ABSTRACT
The contributions of the Howard League have been an odd omission in the more nuanced revisionist histories of the League of Nations as well as historical works tracing the origins of international humanitarianism. Whilst the Howard League’s contributions to the British criminal justice system are well recognised, relatively little is known about the organisation’s pioneering role as an international campaigner during the first half of the twentieth century. The history of the Howard League’s international campaign bears out Samuel Moyn’s more modest assertion that human rights were ‘peripheral to most of the uplifting movements in modern history’. The proposal for an international charter on prisoners’ rights would recede into the background in the post-World War II codification of human rights. In the Howard League’s charter, scholars have evidence that human rights were appropriated for uses other than rationalisation of imperialist expansion prior to World War II.
