Historical Origins of Human Rights

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Historical Origins of Human Rights

• Lecture 10
• The Respatialization of the World
• October 11, 2005

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outline

• spatialization
• natural v. cultural space
• the history of spatiality
• the rise of international consciousness
• some examples
• internationalism between local and global
• internationalism and nationalism
• the history of violence and war
• mid-century wars
• the rise of telescopic humanitarianism

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spatialization

• natural v. cultural space
• space in history
• primitive space
• frontiers
• degrees of distance
• 19th c. internationalism

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defining internationalism

• a process
• a consciousness
• a movement

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the economy

• foreign trade increased 44fold 1800-1913
• qualitative as well as quantitative
  transformation after mid-century not just
  luxuries or raw goods requiring different climate
  (tea, coffee, sugar, tobacco), but also new bulk
  commodities (metal ores, coal, fibers,
  foodstuffs, textiles, iron goods, machinery)
• unprecedented labor flows
• most exporting from industrialized nations and
  among each other

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international effects

• international trade policy
• golden age of free trade (1860s-70s)
• cycles become international (as of 1857?)
• pressure for international regulation
• fixed exchange rates gold standard (1870s-)

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communications/travel

• telegraph (Samuel Morse, 1844)
• steamships
• railroad
• passports

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Jules Verne

• Around the World in 80 Days (1872)
• Had he travelled? It was likely, for no one
  seemed to know the world more familiarly there
  was no spot so secluded that he did not appear to
  have an intimate acquaintance with it. He often
  corrected, with a few clear words, the thousand
  conjectures advanced by members of the club as to
  lost and unheard-of travellers, pointing out the
  true probabilities, and seeming as if gifted with
  a sort of second sight, so often did events
  justify his predictions. He must have travelled
  everywhere, at least in the spirit.

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Jules Verne, contd

• "I maintain," said Stuart, "that the chances are
  in favour of the thief, who must be a shrewd
  fellow.
• "Well, but where can he fly to?" asked Ralph.
• "No country is safe for him.
• Oh, I don't know that. The world is big enough.
• "It was once," said Phileas Fogg, in a low tone.
• "What do you mean by once'? Has the world grown
  smaller?"

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government

• policing (Interpol)
• mail
• measurement (Meter Treaty, 1875)
• There is something captivating in the idea of
  one system of weights and measures, which shall
  be common to all of the civilized world, so that
  at least in this particular, the confusion of
  Babel may be overcome. Kindred to this is that
  other idea of one system of money. And both of
  these ideas are, perhaps, the forerunner of that
  grander idea of one language for all the
  civilized world (Charles Sumner, Mass. Senator,
  1866)

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between local

• did internationalism presuppose the nation or
  anticipate its abolition?
• flexibility of concept
• most often, model of integrating nations without
  superseding them
• could even encourage search for national
  particularity and greatness
• nationalism as word and movement rising at same
  time

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international exhibitions

• began London, 1851
• I asked the Prince Albert if the exhibition
  should be a national or an international
  exhibition. The French had discussed if their own
  exhibition should be international, and preferred
  that it be national only. The Prince reflected
  for a minute, and then said, It must embrace
  foreign productions, to use his words, and added
  emphatically, International certainly. (Henry
  Cole, main organizer)

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the crystal palace
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other intl exhibitions

• Paris, 1855, 1867, 1878, 1889, 1900, 1925, 1937
• London, 1862, 1874
• Amsterdam, 1883
• Chicago, 1893
• St. Louis, 1904
• New York, 1939
• San Francisco, 1939

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sports

• English as leaders
• descent of sports from elite to masses
• nationalization of sports
• international competition
• Pierre de Coubertin (1863-1937)
• Olympic Games (1896-)

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internationalism and civilization

• link between internationalism and exclusion
• European values as the true universal
• ideology of progress
• role of non-civilized in worlds fairs
• role of non-civilized in sports

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and global

• but others interpreted internationalism as
  calling into question the values of the
  nation-state
• beginnings of international movements
• philanthropic movements
• womens movements

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the rise of intl orgs
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Marxist internationalism

• Intl Workingmens Association (1864-74)
• Second Intl (1875-1912)
• The Internationale
• Marx as globalizer

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the Internationale

• Arise ye workers from your slumber
• Arise ye prisoners of want
• For reason in revolt now thunders
• And at last ends the age of cant.
• Away with all your superstitions
• Servile masses arise, arise
• We'll change henceforth the old tradition
• And spurn the dust to win the prize.
• So comrades, come rally
• And the last fight let us face
• The Internationale unites the human race
• So comrades, come rally
• And the last fight let us face
• The Internationale unites the human race.
• No more deluded by reaction
• On tyrants only we'll make war

• The soldiers too will take strike action
• They'll break ranks and fight no more
• And if those cannibals keep trying
• To sacrifice us to their pride
• They soon shall hear the bullets flying
• We'll shoot the generals on our own side.
• No saviour from on high delivers
• No faith have we in prince or peer
• Our own right hand the chains must shiver
• Chains of hatred, greed and fear
• E'er the thieves will out with their booty
• And give to all a happier lot.
• Each at the forge must do their duty
• And we'll strike while the iron is hot.
• Words, Eugène Pottier, 1871
• Music, Pierre Degeyter, 1888

