Front Matter

Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-14257-1 - Human Rights in the Twentieth Century Edited by Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann Frontmatter More information

Human Rights in the Twentieth Century

Has there always been an inalienable “right to have rights” as part of the human condition, as Hannah Arendt famously argued? The contributions to this volume examine how human rights came to define the bounds of universal morality in the course of the political crises and conflicts of the twentieth century. Although human rights are often viewed as a self- evident outcome of this history, the essays collected here make clear that human rights are a relatively recent invention that emerged in contingent and contradictory ways. Focusing on specific instances of their assertion or violation during the past century, this volume analyzes the place of human rights in various arenas of global politics, providing an alterna- tive framework for understanding the political and legal dilemmas that these conflicts presented. In doing so, this volume captures the state of the art in a field that historians have only recently begun to explore.

Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann is Research Director at the Center for Research in Contemporary History, Potsdam, Germany, and has been a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University. He is the author of the prizewinning The Politics of Sociability: Freemasonry and German Civil Society 1840–1918 (2007). Currently, he is preparing a short history of human rights and a book on Berlin in the wake of the Second World War.

© in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-14257-1 - Human Rights in the Twentieth Century Edited by Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann Frontmatter More information

Human Rights in History

Edited by Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann, Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung Samuel Moyn, Columbia University

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.

Human Rights in the Twentieth Century

Edited by Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann

cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo, Mexico City

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First published 2011

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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data Human rights in the twentieth century / [edited by] Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann. p. cm. isbn 978-0-521-19426-6 (hardback) – isbn 978-0-521-14257-1 (pbk.) 1. Human rights. 2. Human rights – Cross-cultural studies. I. Hoffmann, Stefan-Ludwig. jc571.h76962 2010 323.09Ł04–dc22 2010031355

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Contents

Notes on Contributors page ix Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction: Genealogies of Human Rights 1 Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann

Part I the emergence of human rights regimes 1 The End of Civilization and the Rise of Human Rights: The Mid-Twentieth-Century Disjuncture 29 Mark Mazower 2 The “Human Rights Revolution” at Work: Displaced Persons in Postwar Europe 45 G. Daniel Cohen 3 ‘Legal Diplomacy’ – Law, Politics and the Genesis of Postwar European Human Rights 62 Mikael Rask Madsen

Part II postwar universalism and legal theory 4 Personalism, Community, and the Origins of Human Rights 85 Samuel Moyn 5 René Cassin: Les droits de l’homme and the Universality of Human Rights, 1945–1966 107 Glenda Sluga 6 Rudolf Laun and the Human Rights of Germans in Occupied and Early West Germany 125 Lora Wildenthal

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viii Contents

Part III human rights, state socialism, and dissent 7 Embracing and Contesting: The Soviet Union and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948–1958 147 Jennifer Amos 8 Soviet Rights-Talk in the Post-Stalin Era 166 Benjamin Nathans 9 Charter 77 and the Roma: Human Rights and Dissent in Socialist Czechoslovakia 191 Celia Donert

Part IV genocide, humanitarianism, and the limits of law 10 Toward World Law? Human Rights and the Failure of the Legalist Paradigm of War 215 Devin O. Pendas 11 “Source of Embarrassment”: Human Rights, State of Emergency, and the Wars of Decolonization 237 Fabian Klose 12 The United Nations, Humanitarianism, and Human Rights: War Crimes/Genocide Trials for Pakistani Soldiers in Bangladesh, 1971–1974 258 A. Dirk Moses

Part V human rights, sovereignty, and the global condition 13 African Nationalists and Human Rights, 1940s–1970s 283 Andreas Eckert 14 The International Labour Organization and the Globalization of Human Rights, 1944–1970 301 Daniel Roger Maul 15 “Under a Magnifying Glass”: The International Human Rights Campaign against Chile in the Seventies 321 Jan Eckel

