Conclusion
The long-term influence of Holland's Laws and Customs of War on Land as a military handbook is hard to determine. Examination of his correspondence and interactions with officeholders in the military and civil service, as well as politicians, illustrates the composite nature of international legal thought in the offices of the British government.
Guidelines on international law provided for soldiers in the field had their origins in the disparate legal readings of HenÂry Thring, a constitutional lawyer, and John Ardagh, a military officer, comÂbined with the perceived requirements of conflict by the British War Office, and the legal interpretation of Holland, an internationally-inclined Austinian positivist. Shaped by Britain's experience of imperial conflict and filtered through the lens of the Law Officers, as well as the under-secretariats of the War Office and Foreign Office, these were modified in an attempt to absolve British soldiers from the strictures of codified legislation. The result meshed international law and British military law with selective readings of the interÂnational legal canon, international statutes, and historical precedents. Largely forgotten in international legal history, the surplus copies which lingered at the War Office in 1907 suggest that Holland's efforts at instructions on the laws of war for soldiers were also ignored by their intended audience.