BOOK: Aurora ALMADA DE SANTOS & Yvette SANTOS (eds.), "The League of Nations Experience: Overlapping Readings" (De Gruyter, 2025)

Source: De Gruyter

Description:

As an early experiment in the creation of multilateral institutions, the League of Nations was entrusted by its members to maintain peace but also to be a standard-maker and a manager of contemporary problems and challenges requiring a global response. Nevertheless, after a while it became clear that its performance in addressing major conflicts did not live up to the expectations of guarantying collective security. In the functional areas, although the organization created precedents, it also showed limitations. Due to its complexity, increasingly the League of Nations has been studied not only from an institutional perspective but also from a more multidimensional and comparative point of view that allows to consider the presence and role of the organization in various scales and spaces, besides its relationship with a diversity of actors and themes. The League of Nations Experience: Overlapping Readings offers a multitude of interpretations, evincing some of the promising avenues through which the League of Nations continues to inspire academic research.

Table of Contents:

Introduction – The League of Nations experience: Overlapping readings
Aurora Almada e Santos

A contentious idea

The Institut de Droit International’s response to the birth of the League of Nations
Philippe Rygiel
25

The League of Nations or European federation: The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom’s decade of debate over a “United States of Europe,” 1923–1933
Rebecca Shriver
43

Hopes and aspirations

Korea and the League of Nations: from Versailles to the Manchurian Crisis, 1919–1933
Dolf-Alexander Neuhaus
67

The accession of British colonies to the League of Nations and the “Third” British Empire
Thomas Gidney
95

The membership of the Executive Council: Portugal’s highest aspiration in the League of Nations
Jesús Bermejo Roldán and Quintino Lopes
123

Decentering the view

Plowshares into swords: The League of Nations as a weapon of internationalist war
David Ekbladh
145

Survived on sufferance: Social policy, the ILO and the new “World Organisation,” 1941–1945
Geert Van Goethem
171

A plethora of varied initiatives

The Information Section of the League of Nations: An experiment in organising communication in international relations
Arne L. Gellrich and Erik Koenen
199

The League and the world: how and why the League of Nations became the centre of world economic statistics
Martin Bemmann
223

The fight against the trafficking of women and minors before and within the League of Nations: A path to legitimacy for European voluntary associations
Sara Ercolani
249

Abstracts
275

List of contributors
279

Index
285

Source: De Gruyter

BOOK: Randall LESAFFER & Anne PETERS, "The Cambridge History of International Law" (Volume I, 2024, Cambridge University Press)

Source: CUP

Description:

Volume I of The Cambridge History of International Law introduces the historiography of international law as a field of scholarship. After a general introduction to the purposes and design of the series, Part 1 of this volume highlights the diversity of the field in terms of methodologies, disciplinary approaches, and perspectives that have informed both older and newer historiographies in the recent three decades of its rapid expansion. Part 2 surveys the history of international legal history writing from different regions of the world, spanning roughly the past two centuries. The book therefore offers the most complete treatment of the historical development and current state of international law history writing, using both a global and an interdisciplinary perspectives.

• Introduces The Cambridge History of International Law series
• Offers a wide ranging survey of the historiography of international law from a global perspective
• Addresses the contributions of various disciplines – law, history, political thought, economics – and regional traditions to the historiography of international law

Table of Contents:

1. Scope, scale and humility in the history of international law 

Randall Lesaffer
Part I. The Historiography of International Law: Methods and Approaches 

Randall Lesaffer and Anne Peters
2. A thousand flowers blooming, or the desert of the real? International Law and its many problems of history 

Nehal Bhuta
3. Political thought and the historiography of international law 

Mark Somos
4. The turn to the history of international law in the discipline of international relations 

Giovanni Mantilla and Carsten-Andreas Schulz
5. Economic history and international law: a peculiar absence 

Christopher Casey
Part II. The Historiography of International Law: Regional Traditions 

Randall Lesaffer and Anne Peters
6. The historiography of international law in East Asia 

Keun-Gwan Lee
7. The historiography of international law in sub-Saharan Africa

Inge Van Hulle
8. The historiography of international law on the European continent 

Frederik Dhondt
9. The historiography of international law in Russia and its successor states 

Lauri Mälksoo
10. 'The most neglected province': British historiography of international law 

David Armitage and Ignacio de la Rasilla
11. The view from the Leviathan: history of international law in the hegemon 

John Fabian Witt
12. Using history in Latin America 

Arnulf Becker Lorca

More info with CUP.

BOOK: Thomas BOTTELIER & Jan STÖCKMANN, "Instruments of international order: Internationalism and diplomacy, 1900–50" (Manchester University Press, 2024)

Description:

This book explores a set of diplomatic practices and principles that shaped international politics during the first half of the twentieth century. By considering these instruments as historical constructions serving various political ends, the chapters show how internationalists interacted with traditional diplomatic actors, thus blending new and old forms of diplomacy. To illustrate this process, the authors draw on a range of new archival evidence and consider understudied actors and venues, from Ethiopian diplomats to the League of Nations Assembly. What connects them is their attention to the ways in which internationalists sought to solve international problems at an international level by infiltrating established institutions at the highest level of political decision-making.

