ESIL Interest Group History of International Law

ESIL Interest Group History of International Law

Wednesday 30 October 2019

ESIL ELECTIONS: New Steering Committee ESIL IGHIL

(image source: ESIL2018conference)

The ESIL Secretariat sent out the following message on 29 Oct 2019:


Following the call for candidates, we are pleased to inform you that the five following members will form the new CC of the Interest Group on the History of International Law.

  • Markus P. Beham: 4 years
  • Frederik Dhondt: 2 years
  • Jaanika Erne: 2 years
  • Jan Lemnitzer: 2 years
  • John R Morss: 4 years
The new team will be announced on this blog soon.

Tuesday 29 October 2019

BOOK: George ULRICH & Ineta ZIEMELE, How International Law Works in Times of Crisis [European Society of International Law] (Oxford: OUP, 2019),

(image source: OUP)

Book description:
For some time, the word 'crisis' has been dominating international political discourse. But this is nothing new. Crisis has always been part of the discipline of international law. History indeed shows that international law has developed through reacting to previous experiences of crisis, reflecting an agreement on what it takes to avoid their repetition. However, human society evolves and challenges existing rules, structures, and agreements. International law is confronted with questions as to the suitability of the existing legal framework for new stages of development. Ulrich and Ziemele here bring together an expert group of scholars to address the question of how international law confronts crises today in terms of legal thought, rule-making, and rule-application. The editors have characterized international law and crisis discourse as one of a dialectical nature, and have grouped the articles contained in the volume under four main themes: security, immunities, sustainable development, and philosophical perspectives. Each theme pertains to an area of international law which at the present moment in time is subject to notable challenges and confrontations from developments in human society. The surprising general conclusion which emerges is that, by and large, the international legal system contains concepts, principles, rules, mechanisms and formats for addressing the various developments that may prima facie seem to challenge these very same elements of the system. Their use, however, requires informed policy decisions.

On the editors:
Edited by George Ulrich, Professor at the Riga Graduate School of Law; Director of the European Master's Degree in Human Rights and Democratisation, Venice, Italy, and Ineta Ziemele, Professor at the Riga Graduate School of Law; President of the Constitutional Court of Latvia George Ulrich is currently Professor of Human Rights at the Riga Graduate School of Law and Programme Director of the European Master's Degree in Human Rights and Democratisation (EMA). He served as Rector at the Riga Graduate School of Law from 2009-2016 and as Secretary General of the European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratisation (EIUC) from 2003-2009. With a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Toronto, he has published extensively on topics related to the philosophy and practical implementation of human rights in an interdisciplinary perspective as well as on issues related to medical ethics, professional ethics, and the ethics of human rights. Ineta Ziemele is Professor at the Riga Graduate School of Law. She has been Judge at the Constitutional Court of Latvia since January 8, 2015, and President of the Constitutional Court of Latvia since May 8, 2017. Professor Ziemele is a former Judge of the European Court of Human Rights (2005-2014) and President of the Court Chamber (2012-2014). She is Editor-in-Chief of the Yearbook of Baltic International Law and Corresponding Member of the Latvian Academy of Science. She was awarded a doctoral degree in law from Cambridge University in 1999.
On the contributors:
Carlos Espaliú Berdud, Dr., Associate Professor of Public International Law and European Law, Universitat Internacional de Catalunya, Barcelona Stephen Bouwhuis, Assistant Secretary, Attorney General's Department, Commonwealth of Australia James Crawford, Judge of the International Court of Justice Stefano Dominelli, Junior Researcher in International Law, University of Genoa Ilze Dubava, Lawyer, State Chancellery of the Republic of Latvia Patrycja Grzebyk, PhD, Professor at the University of Warsaw, vice-director of the Network on Humanitarian Action at the University of Warsaw Kushtrim Istrefi, Assistant Professor of Public International Law and Human Rights at Utrechct University Zeynep Kivilcim, Associate Professor, Einstein Fellow, faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin David Kosař, Director of the Judicial Studies Institute (JUSTIN) at the Law Faculty of Masaryk University, Brno Sandra Krähenmann, Thematic Legal Adviser, Gebeva Call Irena Nesterova, Researcher at the Institute of Legal Science, Faculty of Law. University of Latvia Jan Petrov, Researcher at the Judicial Studies Institute (JUSTIN) at the Law Faculty of Masaryk University Ignacio de la Rasilla, 'Han Depei Chair Professor of International Law and One Thousand talents Plan Professor, Wuhan University Institute of International Law Ilze Ruse, Associate Professor, Riga Graduate School of Law Jean-Marc Sauvé, Vice-president of the French Conseil d'État Annalisa Savaresi, Lecturer in Environmental Law, University of Stirling Fernando Dias Simões, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law of the Chinese University of Hong Kong Pavel Šturma, Professor of International Law, Charles University Faculty of Law (Prague), Member of the UN international Law Commission (Geneva) Ozlem Ulgen, Senior Lecturer in Law, School of Law, Birmingham City University George Ulrich, Professor of Human Rights at the Riga Graduate School of Law Ineta Ziemele, Professor of International Law and Human Rights at the Riga Graduate School of Law
(source: OUP)

Monday 28 October 2019

BOOK: Jean-Marie PALAYRET, Isabelle RICHEFORT, and Dieter SCHLENKER, eds., Histoire de La Construction Européenne (1957-2015) Sources et Itinéraires de Recherche Croisés (Paris: Editions du Comité des Travaux historiques et scientifiques, 2019). ISBN 978-2-7355-0908-9, 24.00 EUR



(Source: CTHS)

Editions du Comité des Travaux historiques et scientifiques has published a new book on the history of the European Union.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Initiée par Robert Schuman et Jean Monnet, la Communauté européenne du charbon et de l’acier (CECA) précurseur de la construction européenne – a comme premier objectif de « créer une solidarité de fait » (Déclaration Schuman, 9 mai 1950) entre les Européens pour éviter une nouvelle guerre. Le plan Schuman marque le point de départ de la construction européenne.

