

the Theorisation of the Cold War: Capitalist Development, Social Revolution and
Geopolitical Conflict’, Third World Quarterly, 26 (2005), 253–80.
31
Christopher Cramer, Civil War Is Not a Stupid Thing: Accounting for Violence in Developing
Countries (London: Hurst, 2006), esp. 87–138.
32
Stathis Kalyvas, ‘The Ontology of “Political Violence”: Action and Identity in Civil
Wars’, Perspectives on Politics, 1:3 (2003), 475–94.
33
For useful quantitative analysis of this point, see Scott Gates, ‘Recruitment and
Allegiance: The Microfoundations of Rebellion’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 46:1
(2002), 111–30. For evidence of the process at work in a late colonial setting, see
Daniel Branch, Defeating Mau Mau, Creating Kenya: Counterinsurgency, Civil War, and
Decolonization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
34
This is clearly evidenced in the intersections between Mozambique’s war of decoloniza-
tion, which shaded into civil war after formal independence in 1975, and the fight against
white rule in neighbouring Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. See Glenda Morgan, ‘Violence in
Mozambique: Towards an Understanding of Renamo’, Journal of Modern African
Studies, 28:4 (1990), 603–19; Heike I. Schmidt, Colonialism and Violence in Zimbabwe.
A History of Suffering (Woodbridge: James Currey, 2013), chapters 4 and 5;
 Introduction 13

the game on the ground’.35 Developing an approach that originates in the

study of civil wars is apt, because contemporary armed conflicts increas-
ingly exhibit civil war aspects such as paramilitarism, a predominance of
irregular forces, and civilian targeting.36 Even more important is the
ability to apply these insights and approaches to include key aspects of
the civilianization of war such as new technologies and those defending
international norms. Many of the case studies in this collection do just
that (Christopher Goscha, Stacey Hynd, Julius Ruiz).
To this framework we would add three important contributions from
IR specialists. The first derives from Robert Jervis’ now classic study of
complex systems, which emphasizes that their very complexity necessarily
means that actions can have unexpected consequences (a theme
addressed in the chapters by Andrew Barros on bombing and John
Ferris on naval blockade) and captures an important consequence of
the civilianization of war.37 This insight is particularly useful when exam-
ining the linkage between the military and home fronts. It serves as an
expression in IR theory terms of the sometimes unforeseen connections
between manifestations of modernity – among them technology and mass
production, communications and public opinion, and the greater promi-
nence of IOs and NGOs in international affairs – and the dynamic nature
of the civil–military divide over the course of the last century.
The second approach also touches on the question of the unpredictable,
in this case the inevitability that intelligence organizations will fail.
Developed by political scientists working in security studies, a field that
has seen some of the closest collaboration between political scientists and
international historians, this approach has also been influenced by work on
the role of misperception in IR. Several authors in this collection (Barros,
Ferris and Goscha) have integrated intelligence into their analysis to empha-
size the importance of perception in understanding belligerent calculations,
as well as its ability to reinforce the role of Clausewitzian friction.38

Norma Kriger, ‘The Zimbabwean War of Liberation: Struggles within the Struggle’,
Journal of Southern African Studies, 14:2 (1988), 304–22.
35
Stathis Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2006), 25–28.
36
Alex McDougall, ‘State Power and Its Implications for Civil War Colombia’, Studies in
Conflict & Terrorism, 32:4 (2009), 322–45.
37
Robert Jervis, System Effects: Complexity in Political and Social Life (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1999).
38
Richard K. Betts, ‘Analysis, War, and Decision: Why Intelligence Failures Are
Inevitable’, World Politics, 31 (1978): 61–89. A good example of this cooperation between
political scientists and international historians is the contributions in Colin Elman and
Miriam F. Elman (eds), Bridges and Boundaries: Historians, Political Scientists, and the
Study of International Relations (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001). On misperception
see the classic study by Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics
14 Introduction

The final contribution from this discipline that is reprised by our

contributors concerns the self-interested logic of cooperation between
belligerents in ensuring the respect of certain norms, and thereby uphold-
ing the civil–military divide (see the contributions by Barros, Ferris and
Raphaëlle Branche).39 Jurists have also studied this question, albeit as
part of their examination of compliance with international law. When it
comes to understanding the civil–military divide, this literature shares
some of the shortcomings of IR theory that were discussed earlier, but it is
still of considerable value.40 The extent to which civilian protection rests
on realpolitik calculations rather than the influence of those committed to
upholding normative standards of civil–military distinction is a theme
integral to several of the chapters here (particularly those by Olivier
Barsalou and Frédéric Mégret).
Legal scholars approach the study of international norms and the
effectiveness of international law (IL) from a particular specialized train-
ing. Given the practical limitations to IL so cruelly exposed by the Second
World War, it is not surprising that in the post-1945 period, jurists’ study
of their discipline proved susceptible to the influence of the realist per-
spective. In response, they began exploring new linkages between IL and
politics. IL theorists devoted greater attention to the legal process and all
that it touched, effectively widening IL’s impact, influence and
relevance.41 Naturally, the focus on the process in IL attaches great
weight to legal mechanisms and actors. Reflecting this, a seminal study
of the history of IL focused primarily on its practitioners.42 The resultant
preoccupation with legal doctrines, actors and institutions, notably law-
yers, judges, activists and governments, also promoted a transnational
perspective. In similar fashion, the sources examined by IL analysts
mirror the legal and procedural events that figure most prominently in
the reconfiguration of international law during or after major armed
conflicts. There are pitfalls in such an events-led analysis. For example,