Table of Contents:

Introduction
By: Thomas W. Bottelier and Jan Stöckmann
Pages: 1–16

Chapter 1: Becoming national
Self-determination as a tool in international politics
By: Georgios Giannakopoulos
Pages: 17–34

Chapter 2: The League of Nations and the new uses of sovereignty
By: Lukas Schemper
Pages: 35–54

Chapter 3: Ascertaining the truth in Albania
Inquiry as a League of Nations instrument of international order
By: Quincy R. Cloet
Pages: 55–80

Chapter 4: The chemical weapons discourse as an instrument of international order
The Second Italo-Ethiopian War
By: Anneleen van der Meer
Pages: 81–103

Chapter 5: ‘Weapons misused by barbarous races'
Disarmament, imperialism and race in the interwar period
By: Daniel Stahl
Pages: 104–126

Chapter 6: Colonial policy and international control
The American Philippines and multilateral drug treaties, 1909–31
By: Eva Ward
Pages: 127–151

Chapter 7: In the eyes of the world
Media oversight and diplomatic practices at the League of Nations Assembly
By: Robert Laker
Pages: 152–176

Chapter 8: The League of Nations and the advisory opinion of the Permanent Court of International Justice as ‘preventive adjudication’?
By: Gabriela A. Frei
Pages: 177–197

Chapter 9: With or without the metropole
Deferred sovereignty as instrument of racial governance
By: Pablo de Orellana
Pages: 198–226

Index
Pages: 227–232

More info with manchesterhive.

BOOK: Stefanie GÄNGER & Jürgen OSTERHAMMEL (eds.), "Rethinking Global History" (CUP, 2024)

Source: CUP

Description:

Despite three decades of rapid expansion and public success, global history's theoretical and methodological foundations remain under-conceptualised, even to those using them. In this collection of essays, leading historians provide a reassessment of global history's most common analytical instruments, metaphors and conceptual foundations. Rethinking Global History prompts historians to pause and think about the methodology and premises underpinning their work. The volume reflects on the structure and direction of history, its relation to our present and the ways in which historians should best explain, contextualise and represent events and circumstances in the past. In chapters on fundamental concepts such as scale, comparison, temporality and teleology, this collection will guide readers to assess the extant literature critically and write theoretically informed global histories. Taken together, these essays provide a unique and much-needed assessment of the implications of history going global. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

Reviews

‘In this book a group of well-known practitioners provide a multifaceted analysis of the concepts, methods, and issues that will define future scholarship in Global History. If this branch of history is here to stay, then historians should embrace the full conceptual rearmament here discussed to write histories worthy of the problems affecting today's world.’Giorgio Riello, European University Institute and the University of Warwick

‘What a timely intervention! As global history is coming of age, and as the world around us changes, our methods and approaches will have to develop as well. As the talk of de-globalization proliferates, Jürgen Osterhammel and Stefanie Gänger have assembled a group of first-class historians to rethink global history for our times. Fresh, insightful, stimulating.’Sebastian Conrad, Professor of Global History, Freie Universität Berlin

Table of Contents:

Introduction
pp 1-20
Rethinking History, Globally
By Stefanie Gänger, Jürgen Osterhammel

Part I - Forms of Inquiry and Argumentation
pp 21-114

1 - Explanation
pp 23-46
The Limits of Narrativism in Global History
By Jürgen Osterhammel

Select 2 - Comparison
2 - Comparison
pp 47-69
Its Use and Misuse in Social and Economic History
By Alessandro Stanziani

3 - Time
pp 70-91
Temporality in Global History
By Christina Brauner

4 - Quantification
pp 92-114
Measuring Connections and Comparative Development in Global History
By Pim de Zwart

Part II - Concepts and Metaphors
pp 115-182

5 - The Global and the Earthy
pp 117-138
Taking the Planet Seriously as a Global Historian
By Sujit Sivasundaram

6 - Openness and Closure
pp 139-160
Spheres and Other Metaphors of Boundedness in Global History
By Valeska Huber

7 - Scales
pp 161-182
From Shipworms to the Globe and Back
By Dániel Margócsy

Part III - Configurations and Telos
pp 183-273

8 - Tacit Directionality
pp 185-209
Processes, Teleology and Contingency in Global History*
By Jan C. Jansen

Select 9 - Distance
9 - Distance
pp 210-234
A Problem in Global History
By Jeremy Adelman

10 - Materiality
pp 235-253
Global History and the Material World*
By Stefanie Gänger

11 - Centrisms
pp 254-273
Questions of Privilege and Perspective in Global Historical Scholarship
By Dominic Sachsenmaier

More info with CUP.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Boston Area Colloquium on the History of International Law, "History of International Law Colloquium" (Boston, Spring-Fall 2025, DEADLINE: 31 December 2024)

Description:

The organizers of the Boston area colloquium on the history of international law are pleased to announce a call for papers to be presented during the Spring and Fall of 2025. This initiative is organized with the support of Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies, which will host a series of book talks, and Harvard Law School’s Institute for Global Law & Policy, which will host the paper series.

The call is open to all scholars, covering all areas of international law and all periods of history. Because this initiative aims to build a community of scholars in the Boston area, preference will be given to those who can present in person.  To be considered, please email a copy of your submission to mamolea@bu.edu by Dec. 31, 2024.

Contact Professor Andrei Mamolea (mamolea@bu.edu) for more info.

BOOK: Scott LINCICOME & Clark PACKARD (eds.), "Defending Globalization: Facts and Myths about the Global Economy and its Fundamental Humanity" (Cato Institute, 2024)

Source: Barnes & Noble

Description:

Original essays about the ideas and facts underlying globalization, rebutting the most common arguments against globalization today and educating readers on the intersection of globalization and our societies and cultures.

The COVID-19 pandemic, war in Ukraine, simmering US-China tensions, and rising global populism have led to globalization facing renewed attention—and criticism—from politicians and pundits across the political spectrum. Like any market phenomenon, the free movement of people, things, money, and ideas across natural or political borders is imperfect and often disruptive. But it has also produced undeniable benefits—for the United States and the world—that no other system can match. And it’s been going on since the dawn of recorded history.

