This dissertation is about the problem of runaway advancements in weaponry since the 1860s, and how a vast set of characters—diplomats, international lawyers, and politicians, but also surgeons, chemists, teachers and artists—sought to do something about it by outlawing some of them. Their motivations for calling for a ban varied. Some were moved by budgetary woes and the cost of keeping up with the European arms race. Others saw a threat posed to their ability of mending wartime bodies after battle. Yet others were troubled by endangered cities and trade routes. Each time some called for a ban on a weapon, there were others who came to its defense. Sometimes the opposition to a ban came from a wide embrace of the promise of unfettered technological development to make war more humane—by making battles more brutal and therefore hastening war’s conclusion, by raising the barriers to entry and avoiding war, or even through the purported humaneness of technologically advanced weapons themselves. Others opposed weapons prohibitions because they went too far and curtailed perceived national interest, while yet others complained that weapons prohibitions stopped short of outlawing war altogether.

My dissertation is structured along five case studies in the history of international weapons law, all taking place in what I call the foundational period of this body of law between the 1860s and the 1920s. Chapters one and two focus on the prohibition of explosive bullets at St. Petersburg in 1868, and the prohibition of dum-dum bullets at the 1899 Hague Conference. These prohibitions centered on the concept of unnecessary suffering and injuries to soldiers’ bodies. In chapter three, I turn to the meaning of the prohibition on dum-dum bullets in the First World War. While the prohibition was intended to regulate and humanize warfare, during the war the pariah status of dum-dum bullets—fettered by their special status under international law—turned them into a potent propaganda weapon. Dum-dum weapons did not just harm human bodies; their purported use also violated the body of international law, and as a result of their propagandistic use they contributed to the escalation and confusions of war. Chapter four turns to discussions about submarines in the 1920s, arguing for a shift in scale from soldiers’ bodies to world empires and their trade routes. Chapter five traces the debate about chemical warfare in the same time period. If debates about submarines turned on threats to global connectivity, opponents of chemical weapons pointed to the potential of total destruction of urban centers and, by extension, the threat chemical warfare posed to civilians and civilization at large. The dissertation concludes with a look at discussions about dum-dum bullets today and the ongoing campaigns to outlaw nuclear weapons and lethal autonomous weapons. Throughout, I focus on the relationship between technological innovation, law, and humanity in war as they were negotiated in the context of European imperialism and industrialized warfare.