Chapter ID: CBB391479808

The Genie and the Bottle: Reflections on the Fate of the Geneva Protocol in the United States, 1918–1928 (2017)

unapi

MacLeod, Roy M. (Author)


Springer International
Pages: 189-211
Publication date: 2017
Language: English


For Americans serving in the First World War, the advent of chemical weapons made a deep impression. For chemists and soldiers, the experience of meeting—and then making—variants of “poison gas” bred both fear and determination. The wartime creation and post-war struggles of the Chemical Warfare Service reveal the deep divisions these tensions caused, both during the war and through the 1920s, when the United States extensively debated, but failed to ratify, the Geneva Protocol. By the close of the 1920s, the popular optimism that greeted postwar science and invention was clouded by visions of science as a source of new and terrible weapons. In the case of chemical weapons, professional resolve to prepare for future wars competed with a desire to protect the ideals that science represented. In ways that now seem familiar, the profession of chemistry, the chemical industry and the military became powerful allies. This paper examines a subject neglected by historians, and considers how political and professional factors combined to frustrate and delay the early ratification of the Geneva Convention by the United States. As we shall see, our knowledge of these circumstances is far from complete, and will remain so until we have a deeper understanding of the history of America’s complex relationship with this toxic legacy.

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Book Bretislav Friedrich; Dieter Hoffmann; Jürgen Renn; Florian Schmaltz; Martin Wolf (2017) One Hundred Years of Chemical Warfare: Research, Deployment, Consequences. unapi

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Authors & Contributors
Beyrau, Dietrich
Cerruti, Luigi
Fangerau, Heiner
Girard, Marion
Gorski, P.
Katzir, Shaul
Journals
Centaurus: International Magazine of the History of Mathematics, Science, and Technology
Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences
Icon: Journal of the International Committee for the History of Technology
Kwartalnik Historii Nauki i Techniki
Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science
Social Studies of Science
Publishers
Springer International
Birkhäuser
Boydell & Brewer
Cornell University Press
Indiana University Press
Nestor-Istoriia
Concepts
World War I
Science and society
Science and war; science and the military
Chemical weapons
World War II
Science and politics
People
Douglas, C. H. (Clifford Hugh)
Haber, Fritz
Loeb, Jacques
Zeppelin, Ferdinand von
Znaniecki, Florian
Time Periods
20th century, early
20th century
21st century
Progressive Era (1890s-1920s)
Places
Great Britain
Germany
United States
Ottoman Empire
Canada
Europe
Institutions
Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für physikalische Chemie und Electrochemie
Kaiser-Wilhelm-Instituten
Science and Technology
Boy scouts of America
Young Men's Christian Association, World’s Committee (Genewa)
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