Book excerpt: An understanding of military occupation as a distinct phenomenon first emerged in the 18th century. This book shows how this understanding developed and the problems that the occupiers, the occupied, commentators and the courts encountered. It covers all major occupations including: France, Sicily, Greece, Belgium, Syria, Mexico, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cyprus, Egypt, Korea, Peking, the Boer Republics; Latin America; and those related to the Napoleonic Wars, the Mexican-American War, the American Civil War, the Franco-Prussian War, the Russo-Turkish War, and the Spanish-American War