Codification

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 3 studies the earlier history and codification of the biological weapons taboo culminating in the 1925 Geneva Protocol. The chapter charts the evolution of the taboo’s codification from the Laws of Manu c. 200 bce, through various war treaties, the 1899 and 1907 Hague Conferences, to the Geneva Protocol itself. The analysis depicts the growing formalization of the taboo not only as a socially established revulsion but also as a customary norm manifest within international legal provision. The chapter additionally documents both the conceptualization of biowarfare alongside chemical warfare within the more general term of poison as well as the Geneva Protocol’s instrumentality in later acknowledging biowarfare as a taboo issue within its own right and as distinct from the threat of chemical violence. The chapter explains this key shift in understanding.