The Compensations of War
The Compensations of War

Author: Bowerman Guy Emerson

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2012-11-12

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 029274918X

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This remarkable chronicle of one man’s rite of passage through the crucible of WWI offers a vividly detailed account of life on the Western Front. In 1917, shortly after the United States’ declaration of war on Germany, Guy Emerson Bowerman, Jr., enlisted in the American army’s ambulance service. Like other young ambulance drivers―Hemingway, Dos Passos, Cummings, Cowley―Bowerman longed to “see the show.” For seventeen months, until the armistice of November 1918, Bowerman kept an almost daily diary of the war. Only twenty when he enlisted, Bowerman was an idealistic young man who exulted that his section was made up mostly of young “Yalies” like himself. But he expected the war to change him, and it did. In the end he writes that he and his compatriots scarcely remember a world at peace. Bowerman’s unit was attached to a French infantry division stationed near Verdun. Sent to halt the German drive to Paris in 1918, the division participated in the decisive counterattack of July and tracked the routed Germans through Belgium. Then, “unwarned,” Bowerman and his comrades were “plunged into . . . a life of peace.” Into this life, he writes, they walked “bewildered,” like “men fearing ambush.”

The Worth of War
The Worth of War

Author: Benjamin Ginsberg

Publisher: Prometheus Books

Published: 2014-09-02

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 1616149515

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Although war is terrible and brutal, history shows that it has been a great driver of human progress. So argues political scientist Benjamin Ginsberg in this incisive, well-researched study of the benefits to civilization derived from armed conflict. Ginsberg makes a convincing case that war selects for and promotes certain features of societies that are generally held to represent progress. These include rationality, technological and economic development, and liberal forms of government. Contrary to common perceptions that war is the height of irrationality, Ginsberg persuasively demonstrates that in fact it is the ultimate test of rationality. He points out that those societies best able to assess threats from enemies rationally and objectively are usually the survivors of warfare. History also clearly reveals the technological benefits that result from war—ranging from the sundial to nuclear power. And in regard to economics, preparation for war often spurs on economic development; by the same token, nations with economic clout in peacetime usually have a huge advantage in times of war. Finally, war and the threat of war have encouraged governments to become more congenial to the needs and wants of their citizens because of the increasing reliance of governments on their citizens’ full cooperation in times of war. However deplorable the realities of war are, the many fascinating examples and astute analysis in this thought-provoking book will make readers reconsider the unmistakable connection between war and progress.

War Reparations and the UN Compensation Commission
War Reparations and the UN Compensation Commission

Author: Timothy J. Feighery

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2015-02-12

Total Pages: 448

ISBN-13: 0190266686

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The United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC) is a claims reparation program created by the United Nations Security Council in May 1991, after the UN-authorized Allied Coalition Forces' military operations terminated the seven-month invasion and occupation of Kuwait by Iraq and liberated Kuwait. The UNCC was established with the objectives to receive and decide claims from individuals, corporations, and governments against Iraq as arising directly from Iraq's invasion and occupation of Kuwait; and to pay compensation for such claims. War Reparations and the UN Compensation Commission: Designing Compensation After Conflict is the first collective work on the UNCC claims program by experts who have contributed to its progress, and who have assisted in paving the way for more informed research on the Commission and its jurisprudence. Given its unprecedented, serious and sustained effort within the international community, the two-decade long operations of the UNCC deserve considerable attention and in-depth analysis especially with respect to its impact on the development and progress of international law in the areas of State responsibility and reparations.

The Compensations of Plunder
The Compensations of Plunder

Author: Justin M. Jacobs

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2020-07-06

Total Pages: 357

ISBN-13: 022671201X

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From the 1790s until World War I, Western museums filled their shelves with art and antiquities from around the world. These objects are now widely regarded as stolen from their countries of origin, and demands for their repatriation grow louder by the day. In The Compensations of Plunder, Justin M. Jacobs brings to light the historical context of the exodus of cultural treasures from northwestern China. Based on a close analysis of previously neglected archives in English, French, and Chinese, Jacobs finds that many local elites in China acquiesced to the removal of art and antiquities abroad, understanding their trade as currency for a cosmopolitan elite. In the decades after the 1911 Revolution, however, these antiquities went from being “diplomatic capital” to disputed icons of the emerging nation-state. A new generation of Chinese scholars began to criminalize the prior activities of archaeologists, erasing all memory of the pragmatic barter relationship that once existed in China. Recovering the voices of those local officials, scholars, and laborers who shaped the global trade in antiquities, The Compensations of Plunder brings historical grounding to a highly contentious topic in modern Chinese history and informs heated debates over cultural restitution throughout the world.

