LECTURE: Prof. Nehal BHUTA, "The State Theory of Grotius" (Cambridge: LCIL, 13 NOV 2020, ZOOM)

 

(image source: LCIL)

Abstract:

Grotius is not generally considered a state theorist, but a theorist and jurist of natural law. But his accounts of natural right, sociability and sovereign power – all building blocks of his carapace of a natural legal order – generate also an exoskeleton of political order that leans upon but is not reducible to the legal order of natural law. As such, Grotius's juristic sensibility and his Roman legal methods, generate not so much a political theory of the state as a set of generative parameters for the conceptualization of the state in which the concrete constitution of state authority is historical and plural, even as it is integrated into a universal legal order. State authority is made possible and accountable under a system of natural legal right, even as its constitution is a historical achievement that should not readily be disturbed and in which a large range of freedom and unfreedom is lawful and should be accepted. Grotius theory of the state holds important lessons and implications for our contemporary world, where over the last 25 years we have grappled constantly with the problem of what a state is, the circumstances under which we might justifiably breach its sovereignty, and the profound difficulties of re-making state orders when they have failed, collapsed or been destroyed by foreign intervention.

On the speaker:

Professor Nehal Bhuta holds the Chair of Public International Law at University of Edinburgh and is Co-Director of the Edinburgh Centre for International and Global Law. He previously held the Chair of Public International Law at the European University Institute in Florence, where was also Co-Director of the Institute's Academy of European Law. He is a member of the editorial boards of the European Journal of International Law, the Journal of International Criminal Justice, Constellations and a founding editor of the interdisciplinary journal Humanity. He is also a series editor of the Oxford University Press (OUP) series in The History and Theory of International Law. Prior to the EUI he was on the faculty at the New School for Social Research, and at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. Before entering academia, he worked with Human Rights Watch and the International Center for Transitional Justice. Nehal’s two most recent edited volumes are Freedom of Religion, Secularism and Human Rights (OUP) and Autonomous Weapons Systems - Law, Ethics, Policy (Cambridge University Press with Beck, Geiss, Liu and Kress). Nehal works on a wide range of doctrinal, historical and theoretical issues in international law, international humanitarian law, international criminal law and human rights law. He is about to start work as a General Editor (with Anthony Pagden and Mira Siegelberg) of The Cambridge History of Rights (5 volumes).

(source: LCIL) 

BOOK: Anne ORFORD, Pensée critique et pratique du droit international [IREDIES] (Paris: Pedone, 2020), 412 p. ISBN 978-2-2330-0946-3, € 46

(image source: Pedone)

Abstract:

Le droit international ne peut pas exister indépendamment de certaines conceptions du droit et de ses relations avec le pouvoir. C’est au dévoilement de certaines d’entre elles que nous invite le présent ouvrage.Pour découvrir celles-ci, Anne Orford a suivi deux chemins. Elle a d’une part minutieusement examiné le fonctionnement juridique concret des institutions internationales. Elle a ensuite, pour dégager la signification des phénomènes observés, fait appel à diverses autres disciplines que le droit, en particulier à la pensée économique et à l’histoire.Il en ressort de profondes lignes de force qui ont toujours marqué les mondes de la pratique et de la doctrine du droit international. Ceux-ci, en effet, prolongent, de manière plus ou moins consciente, une logique impérialiste et genrée de la conduite des relations internationales.Les développements de Anne Orford sur les interventions militaires et l’articulation de celles-ci avec les interventions économiques sont à cet égard édifiants.Juriste dotée d’une très vaste culture, observatrice douée d’une grande force intellectuelle, l’auteure nous donne à comprendre le rôle du droit international dans la constitution économique et militaire du monde qu’on ne peut plus regarder de la même manière après l’avoir lue. C’est là un instrument précieux pour le juriste qui veut réfléchir aux manières de comprendre ce monde que la crise historique que nous vivons montre à bout de souffle. Présentation de Martti Koskenniemi.