The original essays from both Cato Institute scholars and outside contributors compiled in this volume offer a diverse range of perspectives on globalization—what it is, what it has produced, what its alternatives are, and what people think about it—and offer a strong, proactive case for more global integration in the years ahead.

Covering the basic economic and political ideas and historical facts underlying globalization, rebutting the most common arguments against globalization today, and educating readers on the intersection of globalization and our societies and cultures—from where we live to what clothes we wear and what foods we eat—Defending Globalization will not just educate and entertain readers but also demonstrate the essential humanity of international trade and migration—and why the United States and the rest of the world need more of it.

Contributors include Deirdre N. McCloskey, James Bacchus, Johan Norberg, Daniel W. Drezner, Jeb Hensarling, Marian L. Tupy, and Tom G. Palmer.

About the editors

Scott Lincicome is the vice president of general economics and the Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute. He is also a senior visiting lecturer at Duke University Law School, where he has taught a course on international trade law and previously taught international trade policy as a visiting lecturer. Lincicome has written on numerous economic issues, including international trade; subsidies and industrial policy; manufacturing and global supply chains; economic dynamism; and regulation. Prior to joining Cato, Lincicome spent two decades practicing international trade law. He is the editor of Empowering the New American Worker: Market-Based Solutions for Today’s Workforce (2022).

Clark Packard is a research fellow in the Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute. He was previously a resident fellow at the R Street Institute focusing on international trade policy. Packard is a contributor to Foreign Policy and has written for National Review, Lawfare, The Bulwark, Business Insider, the National Interest, and other publications.

More info with the Cato Institute.

CALL FOR PAPERS AND CONTRIBUTIONS: "Among Empires: Transimperial Circulation of Political Models and Scientific Knowledge. The Case of Four “Latecomers” (Germany, Italy, Belgium, and Japan), 1880s-1940s" (Università di Napoli Federico II, DEADLINE: 30 November 2024)

Over the last three decades at least, historians of different orientations have striven to overcome the nation-state as the unit of analysis to instead highlight the global dimension of phenomena, establish comparisons, or analyze the intersections and interconnections between different political entities. The attempt to apply this approach to empires has led to the development of a ‘transimperial’ research agenda, which focuses on spaces of intersections, encounters, and clashes of colonial rulers and anti-colonial actors within and across empires and brings under the same analytical framework competition, cooperation, and connectivity. In the transimperial approach, the comparison has been intended more as a historical object of investigation than as a method of historiography. Through the ‘politics of comparison,’ different historical actors observed and assessed other empires’ ideas and practices, aiming to emulate, reject, or mix them and giving place to new models of colonial policies.

We seek original contributions that, through the lens of the politics of comparison, focus on four latecomer empires, namely Germany, Italy, Belgium, and Japan – the case of the United States which also falls within this chronology is not part of our project – that started their colonial expansion at the end of the nineteenth century. In these countries and their colonies and protectorates, heated debates took place around the search for (historical or current foreign) models, and politicians, activists, and intellectuals often demanded the transimperial circulation of colonial knowledge, be it legal, political, or scientific.

In particular, we are interested in two distinct yet bordering fields:

 Models of colonial policies from a global perspective: for example, the debate on direct/indirect rule, regimes of belonging (citizenship, colonial subjecthood), education policies targeted at colonial subjects, co-optation in the colonial administration of local peoples, etc.

 Transimperial circulation of colonial knowledge in scientific fields such as medicine, agronomy, anthropology, legal culture, etc.

Selected scholars will be invited to present their research either in individual seminars or larger workshops that will take place in 2025 at the University of Naples Federico II or the University of Eastern Piedmont (Italy). The organization will fully reimburse the scholars coming from Europe; in other cases, it will assess on a case-by-case basis.

Papers will then be published as contributions in a peer-reviewed collective publication in English edited by the group working on the project “Imperial Entanglements: Latecomer Colonial Empires and the “Politics of Comparison” (1880s-1940s)” (PRIN 2022), a project jointly funded by the Italian government and the European Union (see www.imperialentanglements.it)

Applicants should submit:

1. an abstract of their paper of about 500 words

2. a short biography (no more than 300 words)

Email: imperialentanglements2022@gmail.com

Deadline: 30 November 2024

Acceptances will be sent by December 2024

Consult the project organizer's website "Imperial Entanglements" for more info.

BOOK: Anne PETERS & Tom SPARKS (eds.), "The Individual in International Law" (The History and Theory of International Law, OUP, 2024)

Source: OUP

Description:

Shifts across the corpus of international law have brought the international legal system into a closer alignment with the interests of the individual. This has led to a great and growing interest in the roles and status of individuals in international law, and provided new impulses for debate.

The Individual in International Law is an exploration of what is described as the humanisation of international law. It examines how international law has accommodated individuals, and how individual status, rights, and obligations have become denser and more important in the international legal system. Split into two parts, the book analyses the humanisation of international law in different historical periods and from various theoretical perspectives. The first part focuses on the historical evolution of international law, exploring how the interests of individuals have shaped the development of the legal system from antiquity to 1945, providing a counterpoint to State-centric readings of international law's history. The second part contains theoretical debates, critical approaches, and interdisciplinary investigations, offering perspectives from ius positivism and ius naturalism, Marxism, TWAIL, feminism, global law, global constitutionalism, law and economics, and legal anthropology. The book aims to stimulate further research on the humanisation and dehumanisation of new fields ranging from the ius contra bellum to climate law. The editors' introduction and conclusion frame the contributions, draw together their findings, and address critiques comprehensively.