La présente conférence, qui s’est tenue au centre des Archives diplomatiques les 30 juin et 1er juillet 2016, se propose de faire un état des lieux de la recherche historique sur la construction européenne et des dernières tendances de l’historiographie, de présenter divers fonds d’archives (publiques et privées) récemment ouverts au public en la matière et de découvrir quelques-uns des réseaux associatifs ou professionnels qui la sous-tendent.

En collaboration avec la direction des Archives du ministère français des Affaires étrangères, la Conférence « Sources et itinéraires de recherche croisés de l’histoire de la construction européenne – 1957-2015 » a été organisée par l’Association des « Amis des Archives historiques de l’Union européenne ». Celle-ci est une association qui regroupe tous ceux qui souhaitent apporter leur concours à l’enrichissement et à la connaissance des Archives historiques de l’Union européenne.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Remarques introductives
Jean-Marie Palayret


Historiographie du processus de construction européenne

The History of the European construction: development and current trends
Antonio Varsory

Alan S. Milward’s legacy: deconstructing the history of the construction of Europe
Frances MB Lynch

European Integration and the Cold War
Maria Eleonora Guasconi

Les états membres


« Les négociations d’adhésion de l’Espagne à la CEE et les relations hispano-communautaires : sources, parcours et perspectives de recherche »
Mathieu Trouvé

La poursuite et la demande d’adhésion de la Grèce aux Communautés européennes à travers les Archives grecques
Giorgios Polydorakis

Les archives du ministère des Affaires étrangères sur la Construction européenne : état des fonds et présentation de documents
Isabelle Nathan

La construction européenne vue à travers les archives hongroises
Gergely Fejérdy

A History of European Law: The ‘Constitutional Practice’ and the ‘Veto Politics’
Philip Bajon

Le Cedefop, 40 ans au service de la formation professionnelle en Europe : collecte et exploitation des archives d’une agence européenne
Marc Willem


L’apport des archives privées à l’historiographie de la construction européenne

Les archives de la présidence de Jacques Delors à la Commission européenne
Catherine Allaire-Previti

Sources et historiographie de l’Agence spatiale européenne
Nathalie Tinjod

Les sources privées dans la reconstruction biographique des responsables communautaires, années 1950-1970
Mauve Carbonell


Le rôle des fondations

Le Groupe de Liaison des Professeurs d’histoire auprès de la Commission européenne
Wilfried Loth

Le projet d’histoire de la Commission européenne
Éric Bussière

Towards an European Research infrastructure on Integration Policy?
Marc Dierikx

La Maison de l’histoire européenne au défi d’un récit sur l’unité de l’Europe : une histoire de papier(s) ?
Étienne Deschamps


L’Europe a-t-elle tenu toutes ses promesses ?
Jean-Marie Palayret

More info here

(source: ESCLH Blog)

Friday 25 October 2019

BOOK REVIEW: Christophe LOSFELD reviews Stephan MEDER, Der unbekannte Leibniz. Die Entdeckung von Recht und Politik durch Philosophie (Francia Recensio 2019/3)

(image source: Perspectivia)

First paragraph:
Si, ces dernières années, Leibniz a beaucoup retenu l’attention, ce qui s’est traduit tant par la poursuite de l’édition de sa correspondance, la publication de textes consacrés à certains pans de son œuvre – qu’il s’agisse, par exemple, de ses textes consacrés à l’histoire ou à la diplomatie – ou de recueils ou de monographies étudiant telle ou telle facette de son activité polyvalente, la pensée juridique de cet auteur, Stephan Meder le constate avec raison, est un peu demeurée dans l’ombre. C’est en particulier chez les juristes que Meder note un manque d’intérêt pour le polygraphe des Lumières, ce qu’il explique par plusieurs facteurs: outre le caractère interdisciplinaire de Leibniz et les liens qu’il n’a cessé de tisser entre le droit et de la philosophie, Meder voit l’une des raisons de ce manque d’intérêt dans la difficulté d’accéder aux textes originaux, que ce soit parce que tous n’ont pas été édités ou parce que maints d’entre eux sont rédigés en latin, une langue que seule une minorité maîtrise aujourd’hui.
Read the full review on Francia Recensio's website.
More information on the book here.

Thursday 24 October 2019

BOOK: Jochen VON BERNSTORFF and Philipp DANN, eds., The Battle for International Law South-North Perspectives on the Decolonization Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). ISBN 9780198849636, £80.00


(Source: OUP)

Oxford University Press is publishing a new edited collection on South-North perspectives to the decolonisation era.

ABOUT THE BOOK

This volume provides the first comprehensive analysis of international legal debates between 1955 and 1975 related to the formal decolonization process. It is during this era, couched between classic European imperialism and a new form of US-led Western hegemony, that fundamental legal debates took place over a new international legal order for a decolonised world. The book argues that this era presents in essence a battle, a battle that was fought out in particular over the premises and principles of international law by diplomats, lawyers, and scholars. In a moment of relative weakness of European powers, 'newly independent states' and international lawyers from the South fundamentally challenged traditional Western perceptions of international legal structures engaging in fundamental controversies over a new international law. The legal outcomes of this battle have shaped the world we live in today.

Contributions from a global set of authors cover contemporary debates on concepts central to the time, such as self-determination, sources and concessions, non-intervention, wars of national liberation, multinational corporations, and the law of the sea. They also discuss influential institutions, such as the United Nations, International Court of Justice, and World Bank. The volume also incorporates contemporary regional approaches to international law in the 'decolonization era' and portraits of important scholars from the Global South.