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976). For the importance of Clausewitz see
Hew Strachan, Clausewitz’s On War; A Biography (New York, NY: Atlantic Monthly
Press, 2007).
39
See, for example, George H. Quester, Deterrence before Hiroshima: The Airpower
Background of Modern Strategy (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1986). For an
explanation of belligerent cooperation that emphasizes military cultures see Jeffrey
W. Legro, Cooperation under Fire: Anglo-German Restraint during World War II (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 1995).
40
Dunoff and Pollack, ‘Reviewing Two Decades of IL/IR Scholarship’, 638–43; Andrew
T. Guzman, How International Law Works: A Rational Choice Theory (New York, NY:
Oxford University Press, 2008).
41
Dunoff and Pollack, ‘International Law and International Relations’, 6–7.
42
Martti Koskenniemi, The Gentle Civiliser of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law,
1870–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
 Introduction 15

the burgeoning literature on human rights has a tendency towards finding

these rights and their defenders rather than examining their absence.43
In the case of IL, then, studies of particular campaigns or cases are, almost
invariably, related to the larger functioning of the discipline, via legal
actors, authorities, and tribunals, and ultimately the rule of law.
That said, the approach adopted here owes much to the IL literature.
Like Kalyvas, Martti Koskenniemi’s influential study, From Apology to
Utopia: The Structure of International Legal Argument, has helped define
this study’s framework. Koskenniemi reminds us that IL is not an objec-
tive, neutral science in the service of a utopian legal order. Nor is it simply
an unalloyed instrument of state power, a juridical apology for the fact
that might makes right. In Koskenniemi’s view, IL debates need to be
seen as a hybrid of these two species; hence the need to employ ‘concepts
so that they can be fitted into both patterns, so that they can be seen to
avoid the dangers of apologism or utopianism and support both commu-
nity and autonomy’. For IL to remain relevant, his solution is that ‘the
modern lawyer needs to show that the law is simultaneously normative
and concrete – that it binds a State regardless of that State’s behaviour,
will or interest but that its content can nevertheless be verified by refer-
ence to actual State behaviour, will or interest’.44
These ideas are echoed in David Kennedy’s recent study, Of War and
Law, which argues that just as the separation between war and peace has
become harder to discern in an era of asymmetric warfare, there has also
been an extraordinary intermingling of the legal and the military. Soldiers
are increasingly imbued with the law – through their training, through
interaction with legal personnel and procedures, and as a factor in opera-
tional decisions. War, as Kennedy puts it, has become ‘a legal institution’.
As the military increasingly integrates the law into its operations, ‘we are
not only allowing a particular language of evaluation. We also allow for
that language to substitute for other judgements.’ This language has
a ‘capacious’ ability to accommodate conflicting viewpoints and serve
opposing strategies, be they of states or humanitarian organizations.
Setting legal criteria for the targeting of weapons in order to avoid non-
combatant casualties may be exploited to quite contradictory ends. It can
serve as an apology for civilians who are then killed by forces in compli-
ance with these requirements. Or it may advance the all too often quixotic
desire to end non-combatant losses and suffering. Minimizing civilian
casualties can be an effective military strategy, not just a matter of ‘good
43
See, for example, Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink (eds), Activists beyond Borders:
Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998).
44
Martti Koskenniemi, From Apology to Utopia: The Structure of International Legal Argument
(Cambridge, 2005, but first published in Finnish in 1989), 2, 252.
16 Introduction

politics’ or useful propaganda but, in other cases, conferring a fighting

advantage to opponents, particularly when they are irregular forces.
Political legitimacy, and, with it, a strategic advantage, may be enhanced
by being seen to uphold the law and save lives. Or these efforts may
confirm for the local population the illegitimacy of those proclaiming to
defend civilians. Evaluating the role of norms and IL in the formation of
the civil–military divide thus intersects with the analysis adopted here,
one that privileges the endogenous aspect of the divide’s evolution,
thereby highlighting its fluctuating nature.45
Relative to the more long-standing attempts to foster greater collabora-
tion between IR and IL, those between specialists in the history of IL and
international historians are of younger vintage. Yet, among its many
qualities, Koskenniemi’s work has demonstrated how powerful historical
examinations of IL history can be an important source of renewal for IL
theory. This may help explain the recent and encouraging trend among IL
specialists to examine their discipline’s history in light of international
history’s core themes and literatures, notably in regard to IOs like the
League of Nations and UN.46
International historians were among the last to arrive at this intersec-
tion between state power, the role of normative forces and international
institutions. That being said, the post-1945 period saw the field of inter-
national history embrace broader perspectives, both thematic and geo-
graphical, and enter dialogue with other disciplines, notably IR theory.47
As with scholars of IL, realism was an important influence, as was the
Cold War, both intellectually and in terms of access to archival sources.
Trends emerged within this literature, the significance of which became
clearer once the discipline engaged with the question of norms, including
the modern-day protection of civilians, and thus with colleagues in IR
and IL.
The first and most important trend was in the study of armed conflict,
especially modern global war. Scholars moved from a narrow high-policy
focus on the perspectives of political and military leaders through
a number of stages that each widened the analytical framework for the
study of war. The First World War is an excellent example of this process.
Historians turned their attention towards the lower reaches of the military

