Abstract

This essay offers a case study in jus in bello in the American Revolutionary War by focusing on responses to sexual violence committed against American women by soldiers in the occupying British army and their Loyalist auxiliaries. Two main bodies of sources are juxtaposed in order to explore the contexts and manner in which jus in bello was adjudicated: British courts-martial and American Congressional investigations documenting British and Loyalist breaches of the codes of war. By putting the fragmentary evidence of instances of rape in the context of contemporary legal and sociocultural practices of sexual violence in peacetime, as well as of the British army's disciplinary regime, we can elucidate the horizon of experiences and expectations against which survivors, assailants and prosecutors acted. The British army disciplined some soldiers for sexual offenses that violated military law and the codes of war, and it executed a few of them at a time when even their home society featured very low prosecu..