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Edited by Jochen von Bernstorff, Chair of International Law and Human Rights, Law Faculty, University of Tübingen, and Philipp Dann, Chair of Public and Comparative Law, Faculty of Law, Humboldt University Berlin

Jochen von Bernstorff is currently the Dean of the Tübingen Law Faculty (since 2018), holds the Chair for Constitutional law, International Law and Human Rights (since 2011), and has taught international law as a visiting professor at the German Federal Foreign Office Academy Berlin, Université Panthéon-Assas (institut des hautes études internationales), Université Aix-Marseille and National Taiwan University Taipei. He has acted as a consultant for the German Government and various UN-institutions on human rights, development and international environmental law issues.

Philipp Dann holds the Chair of Public and Comparative Law at Humboldt University Berlin (since 2014) and is principal investigator in the Cluster of Excellence 'Contestations of the Liberal Script' (since 2019). He holds degrees from Frankfurt University (PhD and post-doctoral Habilitation) and Harvard Law School (LL.M.) and has taught German, European and public international law in Germany, France, India, Kenya, the Sudan and the US.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction
The Battle for International Law: A Sketch, Jochen von Bernstorff and Philipp Dann
Part I: Sites of Battle
A. Concepts - Kampfbegriffe
1: The Common Heritage of Mankind: Annotations on a Battle, Surabhi Ranganathan
2: The Battle for the Recognition of Wars of National Liberation, Jochen von Bernstorff
3: The Developmental State: Independence, Dependency and the History of the South, Luis Eslava
4: Colonial Fragments: Decolonisation, Concessions and Acquired Rights, Matthew Craven
5: Acquired Rights and State Succession - The Rise and Fall of the Third World in the International Law Commission, Anna Brunner
6: Rival Worlds and the Place of the Corporation in International law, Sundhya Pahuja and Anna Saunders
7: The Battle Continues: Rebuilding Empire through Internationalization of State Contracts, Muthucumaraswamy Sornarajah
8: (De)colonizing Human Rights, Florian Hoffmann and Bethania Assy
9: Picking Battles: Race, Decolonization, and Apartheid, Rotem Giladi
B. Institutions
10: The International Court of Justice During the Battle for International Law (1955-1975)-Colonial Imprints and Possibilities for Change, Ingo Venzke
11: The Battle and the United Nations, Guy Sinclair
12: The World Bank in the Battles of the 'Decolonization Era', Philipp Dann
Part II Individual Protagonists and Regional Perspectives
A. Individual Protagonists
13: Reading R.P. Anand in the Postcolony: Between Resistance and Appropriation, Prabhakar Singh
14: Taslim Olawale Elias: From British Colonial Law to Modern International Law, Carl Landauer
15: Determining New Selves: Mohammed Bedjaoui on Algeria, Western Sahara, and Post-Classical International Law, Umut Özsu
16: Charles Chaumont's Third World International Legal Theory, Emamanuelle Tourme Jouannet
B. Regional Perspectives
17: Literal 'Decolonisation': Re-reading African International Legal Scholarship through the African Novel, Christopher Gevers
18: The Soviets and the Right to Self-Determination of the Colonized: Contradictions of Soviet Diplomacy and Foreign Policy in the Era of Decolonization, Bill Bowring
19: The Failed Battle for Self-Determination: The United States and the Postwar Illusion of Enlightened Colonialism, 1945-1975, Olivier Barsalou
Epilogue
What's Law Got to Do with it? Recollections, Impressions, Martti Koskenniemi

More info here

(source: ESCLH Blog)

Wednesday 23 October 2019

BOOK: Lisa BECKENBAUGH, The Treaty of Versailles. A Primary-Document Analysis (Santa Barbara: ABC Clio, 2018) ISBN 978-1-4408-5909-0, 83 USD

(image source: ABC Clio)

Book abstract:
An indispensable resource on the Treaty of Versailles, one of the most influential and controversial documents in history, this book explains how the treaty tried to solve the complex issues that emerged from the destruction of World War I. This carefully curated primary source collection includes roughly 60 documents related to the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. By collecting all of the most significant documents in one volume, it allows readers to hear the original arguments surrounding the treaty and to explore the voices of the people involved at the Paris Peace Conference. Moreover, it allows readers to engage with the documents so as to better understand the complex motivations and issues coming out of World War I and highlights the differences between the victors and identifies the problems many countries had with the treaty before it was even signed. The documents are organized in chronological order, providing a blueprint to help students to understand all of the significant events that led to the treaty, as well as the vast repercussions of the treaty itself. In addition to the Treaty of Versailles itself, documents include such significant primary sources as the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the Balfour Declaration, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points, and Germany's response to the treaty.
On the author:
Lisa L. Beckenbaugh, PhD, is assistant professor of military and security studies at Air University's Air Command and Staff College. She received her MA from St. Cloud State University and her PhD from the University of Arkansas. Dr. Beckenbaugh has taught at a variety of undergraduate and graduate civilian institutions. She also served as the interim project lead and military analyst II for the Operational Leadership Experiences Project under the aegis of the Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth and was a Post-Graduate Historical Research Fellow at the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office. 
More information with the publisher

Tuesday 22 October 2019

VIDEO: The life and work of Jean Barbeyrac (Groningen, 2014)



The University of Groningen celebrated its 400th anniversary in 2014. Prof. em. Arno Vanderjagt (History of Ideas) comments in this video on Professor of Public and Private Law Jean Barbeyrac's life and work. Barbeyrac translated numerous authors from Latin into French, including Grotius, Pufendorf and Bynkershoek. His elaborate introductions and glossae achived the highest recognition by later scholars. Moreover, he published the volume on Greek and Roman treaties in the Supplément au Corps Universel Diplomatique du Droit des Gens in 1739.

(source: ESCLH Blog)

Monday 21 October 2019

BOOK: Renaud MORIEUX, The Society of Prisoners: Anglo-French Wars and Incarceration in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford University Press, 2019). ISBN 9780198723585, £85.00


(Source: OUP)

Oxford University Press has published a new book on war captivity in the 18th century.