Written by a team of acknowledged experts in their fields, this volume elucidates how the interests, rights, obligations, and responsibilities of individuals have shaped international norms and regimes, and suggests how a reoriented transformative humanism can inform and develop international law in an era of profound ideological, ecological, and technical challenge.

Table of Contents:

Contributors
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction: The History and Theory of the Individual in International Law, Anne Peters & Tom Sparks

1
The Individual in the History of International Law
2. The Individual in International Law in Antiquity, Eleanor Cowan
3. Individuals and Group Identity in Medieval International Law, Dante Fedele & Alain Wijffels
4. From Exemplary Individuals to Private Persons with Rights: International Law 1500-1647, Vitoria, Gentili, and Grotius, Francesca Iurlaro
5. From Re- to Demoralisation: The Individual in International Law, 1648-1789, Mark Somos
6. The Individual in International Law in the Nineteenth Century, 1789-1914, Inge Van Hulle
7. Before Human Rights: The Formation of the International Status of the Individual, 1914-1945, Anne Peters

2
The Individual in the Theory of International Law
8. Legal Positivism and the Individual in International Law, Gleider I. Hernández
9. The Individual in International Law from the Contemporary Sacred Natural Law Perspective, Rafael Domingo
10. The Individual in Secular Natural Law Theories of International Law, Tom Sparks
11. The Status of the Individual in International Law: A TWAIL Perspective, B.S. Chimni
12. The Individual in Feminist Approaches to International Law, Ruth Houghton
13. A Marxist Account of the Individual in International Law, Marina Veličković
14. Global Law and the Individual, Angelo Jr. Golia
15. Global Constitutionalism and the Individual, Başak Çalı
16. The Individual in (International) Law and Economics, Anne van Aaken
17. Individual Personhood in Anthropological Approaches to International Law, Marie-Claire Foblets
18. Conclusion: Reconsidering the Individual in International Law, Anne Peters & Tom Sparks

More info with OUP.

NEW ISSUE: Journal of the History of International Law (Volume 26, Issue 3)

Source: Brill

Articles


British Utilitarianism after Bentham: Nineteenth-Century Foundations of International Law Part II
Author:
Robert Schütze
Pages: 243–284

Unequal Treaty in Practice: A Story about Article 23 of the Treaty of Tientsin
Author:
Shiu Chung Chan
Pages: 285–311

Gender, Human Rights Networks, and the State of Emergency During the Arab Revolt (1936–1939)

Author:
Paola Zichi
Pages: 312–344

Book Review

State Responsibility and Rebels: The History and Legacy of Protecting Investment against Revolution, written by Kathryn Greenman

Author:
Filip Batselé
Pages: 345–349

Visit Brill's website for more info.

BOOK: Isaac NAKHIMOVSKY, "The Holy Alliance: Liberalism and the Politics of Federation" (Princeton University Press, 2024)

Source: PUP

Description:

The Holy Alliance is now most familiar as a label for conspiratorial reaction. In this book, Isaac Nakhimovsky reveals the Enlightenment origins of this post-Napoleonic initiative, explaining why it was embraced at first by many contemporary liberals as the birth of a federal Europe and the dawning of a peaceful and prosperous age of global progress. Examining how the Holy Alliance could figure as both an idea of progress and an emblem of reaction, Nakhimovsky offers a novel vantage point on the history of federative alternatives to the nation state. The result is a clearer understanding of the recurring appeal of such alternatives—and the reasons why the politics of federation has also come to be associated with entrenched resistance to liberalism’s emancipatory aims.

Nakhimovsky connects the history of the Holy Alliance with the better-known transatlantic history of eighteenth-century constitutionalism and nineteenth-century efforts to abolish slavery and war. He also shows how the Holy Alliance was integrated into a variety of liberal narratives of progress. From the League of Nations to the Cold War, historical analogies to the Holy Alliance continued to be drawn throughout the twentieth century, and Nakhimovsky maps how some of the fundamental political problems raised by the Holy Alliance have continued to reappear in new forms under new circumstances. Time will tell whether current assessments of contemporary federal systems seem less implausible to future generations than initial liberal expectations of the Holy Alliance do to us today.

Author:

Isaac Nakhimovsky is associate professor of history and humanities at Yale University. He is the author of The Closed Commercial State: Perpetual Peace and Commercial Society from Rousseau to Fichte (Princeton).

More info with the publisher.

BOOK: Kenneth MACK & Jacob KATZ COGAN & (eds.), "In Between and Across: Legal History Without Boundaries" (OUP, 2024)

Source: OUP

Description:

The boundaries between the history of law and the history of everything else are quite blurry nowadays. Whether one is asking questions about the origins of the carceral state, the relationship between slavery and capitalism, the history of migration flows and empires, the longer story of human rights, the building of the straight state, the role of religion in public life, or many others, there is a shared belief that law and its history matters. In fact, legal historians began to focus on the blurring of boundaries such as those between markets and politics, between identity and state power, as well as between national borders and the flows of people, capital and ideas around the world.

Legal history, broadly conceived, seems to mark much of the most exciting work that is redrawing the boundaries of historical scholarship in many areas of study. In Between and Across: Legal History without Boundaries gathers some of the newest and freshest work by both younger and established scholars who are carrying forward that project and extending it into new areas of historical inquiry. It captures the best of the new and innovative tools and questions that have made law a central plane of inquiry, charts novel directions for the field, and poses broader questions concerning the past, present, and future.

