Boyd van Dijk is an Oxford Martin Fellow at the University of Oxford. He was previously a McKenzie Fellow at the University of Melbourne, Australia and has also taught at the London School of Economics, King's College London, Queen Mary, and the University of Amsterdam.

• 1: Introduction


• 2: The Twisted Road to Geneva


• 3: Making the Civilian Convention


• 4: Internationalizing Civil and Colonial Wars


• 5: Fighters in the Shadow


• 6: Indiscriminate Warfare: Bombing, Nuclear Weapons, and Starvation


• 7: Preparing for the Worst


• 8: Conclusion

Preparing for War, based upon extensive archival research and critical legal methodologies, explores the often misunderstood history of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, among the most important rules for armed conflict ever formulated.