The Routledge History of Human Rights Routledge Histories Series

The Routledge History of Human Rights is an interdisciplinary collection that provides historical and global perspectives on a range of human rights themes of the past 150 years.

The volume is made up of 34 original contributions. It opens with the emergence of a "new internationalism" in the mid-nineteenth century, examines the interwar, League of Nations, and the United Nations eras of human rights and decolonization, and ends with the serious challenges for rights norms, laws, institutions, and multilateral cooperation in the national security world after 9/11. These essays provide a big picture of the strategic, political, and changing nature of human rights work in the past and into the present day, and reveal the contingent nature of historical developments. Highlighting local, national, and non-Western voices and struggles, the volume contributes to overcoming Eurocentric biases that burden human rights histories and studies of international law. It analyzes regions and organizations that are often overlooked. The volume thus offers readers a new and broader perspective on the subject.

International in coverage and containing cutting-edge interpretations, the volume provides an overview of major themes and suggestions for future research. This is the perfect book for those interested in social justice, grass roots activism, and international politics and society.

1. Introduction: An Open-Ended and Contingent History of Human RightsPart 1. The New Internationalism 2. John Anderson - Slave, Refugee, and Freedom Fighter: A Human Rights Campaign in the Age of Empire3. Investigating and Ameliorating Atrocities in the Nineteenth Century: International Commissions of Inquiry in the Balkans (1876-1880)4. Reclaiming Congo Reform for the History of Human Rights5. The Red Cross and the Laws of War, 1863-1949: International Rights Activism before Human RightsPart 2. The Interwar Era: The League of Nations 6. United in their Quest for Peace? Transnational Women Activists between the World Wars7. The "Rights of Man" and Sex Equality: International Human Rights Discourses in the 1930sPart 3. The Formative UN Era A. UN Treaty Making 8. Social and Economic Rights: The Struggle for Equivalent Protection9. Islam and UN Human Rights Treaty Ratification in the Middle East: The Impact of International Law on Diplomacy10. When the War Came: The Child Rights Convention and the Conflation of Human Rights and the Laws of WarB. Decolonization 11. "Why Then Call It the Declaration of Human Rights?" The Failures of Universal Human Rights in Colonial Africa’s Internationally Supervised Territories12. Decolonization, Development, and Identity: The Evolution of the Anticolonial Human Rights Critique, 1948-197813. "When You are Weak, You Have to Stick to Principles": Botswana and Anti-Colonialism in Human Rights HistoryC. Socialist and Capitalist Versions of Human Rights 14. The International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Gender of Economic Rights15. Human Rights Movements and the Fall of the Berlin Wall: Explaining the Peaceful Revolution of 198916. Human Rights in China: Resisting Orthodoxy17. Continuity and Change in U.S. Human Rights PolicyPart 4. After Formal Empire and the Cold War: How Human Rights are Practiced Around the Globe (1980s-2001) 18. The Universality of Human Rights: Early NGO Practices in the Arab World19. How Women Become Human: Chilean Contributions to Women’s Human Rights from Dictatorship to the 21st Century20. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo: From Dictatorship to Democracy21. Asma Jahangir: Personifying the Human Rights Debate in PakistanPart 5. The Universal Human Rights Pantheon in National Contexts 22. Freedom of Religion and the New Diversity: Case Studies from Canada23. Indigenous Activism for Human Rights: A Case Study from Australia24. The International LGBT Rights Movement: An Introductory History25. Rights in Isolation: Lessons on Public Health and Human Rights from Leprosy and HIV in the Pacific IslandsPart 6. New Forms of Accountability in a National Security World (2001 to the Present) 26. Decentralization and Public-Private Diplomacy in the Business and Human Rights Field27. The Selectivity of Universal Jurisdiction: The History of Transnational Human Rights Prosecutions in Latin America and Spain28. Militarized Sexual Violence and Campaigns for Redress29. Solidarity Rights and the Common Heritage of Humanity30. Intellectual Property Law and Human Rights31. Caged at the Border: Immigration Detention and the Denial of Human Rights to Asylum Seekers and Other MigrantsPart 7. The Transformative Impact of Human Rights on Knowledge 32. Archiving Human Rights in Latin America: Transitional Justice and Shifting Visions of Political Change 33. Emotion in the History of Human Rights: A Case Study of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights34. From the Classroom to the Public: Engaging Students in Human Rights History

Jean H. Quataert is SUNY Distinguished Professor of History Emerita at Binghamton University, USA and co-editor of the Journal of Women’s History (2010–20). She has published many books and articles, including Advocating Dignity: Human Rights Mobilization in Global Politics (2009) and "A New Look at International Law: Gendering the Practices of Humanitarian Medicine in Europe’s ‘Small Wars,’ 1879–1907," Human Rights Quarterly, 2018, vol. 40, no. 3, 547–69.

Lora Wildenthal is John Antony Weir Professor of History and Associate Dean of Humanities at Rice University in Houston, Texas, USA. She is the author of German Women for Empire, 1884–1945 (2001) and The Language of Human Rights in West Germany (2013).