Crossing a wide variety of geographic areas (from British-ruled Australia to colonial India and Malaysia, to the United States), the authors sketch new boundaries for the field to cross - boundaries of time, geography, and method - and claim that legal history provides the language to talk across national borders.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: Rewriting the Boundaries of Legal History, Kenneth W. Mack and Jacob Katz Cogan

Part I: The Political Economy of Time

1. Views from Rathole Mountain: A Lawscape Journey through Old Virginia, Matthew Axtell

2. The Rise of Retail Stockholder Litigation and the Creation of the Plaintiff's Bar in American Business Law, 1930-1950, Donna Dennis

3. Private Law, Public Welfare, Marital Ideals, and The Gender Binary . . . or, What I Learned at the Socio-Legal Revolution, Felicia Kornbluh

4. Power of the Purse: How “the Philanthropic North” Has Helped Determine Which Individuals, Groups, and Ideas in the Black Freedom Struggle Will Thrive Nationally, Maribel Morey

5. “Kindred to Treason”: Conspiracy Laws in the United States, Sarah Seo

Part II: Law, Space, and Place in History

6. The Case as Episode: Murder and Migration in Colonial Australia, Catherine L. Evans

7. The Chain and the Rope: Illuminating Constitutional Traditions, Maeve Glass

8. South Asians at the Inns of Court: Empire, Expulsion, and Redemption circa 1900, Mitra Sharafi

Part III: Rethinking Method: Law and Everything Else

9. “Our Experiences Make Us Who We Are”: Lessons from Thomas Ruffin and Dirk Hartog, Jessica K. Lowe

10. Debtor Constitutionalism, Farah Peterson

11. Roosters and Resistance, Christina D. Ponsa-Kraus

12. Law, History, and the Interwar ACLU's Jewish Lawyers, Laura Weinrib

More info with OUP.

BOOK: Paul TUCKER, "Global Discord: Values and Power in a Fractured World Order" (Princeton University Press, 2024)

Source: PUP

Description:

Can the international economic and legal system survive today’s fractured geopolitics? Democracies are facing a drawn-out contest with authoritarian states that is entangling much of public policy with global security issues. In Global Discord, Paul Tucker lays out principles for a sustainable system of international cooperation, showing how democracies can deal with China and other illiberal states without sacrificing their deepest political values. Drawing on three decades as a central banker and regulator, Tucker applies these principles to the international monetary order, including the role of the U.S. dollar, trade and investment regimes, and the financial system.

Combining history, economics, and political and legal philosophy, Tucker offers a new account of international relations. Rejecting intellectual traditions that go back to Hobbes, Kant, and Grotius, and deploying instead ideas from David Hume, Bernard Williams, and modern mechanism-design economists, Tucker describes a new kind of political realism that emphasizes power and interests without sidelining morality. Incentives must be aligned with values if institutions are to endure. The connecting tissue for a system of international cooperation, he writes, should be legitimacy, creating a world of concentric circles in which we cooperate more with those with whom we share the most and whom we fear the least.

More information with the publisher.

BOOK: Mary BRIDGES, "Dollars and Dominion: US Bankers and the Making of a Superpower" (Princeton University Press, 2024)

Source: PUP

Description:

The dominance of US multinational businesses today can seem at first like an inevitable byproduct of the nation’s superpower status. In Dollars and Dominion, Mary Bridges tells a different origin story. She explores the ramshackle beginnings of US financial power overseas, showing that US bankers in the early twentieth century depended on the US government, European know-how, and last-minute improvisation to sustain their work abroad. Bridges focuses on an underappreciated piece of the nation’s financial infrastructure—the overseas branch bank—as a brick-and-mortar foundation for expanding US commercial influence.

Bridges explores how bankers sorted their new communities into “us”—potential clients—and “them”—local populations, who often existed on the periphery of the banking world. She argues that US bankers mapped their new communities by creating foreign credit information—and by using a financial asset newly enabled by the Federal Reserve System, the bankers’ acceptance, in the process. In doing so, they constructed a new architecture of US trade finance that relied on long-standing inequalities and hierarchies of privilege. Thus, racialized, class-based, and gendered ideas became baked into the financial infrastructure.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, there was nothing inevitable or natural about the rise of US finance capitalism. Bridges shows that US foreign banking was a bootstrapped project that began as a side hustle of Gilded Age tycoons and sustained itself by relying on the power of the US state, copying the example of British foreign bankers, and building alliances with local elites. In this way, US bankers constructed a flexible and durable new infrastructure to support the nation’s growing global power.

Mary Bridges, a historian of the twentieth-century United States, is the Ernest May Fellow in History and Policy at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

CALL FOR EXPRESSION OF INTEREST: (De-/re-)constructions of International Law over Time and Space, ESIL Interest Group for the History of International Law (2025 ESIL Annual Conference on “Reconstructing International Law”, Freie Universität Berlin, 10-13 September 2025, DEADLINE: 15 January 2025)

 

Call for Expression of Interest

ESIL Interest Group on the History of International Law

Agora Panel Proposal for the ESIL Annual Conference 2025

  (De-/re-)constructions of International Law over Time and Space

Berlin, 10 to 13 September 2025

Submission deadline: 15 January 2025

The ESIL Interest Group on the History of International Law is preparing an Agora panel proposal on ‘(De-/re-)constructions of International Law over Time and Space’ for the 2025 ESIL Annual Conference “Reconstructing International Law” in Berlin, Germany. The outcome of the Agora proposal is uncertain, but the panel speakers will be invited to present at the interest group pre-conference workshop, if the Agora proposal is not selected by the conference organizers.

Themes

This Agora aims to better understand the theme of ‘reconstructing international law’ from a historical perspective: (1) What have been the causes and reasons for (re-)constructions of international law in its history? (2) How has international law fared after past major systemic crises? (3) What can we learn from institutional and normative projects of (re-)constructing ‘new’ international law in the past?

