This is the first comprehensive comparative historical survey of military occupation from 1792 to 1914. Then as now military occupation engendered great passion, testing loyalty to community, patriotic commitment to resistance, against pragmatic need to compromise if not collaborate. The book shows how occupiers too were tested, often being revealed as restricted by allies, fearful of the occupied populations whose cooperation they needed, and as eager to escape from the burdens of military occupation as they had been to begin. The role of courts and codification, codification that still gover ... More

This is the first comprehensive comparative historical survey of military occupation from 1792 to 1914. Then as now military occupation engendered great passion, testing loyalty to community, patriotic commitment to resistance, against pragmatic need to compromise if not collaborate. The book shows how occupiers too were tested, often being revealed as restricted by allies, fearful of the occupied populations whose cooperation they needed, and as eager to escape from the burdens of military occupation as they had been to begin. The role of courts and codification, codification that still governs military occupation today, is explained, revealing how the rules of occupation were not so much comprehensive, systematic or even innovative as fragmentary and often inadequate attempts to make sense of the uncertainty and confusion of the experience of military occupation. These themes are explored from the early days of the emergence of a clear concept of military occupation amidst the wars of Revolutionary France and the Napoleon through to the end of the long nineteenth century. Occupations as apparently diverse as the occupations of American Civil War, German occupation of France in the Franco-Prussian war, and the British occupation of Egypt are brought together to reveal common elements in the experience of occupiers and occupied as well as the ways that distinct national traditions have shaped military occupation.