“By Right of War”: The Discipline and Practice of International Law in Imperial Russia, 1868-1917

In his Academy project, Holquist explores the emergence and consolidation of the international law of war in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, particularly the critical role played by Imperial Russia. Although the intellectual lineage of the law of war dates back at least to Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), it was only from the mid-nineteenth through the early twentieth century that the law of war as we know it today (for example, the criteria for distinguishing “legal combatants” from “illegal combatants”) crystallized into formal codes defining the “laws of war.” Holquist examines to what extent European militaries, and especially the Russian army, observed these norms in practice. The project encompasses two distinct areas of analysis. First, as a story of intellectual and diplomatic history, it traces how international law emerged as a discipline in Imperial Russia and came to flourish there. Second, as military and political history, the project measures the extent to which these normative principles shaped actual policy. Holquist selects three cases of military occupation to examine the actions of the Russian army: Bulgaria and Anatolia, 1877-78; Manchuria during the Boxer Rebellion, 1900-1901; and Galicia and Armenia during the First World War. “By what means, and to what degree,” Holquist asks, “can one bring people’s conduct, even in extremis, into line with normative and ethical prescriptions?” Apart from its historical significance, this question takes on new urgency in light of current events.