45
David W. Kennedy, On Law and War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2006), 143.
46
For the importance of history for IL see Matt Craven, ‘Introduction: International Law
and Its Histories’, in Matthew Craven, Malgosia Fitzmaurice, and Maria Vogiatzi (eds),
Time, History and International Law (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 1–24.
47
Zara Steiner, ‘On Writing International History: Chaps, Maps, and Much More’,
International Affairs, 73 (1997), 531–46.
 Introduction 17

pyramid, examining the importance and role of junior officers and sol-
diers at the front, and later their post-war significance as veterans pivotal
to processes of cultural demobilization. Studies that followed the peace-
time legacies of conflicts raised interesting comparisons with the mobili-
zation and remobilization of belligerent societies. Scholars also began to
escape the confines of national history and started to examine these issues
from bilateral and multilateral perspectives. Likewise, investigating the
war’s financing and economic mobilization also opened the door to the
home front and wartime culture, which, in turn, generated more com-
parative and transnational studies.48 These works were often grounded in
micro-histories that traced the myriad ways in which the conflict changed
individuals and groups, be that a detailed examination of the experience
of combat at the front or the stresses of daily life behind it.49 The Second
World War also ended in German defeat, but its contours, particularly in
terms of ideology and occupation, were very different from those of the
First. The resulting loss of civilian life informed several highly influential
micro-histories that sought to explain the heightened levels of
civil–military violence that punctuated the conflict.50
Historians of Empire have also been drawn to studying the role of
violence in the operation and destruction of colonialism.51 This now
burgeoning field, much of which attaches greater significance to the
global iniquities between North and South than to the ideological divi-
sions between the Cold War blocs, is essential in explaining the historio-
graphical transformation of the Cold War from a narrowly East–West
conflict to a global one.52 With this sharper focus on inequalities and

48
For the First World War’s historiography see Antoine Prost and Jay Winter, The Great
War in History: Debates and Controversies, 1914 to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005).
49
While perhaps too large to be considered by some a micro-history, see the excellent study
by Leonard V. Smith, From Mutiny to Obedience: The Case of the French Fifth Infantry
Division during World War I (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994). For the
post-war legacy and the idea of cultural demobilization, see Gerwarth and Horne, War in
Peace.
50
Of particular note are Jan Gross, Neighbours: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in
Jebwabne, Poland (New York, NY: Penguin, 2002) and Christopher Browning, Ordinary
Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York, NY:
HarperCollins, 1992).
51
The literature in the field is reviewed in Martin Thomas, Violence and Colonial Order:
Police, Workers, and Protest in the European Colonial Empires, 1918–1940 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2012), chapter 1, and Schmidt, Colonialism and Violence,
2–13.
52
For the concept of a global cold war see Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World
Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2007); Mark Philip Bradley, ‘Decolonization, the Global South, and the Cold War,
1919–1962’, in Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad (eds), The Cambridge History
of the Cold War, vol. I: Origins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). For an
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 The Beggar.
By Jules Bastien-Lepage.
The more he become master of his brush, the more the rustic
work haunted him. He was still a thorough countryman. Although he
had now at intervals the refinements of elegance and little bursts of
worldliness; although he had exchanged the modest atelier in the
Impasse du Maine for a house in the Quartier Monceau, the world
soon wearied him, and he was glad to go back to his village.
This six weeks’ absence, of which he speaks in his letter to his
friend Baude, was spent in an excursion to Venice, and in
Switzerland. He came back only half delighted, and brought back
only a few unimportant sketches.
 Italy and the splendours of Venetian art had left him cold. In this
world of history and mythology he was not at home. He sickened for
his meadows and his Meusian forests.
During his rapid visits to Paris in 1881 and 1882, the painting of
various portraits, notably that of Madame Juliette Drouet, and the
compulsory tax of visits and soirées occupied him almost entirely.
We saw but little of him. But these successes, and the adulation
lavished upon him in Parisian drawing-rooms, did not change him.
He was still the loyal, joyous comrade, faithful to old ties; very
good, very simple; happy as a child when he found himself in a circle
of intimate friends.
We were both members and even founders of an Alsace-Lorraine
dinner, the Dîner de l’Est, which was always given in summer in the
country. One of the last meetings at which he was present, took
place at the end of May, 1881.
A boat had been engaged, which was to take the diners to the
bridge at Suresnes, and to bring them back at night. When we
arrived at the landing-stage, a blind man was standing by the
footbridge, attended by a young girl, who held out her sebilla to the
passers-by.
“Come, gentlemen! all of you, put your hands in your pockets!”
gaily commanded Bastien, and he passed over first, preaching by
example. And the eighty, or a hundred guests of the Dîner de l’Est,
passed one after another over the footbridge, each one leaving in
the child’s sebilla a coin, large or small.
When we were on the deck, Bastien turned round to look at the
blind man and his girl, who were amazed at this unexpected windfall,
and were slowly counting their money.
“What a lovely group?” he said to me. “How I should like to paint
that child!”
While waiting for dinner we walked in the Bois de Boulogne. The
acacias and hawthorns were in flower. The lawns, newly shorn, gave
out a perfume of mown grass. Jules, joyfully drawing in this air
impregnated with country odours, laughed like a happy child.
 At that moment all was going well with him. His Mendiant had had
a great success at the Salon; his last visit to England had been very
prosperous; his head was full of fine projects for pictures. “It is good
to be alive!” he exclaimed, as he played with a flower he had plucked
from the bushes…. On the way back he gave himself up to all sorts
of roguish fun. Mounted on the prow of the boat he sang, with his full
voice, the Chant du Départ.
The vibrating tones resounded powerfully between the two
sleeping river banks; the sky was splendid, twinkling with
innumerable stars. From time to time Bastien lighted a rocket and
sent it up overhead, shouting a loud hurrah!
The fusée mounted slowly into the night, showering down many-
coloured sparks, then fell suddenly and sank in the dark water. Alas!
it was the image of the short and brilliant years that remained for him
to live.
 IV.