(source: Pedone) 

 

VACANCY: Assistant Professor in Legal History (History of International Law) (Tilburg: Tilburg University, DEADLINE 19 OCT 2020)

 

(image: Tilburg; Sources: Wikimedia Commons)

Job description:

Job opportunity for an Assistant Professor in Legal History, in the department of Public Law and Governance (PLG). PLG is a large, diverse and interdisciplinary department, home to nearly 100 academic staff and a range of legal and social science disciplines. You will develop and grow in teaching as well as research, both individually and as part of a team of ambitious scholars. Job description As assistant professor, you develop and teach courses in the bachelor Liberal Arts (English), the bachelor Global Law (English), and in the master International Law and Global Governance, which include courses mostly in the field of legal history (history of international law), as well as fundamentals of private law. You will supervise master theses. You also participate in research carried out by the team of the legal philosophy, jurisprudence and legal history scholars, part of the Department of Public Law and Governance. In the course of your appointment, you will develop a research profile, in line with the research profile and priorities of the Law School. The research conducted within Tilburg Law School is aimed at both scientific and societal relevance. It is organized into several cross-departmental research programs, including Global Law and Governance, New Modes of Lawmaking and Governance in a Multilayered Order, Law and Security, and Law and Technology. Key research themes of legal history include the history of international law, the history of commercial law and the history of public law and governance. The intended ratio between teaching and research is roughly 40%-40%, with the remaining 20% for administrative duties.

Requirements:

Tilburg University believes that academic excellence is achieved through the combination of outstanding research and education, in which social impact is made by sharing knowledge. In doing so, we recognize that excellence is not only achieved through individual performance, but mostly through team effort in which each team member acts as a leader connecting people. You have a PhD in Law on a legal-historical topic, or will defend successfully your PhD no later than 6 calendar months from the first day of your employment contract. Your growth potential in the field of research is evident from peer reviewed international publications. You are willing to apply for external research funding. You have scientific integrity and will contribute to an open and diversified culture of excellence. You have demonstrable teaching experience and good didactic skills. In addition, you are a collaborator with good communication skills. You are fluent in English and preferably also in Dutch, or are prepared to learn Dutch within the first two years of your appointment. You are expected to have a Basic Teaching Qualification (in Dutch: BKO), or are prepared to acquire this within the first two years of your employment. You are committed to be an active member of our team and the department and to integrate in the environment provided by the department and the school.

Conditions:

Tilburg University offers excellent terms of employment. We believe flexibility, development, and good employee benefits are very important. We make clear agreements on career paths and offer all kinds of facilities and schemes to maintain an optimum balance between work and private life. Tilburg University fosters diversity and inclusion; that is why we pursue an active policy for inclusive teams where diverse talents can flourish. The starting gross salary varies between €3,746 and €5,127 gross  per month (full time) based on scale 11 of the Collective Labor Agreement Dutch Universities. Tilburg University actively promotes equal and transparent salary between men and women by strictly applying predetermined parameters based on the candidate’s experience. Employees recruited from abroad may be eligible for the 30% tax facility- this means that 30% of your salary will be paid as a tax-free reimbursement. Tilburg University offers you an employment agreement for a period of 5 years. You are entitled to a holiday allowance amounting to 8% and a year-end bonus of 8.3% of your gross yearly income. If you work 40 hours per week, you receive 41 days of paid recreational leave per year. Please visit Working at Tilburg University for more information on our employment conditions.

Read further on academictransfer. 

PHD Defense: Jean-Romain FERRAND-HUS, La diplomatie du Second Empire, vecteur d’influence et de réforme des systèmes politiques et juridiques étrangers (supervisor: prof. dr. Anthony MERGEY) (Rennes: université Rennes 1, 2 DEC 2020)

(image source: Wikimedia Commons)

The Association des historiens des facultés de droit announced the following PhD viva:

Jean-Romain Ferrand-Hus (Université de Rennes 1) présentera et soutiendra sa thèse de doctorat en droit le 2 décembre 2020, intitulée La diplomatie du Second Empire, vecteur d’influence et de réforme des systèmes politiques et juridiques étrangers, dirigée par M. le professeur Anthony Mergey.

