Boyd Van Dijk, Preparing for War

Abstract

Boyd Van Dijk, Preparing for War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. £80. 400 Pages; ISBN: 9780198868071 Boyd Van Dijk’s Preparing for War—The Making of the Geneva Conventions is a book no international humanitarian law scholar should miss. It is a truly interdisciplinary piece of scholarship, which masterfully handles history, political science and international law in telling the story of the drafting and negotiation of the 1949 Geneva Conventions. As its title suggests, the main argument of the book is that, when negotiating the text of the Geneva Conventions, its drafters where not exclusively or predominantly capitalizing on the experience of past wars1 in the name of abstract ideas of humanity, but rather preparing for future wars by bringing to the table very concrete, specific and sometimes mundane interests. Preparing for War gives the reader a sense of the contingency behind the historical events which took place in Geneva, pointing to the fact that the final outcome is not the product of a carefully designed and implemented project but rather the result of the combination of many factors, some predictable and some unpredictable.