Crimes Against Humanity. Essay #1

“In these new biological doctrines, education or changes in environment could never change the inherent hierarchical structures in human nature” 1 : The Failures of Universal Human Rights Legislation at the Turn of the 19th Century Allison Brown HIST 4990 - Crimes Against Humanity Dr. Blackler 26 September, 2021 “Explicit hierarchies of power, not the promise of rights for all citizens, prevailed … the great transformation of the nineteenth century … opened up new possibilities and offered glimmers of the world to come, the world of nation-states and human rig2hA ts” s .nation-states formed and the promise for human rights at the turn of the 19th century developed, so as did opposition and systematic attempts to oppress populations from achieving equality. In this paper, human rights are defined as natural, inalienable, and universa3l.Aspirations for universal human rights legislation failed to establish a hold globally, and would succumb to systematic oppression for three crucial reasons: European hierarchical structures, hypocrisy in the colonial sphere, and increasing thinking along national lines that propelled nationalism. At the turn of the 19th century, formative doctrine such as the United States Declaration of Independence as well as the Fren Dch éclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen amplified the call for a new codification of humanity. Perhaps the most formative working definitions of human rights at the time, the U.S. Declaration famously states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these 4 are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. T”h e U.S. Declaration establishes that in order for the protection of autonomy, and eventually egalitarianism, governments are necessary to preside over a Kantian state of anarchy and uphold human rig5hTth s.eFrench Declaration of Human Rights echoes these sentiments with, “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good. The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression”.6 Both the French Declaration of Human Rights and the United States Declaration of 1 Independence establishes that human rights are universal, and all men have the right to pursue liberty and their rights within an egalitarian system. Hunt describes, “The French Revolution … inadvertently developed a kind of conceivability or thinkability scale … sooner or later, it became clear that granting rights to some groups (Protestants, for example) was more easily imagined than granting them to others [women, for exa7mTphlies].” conceivably scale of rights determined to whom and when human rights would be granted. Early on, it became evident that granting rights to white, Protestant, propertied males would be more conceivable than propertyless males, people of color, women, and religious minorities. The conceivability scale incorrectly assumed that eventually rights would trickle-down to those lowest in society. Although this eventually does occur, it takes centuries, if at all, for rights to be granted to those at the lowest tiers of societies and socio-economic statutes. This systematic denial of rights to populations allowed for those in the top tiers of society to remain superior. Domestically, those in society who opposed the granting of human rights to free men of color fixated on a central point, once granted, the rights of free men of color could not be separated from the “ … consideration of the slave system itself. Once those rights had been acknowledged, the next step became that much more inevit8a Tblhee.”promotion of rights for domestic groups inspired populations throughout empires to advocate for their own autonomy. During the 19th century, the European colonies, were fraught with rebellion and uprisings, as it became increasingly difficult to put back into place notions of superiority on the basis of traditions, customs, religion, and pasthistories.9 These revolutions were compounded by the increasing rates of education and literacy following the Enlightenment. New-found public notions of equality and autonomy led individuals throughout classes in society to consider their place, and “... the sweeping claims about the natural 2 equality of all mankind called forth equally global assertions about natural difference, producing a new 10 kind of opponent to human rights. ”An example of this occurs in French, Saint-Domingue. At the turn of the 19th century, Toussaint Louverture, leader of the Haitian Independence Movement, acknowledged the hypocrisy of the French Declaration of Human Rights and the French Revolution more broadly for those residing in its colonies. Louverture, the ex-slave, sought out equality for all residing in his definition of French society, “I want liberty and equality to reign in Saint Domingue. I work to bring them into existence. Unite yourselves to us, brothers [fellow insurgents], and fight with us for the same cause1.1” His actions and acknowledgment of the gap between the rights of the French in Europe and those in the colonial sphere would ultimately lead to contention and violent suppression from Napoleon’s French regime. Due to the societal structures the French government wished to maintain, the total abolition of slavery was delayed in the French Colonies until 112 848. Systematic and hypocritical objectives to limit human rights were particularly obvious in the colonial sphere. For those at the top of society, as human rights progressed, imperialism only furthered inequality and incentivized oppression, as “ … the establishment of universal [white] male suffrage combined with the abolition of slavery and the beginning of mass immigration to make equality much more concrete and threatenin1g3.”As human rights legislation initiatives progressed in mainland Europe and the United States, situations in the colonial sphere only worsened for the colonized. No matter the progression of human rights legislation globally, Indigenous and colonized populations throughout the world fell victim to aggressive imperial projects. Settler colonialism ignored all nascent human rights doctrine and imperialistic strategies such as “ … assimilation … provided settler-colonial regimes, a non14 physical method to commit cultural homicide .”The simultaneous growth of human rights legislation in 3 tandem with the complete denial of humanity in the colonial sphere was systematic. If colonial powers were to acknowledge their inhumane treatment of the colonized, relative geopolitical and economic advantages colonizing powers held over other states would be drastically reduced. Horrific human rights violations and atrocities could be justified by colonizing states to maintain global status and power. Only further compounding failures of human rights legislation, nationalism entirely reinvented the global human rights discussion in the 19th century. Nationalism threatened the traditional hierarchy of authority that existed for centuries prior. With the fall of Napoleode n,fa acto champion for narrowly defined French equality, discussion of human rights shifted in circles of authority. Upholding the universal rights of all men on one side stood juxtaposed to embracing nationalism and homogeneity on the other. Nationalism led to a decline for who and where individuals could maintain their rightds, e with jure restrictions. Human rights legislation was sweeping for citizens of a state, but, “... human rights now depended on national self-determinatio15n.” Once again, the universality of human rights promised in the United States’ Constitution and the French Declaration of Human Rights, were limited. “Once bursting with enthusiasm for securing rights through the spread of national self6 determination, nationalism turned increasingly closed and defen1si vAes.”Europe become increasingly homogenous, state lines were drawn on languages, cultures, and religions, being stateless meant being left adrift with no guarantee of rights. Systematically, the framers of modern European states excluded religious minorities, from Jewish populations in mainland Europe to divides between Muslims and Christians in Greek rebellions in the 182170W s.ith immigration increasing worldwide, it became more difficult to maintain ethnic or religious homogeneity, leading to a collective “other” in many states. In Australia, measures were taken to deny immigration of Asian populations, the continent wanting to maintain its British and Irish “roots”, and continued repression of Aboriginal populations led to continued 4 atrocities. In these periods, philosophical arguments occurred over universal human rights being linked directly to nationalities. Edmund Burke, an Irish philosopher, linked a hierarchical society “ … to a certain conception of the nation … liberty could only be guaranteed by a government rooted in a nation’s history … rights only worked when they grew out of longstanding traditions and pract18ices.” Nationalism only widened the gap in human rights legislation and systematic attempts to repress and limit universal rights to those within a certain station in society or citizens of a specific state. With antiimmigration nationalistic sentiments only growing, it became increasingly dangerous to be a stateless person, as there were no binding international guarantees of universal rights. In conclusion, it is for these three reasons, European and American hierarchical structures, hypocrisy in the colonial sphere, and an increase in nationalistic thinking that universal human rights were systematically oppressed. Moving further into the 19th century, calls for rights will continue to the dismay of European colonial powers and individuals benefiting from the systematic oppression of those below them in society. The main shortcoming of universal human rights legislation and doctrine resulting from the 19th century is the tie between rights and formally recognized citizenship. To this day, no international human rights code is legally binding. Statutes like the United Declaration of Human Rights are signed because they lack a mechanism for enforcement, perhaps a modern example of a systematic effort to deny universal human rights. 5