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From Slaves to Prisoners of War: The Ottoman Empire, Russia, and the Making of International Law

From Slaves to Prisoners of War: The Ottoman Empire, Russia, and the Making of International Law

Name: From Slaves to Prisoners of War: The Ottoman Empire, Russia, and the Making of International Law
Brand: Oxford University Press
SKU: 9780198785415
Price: 1261.00 HKD
Availability: InStock
Author: Will Smiley
ISBN: 9780198785415

By Will Smiley

Oxford University Press September 2018

Specifications

ISBN-13: 9780198785415
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publication: September 2018
Format: Hardback
Jurisdiction: U.K. ? Countri(es) for reference only

Details

The Ottoman-Russian wars of the eighteenth century reshaped the map of Eurasia and the Middle East, but they also birthed a novel concept - the prisoner of war.

For centuries, hundreds of thousands of captives, civilians and soldiers alike, crossed the legal and social boundaries of these empires, destined for either ransom or enslavement. But in the eighteenth century, the Ottoman state and its Russian rival, through conflict and diplomacy, worked out a new system of regional international law.

Ransom was abolished; soldiers became prisoners of war; and some slaves gained new paths to release, while others were left entirely unprotected. These rules delineated sovereignty, redefined individuals' relationships to states, and prioritized political identity over economic value. In the process, the Ottomans marked out a parallel, non-Western path toward elements of modern international law.

Yet this was not a story of European imposition or imitation-the Ottomans acted for their own reasons, maintaining their commitment to Islamic law. For a time even European empires played by these rules, until they were subsumed into the codified global law of war in the late nineteenth century. This story offers new perspectives on the histories of the Ottoman and Russian Empires, of slavery, and of international law.

Introduction

1: Into Captivity

2: Slavery and Ransom

3: From the Law of Ransom to the Law of Release

4: Defining the Law of Release

5: Prisoners of War

6: Negotiating the Prisoner-of-War System

7: The Rules Expand

8: Those Left Out

9: Reform and Reciprocity

10: Humanitarianism and Legal Codification

Conclusion