On the death of Gambetta, January 1, 1883, Bastien was

commissioned to make a design for the funeral car in which the great
orator was to be conveyed to Père Lachaise; he spent a week in the
little room at Ville d’Avray, painting the picture representing the
statesman on his deathbed. The cold was extreme at this time, and,
his work scarcely finished, he went away, feeling ill, to Damvillers,
where he hoped to finish the great picture he had began of L’Amour
au Village.
His native air, the simple life, and his mother’s loving care
restored him, and he began to work again with his usual eagerness.
Muffled in a warm jacket and a travelling cloak that covered him
down to the feet, he made his models pose for him in the piercing
days of February, in the little garden where he had already painted
the portrait of his grandfather. In March the work was well advanced,
and he invited me to go and see it at Damvillers before it was sent to
the Salon. I left Verdun on a freezing afternoon, accompanied by the
old friend who had walked with us through the Argonne, and we
were set down at Damvillers at night-fall. Our hosts were awaiting us
on the doorstep; the grandfather, always the same, with his Greek
cap and white beard, and his Socratic face; the painter and the little
mother, with smiles and outstretched hands.
Around them Basse the spaniel, and Golo and Barbeau were
bounding and barking joyfully to give us a welcome.
The next morning, early, we went up to the studio to see L’Amour
au Village, which was to go to Paris that day.
The subject of this picture is well known; it is one of the most real
and the most original that the artist has painted: the daylight is
waning; at the gate of a village garden, a lad of twenty, who has
been binding sheaves, and still wears his leggings of leather, is
talking, leaning against a fence, with a young girl, who turns her back
to the spectator; what he is saying to her may be guessed from his
awkward manner of twisting his stiff fingers, and also from the
attentive but embarrassed air of the young girl. One feels that they
are not saying much, but that love exhales from every word, so
difficult to speak. Around them summer spreads the robust verdure
of the country. The fruit trees stand lightly silhouetted against a
background of kitchen herbs, gently sloping up to the houses of the
village, whose brown roofs and pointed spire come against the soft
and misty twilight sky. All this, bathed in a subdued light, is
marvellously painted. The young girl, her short plaits falling over her
shoulders, her neck bent, the form of her back, so young, so
delicate, is an exquisite figure; the face of the young harvester, so
energetic, so ingenuously in love, is charming in expression; the
treatment of the hands, the bust, the dress, is masterly. There is in
this picture a true and manly poetry, which is strengthening and
refreshing, like the odour of ripe corn.
Bastien was glad to have completed this difficult work, and his
satisfaction enabled him to bear with cheerfulness the pains in his
loins, and the digestive troubles which were becoming more and
more frequent.
It was long since I had seen him so gay and unreserved. This
happy holiday-week spent at Damvillers was the pendant to the walk
through the Argonne. The sullen sky, continually blotted out by
chilling showers, allowed us few walks in the open air; but every
morning we went up to the studio. Jules dismissed the little sweep,
who was sitting for a picture that he had on hand, and, taking a sheet
of copper, he made us pose for an etching. I have this plate before
me now; it did not bite well. It represents the whole family, including
the grandfather, making a circle round our friend F., who, standing up
and very grave, is reciting one of La Fontaine’s fables. While I look at
it, I seem to hear again the merry laughter which filled the studio,
alternating with the rattling of the hail against the windows.
In the evening, after supper, we placed ourselves at the round
table, and played at Diable or Nain rouge. Jules, throwing away his
best cards, always managed to let the grandfather win; and when the
octogenarian, quite proud of his success, took up the stakes, he
would pat him on the shoulder, and cry out, with a merry twinkle of
the eye, “Ha! what a lucky man! he will ruin us all!” and the laughter
began again.
We did not go to bed till well on into the night, after having roused
the little domestic, Felix, who had dozed off in the kitchen while
copying a portrait of Victor Hugo.

Father Jacques, the Woodman.

By Jules Bastien-Lepage.
In the intervals of sunshine, Bastien-Lepage took us to visit “his
fields.” He had a peasant’s love for the land, and he employed his
gains in adding to the paternal domains. He had just bought an
orchard situated in the old moat of the town, which had belonged to
an unfrocked priest. He intended to build a châlet there, where his
friends, painters or poets, might come and live in their holidays and
dream at their ease. He explained to us with the delight of a child, his
plans for the future. When, with his portraits, he should have gained
an independent fortune, he would execute at his ease and in
freedom, the grand rustic pictures that he dreamed of, and among
others, that burial of a young village girl, for which he had already
made many notes and sketched the principal details. We only took
one long walk, and it was in those woods of Réville which form the
background of his landscape, Ripe Corn. The weather had remained
cold, and there were still patches of snow on the backs of the grey
hills, though the sun shone sometimes. Except a few downy buds on
the willows, the woods were without verdure; but the ploughed fields
had a beautiful brown colour; the larks sang; the tops of the beeches
began to have that reddish hue, which indicates the rising of the sap,
the swelling buds. “Look,” said Bastien to me, when we were in the
forest, “my Wood-cutter in the last Salon was reproached with want
of air…. Well, here we are in a wood, and the trees are still without
leaves, yet look how little the figure stands out from the undergrowth
of trees and bushes. There is a great deal of routine and prejudice in
that criticism of the perspective of my pictures done in the open air. It
is the criticism of people who have never looked at a landscape,
except crouching down or sitting. When you sit down to paint, you
naturally see things quite differently from the way you see them
standing. Sitting, you see more sky and you have more objects—
trees, houses, or living beings standing out sharply in silhouette
against the sky, which gives the illusion of a greater distance and a
wider atmosphere. But it is not in this way that we generally see a
landscape. We look at it standing, and then the objects, animate or
inanimate, that are nearest to us, instead of being seen in profile
against the sky, are silhouetted upon the trees, or upon the fields,
grey or green. They stand out with less clearness, and sometimes
mix with the background, which then, instead of going away, seems
to come forward. We need to renew the education of our eye, by
looking with sincerity upon things as they are in nature, instead of
holding as absolute truths the theories and conventions of the school
and the studio.”
All the afternoon passed thus happily away in friendly talking and
slow smoking along the wooded paths. The blackbirds were
whistling; from time to time we discovered a flower in the open
spaces, which showed that spring was surely coming; a wood
anemone, with its milk-white petals, or a branch of mezereon, with its
pink flowers opening before the leaves, and its Japanese
appearance.
Jules stopped and gathered a stem of black helebore. “Ah, how
beautiful!” he said. “How one would like to make a careful study of
these leaves—so decorative, so finely cut—of dark green, almost
brown, out of which comes this pale green stem, with its clusters of
greenish flowers edged with pale rose-colour. What lovely forms, and
what a variety of tender shades! This is what they ought to give as a
copy to the children in the schools of design, instead of the eternal
and wearisome Diana de Gabies!”