ABOUT THE BOOK

In the eighteenth century, as wars between Britain, France, and their allies raged across the world, hundreds of thousands of people were captured, detained, or exchanged. They were shipped across oceans, marched across continents, or held in an indeterminate limbo. The Society of Prisoners challenges us to rethink the paradoxes of the prisoner of war, defined at once as an enemy and as a fellow human being whose life must be spared. Amidst the emergence of new codifications of international law, the practical distinctions between a prisoner of war, a hostage, a criminal, and a slave were not always clear-cut. Renaud Morieux's vivid and lucid account uses war captivity as a point of departure, investigating how the state transformed itself at war, and how whole societies experienced international conflicts. The detention of foreigners on home soil created the conditions for multifaceted exchanges with the host populations, involving prison guards, priests, pedlars, and philanthropists. Thus, while the imprisonment of enemies signals the extension of Anglo-French rivalry throughout the world, the mass incarceration of foreign soldiers and sailors also illustrates the persistence of non-conflictual relations amidst war. Taking the reader beyond Britain and France, as far as the West Indies and St Helena, this story resonates in our own time, questioning the dividing line between war and peace, and forcing us to confront the untenable situations in which the status of the enemy is left to the whim of the captor.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Renaud Morieux, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge

Renaud Morieux has been a lecturer in British history at Cambridge since 2011, before which he lectured in modern history at Lille for five years. His career, spanning the Channel, exemplifies his attempts to cross the intellectual and academic borders between France and Britain.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction
1: Defining the prisoner of war in international law: a comparative approach
2: Hate or love thy enemy? Humanitarian patriotism
3: The multiple geographies of war captivity
4: The anatomy of the war prison
5: The reinvention of Society?
6: War captivity and social interactions
Conclusion
Epilogue: Napoleon the prisoner of peace

More info here

(source: ESCLH Blog)

Friday 18 October 2019

SPECIAL ISSUE: A Multitude of Actors in Early Modern Diplomacy (ed. Birgit TREMML-WERNER & Dorothée GOETZE) (Journal of Early Modern History XXIII (2019), nr. 5)

(image source: brill)

A Multitude of Actors in Early Modern Diplomacy (Brigit Tremml-Werner & Dorothée Goetze)
First paragraph:
This special issue has been motivated by the drive to contextualize the role of individuals of various backgrounds in early modern foreign relations. All contributions cover a broad geographic scope and stress the impact of non-European practices and stages for the study of early modern foreign relations. Four thematic articles follow diverse diplomatic actors, ranging from non-elite envoys to chartered companies, Catholic friars and ministers on ships, to foreign courts, and behind their desks. They provide insights into these individual actors’ functions and achievements and raise questions about social belonging and knowledge channels. The introduction below portrays the development of an actor-oriented research angle in the field of New Diplomatic History over the past decades and addresses blurring concepts and over-generalizations. It attempts to redefine the heterogeneous group of early modern diplomatic actors as products of their involvement in political and material struggles, both at home and abroad.


Mixed Company in the Contact Zone: the “Glocal” Diplomatic Efforts of a Prussian East Indiaman in 1750s Cape Verde (Felicia Gottmann)
Abstract:
This article takes a micro-historical actor-centered approach to study the encounter between the officers of a Prussian East India Company Ship and local elites in 1750s Praia, Cape Verde. Combining recent advances in New Diplomatic History and in Company Studies with insights from the study of Contact Zones and transculturation, it analyzes the diplomatic strategies marginalized and hybrid players could adopt to project themselves onto the early modern global stage and locally counterbalance the hegemonic Northern European Atlantic powers. It thus proposes an alternative model of nonprofessional diplomatic interaction in the early modern period.

Three Manila-Fujian Diplomatic Encounters: Different Aims and Different Embassies in the Seventeenth Century (Anna Busquets)
Abstract:
During the second half of the seventeenth century, there were at least three embassies between the Spaniards of Manila and the Fujian based Zheng regime. The first embassy took place in 1656 ordered by the Spanish governor in Manila. The ambassadors were two captains of the city, and its aim was to re-establish trade relations, which had been severed many months before. In response, Zheng Chenggong sent his cousin to the Philippine islands to settle several business arrangements regarding Fujianese trade. In 1662, Zheng Chenggong took the initiative of sending the Dominican Victorio Riccio, who worked as missionary in the Catholic mission at Xiamen, as emissary to the Governor of the Philippines, don Sabiniano Manrique de Lara. The third embassy took place in 1663. Thereupon, Zheng Jing, Zheng Chenggong’s successor, sent Riccio to Manila for signing a peace pact and for re-establishing trade. The three embassies were related to the Zheng’s purpose of gaining economic and political supremacy over the Philippines and the South China Seas. In all three cases, the actors, the diplomatic correspondence, the material aspects and the results differed profoundly. The article analyzes the role of individuals as intermediaries and translators while considering the social and cultural effects that these embassies had on the Sino-Spanish relations in Manila.

Dutch-Portuguese Diplomatic Encounters, 1640-1703: Exchanges, Sovereignty and “World Peace” (Cátia Antunes)
Abstract:
This article traces the multiplex relationships established between Portuguese ambassadors, consuls and extraordinary envoys in the Dutch Republic between 1640 and 1703 with the Portuguese kingdom, the king, the Portuguese “Nation” in Amsterdam and the Dutch States General. In negotiating multiple contracts and treaties regarding “world peace,” these men determined the course of history not so much because they were bound by the service of a state or a king but rather because they served a multiplicity of interests that often damaged national interest in favor of specific interest groups. The article focuses particularly on the Dutch-Portuguese clashes in Western Africa and Brazil and how their settlements impacted the Dutch-Portuguese power sharing in Asia, ultimately challenging premises of sovereignty at a global scale.

