Humanitarian and legal rupture in maritime lifesaving since 1800
Abstract
This article explores the relationship between moral and legal language as convergent and divergent types of normative order in the long history of saving lives from shipwreck since the late eighteenth century. The author presents an argument about humanitarianism as based on a symbolic rupture within an established moral culture and the law as imposing a second rupture on the resulting humanitarian culture, but a complicated and incomplete one, on account of the fractured nature of law when viewed through the lens of the diverse traditions that can be seen to impinge on the current situation. The nature of this argument, then, is genealogical and relates present normative disorder to earlier lines of development.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Law
logistics
and international trade
Colonial History and Postcolonial Studies
International Law and Human Rights
Publication details
- Journal / source
- International Journal of Maritime History
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Volume
- 38
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 95–115
- Publication date
- 27 January 2026
- Language
- EN