Sketch for Father Jacques

We did not return till evening, when there was a magnificent
sunset, which crimsoned the smoky roofs of Réville, and made the
light clouds scattered over the sky look like a strew of rose-leaves.
The next day was the last of my visit. We took leave after long
embraces, making fine plans for returning to Damvillers for the
September holiday, while the grandfather, shaking his hoary head,
murmured sadly, “Who knows if you will find me here?” And
Barbeau, and Golo, and Basse bounded and barked round the
omnibus that took us away with tremendous noise.
I did not see Jules again till a month later, at the opening of the
Salon, in front of L’Amour au Village, which had a full success. He
was ill, and complained of pains in the loins more acute than
formerly; then he suddenly disappeared mysteriously. The door of
the atelier in Rue Legendre was closed, and visitors were told that
the painter was gone into the country. We did not know till later that
he had hidden himself, to undergo a sharp and painful treatment,
and that, scarcely convalescent, he had gone to breathe the sea air
in Brittany, at Concarneau. He spent his days there, in a boat,
painting the sea, and forgetting his pains by the help of work.
When he came to see us again in October, he appeared to be
recovered; but digestion was still a difficulty, and his habitual gaiety
was, as it were, clouded over. His character was changed. There
were no more of those trenchant affirmations of which his comrades
sometimes complained; he was indulgent, and even affectionate,
much more than was usual with him. He did not stay long in Paris,
but hastened back to Damvillers, to get seriously to work again. He
arrived in time to be present during his grandfather’s last moments.
The old man departed loaded with years; but, though surely
expected, his death was a painful blow to the survivors. “The house,”
he wrote, “is empty more than one could believe. Only a few days
ago, at any moment, a door would open and the grandfather
appeared, without motive, without object, without speaking or being
spoken to; but the sight of his kindly face was enough. One kissed
him, and he went away, as before, without object, sitting down, going
into the garden, coming back, and always with the same kind face. I
remember now that he has been growing paler for some days…. No,
you can have no idea how empty the house is. I cannot get
accustomed to it. We often talk of him with my mother—with what
pleasure! It is not that we weep for him with tears; we reason about
it, and we appear resigned and courageous; but behind all that there
is a sad feeling of want, of absolute loss. It is the touch one wants….
I have been ill with it, and am so still. I have not been able to work;
to-day, for the first time, I went out to shoot larks; the weather was
fine, the sun was shining, and the country beautiful. This did me
good.”
Indeed, the health of the artist, far from improving, was becoming
daily more uncertain. “It is the digestive tube,” said he, “that is out of
order.” Nevertheless, he worked with his usual courage, overlooking
his Concarneau studies, planning a new picture, and only stopping to
go out shooting or to saunter through the woods.
“Our evening walks are the best part of the day”—(letter to Ch.
Baude, Nov. 27, 1883)—“that is, from the setting of the sun till it is
dark. Every night the spectacle is new. The programme changes with
the weather. Sometimes the subject of the piece is dramatic; the next
day it is soft and charming; and, with the constant rain, our inundated
meadows reflect the brilliant scenery. Can you imagine all our
pleasure, in your dingy Paris? The next morning is too slow in
coming; one wants so much to put down last night’s impression; so
that I am making a heap of sketches, and find much pleasure in it.
Then—here is a surprise!—I have a new picture on the way….
Guess!… The subject is a wounded deer taken by the dogs. The
scene is, naturally, the wood, and the wood at this time of year: only
a few leaves of brilliant yellow against the marvellous rosy-grey of
the branches of the trees; then the violet tone of the dead leaves
flattened on the soil, and a few green briars round a pool under a
willow. The place was not chosen by me. The deer chose it himself
to die there; for I killed him the other day, and he went there to be
taken, a hundred yards from where he was shot—just opposite the
spot where Minet killed a hare. It was then that this picture struck
me. Afterwards I sketched in and reconstructed the scene; and, as I
wanted a model, I killed a second deer….”
Here is a characteristic symptom: he who formerly only wrote the
shortest of notes, scribbled in haste at the corner of a table, now
sent long, expansive letters to his friends, showing signs of
redoubled love of life, of art, of the beauties of nature:—
“My dear friends” (Jan. 3, 1884), “if you could see your poor
Bastien, with this heap of letters to write, you would certainly say:
‘How he is changed!’… If my wishes had the extraordinary virtue of
fulfilling themselves, I should like that you, whom I love, should profit
by it, and that 1884 should bring health and happiness and success
to all. My mother’s wishes are the same as mine, and she rejoices
that we are to see you soon. Ah, my dear friend, what pleasure you
would have in living upon the woods, as I feed upon them now
almost every day, along with Golo and Barbeau! What marvellously
delicate tones! and the fading out of daylight, and when the evening
comes on! The woods are exquisitely fine, with their tall, dry, ivory-
coloured grasses; they are so tall in some of the open spaces that
they caress your face as you pass, and the cool touch upon your
face and hands, hot with walking, is a delicious sensation. I rarely
leave the woods before night, for I must send up a few salutes to the
wild ducks with my gun before going in. One hears them coming
from a great distance, but it is difficult to judge if they are far away or
near, from the peculiarity of their cry; so they have often passed, and
are already a good way off, before one finds out that one has missed
them.
“This is to let you know that I am not a stay-at-home, as you might
think. I find it important to walk a good deal, for in this way I regain a
little health. My stomach was beginning to get wrong, but it is
better!…”
A few days after this I met a mutual friend of ours. “Well,” he said
to me, “our poor Bastien is very ill…. They think it is hopeless.”
 V.

