Samuel Moyn’s latest book, Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War, offers a compelling re-reading of the history of the laws of war not as the precursors of international humanitarian law, but as enablers of what he calls “inhumane war”. Instead of advancing the cause of humanization of war, Moyn argues in favour of pacificism and the abolition of war in its entirety. And yet, Moyn’s decision to tell his history through two interconnected but different parts – one on the broader history of the laws of war and another on the very recent present of US domestic politics – forces the book to embrace a North Atlantic, Anglo-American vision of international law that robs it of valuable insights from the Global South and its relationship to the same body of laws. In this review essay, I explore these missed connections seeking to offer a more global approach to the history of war and peace.

塞缪尔·莫恩 (Samuel Moyn) 的最新著作《人道：美国如何放弃和平并重塑战争》，提供了对战争法历史的令人信服的重读，它不是作为国际人道主义法的先驱，而是作为他所谓的“非人道战争”的推动者。莫恩没有推进战争人性化的事业，而是主张和平主义和彻底废除战争。然而，莫恩决定通过两个相互关联但不同的部分来讲述他的历史——一个是关于战争法的更广泛的历史，另一个是关于美国国内政治的最近现状——迫使这本书包含一个北大西洋的英美国际法的视野，剥夺了它从全球南方及其与同一法律体系的关系中获得的宝贵见解。在这篇评论文章中，我探索了这些遗漏的联系，试图为战争与和平的历史提供一种更全球化的方法。