In the aftermath of the Great War, a conflict that introduced new degrees of killing and brutality to modern warfare, a traumatized global society sought healing through international legislation. Disarmament measures passed with great fanfare during the 1920s were seldom enforced and were largely unable to withstand the test of time. The 1925 Geneva Protocol banning the use of poison gas in warfare produced the most long-lasting effect by codifying the chemical weapons taboo for future generations. The protocol had scarcely been signed when the first accusations began arriving of its violation. What the world discovered was that this taboo was tenuous in nature and largely unenforceable. Over the next century, imperialists, dictators, and rogue actors would continue to use chemical weapons with impunity. Nevertheless, the 1925 Geneva Protocol has remained a foundational document in all discussion surrounding its enforcement.

In recognizing of the forthcoming 100-year anniversary of the 1925 Geneva Protocol, this proposed roundtable has gathered five experts in the field of chemical weapons, broadly defined, in an effort to explore the protocol’s enduring, yet checkered legacy. The roundtable will be chaired by Dr. Molly Girard Dorsey whose books on British response to poison gas during WWI and Allied chemical weapons policies during WWII serve as the standard for chemical warfare history during the first half of the 20^th Century. Dr. Susan Grayzel will open the roundtable by accounting for the feminist and anti-militarist activist alliance that advocated for legal measures prohibiting the continued use of poison gas following WWI. Dr. Gennifer Weisenfeld will then move the roundtable discussion eastward to analyze Japanese anti-poison gas civil defense and the widespread distribution of gas masks during the 1930s. Dr. Peter Thorsheim will bring the roundtable back to the European continent by offering a new interpretation of chemical weapons in the British colonies, focusing specifically on poison gas experiments conducted on unsuspecting colonial subjects from the 1920s through the 1950s. The roundtable discussion will end with Dr. Asher Orkaby’s discussion of chemical weapons programs in Egypt, Iraq and Syria, the precursors for which were left behind by British military forces in WWII.

This roundtable of chemical warfare historians will aim to reflect on the century since the 1925 Geneva Protocol, providing modern policymakers with informed social and political historical perspective in order to respond effectively to the continued use of chemical weapons on the battlefield. The discussion is centered around a collective effort to explain historic anti-war advocacy, legislative efforts to ban the weapon, the colonial legacy of poison gas, and the struggles to combat its use in modern warfare.