The Human Rights Revolution: An International History

368 Pages·2012·1.27 MB·English

by  Akira Iriye

THE HUMAN RIGHTS REVOLUTION
REINTERPRETING HISTORY
Wm. Roger Louis, series editor
The series Reinterpreting History is dedicated to the
historian’s craft of challenging assumptions, examining
new evidence, and placing topics of signifi cance in his-
toriographical context. Historiography is the art of con-
veying the ways in which the interpretation of history
changes over time. The vigorous and systematic revision
of history is at the heart of the discipline.
Reinterpreting History is an initiative of the National
History Center, which was created by the American His-
torical Association in 2002 to advance historical knowl-
edge and to convey to the public at large the historical
context of present-day issues.
Making Sense of the Vietnam Wars: Local, National, and Transna-
tional Perspectives ■ EDITED BY Mark Philip Bradley and Marilyn
B. Young
Atlantic History: A Critical Appraisal ■ EDITED BY Jack P. Greene
and Philip D. Morgan
The Human Rights Revolution: An International History ■ EDITED BY
Akira Iriye, Petra Goedde, and William I. Hitchcock
THE HUMAN RIGHTS REVOLUTION
An International History
EDITED BY
Akira Iriye , Petra Goedde , and
William I. Hitchcock
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The human rights revolution : an international history / edited by
Akira Iriye, Petra Goedde, and William I. Hitchcock.
p. cm. — (Reinterpreting history)
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-19-533313-8 — ISBN 978-0-19-533314-5 (pbk.)
1. Human rights—History.
2. Human rights—Political aspects—History.
I. Iriye, Akira. II. Goedde, Petra, 1964– III. Hitchcock, William I.
JC571.H775 2012
323.09—dc23 2011017618
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
To the Memory of Kenneth J. Cmiel
This page intentionally left blank
CONTENTS
Preface i x
Contributors xi
Introduction: Human Rights as History 3
AKIRA IRIYE AND PETRA GOEDDE
PART I The Human Rights Revolution
1. The Recent History of Human Rights 27
KENNETH CMIEL
2. The Holocaust and the “Human Rights Revolution”:
A Reassessment 53
G. DANIEL COHEN
3. “Constitutionalizing” Human Rights: The Rise and
Rise of the Nuremberg Principles 73
ELIZABETH BORGWARDT
4. Human Rights and the Laws of War: The Geneva
Conventions of 1949 93
WILLIAM I. HITCHCOCK
5. Grams, Calories, and Food: Languages of Victimization,
Entitlement, and Human Rights in Occupied Germany,
1945–1949 113
ATINA GROSSMANN
6. Are Women “Human”? The UN and the Struggle to
Recognize Women’s Rights as Human Rights 133
ALLIDA BLACK
PART II The Globalization of Human Rights History
7. Imperialism, Self-Determination, and the Rise of
Human Rights 159
SAMUEL MOYN
8. “The First Right”: The Carter Administration,
Indonesia, and the Transnational Human Rights
Politics of the 1970s 179
BRAD SIMPSON
9. Anti-Torture Politics: Amnesty International, the
Greek Junta, and the Origins of the Human Rights
“Boom” in the United States 201
BARBARA KEYS
10. From the Center-Right: Freedom House and
Human Rights in the 1970s and 1980s 223
CARL J. BON TEMPO
11. “For Our Soviet Colleagues”: Scientifi c Internationalism,
Human Rights, and the Cold War 245
PAUL RUBINSON
12. Principles Overwhelming Tanks: Human Rights
and the End of the Cold War 265
SARAH B. SNYDER
13. The Right to Bodily Integrity: Women’s Rights as
Human Rights and the International Movement to
End Female Genital Mutilation, 1970s–1990s 285
KELLY J. SHANNON
14. Is History a Human Right? Japan and Korea’s
Troubles with the Past 311
ALEXIS DUDDEN
15. Approaching the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights 327
MARK PHILIP BRADLEY
Index 345
PREFACE
This book, like the fi eld of human rights, has been a long time in gestation.
It began as a series of papers delivered to the 2004 meeting of the American
Historical Association (AHA) in Washington, D.C. Akira Iriye chaired a
panel on the topic “Writing the Global History of Human Rights” that fea-
tured contributions by Mark Bradley, Kenneth Cmiel, Alexis Dudden, and
Atina Grossmann. The original idea had been to use these essays as a nu-
cleus of a volume on new trends in historiography as part of the Oxford
series on Reinterpreting History . Yet the project was dealt a blow by the
sudden death of Ken Cmiel, whose energy and leadership in this evolving
fi eld has been missed by his friends, colleagues, and peers across the disci-
pline. He had done a great deal to place this fi eld on the agenda of histo-
rians, and many of the essays in the collection have their origins in his
seminal writings. The volume is dedicated to his memory.
In late 2008, William Hitchcock and Petra Goedde co-chaired a confer-
ence at Temple University on “Human Rights as International History.” The
event was held, in part, to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights and also to gather together work in the fi eld
by a new generation of scholars whose fresh arguments and new archival
discoveries helped transform human rights scholarship. We are grateful to
the International History Workshop and the History Department at Temple
for the support we received in hosting that gathering.
Susan Ferber, our always creative and indefatigable editor, saw that by
combining the essays from the AHA panel and the Temple event, we had
the makings of an outstanding “state of the fi eld” volume. Susan earned
our profound gratitude for keeping this project going and prodding us to
bring it to fruition, even when it seemed it might not quite make it to the
fi nish line. She is a visionary editor, and we all feel enormously proud of
the volume she has done so much to create.
Akira Iriye
Petra Goedde
William I. Hitchcock
ix