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Michael Barnett, Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism (Cornell University Press 2011), 296 pages, ISBN 978-0-8014-4713-6.
Readers of this journal are undoubtedly aware of the considerable attention given to international human rights by the academy in recent years. Scholarship on the contemporary and historical dimensions of human rights continues to proliferate, as have university human rights centers and programs of studies. These are welcome developments, certainly, not only for the prevalence of human rights discourses and practices in the current international milieu, but for the appealing avenues that human rights offers for exploring the past. For all of this academic interest in human rights, however, it is remarkable how little attention, by comparison, has been paid to a "cousin" of human rights. Humanitarianism has played arguably a similarly important role in contemporary global society as human rights, and perhaps an even richer part in the longer history of the modern world.
Michael Barnett's Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism represents a major attempt at correcting this imbalance, and largely succeeds. A book of ambitious scope, sophisticated analysis, extensive research, and elegant presentation, it is simultaneously a sweeping account of the evolution of Western-based humanitarian aid initiatives over the past two centuries and a clarion call for others to continue the project that this study begins. A political scientist, Barnett's work will appeal to a wide audience of social scientists in his and related fields, to those in my discipline of history, to humanitarian aid practitioners, and to policymakers. Its clear prose, clean structure, and broad sweep will help it find a way onto the syllabi of important courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
Those familiar with the 2008 volume that Barnett co-edited with Thomas G. Weiss, Humanitarianism in Question: Power, Ethics, Politics, will find the third and final section of Empire of Humanity to be a welcome extension of...