Sweden’s Early-Modern Neutrality: Neutral Vessels, Prize Cases and Diplomatic Actors in London in the Late Eighteenth Century (Leos Müller)
Abstract:
Early modern shipping under neutral flags was an activity that required many capacities, combining practices from three different fields: commerce and shipping, diplomacy, and international law. This complexity of neutral shipping is the reason why traditional diplomatic history paid limited attention to it, despite the fact that shipping and prize cases consumed much of the attention and time of diplomats of neutral nations. The neutral agents had to be able to understand, communicate and move between all three fields. This article studies seizures of Swedish neutral vessels by British privateers and the Royal Navy between 1770 and 1800, including the years of the War of American Independence and the French Revolutionary Wars. It provides examples of how exchanges between different field actors—e.g. shipmasters, ship-owners, merchants, agents, lawyers, naval officers and diplomats—were communicated and understood from the perspective of Sweden’s representatives in London.
(read more here)

Thursday 17 October 2019

BOOK: Simon JACKSON & Alanna O'MALLEY (eds.), The Institution of International Order. From the League of Nations to the UN [Routledge Studies in Modern History] (London: Routledge, 2019), 284 p., ISBN 9781138091504, 115 GBP

(image source: Routledge)

Book abstract:
This volume delivers a history of internationalism at the League of Nations and the United Nations (UN), with a focus on the period from the 1920s to the 1970s, when the nation-state ascended to global hegemony as a political formation. Combining global, regional and local scaes of analysis, the essays presented here provide an interpretation of the two institutions — and their complex interrelationship — that is planetary in scale but also pioneeringly multi-local. Our central argument is that although the League and the UN shaped internationalism from the centre, they were themselves moulded just as powerfully by internationalisms that welled up globally, far beyond Geneva and New York City. The contributions are organised into three broad thematic sections, the first focused on the production of norms, the second on the development of expertise and the third on the global re-ordering of empire. By showing how the ruptures and continuities between the two international organisations have shaped the content and format of what we now refer to as ‘global governance’, the collection determinedly sets the Cold War and the emergence of the Third World into a single analytical frame alongside the crisis of empire after World War One and the geopolitics of the Great Depression. Each of these essays reveals how the League of Nations and the United Nations provided a global platform for formalising and proliferating political ideas and how the two institutions generated new spectrums of negotiation and dissidence and re-codified norms. As an ensemble, the book shows how the League of Nations and the United Nations constructed and progressively re-fashioned the basic building blocks of international society right across the twentieth century. Developing the new international history’s view of the League and UN as dynamic, complex forces, the book demonstrates that both organisations should be understood to have played an active role, not just in mediating a world of empires and then one of nation-states, but in forging the many principles and tenets by which international society is structured.
On the editors:
Simon Jackson is Lecturer in Modern Middle Eastern History at the University of Birmingham, where he directs the Centre for Modern & Contemporary History. He is completing a book on the political economy of French empire in Syria and Lebanon after World War One, and researching another, on the origins of the global food production system in late colonial rule. His work has appeared in Humanity, Monde(s) and the Arab Studies Journal. Alanna O’Malley is Assistant Professor of History & International Relations at Leiden University. She is the author of The Diplomacy of Decolonisation, America, Britain and the United Nations during the Congo crisis 1960-64, which was published by Manchester University Press in 2018.She has been a Kathleen Fitzpatrick Visiting Fellow at the University of Sydney and a Fulbright Scholar at the Department of History at George Washington University. She is currently working on a new project, which examines the impact of the Global South on the United Nations 1955-1981. 

Wednesday 16 October 2019

BOOK REVIEW: Holger HEHRING reviews Jörn LEONHARD, Der überforderte Frieden. Versailles und die Welt 1918-1923 (München: Beck 2018) (Francia Recensio 2019/3

(image source: Deutschlandfunk)

First paragraph:
In January 1918 – the war had not ended yet – the Vienna paper »Der Morgen« published a cartoon that showed the »Babylonian peace tower«: on it and around it a plethora of political leaders, citizens, slogans, and banners compete for attention. They demand, for example, »democracy«, »freedom of the seas«, and in the background, we can spot a campaigner calling for »Africa to the Africans«. Readers can find this cartoon and an interpretation of it in Jörn Leonhard’s awe-inspiring monumental history of peace making after the First World War (p. 133).
Read more on Francia Recensio's website.
 

Tuesday 15 October 2019

BOOK: Thomas G. OTTE (ed.), British World Policy and the Projection of Global Power, c.1830–1960 (Cambridge: CUP, 2019), ISBN 9781107198852, 75 GBP

(image source: CUP)

Book abstract:
A fundamental truth about British power in the nineteenth century and beyond was that Britain was a global power. Her international position rested on her global economic, naval and political presence, and her foreign policy operated on a global scale. This volume throws into sharp relief the material elements of British power, but also its less tangible components, from Britain's global network of naval bases to the vast range of intersecting commercial, financial and intelligence relationships, which reinforced the country's political power. Leading historians reshape the scholarly debate surrounding the nature of British global power at a crucial period of transformation in international politics, and in so doing they deepen our understanding of the global nature of British power, the shifts in the international landscape from the high Victorian period to the 1960s, and the changing nature of the British state in this period.
On the editor:
T. G. Otte is Professor of Diplomatic History at the University of East Anglia. Among his latest books are July Crisis: The World's Descent into War, Summer 1914 (2014), The Age of Anniversaries: The Cult of Commemoration, 1895–1925 (ed., 2018) and Statesman of Europe: A Life of Sir Edward Grey (forthcoming). 
(source: CUP)

Monday 14 October 2019

CONFERENCE: Peace and Security in Times of Transition: Socialist and Post-Socialist States and the Development of International Peacekeeping Since 1945 (29-31 October 2020, Moscow) (DEADLINE: 1 DECEMBER 2019)


(Source: HSozKult)

Via HSozKult, we learned of a conference at the Deutsches Historisches Institut in Moscow on the role of socialist and post-socialist states in the development of peacekeeping operations since 1945.