Until modern times, international relations were determined by the good will of the sovereign and force played the dominant role in these relations. There has been no agreed definition as to when ‘international law’ exactly began, but it is generally agreed that (de-/re-)construction has been a common theme in the history of international law at various moments in time, with the Westphalian Peace of 1648 being marked as one of the most famous watershed moments. The subsequent transition from European public law to international law through colonial expansion was another important moment of territorial ‘reconstruction.’ Conversely, one might inquire about the extent to which decolonization and the admission of newly independent states has led to the ‘reconstruction’ of Eurocentric international law in the 20^th century.

At the same time, reconstruction can be approached from an institutional perspective or through the historical expansion of the actors or sources of international law. One could also explore the (de-/re-) construction of international law through the rise and fall of its individual sub-disciplines or by looking at reconstruction within and across sub-disciplines. Apart from successful (de-/re-) construction, the failed attempts of various actors to (de-/re-)construct international law could provide important lessons about reform. In addition to the restructuring of international law in the history, we are also interested in papers discussing the restructuring of ‘the history of international law’ as a discipline, its theories, and methodologies.

The IG particularly encourages interdisciplinary research engaging with historical methods, such as the use of archives and other historical sources. Perspectives from underrepresented regions and critical scholars are particularly welcomed.

Submission procedure

Members of the HIL IG and other ESIL Members working on related topics are invited to express their interest in participating by sending to lamsh@vuw.leidenuniv.nl prior to the deadline the following documents:

-          An Abstract of no more than 400 words

-          Your curriculum vitae

-          Your short biography, indicating whether you are an ESIL member and whether you are applying for the ESIL Early-Career Scholar Prize

 Timeline

The deadline for expressing interest in the Agora panel proposal is 15 January 2025. We expect to inform successful applicants before 31 January 2025 if they will be part of the Proposal.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact Ocean: lamsh@vuw.leidenuniv.nl.

Please note that the Interest Group is prioritizing those who could present their papers in person. However, the Interest Group is unable to provide funding for travel and accommodation. Selected speakers will be expected to bear the costs of their own travel and accommodation. Some ESIL travel grants and ESIL carers’ grants will be available to offer partial financial support to speakers who have exhausted other potential funding sources.

Please see the ESIL website for all relevant information about the conference.

Conveners

Anastasia Hammerschmied – Florenz Volkaert - Jaanika Erne – Sze Hong Lam (Ocean)

SEMINAR SERIES: "Thinking Gender, History, & International Law" (University of Warwick/Teams, October 2024 - March 2025)

Description:

Our aim is to engage a global audience interested in critical, feminist, and postcolonial perspectives on contemporary and historical issues in international law and politics. The series aims to create a space for academic research and networking, bringing together scholars from various fields to discuss feminist and gender-centred issues in history and international law. Each session will feature a dialogue between two or more scholars to foster discussion and conversation.

Our inaugural session, "How to Write Feminist Histories of International Law?", will take place next Monday, October 21, 2024, at 5pm BST. We're thrilled to have Aoife Donoughe, Maria Drakopolou, Diane Marie Amann, and Gina Heathcote as our distinguished speakers for this session.

Full list of seminar topics:

October 21, 2024: How to Write Feminist Histories of International Law?

November 18, 2024: How to Gender the Public and Private Divide in International Law?

December 2, 2024: Women's Rights and Human Rights: Carceral Genealogies from CEDAW to Istanbul

January 13, 2025: Decolonial Methods: Gender, History and Law Through Black Literature

February 3, 2025: Decolonising Children's Rights and International Criminal Law: Human Rights Between Security and Empowerment

February 25, 2025: Gender and International Criminal Law: History, Victimhood and Transitional Justice

March 17, 2025: International Law and Colour Line: Is Palestine a Feminist Issue?

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For more information and required pre-registration, visit Warwick University's dedicated webpage.

To subscribe to the mailing list, email paola.zichi@warwick.ac.uk or Aisel.Omarova@warwick.ac.uk. 

SPECIAL ISSUE: Revista Brasileira de História & Ciências Sociais, "História do Direito Internacional" (Volume 16, Issue 32, 2024)

Source: Revista Brasileira de Historia & Ciencias Sociais

Description:

Apresentação do Volume 16 Número 32 da Revista Brasileira de História & Ciências Sociais

Denize Terezinha Leal Freitas, Fabiano Quadros Rückert, José Carlos da Silva Cardozo, Jonathan Fachini da Silva, Tiago da Silva Cesar, Wagner Silveira Feloniuk

4-5

História do Direito Internacional

Augusto Jaeger Junior, Arno Dal Ri Jr., Lucas Carlos Lima

6-10

Dossiê

Percursos do Princípio das Nacionalidades nas doutrinas belgas de Direito Internacional: do Círculo de Gante à Escola de Lovânia (1863-1953)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14295/rbhcs.v16i32.16513

Arno Dal Ri Jr

11-53

 

A cláusula da nação mais favorecida em tratados comerciais: percepções ocidentais sobre a prática latino-americana de tratados comerciais no final do século XIX e início do século XX

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14295/rbhcs.v16i32.16576

Florenz Volkaert, Fernando Muniz Shecaira

54-87

 

A participação brasileira na elaboração do Estatuto da CPJI: o papel de Clovis Bevilaqua a Raul Fernandes

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14295/rbhcs.v16i32.16509

Lucas Carlos Lima

88-107

 

A história da construção do modelo de produção tradicional do direito internacional

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14295/rbhcs.v16i32.16665

Amina Welten Guerra

108-138

A prática dos estados asiáticos na implementação do princípio de proteção de monumentos e obras de arte antes da Primeira Guerra Mundial