Indeed he was very ill. The treatment he had undergone in the

summer of 1883 had not been successful. The pains in the loins and
bowels had returned with greater violence at the end of January.
By the advice of his friend Dr. Watelet he again went to Paris in
March to consult Dr. Potain. Without any illusions as to the fatal
nature of the disease, the doctors thought that a change of air and of
climate might, morally and physically, produce good results. They
advised that he should go to Algiers for two months.
Bastien himself, seized with that longing desire for movement
which often torments invalids who are seriously ill, had experienced
a wish to go to the south. It was decided that he should start as soon
as possible for Algiers, accompanied by his servant Felix, and by his
mother.
On the morning of the day fixed for starting I went to the Rue
Legendre to say good-bye to him. He had gone to complete some
arrangements with his picture-agent. I found only Mme. Bastien, who
was occupied in filling the trunks which were scattered about the
studio. The brave little mother, who had never left her home at
Damvillers for more than a few days together, was preparing for this
long journey to an unknown country quite simply, with an apparent
tranquillity, as if she were going as far as Saint Cloud.
The hope that the change might be good for Jules was enough to
give her courage to face this upsetting of all her old ways of living.
Sometimes only, when she was carefully arranging the linen in the
trunk, the tears would rise to her eyes and a quiver of pain pass over
her lips.
Upon the chairs and against the walls were placed the recent
studies brought from Damvillers, and one felt one’s heart tighten at
the sight of these last works, where nature had been observed and
rendered with incomparable skill, penetration, and charm. They were
The Frog-fisher, The Little Sweep, The Washerwoman, The Pond at
Damvillers, The Edge of the Wood, The Church at Concarneau, and
that study of A Midnight Sky so original, with the clouds scattered
over an azure that was almost black.
At this moment Bastien-Lepage came in, and on seeing him walk
with difficulty into the studio, I was distressed at the change that had
come over him. His thin face had become quite bloodless; the skin of
his neck was peeling off; his hair seemed to have no life in it. His
questioning blue eyes expressed an anguish and weariness that was
heartrending. “Well,” said he, after having embraced me, “are you
looking at my studies? When people see them at George Petit’s,
they will say that the little Bastien could paint the landscape too,
when he gave himself the trouble!…” When I said to him that his long
absence that morning had made his mother anxious, he added quite
low, and taking me into one corner of the studio: “When one is going
to take a journey so far, one must prepare for it…. I wanted to put my
affairs in order. Poor little mother!” he went on; “she has been very
brave! Down at home she used to spend whole nights in rubbing me
for my rheumatism, and I let her think that it did me good…. Now,
perhaps the Algiers sun will cure me.” Hope alternated with
discouragement. During breakfast he recovered a little. I was to go to
Spain at the end of March; he urged me to change my plans, and to
join him in Algiers. We ended with a half-promise. We tried hard to
appear gay; we clinked our glasses as we drank to the hope of soon
meeting again, but each one felt his throat tighten, and turned away
to hide from the other his moist eyes. I left the house in the Rue
Legendre with my heart full of the saddest forebodings.
Jules left the same night for Marseilles. They had a good
crossing, and his first letter, dated March 17th, was reassuring:—
“My dear friends, there is no getting out of it; you must come, for a
thousand reasons. Here it is just like May in Paris. Everything is in
flower; and such flowers!—heaps of them, everywhere. The verdure
is delicate and grey, and, like patches, always well placed; the
outlines picturesque and new, the trees very dark green. And in the
midst of all this, upon the roads, the Arabs, of astonishing calmness
and splendid carriage, under their earth-coloured and ash-coloured
draperies—ragamuffins as proud as kings, and better dressed than
Talma. They all wear a shirt and burnous; not one is like another. It
seems as if each one, at every moment, gave expression to his
thought by his manner of draping his garment. It is once more the
triumph of blank truth over arrangement and conventionalism. The
sorrowful man, whether he wishes it or not, in spite of himself is not
draped like the gay. Beauty, I am convinced, is exact truth: neither to
the right nor to the left, but in the middle.
“All this without telling you we have hired a house at Mustapha
Superior. It is half Arab, half French, quite white, with an interior
court opening into a garden twice as big as that at Damvillers. The
garden is full of orange-trees, and lemon, almond, fig, and a quantity
of other trees, the names of which I do not know and probably never
shall. All this, not trim like a park, but left a little à la diable, like our
garden at home. Then we have the right of walking in a magnificent
garden which joins ours. We have at least eight rooms; in counting
them I thought of you. In all directions round this house there are
delightful walks within reach for invalid limbs; in short, it is a
Mahomet’s Paradise, … ‘moins les femmes.’ I have said nothing
about Kasbah, the old Arab town—my legs have only let me see it
from a distance as yet; but, my good friend, imagine that against a
morning sky you have, sometimes in the palest rose, sometimes in
silvery grey, sometimes in faint blue, and so on—everywhere against
the pearly sky—more or less elongated rectangles, placed
irregularly, but always horizontally, in the manner of a line of low hills,
and you will have the delicate colouring of the old town. One would
not suppose it was a town with habitations, so delicate is the tone of
it, but for some little holes of rare windows placed here and there.
