In recent decades, it has become evident that the Peace of Westphalia (1648) did not put an end to religiously motivated violence. The responses of victims and the international community to this violence have been scarcely studied. David de Boer addresses this gap in his 2019 dissertation, which was a joint doctoral degree from the University of Konstanz and Leiden University. His investigation shows how victims and their advocates used the press to draw international attention to religiously inspired violence. De Boer focuses on the Dutch Republic, which served as the most important international news hub and which was renowned as a safe haven for various types of religious refugees.

To explore how victims of religious violence and their advocates generated transnational solidarity, de Boer engages with two historiographies: the confessionally affiliated “Protestant internationalism” and the non-confessional humanitarianism and human rights. Most historians have previously thought that the instruments and goals associated with the latter only emerged at the end of the eighteenth century with campaigns against the slave trade. However, de Boer argues that their origins can be found in the seventeenth century, with campaigns by religious minorities against religiously motivated violence, invoking humanitarian arguments. He does not relate “Protestant internationalism” and humanitarianism to a specific zeitgeist but draws our attention to the “cautious deconfessionalization of humanitarian practices” (9).

To successfully highlight religious violence, transnational advocates could not merely proclaim their own religious righteousness but had to employ universalizing argumentative strategies, such as natural law, reason, and a sense of common humanity. They articulated these arguments in “a multitude of public spheres” (16), utilizing news media like newspapers and periodicals, and pamphlets, including printed sermons and songs. And it was the Dutch press that served as the hub for international attention to their cause.

To map out which cases of religious violence received attention (and which did not!), which determinants were behind this, and which arguments were used, de Boer examines a number of cases of religious persecution from c.1650–1750. These include the Reformed Waldensians in Piedmont (1655–1656); the Huguenots in France (1679–1685); the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the subsequent refugee crisis (1685–1689); the civil war between Huguenots and the French Crown in the Cévennes (1702–1705); the “Bloodbath of Toruń” in 1724; and the expulsion of the Jews from Prague in 1745.

The author’s analysis reveals, first, that these media, by their very nature, reached not only fellow Protestant believers but also Roman Catholics. This meant that oppressed Protestants had to avoid alienating the Roman Catholics by playing “a confessionally neutral card” (168) to convince their audience that their treatment was unreasonable, unjust, and inhumane. The same mechanism also applied to Catholics. In de Boer’s view, the question of whether the advocates were genuinely motivated by the norms with which they legitimized their cause is of secondary importance. In other words, a Reformed Protestant invoking universal human values should not be seen as, or suspected of, relativizing the exclusivity of the Reformed religion.

Second, the development of confessional and humanitarian arguments do not show a simple “linear history of political secularization” (169) but exist as non-linear complex patterns. The arguments used depended on the intended audience. Both variants coexisted or were transformed by other advocates for new audiences into either confessional or humanitarian terms. Humanitarian argumentation overcame religious antagonism, but people also developed secular markers of confessional distinction, turning conflicts into existential struggles “without resort to the forces of God and Satan” (170).

With his study, de Boer has demonstrated that humanitarian arguments were used even before the Enlightenment, exactly in the midst of religious violence. He insightfully elucidates this dynamic around when and how the various arguments were used.

Despite the value of de Boer’s study, I would like to share two critical observations. In the first place, I wonder whether the subtitle, The Making of Humanitarianism, does not attribute too much value and is biased toward the pleas for solidarity with victims of religious violence. The author does mention that the abolitionist campaigns were much more comprehensive than the actions against religious violence (7) but he fails to compare both discourses and their impact. It stands therefore to reason then that because it was not investigated, de Boer cannot substantiate the claim behind the subtitle. The second point is that, although the author mentions the different types of sources he studied, he does not explain in his case studies why he selected these cited sources and not others.

My observations do not, however, detract from the value of de Boer’s book on the study of religious violence, humanitarianism, and confessionalism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As for confessionalism, the monograph offers points of departure to relate the research to the study of “confessional ambiguity” and mixed marriages. These can be used to examine when and how there was confessionalization or deconfessionalization in the confessional age.