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14295/rbhcs.v16i32.16429

Alice Lopes Fabris

139-158

A obra literária de Carl Schmitt durante seus anos como protagonista jurídico do nacional-socialismo (1933-1936): uma sobreposição entre os escritos e os fatos

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14295/rbhcs.v16i32.16602

Marcelo Markus Teixeira

159-181

Decolonizing International Law: between demystifications and resignifications

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14295/rbhcs.v16i32.16555

Tatiana de A. F. R. Cardoso Squeff, Gabriel Pedro Dassoler Damasceno

182-205

 

O peticionamento das vítimas de violações de direitos humanos no sistema convencional das nações unida

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14295/rbhcs.v16i32.16529

Cristina Figueiredo Terezo Ribeiro, Thaís Magno

206-245

 

De objetivos universais a resultados locais: apontamentos para uma história da proteção regional aos direitos humanos

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14295/rbhcs.v16i32.16586

Alexander de Castro

246-269

 

Direitos africanos dos Direitos Humanos – análise desde a perspectiva jurídico-histórica

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14295/rbhcs.v16i32.16565

João Francisco

270-298

 

A talidomida no banco dos réus: o julgamento de Alsdorf (Alemanha, 1968) a partir da imprensa brasileira

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14295/rbhcs.v16i32.16582

Francieli Lunelli Santos

299-323

 

A Resiliência da Identidade: Indigenato e a Virada Histórica no Direito Internacional

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14295/rbhcs.v16i32.16369

Lucas Lixinski

324-354

 

O Supremo Acordo: usos jurídicos do passado da Anistia no julgamento da Arguição de Descumprimento de Preceito Fundamental n. 153

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14295/rbhcs.v16i32.16715

Ilanil Coelho, Pedro Odainai

355-390

 

Interesses políticos na evolução histórica do Direito Internacional dos Refugiados e no caso ucraniano: entre humanitarismo e seletividade na prática europeia

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14295/rbhcs.v16i32.16537

Augusto Jaeger Junior, Ricardo Strauch Aveline

391-420

 

Das contribuições de Francisco de Vitória ao necessário giro epistemológico para as Américas: o Direito Internacional redimensionado a partir do Sul Global

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14295/rbhcs.v16i32.16568

Thiago Giovani Romero, Wanda Helena Mendes Muniz Falcão, Vinicius Villani Abrantes

421-438

 

O solidarismo de Hugo Grócio como princípio normativo de um constitucionalismo transnacional no século XXI

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14295/rbhcs.v16i32.16724

Anderson Vichinkeski Teixeira

More info with the publisher.

SEMINAR: "France, Europe, empires, XVIe – début XIXe siècle" (École Normale Supérieure de Paris, October 2024 - May 2025)

Source: IDHES

Description:

France, Europe, empires, XVIe – début XIXe siècle

Dates

Du 18 octobre 2024 au 16 mai 2025

Annuel en quinzaine (sauf exception), le vendredi, 16 h – 18 h

Lieu

ENS

bâtiment Jaurès, aile Ulm, 2e étage, Salle Ferdinand Berthier (U207)

29 rue d’Ulm

75005 Paris

RER B : Luxembourg

Attention : entrée du public par le 24, rue Lhomond (et long parcours intérieur fléché)

Organisation

IDHES, UMR 8533 :

Michela Barbot (CNRS), Anne Conchon (Université Paris 1), Laurence Croq (Université Paris Nanterre), Vincent Demont (Université Paris Nanterre), Vincent Milliot (Université Paris 8), Daniel Velinov (CNRS) et Julien Villain (Université Évry Paris-Saclay)

Programme

Vendredi 18 octobre 2024

Séance introductive

Vendredi 8 novembre 2024

Catherine Denys, Université de Lille

Comment naît une police coloniale d’Ancien Régime ? L’exemple de l’île de France (île Maurice) au XVIIIe siècle

Vendredi 22 novembre 2024

Simon Castanie, docteur de l’Université Sorbonne Université

L’emprisonnement pour dette à Paris dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle

Vendredi 6 décembre 2024

Jean-Paul Zuniga, CRH, EHESS

Catégorie fiscale et identification sociale : dire l’appartenance à Santiago du Chili (fin XVIIe – début XVIIIe siècle)

Vendredi 24 janvier 2025

Giorgio Riello, Warwik University, IUE Florence

The Workshop of the World: Factories and Capitalism in Early Modern Global Asia

Vendredi 7 février 2025

Marie Houllemare, Université de Genève

Masculinités esclavagistes : genre et violence dans la Caraïbe française au XVIIIe siècle

Vendredi 21 février 2025

Laurence Croq, Université Paris Nanterre

La police des femmes de lettres à Paris au XVIIIe siècle

Vendredi 14 mars 2025

Guillaume Garner, ENS Lyon

Le caméralisme : une économie politique du capitalisme ? (vers 1740 – vers 1800)

Vendredi 28 mars 2025

Thomas Pasquier, doctorant, Université Paris 8

Par-delà verrous et clôtures. Criminalité, ordre et propriété pendant la Révolution française 

Vendredi 11 avril 2025

Juliette Françoise, doctorante, Université de Genève, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

La régulation de la monnaie : un élément de la formation des empires modernes ? L’exemple de l’Empire français en Asie au XVIIIe siècle

Vendredi 25 avril 2025

Donia Menghini, doctorante, Université Paris 8

Maintenir l’ordre et policer la vallée du Saint-Laurent, de la Nouvelle-France au Canada anglais

Vendredi 16 mai 2025

Domitille de Gavriloff, doctorante, CENA, EHESS

Les missionnaires, éléments perturbateurs ou régulateurs de l’ordre esclavagiste et racial dans les colonies de la Caraïbe française, XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles ?