One could not have a sensation more unexpected, and never a
sweeter and finer joy. So you must come! My mother is counting
upon it, and what, then, am I? What new things you could say about
all this! The sea was very fine at the beginning and end of our
crossing. Midway some of the passengers suffered: my mother and
Felix among them, but they got some sleep. We were twenty hours
in crossing, and we were not tired on arriving. Come, set off; start!…
A good embrace from my mother and from me.”
His first letter, as may be seen, was full of ardour. The climate of
Algeria did him good at first, and his sufferings seemed to be
relieved.
“I am preparing myself bravely for the ordeal by fire” (April letter to
Ch. Baude); “may my rheumatism take flight and depart with the
coming attack of the sun! When it is hot here, it is still quite bearable.
Apart from these calculations about the heat and these health
experiences, I am happy, even excited, by all that I have seen; and
yet I have only seen what any bagman might see who is busy about
the selling of his goods; but it has been enough to give me great
delight. What remains of the old Arab town is marvellous; one holds
one’s breath when, at a sudden turn, the vision reappears. For those
unhappy eyes that only see the colours on the palette, it is white; but
picture to yourself a long hill, rather high, with a depression in the
middle, and sloping as if to the sea, and this hill all covered with
elongated or elevated cubes of which one cannot distinguish the
thickness; all this remaining unnoticed by the eye that is ravished by
the delicate tone, rosy, greenish, pale blue, making altogether white
tinted with salmon.
“If one did not know it beforehand, one would never dream that
amongst these cubes of plaster thousands of men are walking,
talking, sleeping—men of noble manner, proud and calm, and with
something very like indifference or contempt for us. And they are
right. They are beautiful, we are ugly. What matter is it to me that
they are knaves! They are beautiful!…
“Yesterday I went to take a bath. I had to go three or four hundred
steps through streets full of merchants. In a passage a Jew was
selling silks, pearls and corals; in front of his shop, not two yards
wide, were three Arabs—an old man, another of middle age, the
third about seventeen. There they were, seated, attentive, calm,
wishing to buy, consulting together, making scarcely a gesture with
their hands, always kept at full length, but sitting quietly, never
hurrying, reflecting enormously, and keeping all the while under their
burnouses the softest, gentlest attitudes. The youngest was superb
—so handsome that mama was struck with it. ‘They are like beautiful
statues,’ said she. I could not understand the scene and the relations
that united these three Arabs. It was clear they were come to buy;
they had come down from the higher part of the town. They were
poor, for the youngest was in rags, and the burnouses of the others,
though not in rags, were very much worn; but they took such pains in
counting the little pieces of false coral that it was clear the Jew was
selling dear to these big children a thing of no value. The one of
middle age was counting on the table, with his flat hand by groups of
five, the little pieces of coral which he chose as he counted them;
thus adding each time five pieces to the heap that he drew towards
him.
“What strikes one is this simple colouring, these magnificent folds,
and then this serious childishness.
“I was not able to wait till the end of the scene. It was cold and
draughty in this passage, which brought me back to the fact of my
poor crazy legs. I long for the time when I shall be a man again; what
lovely things I shall see, and perhaps I shall do!”
April 23rd (to the same): “Now I take myself by the ear and drag
myself to the letter-paper, and all the needful things. Nothing is
wanting, neither the thousand things I have to say, nor above all the
tender affection that I keep in store for you.
“Emile says that you are coming, and soon: don’t be alarmed, you
will not melt in the hot sun. There are cool places in the garden,
where one can stretch oneself, with a magnificent landscape at one’s
feet. We have only had the heat since yesterday; you will see how
good you will find it, your muscles will relax, and you will go back
quite young. We will make some excursions together if I am up to it.
Any way there are plenty all round us to tempt you to make some.
“You have heard from Emile that I went to Blidah. I bore the little
journey very well at first, but I was tired afterwards. I am going to
begin to rest, and go slowly, in order that I may go farther. I have
scarcely done anything till now, for I don’t feel myself up to remaining
long in the same position, as a painter must, who thinks only of his
work.”
The health that he hoped for, and so anxiously waited for, did not
come. On the contrary, as the heat increased, Jules felt more unwell
and more fatigued. The last letter that he wrote to me reached me at
Granada, in that hotel, the “Siete Suelos,” where Fortuny and Henri
Regnault had lived. There was all through it a sentiment of touching
melancholy and discouragement.
“My good friends, this is delightful. It is too good to get your
photographs at the same time as your kind and affectionate letter. I
am glad you are going to Spain. Lucky fellows! Go along! while I,
who should so like to see a bull fight!… You had not time to come,
and indeed it was selfish to ask you. You could not have stayed more
than a few days. But that is to be done some day when I am no
longer a cripple, and when we can have two months before us. We
are comfortably settled here. At this moment I am writing to you
under the tent set up in the terraced court of our villa, with a
wonderful view before me. Placed a little to the left of a semicircle,
formed by the hills of Mustapha, 170 yards above the sea which
flows at their base, we have at every hour of the day, a different
landscape; for the sides of the hills are full of ravines, and the sun,
according to the time of day, throws their slopes into light, or makes