Le jury est composé de :
– Mme Brigitte Basdevant-Gaudemet, professeur émérite de l’Université Paris-Saclay
– M. Yves Bruley, maître de conférences HDR à l’Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes
– M. Anthony Mergey, professeur à l’Université Paris II Panthéon-Assas, directeur
– M. Laurent Pfister, professeur à l’Université Paris II Panthéon-Assas, rapporteur
– M. Laurent Reverso, professeur à l’Université de Toulon, rapporteur
– M. Sylvain Soleil, professeur à l’Université de Rennes 1

La soutenance se déroulera à compter de 13h45 dans la Salle des conseils de la Faculté de droit et de science politique, 9 rue Jean Macé, Rennes.

(source AHFD) 

ONLINE SEMINAR: The History of International Law (Jindal Global University) (23 SEP-28 OCT 2020))

(image source: Twitter)

The Jindal Global University announces a thrilling series of online lectures on the History of International Law, featuring Sarah C. Kovner (Columbia), Lisa Ford (UNSW), James Thuo Gath II (Chicago), Michael A. Becker (Trinity College Dublin), David Armitage (Harvard), Carl Landauer and Jennifer Pitts (Chicago) and Houchang Chehabi (Boston).

The series is organised by dr. Prabhakar Singh and Prof. Ajita Sharma.

More information on dr. Singh's twitter.

BOOK: Eric SCHNAKENBOURG & François TERNAT (eds.) Une diplomatie des lointains - La France face à la mondialisation des rivalités internationales. XVIIe-XVIIIe (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2020), ISBN 9782753580077, €30

 

(image source: Furetdunord)

Abstract:

A partir du XVIIe siècle, l'élargissement du champ d'activité de la diplomatie française à l'Amérique, à l'Afrique et à l'Asie invite le monde à la table des grandes négociations. Mais parallèlement, au niveau local, la conduite de la diplomatie ordinaire est une affaire d'individus vivant à l'interface des mondes européens et autochtones. Qu'ils participent à la conclusion de traités de paix, à la réussite d'opérations commerciales ou à la traite des esclaves, ils sont les acteurs de terrain de la mondialisation de la diplomatie française. L'influence toujours plus importante des espaces lointains sur la conduite de la diplomatie française est un défi aux multiples dimensions dont ce volume a l'ambition de rendre compte en jouant sur les points de vue et les échelles pour comprendre l'exercice de la diplomatie française à l'écoute et à l'épreuve du monde.

(source: Furet du nord) 

BOOK: Sören URBANSKY, Beyond the Steppe Frontier: A History of the Sino-Russian Border (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020), 390 p. ISBN 9780691181684, € 39,95

 

(image source: Princeton UP)

Abstract:

The Sino-Russian border, once the world’s longest land border, has received scant attention in histories about the margins of empires. Beyond the Steppe Frontier rectifies this by exploring the demarcation’s remarkable transformation—from a vaguely marked frontier in the seventeenth century to its twentieth-century incarnation as a tightly patrolled barrier girded by watchtowers, barbed wire, and border guards. Through the perspectives of locals, including railroad employees, herdsmen, and smugglers from both sides, Sören Urbansky explores the daily life of communities and their entanglements with transnational and global flows of people, commodities, and ideas. Urbansky challenges top-down interpretations by stressing the significance of the local population in supporting, and undermining, border making. Because Russian, Chinese, and native worlds are intricately interwoven, national separations largely remained invisible at the border between the two largest Eurasian empires. This overlapping and mingling came to an end only when the border gained geopolitical significance during the twentieth century. Relying on a wealth of sources culled from little-known archives from across Eurasia, Urbansky demonstrates how states succeeded in suppressing traditional borderland cultures by cutting kin, cultural, economic, and religious connections across the state perimeter, through laws, physical force, deportation, reeducation, forced assimilation, and propaganda. Beyond the Steppe Frontier sheds critical new light on a pivotal geographical periphery and expands our understanding of how borders are determined.