Index 343

Notes on Contributors

Jennifer Amos, PhD Candidate History, University of Chicago. She is preparing a dissertation on Soviet conceptions of human rights. G. Daniel Cohen, Associate Professor in the Department of History, Rice University, Houston. He is the author of Europe’s Displaced Persons: Refugees in the Postwar Order (Oxford, forthcoming) and of several articles on refugees and human rights after World War II. Celia Donert, Post-doc at the Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung Potsdam. She is currently working on the Gerda Henkel Stiftung–funded research project The Human Rights of Women in Postwar Europe and revising her dissertation for publication as The Rights of the Roma: Citizens of Gypsy Origin in Socialist Czechoslovakia. Jan Eckel, Assistant Professor in the Department of History, Albert-Ludwigs- Universität Freiburg. Major publications include Hans Rothfels. Eine intellektuelle Biographie im 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 2005); Geist der Zeit: Deutsche Geisteswissenschaften seit 1870 (Göttingen, 2008); “Utopie der Moral, Kalkül der Macht. Menschenrechte in der globalen Politik seit 1945,” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 49 (2009), 437–84; and (as co-editor) Neue Zugänge zur Geschichte der Geschichtswissenschaft (Göttingen, 2007). He is currently preparing a book on the history of international human rights politics, 1945–1995. Andreas Eckert, Professor of African History, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Director of the Internationales Geisteswissenschaftliches Kolleg (IGK) “Work and Human Lifecycle in Global History.” Major publications include Grundbesitz, Landkonflikte und kolonialer Wandel. Douala 1880– 1960 (Stuttgart, 1999); Herrschen und Verwalten. Afrikanische Bürokraten, staatliche Ordnung und Politik in Tansania, 1920–1970 (Munich, 2007); and (as co-editor) Globalgeschichte. Theorien, Themen, Ansätze (Frankfurt, 2007); Vom Imperialismus zum Empire – Nicht-westliche Perspektiven auf

x Notes on Contributors

die Globalisierung (Frankfurt, 2008); and Journal of African History (since 2005). Currently he is preparing a history of Africa since 1850. Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann, Research Director at the Zentrum für Zeithis- torische Forschung Potsdam. Major publications include Civil Society, 1750–1914 (Basingstoke and New York, 2006); The Politics of Sociability: Freemasonry and German Civil Society, 1840–1918 (Ann Arbor, 2007); Geschichte der Menschenrechte (Munich, forthcoming); and (as co-editor) Demokratie im Schatten der Gewalt: Geschichten des Privaten im deutschen Nachkrieg (Göttingen, 2010). He is currently completing a book on Berlin under Allied occupation. Fabian Klose, Lecturer in the Department of History, Ludwig-Maximilians- Universität Munich. His dissertation has been published as Menschenrechte im Schatten kolonialer Gewalt. Die Dekolonisierungskriege in Kenia und Algerien 1945–1962 (Munich, 2009). He is currently working on a history of humanitarian interventions in the nineteenth century. Mikael Rask Madsen, Professor of European Law and Integration and Director of the Centre for Studies in Legal Culture (CRS), Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen. Major publications include La genèse de l’Europe des droits de l’homme: Enjeux juridiques et stratégies d’Etat (1945–1970) (Strasbourg, forthcoming) and (as co-editor) Paradoxes of European Legal Integration (London, 2008). He is currently completing a large research project on the rise and transformation of human rights in Europe since World War II. Daniel Roger Maul, Researcher in the Department of History, Justus-Liebig- Universität Gießen. Major publications include Menschenrechte, Entwicklung und Dekolonisation – Die Internationale Arbeitsorganisation (IAO) 1940–1970 (Essen, 2007; in trans. London, 2011). He is currently working on a history of international relief in the twentieth century. Mark Mazower is Professor of History and Program Director of the Center for International History at Columbia University, New York. Major publications include Greece and the Inter-War Economic Crisis (Oxford, 1991); Inside Hitler’s Greece: The Experience of Occupation, 1941–1944 (New Haven, 1993); Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century (New York, 1998); Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430–1950 (New York, 2004); Hitler’s Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe (London, 2008); No Enchanted Palace: The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations (Princeton, 2009); and (as editor) The Policing of Politics in Historical Perspective (London, 1997); After the War Was Over: Reconstructing the State, Family and the Law in Greece, 1943–1960 (Princeton, 2000); and Networks of Power in Modern Greece (London, 2008). He is currently working on a history of ideas and institutions of international governance since 1815.

