Abstract

What is the relationship between decolonization and international law? Most historians agree that empires framed their colonial wars as emergencies in order to escape international scrutiny. After 1945, however, those same imperial powers invited the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to intervene in their wars of decolonization while resisting an official state of war. This article seeks to solve this puzzle by drawing attention to the ICRC’s critical part in reshaping the international legal system regarding colonial war in the critical years before the Algerian War of Independence (1954–62) and the Bandung Conference (1955). In this formative period, the organization, together with anti-colonial activists, played a transformative role in contesting accepted ideas of global governance and international law while providing a new stage for anti-colonial resistance, with far-reaching consequences, not just for the ICRC’s own institutional future, but also for the legitimization of (post-)colonial sovereignty in the twentieth century.

中文翻译：

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殖民战争的国际化：关于1945年至1949年东南亚红十字国际委员会干预的意外后果*

摘要

非殖民化与国际法之间有什么关系？大多数历史学家都同意，帝国为了逃避国际审查而将殖民战争定为紧急情况。然而，在1945年之后，这些同样的帝国大国邀请红十字国际委员会（ICRC）干预其非殖民化战争，同时抵制正式的战争状态。本文旨在通过吸引人们注意红十字国际委员会在重塑阿尔及利亚独立战争（1954-62年）和万隆会议（1955年）之前的殖民战争国际法律体系中的关键作用来解决这个难题。在这个形成时期，该组织与反殖民主义者一起，