Reparations for Victims of Genocide, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity
Reparations for Victims of Genocide, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity

Author: Carla Ferstman

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 585

ISBN-13: 9004174494

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This book provides detailed analyses of systems that have been established to provide reparations to victims of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, and the way in which these systems have worked and are working in practice. Many of these systems are described and assessed for the first time in an academic publication. The publication draws upon a groundbreaking Conference organised by the Clemens Nathan Research Centre (CNRC) and REDRESS at the Peace Palace in The Hague, with the support of the Dutch Carnegie Foundation. Both CNRC and REDRESS had become very concerned about the extreme difficulty encountered by most victims of serious international crimes in attempting to access effective and enforceable remedies and reparation for harm suffered. In discussions between the Conference organisers and Judges and officials of the International Criminal Court, it became ever more apparent that there was a great need for frank and open exchanges on the question of effective reparation, between the representatives of victims, of NGOs and IGOs, and other experts. It was clear to all that the many current initiatives of governments and regional and international institutions to afford reparations to victims of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes could benefit greatly by taking into full account the wide and varied practice that had been built up over several decades. In particular, the Hague Conference sought to consider in detail the long experience of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany (the Claims Conference) in respect of Holocaust restitution programmes, as well as the practice of truth commissions, arbitral proceedings and a variety of national processes to identify common trends, best practices and lessons. This book thus explores the actions of governments, as well as of national and international courts and commissions in applying, processing, implementing and enforcing a variety of reparations schemes and awards. Crucially, it considers the entire complex of issues from the perspective of the beneficiaries - survivors and their communities - and from the perspective of the policy-makers and implementers tasked with resolving technical and procedural challenges in bringing to fruition adequate, effective and meaningful reparations in the context of mass victimisation.

The Politics of Redress
The Politics of Redress

Author: Peter Keppy

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2010-01-01

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 9004253734

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This book focuses on the aftermath of World War II in Asia as described in a sobering and insightful history of two types of redress: compensation for material war damage and restitution of looted property. Japanese Army units and citizens stole goods while shelling and bombardment by all sides destroyed factories, offices and residential neighbourhoods. How were these cases of material damage and loss to be rectified, and who was to rectify them? What financial means and legal precedents were there to fall back on at a time of decolonization, independence struggle, and shifting alliances on the brink of the Cold War? The politics of redress makes an important contribution to the study of law and society in Southeast Asia. It lays bare the complex web of interconnections between politics, law and economy from a comparative historical perspective. The translation of this book was funded by the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO, Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research).

The Roma Struggle for Compensation in Post-war Germany
The Roma Struggle for Compensation in Post-war Germany

Author: Julia Von dem Knesebeck

Publisher: Univ of Hertfordshire Press

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 9781907396113

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Thirty years passed before it was accepted, in West Germany and elsewhere, that the Roma (Germany's Gypsies) had been Holocaust victims. And, similarly, it took thirty years for the West German state to admit that the sterilisation of Roma had been part of the 'Final Solution'. Drawing on a substantial body of previously unseen sources, this book examines the history of the struggle of Roma for recognition as racially persecuted victims of National Socialism in post-war Germany. Since modern academics belatedly began to take an interest in them, the Roma have been described as 'forgotten victims'. This book looks at the period in West Germany between the end of the War and the beginning of the Roma civil rights movement in the early 1980s, during which the Roma were largely passed over when it came to compensation. The complex reasons for this are at the heart of this book.

Gulf War Reparations and the UN Compensation Commission
Gulf War Reparations and the UN Compensation Commission

Author: Cymie R. Payne

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 0199732205

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In Gulf War Reparations and the UN Compensation Commission: Environmental Liability, experts who held leadership positions and worked directly with the UNCC draw on their experience with the institution and provide a comprehensive view of the United Nations Compensation Comission and its work in the aftermath of the Gulf War. In this volume, the first of two on the UNCC's work, the authors explain that the United Nations Security Council established the ad hoc compensation commission to address reparations as a component of the ceasefire following Iraq's 1990-91 invasion and occupation of Kuwait. The authors also describe how the work of the United Nations Compensation Commission addressed important questions of state responsibility, environmental liability, mass claims processing, international law, and dispute settlement institutions in the post-armed conflict context. Readers will also learn that the scope and the scale of the UNCC was extraordinary, since almost 2.7 million claims from 80-plus countries were submitted to the Commission (which awarded in excess of $55 billion and has paid out more than half of that total), and that this led to the development of innovative procedural, institutional and managerial approaches in handling mass, environmental, and corporate claims at a scale that is unparalleled. Additionally, the books note that the Commission also contributed to the evolution of international jurisprudence in these areas.