The interconnected histories of international organizations and the normative conceptions of international relations with their discussions about range and universality constitute one of the most promising and challenging topics of International History since 1945. Debates about the balance between state sovereignty and territorial integrity, international security, human rights, and dimensions of peace were reflected and still are reflected by international approaches to international challenges, new- and old-type crises, and problems of Cold War, decolonization as well as post-Cold War and post-colonial processes. […]“

More info with HSozKult

(source: ESCLH Blog)

Friday 11 October 2019

CONFERENCE: Law and Legality in Modern Eastern Europe (4-5 October 2019, Princeton)


(Source: Princeton)

In the coming two days, the Department of History at Princeton is organizing a conference on Law and Legality in Modern Eastern Europe.

Here the programme:

Program
Friday, October 4, 2019
1:15 p.m. Welcome and Introductions

Emily Greble  (Vanderbilt University)
Iryna Vushko (Princeton University)
1:30 p.m. - 3:15 p.m. Politics of Punishment in the Habsburg and Russian Empires

Chair: Emily Greble
Alison Frank  (Harvard University), “The Emperor and the Executioner: Justice, Mercy, and Capital Punishment in the Habsburg Monarchy”
Iryna Vushko (Princeton University), “Imperial Golgotha: Spielberg Prison in the Habsburg Empire”
Daniel Beer  (Royal Holloway), “Rituals of Civil Death: Sovereignty and Subversion in the Reign of Alexander II”
Commentator: Ekaterina Pravilova (Princeton University)
3:15 p.m. - 3:30 p.m. Coffee Break

3:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m. Overlapping and Contested Sovereignties

Chair: Iryna Vushko
Natasha Wheatley (Princeton University), “Sovereignty as a Knowledge Problem”
Aimee Genell  (Western Georgia University), “From the Legalist Empire to the Sovereign State”
Emily Greble (Vanderbilt University), “Debating Concepts of Sovereignty: Muslims in Post-Ottoman Europe”
Dominique Reill  (University of Miami), “Eeeny, Meeny, Miny, Law: Law-Making and Self-Determination in Absence of a State”
Commentator: Lauren Benton  (Vanderbilt University)
6:30 p.m. Dinner

Saturday, October 5, 2019
8:30 a.m. - 9 a.m. Breakfast

9 a.m. - 10:45 a.m. International Law and Regional Implications

Chair: Emily Greble
Peter Holquist  (University of Pennsylvania), “Testing the New ‘Laws of War’: Imperial Russia and the 1877-78 Russo-Turkish War”
Jared Manasek  (Pace University), “Occupation, Sovereignty, and the Presumption of Legality: the “Forgotten” Ottoman Exclave of Ada Kale in the Danube International Waterway”
Kent Schull  (State University of New York, Binghamton), “Repatriating POWs in Post-Great War Eastern Europe: Negotiating Citizenship & Belonging in the Wake of Dismantled Empires, New Nation States & Imperial Ambitions”
Commentator: Eric Weitz  (The City College of New York and the Graduate Center, CUNY)
10:45 a.m. - 11 a.m. Coffee Break

11 a.m. - 12:45 p.m. The Transformation of the East European Legal Order in the Twentieth Century

Chair: Iryna Vushko
Gábor Egry  (Institute of Political History, Budapest), “The Law of the State, the State of the Nation: the Idea of the Nation and the Transformation of Legal Categories in Interwar Eastern Europe”
Melissa Feinberg  (Rutgers University), “The Dilemmas of De-Austrianization: Family and Marriage Law in the First Czechoslovak Republic”
Rebecca Reich  (Cambridge University), “Journalism and Judgment in the Post-Stalin Period”
Commentator: Benjamin Nathans  (University of Pennsylvania)
1 p.m. Concluding Lunch

All info on the conference here

(source: ESCLH Blog)

Thursday 10 October 2019

COLLOQUIUM: Legacies of War and Empire - New Work in the History of International Law (University of Edinburgh, 10 October 2019)



We learned of a colloquium at the University of Edinburgh, focusing on the theme of legacies of empire and war. Here the programme:

The Edinburgh Centre for International and Global Law presents

Legacies of War and Empire - New Work in the History of International Law Part 2

This roundtable will bring together scholars working in the history of international law, with a particular focus on the legacies of empires and of war for the structure of international law and for contemporary international legal norms.

Dr Boyd van Dijk, Lecturer in Modern European History, University of Amsterdam
Making Common Article 3 in Southeast Asia: A Third World Approach to the 1949 Geneva Conventions
Most scholars agree that modern empires framed their colonial wars as ‘emergencies’ in order to escape international scrutiny. After 1945, however, those same imperial powers invited the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to intervene in their wars of decolonization, despite resisting an official state of war. This article seeks to solve this puzzle by drawing attention to the ICRC’s critical part in reshaping the international legal system for colonial war in the critical years before the Algerian War and the Bandung Conference. In this formative period, the organization played, together with anti-colonial activists, a transformative role in contesting accepted ideas of global governance and international law while providing a new stage for anticolonial resistance, with far-reaching consequences not just for the ICRC’s own institutional future, but also for the legitimization of postcolonial sovereignty in the twentieth century.

Dr Megan Donaldson, Lecturer in International Law, University College London
The Afterlife of François de Callières: Secrecy, Espionage and the Ethos of Diplomacy
The paper examines a crucial turning point in the evolving relationship between espionage and diplomacy: interwar efforts to rehabilitate diplomacy from widespread critiques of its imbrication with secrecy and deception. It shows that writings by and for diplomats in the 1920s and 30s sought to shift moral concern from the secrecy of diplomacy as such to deceptive dealings; and then to distance diplomacy from deception. These interwar writings on diplomacy had surprising longevity, remaining leading references well after WWII. Moreover, they illustrate an enduring pattern in which the practice of espionage is rhetorically excluded from diplomacy, while the boundary between diplomacy and espionage remains undefined. Diplomacy can thus be presented as a practice of peace and conciliation, or as liberal bargaining, softening the sharper edges of hierarchy. Yet in instances like Australia’s recording of the East Timorese cabinet during crucial treaty negotiations, it becomes clear how closely espionage and diplomacy are intertwined—and how profoundly this complex of activities, once seen outside a Cold War contest of superpowers—accentuates rather than palliates inequality.