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words, words, words

• Internationalism International character or
  spirit the principle of community of interests
  or action between different nations spec. (with
  capital I) the doctrine or principles of the
  International Working Men's Association. 1851 M.
  TUPPER in D. Hudson Martin Tupper (1949) x. 121
  President Fillmore..received me very kindly and
  cordially, and avowing himself a great lover of
  my works and my Internationalism. 1877 M. M.
  GRANT Sun-Maid xi, Its internationalism was the
  feature that struck you first. 1886 Pall Mall G.
  26 Aug. 3/2 If this should be the sole fruit of
  this year's conference the interests of
  internationalism in labour will have been very
  considerably advanced. 1888 SIR C. MONCRIEFF
  ibid. 11 Sept. 4/1 On a par with most of the
  others which internationalism has devised for the
  welfare of Egypt. 1895 Thinker VIII. 536
  Internationalism is the only virtue that comports
  with peace. 1898 Daily News 27 July 6/2 The
  preacher of the Four Commandments
  (non-Resistance, Chastity, Labour, Universal
  Brotherhood, otherwise Internationalism). 1955
  Times 17 May 10/7 Internationalism seems to have
  become by now an accepted thing even in trades
  far less easily internationalized than ours. 1971
  World Archaeol. III. 226 In Childe's view, it
  was..the Iron Curtain which abruptly severed this
  age-old tradition of internationalism. 1973 Times
  16 Apr. 4/6 No city has done more than Coventry
  since the war to further the cause of
  internationalism.

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next lecture

• international law
• international regulation of war
• crucial turning point in history of
  humanitarianism
• The word international, it must be acknowledged,
  is a new one though, it is hoped, sufficiently
  analogous and intelligible. It is calculated to
  express, in a more significant way, the branch of
  law which goes commonly under the name of the law
  of nations. (Bentham, 1780)

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the history of violence

• general decline w/ civilizing process
• less frequent but more intense
• the turning point of the 1850s-1860s
• war as an object of humanitarian concern

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the death toll
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the death toll, contd
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primitive genocide
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fatalism in history

• war as a fact of life
• no way to limit not just war but the effects of
  war
• Cicero When arms speak, the laws are silent.

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the war against war

• the end of fatalism to the 18th century
• ironically, by empowering states, war came to
  seem less of an unavoidable, if tragic,
  occurrence
• spate of works at the end of the 18th century
  the most famous of which is Kants Perpetual
  Peace which foresaw earthly harmony and Bentham
  first sketched a plan for a peace society
• first peace movements and associations founded in
  the 1810s
• Quaker pacifism
• The Peace Society
• The League of Universal Brotherhood
• did best in Britain and in small countries
  developing a neutralist philosophy like
  Switzerland
• by the mid-19th century, particularly in Britain,
  it seemed like an age of universal, persistent
  peace had arrived

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was Nietzsche wrong (gasp)?

• the new face of war intensity and export
• Nietzsche shared something with the
  humanitarians of his time the factual
  assumption that overt forms of violence were
  disappearing. He merely argued to the fact that,
  in part because they were becoming covert and
  inward, humanitarian developments are part of a
  decline.
• yet in the battles they periodically fought
  against each other (and constantly in the
  colonies), Europeans were revealing themselves as
  the cruel and bloodthirsty warriors Nietzsche
  said they had taught themselves not to be
  anymore.
• were the forms, or was the scope, of violence
  new, or is it only that humanitarian concern made
  it seem more of a glaring problem?

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the Crimean War (1854-56)

• what was the Crimean War and why did it start?
• the Ottoman Empire
• Alma
• William Howard Russell, first war correspondent?
• Roger Fenton sent by British government, on
  instructions to glamorize (or at least not
  undermine) war
• We search in vain for any reference to death and
  injury certainly a monumental absence in a
  photographic record of war.
• no images of combat or even of wounded why?
• Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Charge of the Light
  Brigade
• revolution in war reportage

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the valley of the shadow of death
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Solferino (1859)

• next time

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American Civil War (1861-65)

• Matthew Brady
• Alexander Gardner and Timothy OSullivan A
  Harvest of Death, Field Where General Reynolds
  Fell
• like Fenton, they arranged their
  shots arrangement of photos
• where Fenton seemed loyal to crown and
  aristocracy, OSullivan and Garder were out for
  commercial gain to be had from sating mass
  voyeurism
• sensationalism and photography of dying

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a harvest of death
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where general reynolds fell
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telescopic philanthropy

• engaging in action to help faraway sufferers
• press directing moral energy
• popular heroes
• Florence Nightingale (1820-1910)
• Scutari
• ladies of the lamp

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telescopes, contd

• Charles Dickens, Bleak House (1852-3)
• If the veil had been lifted up here in London
  from the last two months of cholera and the whole
  truth had been told about the sufferings of the
  poor in their ill-provided dwellings a picture
  far more harrowing even than that from
  Constantinople might easily have been drawn. But
  cui bono?