TThe historic International Law Studies ("Blue Book") series was initiated by the Naval War College in 1901 to publish essays, treatises and articles that contribute to the broader understanding of international law. This, the eightyeighth volume of the "Blue Book" series, is a compilation of scholarly papers and remarks derived from the proceedings of a conference hosted at the Naval War College on June 21-23, 2011 entitled "Non-International Armed Conflict in the 21st Century." The purpose of the June 2011 International Law Conference was to examine the legal issues surrounding...

For centuries, attacks on maritime commerce have been consistent features of war at sea. At the same time, a fundamental raison d'etre of navies has been the protection of maritime trade against such attacks. From ancient times, piracy has been an issue at sea, and a long tradition of private men-of-war lasted into the mid-nineteenth century.After 1690, the French navy put into practice a concept of guerre de course as an alterna-tive to fleet battle, or guerre d'escadre, as a means of dealing with the superior power of Britain's Royal Navy. In the 1870s and 1880s a group of naval thinkers in...