Dr Rotem Giladi, Teaching Fellow in International Law, Edinburgh Law School
Approaching Colonial War: Law, Culture, and the Case of Human Heads
The paper starts with the observation that while there can be little doubt about the existence of an international law category of ‘colonial war’ in the late nineteenth century, establishing its content, contours, boundaries, and intellectual foundations proves highly elusive. The resulting indeterminacy of the category operates, then, both doctrinally and epistemologically. Historiographically, in addition, it leaves us with a highly impoverished, even distorted, account of the origins and politics of the modern laws of war. While we know that the codification of the laws of war was central to the modern international law project of the late 1800s, we know little on how the development of the laws of war was linked to the legal structuring of empire and colonialism, another central concerns of that generation’s international lawyers. The paper suggests next that the very elusiveness of colonial war, rather than an obstacle to be overcome, may itself serve as a source of meaning. Here I propose, tentatively, approaching colonial war not as a set of indeterminate, uncertain, unstable, or contradictory norms but, instead, as a register of cultural practices that together may furnish an alternative historical account of the laws of war its operation, function, and preoccupation. To illustrate the utility of this approach, I last reflect on a series of anecdotes involving the fate of human heads— cultural artefacts present in colonial battlefields, diplomatic conferences, private homes, popular culture, and public debates—and explore their potential meanings.

Dr Inge van Hulle, Assistant Professor, Tilburg Law School
Benevolent Aggression and Exemplary Violence in West Africa (1807-1885)
This paper represents one of the first attempts to elaborate on the international legal framework that surrounded the practice of imperial use of force in an African context during the early and mid-nineteenth century, prior to the Scramble for Africa. I first discuss the context in which violence was used as an imperial strategy and highlight the particular environmental conditions in which military campaigns took place in West Africa. I then elaborate on the justifications that British imperial personnel resorted to in their use of force and that became accepted practice in British imperial international law. Violence, though inherently part of a policy of aggression, was often styled as ‘benevolent’: as a form of racialised necessity; as an extension of Britain’s humanitarian agenda or as a supposedly legitimate answer to a perceived African wrong-doing. Apart from forced interventions, Britain actively pursued the acquisition of a monopoly over the exercise of violence in frontier regions by pursuing a policy of mediation in inter-African disputes, imprisonment of so-called African ‘rebels’ and disarmament of neighbouring African states in order to safeguard trade. As British presence in West Africa increased during the second half of the nineteenth century so did imperial agents’ resort to violence. Force thus became a method through which British strategic objectives could be fulfilled by coercing African rulers into accepting the premises of British imperial international law.

Dr Cait Storr, Lecturer in Law, University of Glasgow Law School
International Status, Imperial Form: Nauru and the Histories of International Law
This chapter is the introduction to a forthcoming monograph, International Status, Imperial
Form: Nauru and the Histories of International Law. The book draws on theories of jurisdiction and bureaucracy to construct a detailed sociolegal account of the relationship between international status and administraive form in the Nauruan case, as a frame through which to examine how the twentieth century international order developed in continuaion of European imperial administrative practices of the late nineteenth century. It argues that as the international status of Nauru shifted from protectorate, to mandate, to trust territory, to sovereign state, what occurred at the level of local administration was an accretive process of internal bureaucratisation and external restatement according to the prevailing concepts of the period. It concludes that shiftss in international status toward political independence are better understood as marking not the end, but the beginning of the process of decolonisation.

More info with the University of Edinburgh

(source: ESCLH Blog)


Wednesday 9 October 2019

PROJECT: "De Iure Belli Ac Pacis" and its dissemination (Mark SOMOS, MPIL Heidelberg)

(image source: Wikimedia Commons)

News from the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law:

Mark Somos won a Heisenberg position. The MPIL will host a five-year Heisenberg project starting on 1st October. The project seeks to uncover an unknown aspect of the history of international law by examining all surviving copies of the first ten editions of Hugo Grotius’ seminal De iure belli ac pacis. The project will map their dissemination around the world, and will analyse all hand-written annotations left by four centuries of readers, including major figures in the history of international law.
(source: MPIL)

Tuesday 8 October 2019

VIDEO: Eminent Scholars. Audio and Video Archives of Eminent Legal Scholars (Melbourne: Institute for International Law and the Humanities)

(image source: Wikimedia Commons)

The Eminent Scholars-audio and video archive (Prof. Sundhaya Pahuja & Adil Hasan Khan, Institute for International Law and the Humanities, Melbourne Law School) has uploaded material on the following scholars:
- Ratna Kapur
- Muthucumaraswamy Sornarajah
- Mohammed Bedjaoui
- Peter Fitzpatrick
- Upendra Baxi

Read, watch and listen here.

Monday 7 October 2019

BOOK: Robert THEIS & Alexander AICHELE (Hrsg.), Handbuch Christian Wolff (Heidelberg: Springer, 2018), ISBN 978-3-658-14736-5 € 86,99

(image source: Springer)

Book abstract:
Mit diesem Buch wird erstmals ein umfassendes und systematisches Referenzwerk zu Christian Wolff vorgelegt, das alle wichtigen Aspekte zu Leben und Werk des Philosophen behandelt. Das Handbuch ist von international renommierten Experten verfasst und behandelt die Biographie, das philosophische und naturwissenschaftlich-mathematische Werk sowie die philosophiegeschichtliche Rolle von Christian Wolff.
On the editors:
 Prof. em. Dr. Robert Theis lehrte Philosophie an der Universität Luxemburg. PD Dr. Alexander Aichele lehrt Philosophie an der Universität Halle.
Read more on SpringerLink.

