Andrew Barros is Associate Professor of History at the Université du Québec, Montréal. Martin Thomas is Professor of Imperial History and Director of the Centre for the Study of War, State and Society at the University of Exeter.

• Introduction: the civilianization of war and the unpredictable civil-military divide, 1914–2014 Andrew Barros and Martin Thomas; Part I. Who Fights? Combatants, Mobilization, and the Changing Nature of War: Sections 1. The 'Total War' Era, 1914–45: 1. Doing the necessary: the declaration of London and British strategy, 1905–1915 John Ferris; 2. Fighting the fifth column: the terror in republican Madrid during the Spanish Civil War Julius Ruiz; 3. Moscow 1941: the rise and fall of the Soviet People's Militia (Narodnoe Opolchenie) Jean Lévesque; Section 2. The Cold War and Decolonization, 1945–2000: 4. The collapsing civil-military divide in wars of decolonization: two case studies from the Indochina War (1945–54) Christopher Goscha; 5. Parallel ambiguities: prisoners during the Algerian War of Independence Raphaëlle Branche; 6. East Pakistan/Bangladesh 1971–72: how many victims, who, and why? Christian Gerlach; 7. 'I wasn't a boy, I was a soldier': militarization and civilianization in narratives of child soldiers in Africa's contemporary conflicts, c. 1990–2010 Stacey Hynd; Part II. A Moving Target: Strategic Bombing and Civilians, 1916–2014: 8. The problems of opening Pandora's box: strategic bombing and the civil-military divide, 1916–39 Andrew Barros; 9. Bombing civilians scientifically: operational research in Bomber Command, 1941–45 Victor Bissonnette; 10. Creating a cordon sanitaire: US strategic bombing and civilians in the Korean War Alexander Downes; 11. 'One hell of a killing machine': how a civilian agency became the vanguard of America's War on Terror Chris Fuller; Part III. Civilian Protection and International Norms and Organizations: When and How Much?: 12. Turn everyone into a civilian: René Cassin and the UNESCO project, 1919–45 Andrew Barros; 13. Human rights is the continuation of war by other means: the United States and the creation of the United Nations Human Rights Commission, 1945–48 Olivier Barsalou; 14. The United Nations, decolonization, and violence against civilians in the French and British Empires Martin Thomas; 15. The 'protection of civilians': peacekeeping's new raison d'être? Frédéric Mégret.

'The twentieth century saw greater protections for civilians in war as well as the mass targeting of non-combatants by states and non-state actors alike. This highly readable volume offers a coherent and thought provoking analysis of these two entangled trends.' Joe Maiolo, King's College London