On the author:

Sören Urbansky is a research fellow at the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC. He is the author of Kolonialer Wettstreit: Russland, China, Japan und die Ostchinesische Eisenbahn. 

(source: Princeton UP) 

ONLINE LECTURE: Prof. dr. Miroslav Šedivý (Univ. of Pardubice), 'The public response to international insecurity 1830–1848: The Europeans between the written law (Recht) and the law of the mightiest (Faustrecht)' (1 OCT 2020; 17:00)

Standen & Landen/Anciens Pays et Assemblées d'États Lecture: 
Prof. dr. Miroslav Šedivý (Univ. of Pardubice)

The public response to international insecurity 1830–1848: The Europeans between the written law (Recht) and the law of the strongest (Faustrecht) 

(image source: Standen&Landen)

Abstract:

The Congress of Vienna of 1814–1815 was a generally well-known attempt to ensure security and peace within the so-called family of European countries and nations. This goal was to be achieved by clearly defined legal engagements and a mutual willingness to settle international disputes in a peaceful way. A quarter century later, however, a considerable number of Europeans felt that the heritage of the congress was being eroded and that the world was becoming increasingly insecure.

This conviction was primarily caused by the abuse of power by the most powerful states at the expense of weaker ones in Europe as well as the former’s imperialist policies in overseas regions. The most influential in this respect was the great powers’ competition in the Near East which had significant negative repercussions on the relations among the great powers themselves and on the general peace in Europe, such as happened in late 1840 during the so-called Rhine Crisis when a military conflict in the Ottoman Empire provoked a general war scare on the Continent. What was symptomatic for the Rhine Crisis was the increasing mistrust in the great powers’ policies and in the stability of the whole structure of the post-Napoleonic states system: a growing number of Europeans no longer had faith in the functionality of this system and generally became convinced that the security of their own countries and other nations in the world where the rule of force (Faustrecht) dominated was to be best preserved by material strength. That is why this widespread reaction to the law-breaking in international affairs, resulting in international insecurity, was one of the important points in various political/national programmes and stimulated the pursuit of national unifications, well defensible frontiers, land and naval armaments and colonial adventures.

At the same moment, however, a great number of Europeans did not abandon the belief that the security of their homeland also depended on the quality of the whole European states system, which made a considerable number advocate a more normative approach: new international law was to be introduced to ensure the equality as well as more justice and peace in relations among all states. This request was popular not only among the adherents of the peace movement being on rise in the 1840s but also in the nationalist camps across the Continent; both groups proposed the reconstruction of the international order by introducing new principles of international law, being a real law of (free) nations, and the creation of a pan-European organisation in the form of either a monarchical confederation or a congress of nations. The paper’s principal goal is to introduce this at the first sight contradictory debate about law and power in international relations before the mid 19th century and explain not only its causes but also the reason of the failure to establish a new better international political-legal order in Europe.

Reservation:

RSVP with standenenlanden@gmail.com. The lecture is scheduled for 1 October 2020 at 17:00 CET.

(source: Standen & Landen/Anciens Pays & Assemblées d'États)

BOOK: Adom GETACHEW, Worldmaking after Empire. The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination (Princeton (N.J.): Princeton University Press, 2020), 288 p. ISBN 9780691179155 , 22 GBP

 

(image source: Princeton)

Presentation:

Decolonization revolutionized the international order during the twentieth century. Yet standard histories that present the end of colonialism as an inevitable transition from a world of empires to one of nations—a world in which self-determination was synonymous with nation-building—obscure just how radical this change was. Drawing on the political thought of anticolonial intellectuals and statesmen such as Nnamdi Azikiwe, W.E.B Du Bois, George Padmore, Kwame Nkrumah, Eric Williams, Michael Manley, and Julius Nyerere, this important new account of decolonization reveals the full extent of their unprecedented ambition to remake not only nations but the world. Adom Getachew shows that African, African American, and Caribbean anticolonial nationalists were not solely or even primarily nation-builders. Responding to the experience of racialized sovereign inequality, dramatized by interwar Ethiopia and Liberia, Black Atlantic thinkers and politicians challenged international racial hierarchy and articulated alternative visions of worldmaking. Seeking to create an egalitarian postimperial world, they attempted to transcend legal, political, and economic hierarchies by securing a right to self-determination within the newly founded United Nations, constituting regional federations in Africa and the Caribbean, and creating the New International Economic Order. Using archival sources from Barbados, Trinidad, Ghana, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, Worldmaking after Empire recasts the history of decolonization, reconsiders the failure of anticolonial nationalism, and offers a new perspective on debates about today’s international order. 

On the author:

Adom Getachew is the Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Political Science and the College at the University of Chicago. 

(source: Princeton UP) 

BOOK: Beatrice DE GRAAF, Fighting Terror after Napoleon How Europe Became Secure after 1815 (Cambridge: CUP, 2020), ISBN 9781108842068, 29,99 GBP

 

(image source: CUP)

Abstract:

After twenty-six years of unprecedented revolutionary upheavals and endless fighting, the victorious powers craved stability after Napoleon's defeat in 1815. With the threat of war and revolutionary terror still looming large, the coalition launched an unprecedented experiment to re-establish European security. With over one million troops remaining in France, they established the Allied Council to mitigate the threat of war and terror and to design and consolidate a system of deterrence. The Council transformed the norm of interstate relations into the first, modern system of collective security in Europe. Drawing on the records of the Council and the correspondence of key figures such as Metternich, Castlereagh, Wellington and Alexander I, Beatrice de Graaf tells the story of Europe's transition from concluding a war to consolidating a new order. She reveals how, long before commercial interest and economic considerations on scale and productivity dictated and inspired the project of European integration, the common denominator behind this first impulse for a unification of Europe in norms and institutions was the collective fight against terror.

On the author:

Beatrice de Graaf is Distinguished Professor and holds the Chair of History of International Relations at Utrecht University. She was awarded the Stevin Prize in 2018, the highest distinction in Dutch academia. Tegen de Terreur, the Dutch version of this book, was shortlisted for the Libris Prize.

(source: CUP) 

ARTICLE: Liliana OBREGÓN, Peripheral Histories of International Law (Annual Review of Law and Social Science XV (2019), 437-451

(image source: wikimedia Commons)

 Abstract:

"Peripheral international legal histories are considered a new subfield of the discipline's historiography, though there is no defined canon, chronology, or accepted set of theoretical questions or conflicts. Despite the absence of an established literature, this review argues that peripheral histories of international law challenge the linear narrative that a European international legal system was unquestioned and easily incorporated by the new non-European states that surged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This overview looks at several forms of approaching the literature that differ in methodology but share a (partial or complete) challenge to a coherent universal international law and a homogeneous forward-looking global project."

(source: Annual Review of Law and Social Science) 

ARTICLE: Daragh GRANT, "Francisco de Vitoria and Alberico Gentili on the Juridical Status of Native American Polities" (Renaissance Quarterly LXXII (2020), Nr. 3, 910-952)

 

(image source: CUP)

Abstract:

Over the course of the sixteenth century, Europeans writing about the ius gentium went from treating indigenous American rulers as the juridical equals of Europe's princes to depicting them as little more than savage brutes, incapable of bearing dominium and ineligible for the protections of the law of peoples. This essay examines the writings of Francisco de Vitoria and Alberico Gentili to show how this transformation in European perceptions of Native Americans resulted from fundamental changes in European society. The emergence of a novel conception of sovereignty amid the upheavals of the Protestant Reformation was central to this shift and provided a new foundation for Europe's continued imperial expansion into the Americas.

Read more with CUP, DOI 10.1017/rqx.2019.255.

