Civilians at War

Civilians at War: From the Fifteenth Century to the Present, edited by Gunner Lind. Copenhagen, Museum Tusculanum Press, 2014. 250 pp. $36.00 US (cloth). This uneven volume presents some of the fruits of a series of seminars conducted between 2005 and 2007. Edited by Gunner Lind, a prolific historian of early modern Europe, the anthology also includes the work of sociologists, philosophers, and researchers in peace and conflict studies. The funding for the early stages of the group's work, several of the organizers, and two and a half of the six chapters are Danish or Scandinavian, and so the volume has that distinct emphasis. It also does not pretend, other than in the title, to present a connected or representative view of the experience of war over the whole period. Instead one finds essays on the social theory of war (Lars Bo Kaspersen), a synthetic re-examination of the emergence of the concept of civilians in European history (Gunner Lind), a look at the norms and practices of war as related to non-combatants in late medieval and early modern Denmark (Jeppe Buchert Netterstrom), Danish public and media reaction to World War II in 1939 and 1940 (Palle Roslyng-Jensen), philosophical reflections on the impact of rape in war (primarily derived from the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, by Robyn May Schott), and a policy-oriented study of the problems of demobilizing armed civilians in post-conflict transitions based on case studies in modern Guatemala and South Africa (Steffen Jensen and Finn Stepputat). Lind's preface suggests a uniting theme of investigating the meaning, significance, or appropriateness of the classical dichotomy between the combatant and the civilian, and several of the essays do take that as their central mission, but whatever other value they may have, Kaspersen's and Roslyng-Jensen's do not. In addition, the length and quality of the individual essays vary greatly, from fourteen pages to sixty-two, and from original research in a very small niche to truly insightful synthetic thinking. This straying from the central theme, the heavy Scandinavian focus, the lack of real temporal or geographical coverage, constitute the unevenness. Even so, there is much to learn here. Space limitations suggest focusing on those essays by historians. Lind's overview of the emergence of the concept of a civilian as distinct from a theologically defined non-combatant is an excellent overview of the complex interactions of attitudes toward war, the institutionalization of armed force, and the emergence of the modern state. It immediately recommended itself for teaching purposes, although it fails to engage David Bell's parallel and contrasting argument in The First Total War: Napoleon's Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It (Boston, 2007)

Art · Art history · Danish · Fifteenth · Period (music) · Political science · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · World War II · Classics · European and Russian Geopolitical Military Strategies · History · Law · Military and Defense Studies · Military History and Strategy · Philosophy