Friday 4 October 2019

ARTICLE: Jean-Louis HALPERIN, "A German Linkage Between Criminal Law and Law of Nations as Academic Disciplines" (Rechtsgeschichte XXVII (2019), 51-64)

(image source: MPIeR)

First paragraph:
The association of criminal and international law within a German historical context would normally only seem to concern post-1945 law and the path from the Nürnberg trial to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.1 But the point of departure of this study is different and comes at the end of the 18th century: it is the matter of German professors who taught both criminal law (Strafrecht) and the law of nations (Völkerrecht). While Franz von Liszt (1851–1919) is certainly the best known both inside and outside Germany, Ernst-Ferdinand Klein (1744–1810), August Wilhelm Heffter (1796–1880), Franz von Holtzendorff (1829–1899) and, for the lesser part of their careers, Hugo Hälschner (1817–1889), Richard Schmidt (1862–1944), Ernst Beling (1866–1932), Carl Schmitt (1888–1985) and Georg Dahm (1904–1963) all taught both subjects. Moreover, other German professors and philosophers have written about criminal and international law, something rather uncommon in other countries. This surprising association between two subjects that are now separated among different specialists is something particular to Germany, and this phenomenon is likely to be linked with the blossoming of the German-speaking literature about norms and sanctions, including the Vienna School of Law. Whereas criminal law appeared as the model of sanctioned norms, dependent on efficient penalties, the law of nations was for a long time controversial because its norms seemed unsanctioned or imperfectly sanctioned through war. War itself triggered discussions about a period in which some murders – those of the enemies – were licit, whereas other forms of behaviour toward adversaries were considered crimes against the law of nations.
Read the full article (open access) on rechtsgeschichte's website.

Thursday 3 October 2019

SEMINAR: Ian CAMPBELL, "Warfare and the Intellectual Culture of the Universities in Early Modern Europe" (Queen's University Belfast, 4 OCT 2019)

(image source: QUB)
We are pleased to welcome Dr Ian S. Campbell (QUB) to the Centre for Early Modern Studies on 4th October. Ian’s talk, “Warfare and the Intellectual Culture of the Universities in Early Modern Europe,” is open to all and will take place at 3pm in the Kate O’Brien room (C1079), Main Building, UL. Ian is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern Irish History and Principal Investigator of War and the Supernatural in Early Modern Europe.
Abstract
Warfare is that area of human politics where most is at stake, and the great intellectuals of medieval and early modern Europe carefully analysed the rights and wrongs of it. But the histories of this political thinking about war that are currently available in English are flawed. They peddle crazy ideas about the Calvinist love of warfare, and ignore important areas of Catholic intellectual life, in order to tell a reassuring story about the origins of the modern, liberal, secular order. If we revise that view of Catholic and Protestant thinking on warfare, and we will be able to perceive some often neglected aspects of the modern world.
Historians of political thought pay considerable attention to the Dominican and Jesuit theologians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, because these theologians distinguished between nature and supernature. Quentin Skinner, for example, understands the “natural” category to be very close to our modern, secular one – an area of human life drained of the divine. These theologians can thus be seen to be preparing the way for liberal philosophers like Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. The Dominican and Jesuit rejection of holy war, moreover, is often used as a token of the strength of this natural category. But both Skinner and Richard Tuck ignore the early modern Franciscan tradition which did not distinguish between nature and supernature in the same way, and did not reject wars fought for evangelisation. More strangely, both Skinner and Richard Tuck largely ignore the Protestant scholastics, Lutheran and Reformed, who treated warfare with distinctively Protestant accents (to use Michael Becker’s term). When this range of Catholic and Protestant perspectives, excluded by Skinner and Tuck, are included in our history, it becomes easier to see why the Italian scholar Paolo Prodi saw the development of the European state in the early-modern period not as a process of secularisation, but as a process of sacralisation. For Prodi, what mattered most was not the creation of areas of life free from God, but the absorption by the State of that sacred power previously confined within the Church. Prodi’s vision offers a more life-like portrait of the world in which we live.
(source: QU Belfast)

Wednesday 2 October 2019

BOOK: Inge VAN HULLE & Randall LESAFFER (eds.), International Law in the Long Nineteenth Century (1776-1914). From the Public Law of Europe to Global International Law ? [Legal History Library, 28; Studies in the History of International Law, 11] (Leiden/Boston: Martinus Nijhoff/Brill, 2019), 242 p. ISBN 9789004412088, € 99

(image source: Brill)

Book description:
International Law in the Long Nineteenth Century gathers ten studies that reflect the ever-growing variety of themes and approaches that scholars from different disciplines bring to the historiography of international law in the period. Three themes are explored: ‘international law and revolutions’ which reappraises the revolutionary period as crucial to understanding the dynamics of international order and law in the nineteenth century. In ‘law and empire’, the traditional subject of nineteenth-century imperialism is tackled from the perspective of both theory and practice. Finally, ‘the rise of modern international law’, covers less familiar aspects of the formation of modern international law as a self-standing discipline.
On the contibutors:
Contributors are: Camilla Boisen, Raphaël Cahen, James Crawford, Ana Delic, Frederik Dhondt, Andrew Fitzmaurice, Vincent Genin, Viktorija Jakjimovska, Stefan Kroll, Randall Lesaffer, and Inge Van Hulle.
DOI 10.1163/9789004412088.

(see earlier on this blog)

Tuesday 1 October 2019

INTERVIEW: Lesley DINGLE interviews Sir James CRAWFORD [Eminent Scholars Archive/International Association of Law Libraries]

(image source: IALL)

First paragraph:
In May 2018 I was privileged to conduct two lengthy interviews with Judge Crawford in his chambers at the Peace Palace in The Hague. The audio and written transcripts of these are available on the Eminent Scholars Archive (ESA) website[1]. His distinctive outlook on international law gives rise to what I have called a Crawfordian Vision of International Law, and I have used his interviews as a basis for identifying some of its characteristics. (Quotations in italics are referred to Question numbers in his interview transcripts).
Read more here.