BOOK: Inge VAN HULLE, Britain and International Law in West Africa The Practice of Empire [The History and Theory of International Law] (Oxford: OUP, 22 OCT 2020), 320 p. ISBN 9780198869863, 80 GBP

 

(image source: OUP)

Abstract:

Africa often remains neglected in studies that discuss the historical relationship between international law and imperialism during the nineteenth century. When it does feature, focus tends to be on the Scramble for Africa, and the treaties concluded between European powers and African polities in which sovereignty and territory were ceded. Drawing on a wide range of archival material, Inge Van Hulle brings a fresh new perspective to this traditional narrative. She reviews the use and creation of legal instruments that expanded or delineated the boundaries between British jurisdiction and African communities in West Africa, and uncovers the practicality and flexibility with which international legal discourse was employed in imperial contexts. This legal experimentation went beyond treaties of cession, and also encompassed commercial treaties, the abolition of the slave trade, extraterritoriality, and the use of force. The book argues that, by the 1880s, the legal techniques that were fashioned in the language of international law in West Africa had largely developed their own substantive characteristics. Legal ordering was not done in reference to adjudication before Western courts or the writings of Western lawyers, but in reference to what was deemed politically expedient and practically feasible by imperial agents for the preservation of social peace, commercial interaction, and humanitarian agendas.

On the author:

Inge Van Hulle is Assistant Professor of Legal History at Tilburg University, The Netherlands. Prior to joining Tilburg University she worked as a PhD research assistant at the department of Roman law and legal history at KU Leuven where she obtained here PhD in 2016. At Tilburg University she teaches courses such as 'History and Theory of International Law', 'History of International Law', 'History of Government and Public Institutions' and 'Early Modern History'.

(source: OUP)

BOOK: Raphaël CAHEN & Nicolas LAURENT-BONNE (dir), Joseph-Marie Portalis. Diplomate, magistrat et législateur (Aix-en-Provence: PUAM, 2020), 244 p. ISBN 9782731411744, € 23

 

(image source: PUAM)

Abstract:

Fils du célèbre Portalis corédacteur du projet de code civil, Joseph-Marie est un personnage historique de premier rang : homme aux huit serments politiques à l’image d’un Talleyrand ou d’un Fouché, Portalis a traversé les bouleversements sociaux, économiques, technologiques, politiques et juridiques de la France et de l’Europe, de la fin de la Révolution au Second Empire. Ancien émigré, diplomate, conseiller d’État, pair de France, académicien, publiciste, ministre des Cultes par intérim, de la Justice, des Affaires étrangères, premier président de la Cour de cassation pendant plus de vingt ans et même sénateur au début du Second Empire, Portalis « fils » a laissé à la postérité une œuvre importante qui n’a pas suscité, jusqu’à présent, l’intérêt des historiens et des juristes à de rares exceptions près. Par le biais de sources inédites mais également des œuvres publiées et rarement étudiées de Joseph-Marie Portalis, ce livre entend proposer un aperçu de la vie et de l’œuvre de ce personnage.

Table of contents:

Avant-propos (Raphaël Cahen & Nicolas Laurent-Bonne)  
D’un Portalis à l’autre : la constance d’une lignée (Joël-Benoît d'Onorio)
4 janvier 1811, Portalis est chassé du Conseil d’État (Thierry Lentz)

Première partie: Portalis, haut magistrat

Joseph-Marie Portalis, premier président de la Cour de cassation (Xavier Prétot)
Joseph-Marie Portalis à la Chambre criminelle : les audaces d’une présidence (1824-1829) (Claire Bouglé-Le Roux)

Deuxième partie: Portalis, penseur et législateur

Joseph-Marie Portalis et le « milliard » des émigrés (Marion Narran-Finkelstein)
Joseph-Marie Portalis, législateur et théoricien de la science des lois (Sylvain Bloquet)
« Les limites des deux mondes », Portalis et l’historien (François Jankowiak)

Troisième partie: Portalis, diplomate et penseur des relations internationales

Avant-propos (Martine de Boisdeffre)
Joseph-Marie Portalis – penseur et acteur de la diplomatie napoléonienne (Raphaël Cahen)
Reconstruire le centre par la périphérie : le ministère Portalis et la guerre russo-ottomane de 1828-1829 (Gabriel Leanca)
Portalis le jeune et le droit des gens (Frederik Dhondt)

Quatrième partie: Portalis et les cultes

Portalis accompagne l’échec du Concordat de 1817 (Brigitte Basdevant-Gaudemet; Dominique Rodde)
Portalis et sa mission à Rome pour les affaires concordataires (Audrey Virot)
Les discours de Portalis à la chambre des pairs en matière religieuse (Cyrille Dounot)

More information with the publisher. 