a network of shade, in a way quite peculiar to this corner of Africa.
Little villas gleaming in the sunshine or grey in the shade give effect
to the groups of verdure, the whole looking from the distance like a
rich embroidery, with bosses of green harmoniously arranged. All
this runs down toward the Gulf of Algiers, and trending away from
here forms Cape Matifou. Above are the crests of the Little Atlas, far
away, and lost in heaven’s blue; near by, sloping gardens spread out
their golden or silvery verdure, according as one looks upon olive or
eucalyptus. Add to this the perfume of the orange and lemon trees,
the pleasure of telling you that I embrace you all three, Tristan
included, that I am a little better, and you will have the state of my
heart.
“Enjoy yourselves,—and you, my dear forester, with your Toledo
eyes, what are you going to give to the world after all this delight of
sunshine and kindly fellowship and the loving union of the charming
trio that you make? It seems to me I have the heart and voice to
make a fourth—what say you? Ah! that shall be after the
rheumatism! Kindest regards from mama and from me. A last
embrace to all three of you.”
The improvement he had experienced on arriving in Algiers
ceased about the end of April. His strength and appetite gradually
failed; and at the end of May it was decided to take the invalid back
to France. He settled again in the Rue Legendre with the poor little
mother, who never left him afterwards. When I saw him again I was
shocked at the progress the disease had made. His thinness was
such that my unhappy friend was nowhere in the garments that were
made for his journey. His legs refused their service; he could no
longer work; and yet he kept a little hope. He had just begun a new
treatment, and talked of going into Brittany “as soon as he was
strong enough.” He drove every day in the Bois when the weather
was fine, and spent the rest of his day on cushions in the corner of
the studio, occupied in contemplating, with a heartrending look, his
studies hanging on the walls. This inaction was most distressing to
him.
“Ah!” cried he, “if I was told: They are going to cut off your two
legs, but after that you will be able to paint again, I would willingly
make the sacrifice….”
He could only sleep now with the help of injected morphine, and
he waited with impatience for the hour when a new supply should
give him some relief, and a factitious drowsiness should make him
forget his suffering.
In proportion as digestion became more difficult his appetite
became more capricious. He wanted to have dishes made which
reminded him of the cooking of his village; then, when they were
brought to him, he turned away disgusted, without tasting them.
“No,” said he, pushing aside the plate, “that’s not it; to have it good it
must be made down there, prepared by the Damvillers people, with
home-grown vegetables.” And while he was speaking one saw by his
moist eyes a sudden and painful calling up of the impressions of
former days; he saw all at once the old home, the gardens and
orchards of Damvillers at the fall of evening, the peaceful village
interiors at the time when the fires were lighted for the evening meal.
As the season advanced his strength decreased. In September
his brother was obliged to take him on his back to carry him to the
carriage, and he drove about slowly for an hour in the avenues of the
Bois. He could not read, and was easily wearied by conversation.
His nerves were become very irritable, and the slightest odours were
disagreeable to his sense of smell. His courage seemed to forsake
him; at the same time he was always wanting to know what others
thought of his illness. His blue eyes with their penetrating look
anxiously searched the eyes of his friends, and of his mother, who
never left his side. The heroic little woman did her best to
dissimulate, and was always smiling and affecting a cheerfulness
and a confidence which were painful to see; then, when she could
escape for a moment, she hastened into the neighbouring room and
melted into tears.
For months this cruel agony was thus prolonged. Bastien was
only a shadow of himself. On the 9th of December, during great part
of the night, he talked of Damvillers with his mother and his brother.
Then at about four in the morning he said to them, with a kiss,
“Come, it is time for children to sleep.” All three slept. Two hours later
Mme. B. was awakened by Jules, who asked for something to drink;
she rose, and brought him a cup of tea, and was alarmed on finding
that the invalid groped for the cup to guide it to his lips; he could no
longer see; but he still spoke and even joked about the difficulty he
had in moving his limbs.
Shortly afterwards he dozed, and sliding gently from sleep into
death, he expired at six in the evening, December 10, 1884.
I saw him next day lying on his mortuary bed, in the midst of a
thick covering of flowers. His poor emaciated face, with its sightless
and deeply sunk orbits, made him look like one of those Spanish
figures of Christ, fiercely cut in wood by Montanez.
On the 12th of December a long train of friends and admirers
accompanied his remains to the Eastern Railway Station, whence it
was conveyed to the Meuse. The next day, Sunday, the whole
population of Damvillers waited at the entrance of the town for the
funeral carriage, which brought back Bastien-Lepage to his native
place.
The sad procession advanced slowly on that road from Verdun
where the painter had loved to walk at twilight, talking with his
friends. A pale mist blotted out those hills and woods whose familiar
outlines he had so often reproduced. The cortège stopped before the
little church where he had intended painting his Burial of a Young
Girl. The morning was showery; the wreaths and festoons of flowers,
placed the night before on his coffin, were revived and refreshed by
the moisture; when they were heaped up upon the grave they
seemed to come to life again, and to send out with their renewed
perfume a last adieu from Paris to the painter of the peasants of the
Meuse.