Notes on Contributors xi

A. Dirk Moses, Associate Professor in the Department of History, University of Sydney, and Professor of Global and Colonial History at the European University Institute, Florence. Major publications include German Intellectuals and the Nazi Past (New York, 2007); and (as editor) Genocide and Settler Society: Frontier Violence and Stolen Aboriginal Children in Australian History (New York, 2004); Colonialism and Genocide (London, 2007, with Dan Stone); Empire, Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation and Subaltern Resistance in World History (New York, 2008); and The Oxford Handbook of Genocide (Oxford, 2010, with Donald Bloxham). He is preparing two books, Genocide and the Terror of History and The Diplomacy of Genocide. Samuel Moyn, Professor of History at Columbia University, New York. Major publications include Origins of the Other: Emmanuel Levinas between Revelation and Ethics (Ithaca, 2005); A Holocaust Controversy: The Trebl- inka Affair in Postwar France (Waltham, Mass., 2005); The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Cambridge, Mass., 2010); and (as ed. with intro.) Pierre Rosanvallon, Democracy Past and Future (New York, 2006). He is currently in the process of writing a book, A New Theory of Politics: Claude Lefort and Company in Contemporary France. Benjamin Nathans, Ronald S. Lauder Endowed Term Associate Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania. Major publications include Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia (Berkeley, 2002); and (as co-editor) Culture Front: Representing Jews in Eastern Europe (Philadelphia, 2008). He is currently preparing a book on human rights, legal thought, and dissent in the Soviet Union after Stalin, under contract with Princeton University Press. Devin O. Pendas, Associate Professor of History, Boston College. Major publications include The Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, 1963–1965: Genocide, History and the Limits of the Law (Cambridge, 2006). He is currently preparing a book on Law and Democracy: Transitional Justice in German Courts, 1945–1955 (under contract with Cambridge University Press). Glenda Sluga, Professor of International History, Department of History, University of Sydney. Major publications include The Problem of Trieste and the Italo-Yugoslav Border: Difference, Identity and Sovereignty in Twentieth- Century Europe (Albany, 2001); The Nation, Psychology, and International Politics, 1870–1919 (Basingstoke, Palgrave Transnational History series, 2006); and (as co-author), Gendering European History (Leicester, 2000). She is currently working on two Australian Research Council–funded projects: a study of the twentieth century as the great age of internationalism, and a book and Web site on women, nationalism, and cosmopolitanism at the Congress of Vienna.

xii Notes on Contributors

Lora Wildenthal, Associate Professor of History, Rice University, Houston. Major publications include German Women for Empire, 1884–1945 (Durham, 2001) and (as co-editor) Germany’s Colonial Pasts (Lincoln, Neb., 2005). Currently she is preparing a study on the politics of human rights activism in West Germany.

Acknowledgments

The essays in this volume were initially presented at a conference held in Berlin in June 2008 entitled “Human Rights in the Twentieth Century: Concepts and Conflicts.” I had discussed the idea for such a conference two years ear- lier with Mark Mazower in Cambridge, Mass., and with Dieter Gosewinkel in Berlin, while I spent a research year away from teaching, thanks to a generous grant by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation. The conference and then this volume were made possible by the financial support from the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the Social Sciences Research Center Berlin, and the Center for Research in Contemporary History Potsdam. The Potsdam Center also pro- vided logistical support and, more generally, a research environment condu- cive to the project. I would also like to express my appreciation to Eric Crahan at Cambridge University Press for taking on this volume and for working so assiduously to see to its timely publication. Finally, I thank Tom Lampert for helping me with the translation, and Małgorzata Mazurek, Celia Donert, Willibald Steinmetz, Kathleen Canning, and Samuel Moyn for a careful reading of the introduction.

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