 

ARTICLE: Gavin DALY, 'Anglo-French Sieges, the Laws of War, and the Limits of Enmity in the Peninsular War, 1808–1814' (English Historical Review)

 

(image source: OUP)

Abstract:

The many sieges of the Napoleonic Wars remain a relatively neglected area of historical study, especially in the context of the history of customary laws of war, where sieges played a central role. This article explores an important but largely forgotten episode in the infamous British storm and sack of the French-held Spanish towns of Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz and San Sebastián during the Peninsular War: mercy to the French garrisons, who, in obstinately defending against storming parties, had forfeited their protective rights under prevailing laws of war. Combining military, legal and cultural history, and drawing upon British soldiers’ letters, diaries and memoirs, the article focuses on three interrelated issues: siege capitulation and surrender rituals, attitudes to obstinate defences, and British mercy to the French garrisons. The article highlights sieges as a privileged site for examining laws of war, cultures of war, and moral sensibilities. In doing so, it sheds further light on historical debates about changes and continuities in practices and cultures of war over the long eighteenth century. There has been considerable recent interest in the history of atrocity, massacre and enmity during the French Revolutionary–Napoleonic Wars. Yet the Anglo-French case-studies examined here highlight the persistence of restraint, honour codes, civility and humanity between regular soldiers, even in the seemingly most barbarous of wartime theatres, and despite laws of war that sanctioned violence in these very circumstances.

Read more here (DOI 10.1093/ehr/ceaa190)

BOOK: Atle L. WOLD, Privateering and Diplomacy, 1793–1807 Great Britain, Denmark-Norway and the Question of Neutral Ports (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). ISBN 978-3-030-45185-1, 79,49 EUR

 

(Source: Palgrave)

Palgrave is publishing a new book on the British-Danish diplomatic debate on privateering and neutral ports in the period 1793-1807.

ABOUT THE BOOK

This book addresses the British-Danish diplomatic debate on privateering and neutral ports in the period 1793-1807, when Denmark-Norway remained neutral in the war between Britain and France. The British government protested against the use French privateers made of Norwegian ports as bases for their attacks on the British Baltic Sea and Archangel Trades, but the Danish government insisted on keeping the ports open. This led to a running dispute on the relative rights and duties of belligerents and neutrals, but also on violations of the tentative agreement that the two governments reached in 1793. The three main chapters in the book address the principled debate on privateering and neutral ports; the central role played in the debate by the British diplomatic and consular representatives in Denmark-Norway; and privateering in practice. The final two chapters look at the impact of the Dutch change of sides in the war in 1795, and the development from the official closure of the Norwegian ports to privateers in 1799 until Denmark-Norway’s entry into the war on the side of France in 1807.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Atle L. Wold is Associate Professor of British Studies at the Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages at the University of Oslo, Norway. He is the author of Scotland and the French Revolutionary War, 1792-1802 (2015).

More info here

(source: ESCLH Blog)

BLOG: Alfonso GURMENDI & Paula BALDINI MIRANDA DA CRUZ, 'Writing in International Law and Cultural Barriers' (Opinio Juris Blog, 7 AUG 2020)

 

(image source: Opinio Juris)

First paragraph:

Today, lack of regional representation in international law practice and academia is a well-known problem. International law is still Western, old, male, and white. Despite efforts to reduce these disparities, they prevail in pretty much every area of international law, including e.g. academic publications, where double-blind peer review would, at least in principle, prevent personal characteristics such as regional origin from playing a role in selection processes.

Read more on Opinio Juris.