Dans la première quinzaine de juin aura lieu une journée d’études « carte blanche » organisée par les doctorants.

More info with IDHES.

BOOK: Philip STERN, "Empire, Incorporated: The Corporations That Built British Colonialism" (Harvard University Press, 2023)

Source: HUP

Description:

Across four centuries, from Ireland to India, the Americas to Africa and Australia, British colonialism was above all the business of corporations. Corporations conceived, promoted, financed, and governed overseas expansion, making claims over territory and peoples while ensuring that British and colonial society were invested, quite literally, in their ventures. Colonial companies were also relentlessly controversial, frequently in debt, and prone to failure. The corporation was well-suited to overseas expansion not because it was an inevitable juggernaut but because, like empire itself, it was an elusive contradiction: public and private; person and society; subordinate and autonomous; centralized and diffuse; immortal and precarious; national and cosmopolitan—a legal fiction with very real power.

Breaking from traditional histories in which corporations take a supporting role by doing the dirty work of sovereign states in exchange for commercial monopolies, Philip Stern argues that corporations took the lead in global expansion and administration. Whether in sixteenth-century Ireland and North America or the Falklands in the early 1980s, corporations were key players. And, as Empire, Incorporated makes clear, venture colonialism did not cease with the end of empire. Its legacies continue to raise questions about corporate power that are just as relevant today as they were 400 years ago.

Challenging conventional wisdom about where power is held on a global scale, Stern complicates the supposedly firm distinction between private enterprise and the state, offering a new history of the British Empire, as well as a new history of the corporation.

More info with the publisher.

BOOK: Patrick QUINTON-BROWN, "Intervention before Interventionism: A Global Genealogy" (OUP, 2024)

Source: OUP

Description:

Intervention before Interventionism is about the ways in which statespeople have reordered intervention and non-intervention since the middle of the twentieth century. It is concerned primarily with non-Western contestations of Western-dominated order; it illustrates institutional change in and through decolonization; and it provides a conceptual roadmap for understanding dilemmas of intervention and non-intervention today, particularly in relation to contestation as it has re-emerged in the twenty-first century. While building on and conversing with existing literature, the book stands out from previous approaches insofar as it is a mapping of international struggles for the reconstitution of intervention in the globalization of the society of states.

Table of Contents:

Introduction
1 Reconstituting intervention: Contestation and the Princeton Conference
2 Dictatorial intervention and the UN Charter
3 Anti-colonial intervention and the Bandung Spirit
4 ‘Friendly’ intervention and the Special Committee
5 Emancipatory intervention and the New International Orders
6 Liberal intervention and the Responsibilities to Protect
Epilogue

More info with the publisher.

BOOK: Ryo SAHASHI, Yasuhiro MATSUDA& Waka AOYAMA (eds.), "Asia Rising: A Handbook of History and International Relations in East, South and Southeast Asia" (Springer, 2024)

 

Source: Springer

Description:

This open-access book offers a clear and thorough exploration of Asia's history from an international relations perspective. The book investigates key political, economic, and cultural forces defining Asia. It highlights the historical and current significance of the Indo-Pacific region, particularly shedding light on its strategic role in global geopolitics. Through detailed historical analyses, the authors guide readers toward a comprehensive understanding of Asia's complex international relations, from colonization and imperialism, through the Cold War, into decolonization and the wave of democratization in the region, to the rise of China, unpacking the various dimensions of regionalism in Asia. This book serves as a practical scholarly resource for advanced students, researchers, and lecturers interested in understanding the region's past and its implications for future geopolitical dynamics. It is relevant to historians focused on Asia and to international relations and political science scholars interested in the shift to an Asian world order, from past to present.

More info with Springer.

COLLOQUIUM: "Génocide. Droit et histoire du crime des crimes", Collège de France (Paris, 13 June 2025)

Source: Collège de France

Description:

Colloque coorganisé par la Pr Samantha Besson, chaire Droit international des institutions et le Pr Henry Laurens, chaire Histoire contemporaine du monde arabe.

Garantie pour la première fois en droit international en 1948 (Convention pour la prévention et la répression du crime de génocide du 9 décembre 1948), l’interdiction du génocide est souvent considérée comme l’interdiction du « crime des crimes ». Contrairement aux autre crimes codifiés à nouveau depuis dans les statuts de tribunaux pénaux internationaux (dont le Statut de Rome de la Cour pénale internationale (CPI) du 17 juillet 1998), le crime de génocide n’a jamais varié dans sa formulation. En comparaison, il a aussi été peu invoqué et, dès lors, peu interprété dans la jurisprudence, que ce soit par les tribunaux pénaux nationaux ou les tribunaux pénaux internationaux ad hoc ou permanents comme la CPI. Certains en ont déduit une force normative parmi les plus élevées en droit international, une valeur de reconnaissance historique des crimes commis et, c’est lié, un rôle avant tout préventif. Depuis une quinzaine d’années, toutefois, une évolution se fait sentir. La violation de l’obligation qu’ont les États de prévenir le génocide est invoquée de manière de plus en plus fréquente en pratique. C’est ainsi que, dès 2007, la jurisprudence de la Cour internationale de justice (CIJ) s’est étoffée autour de l’obligation de prévention du génocide. Actuellement la clause de compétence de l’art. IX de la Convention de 1948 est au fondement de pas moins de quatre procédures contentieuses contre des États devant la CIJ.

Face à cette évolution rapide de la pratique internationale, un bilan juridique s’impose. Étant donné la place centrale donnée à divers titres à l’histoire au sein du raisonnement juridique en matière de génocide, il est intéressant d’y procéder en dialogue avec les historiens. La Convention de 1948 y invite d’ailleurs les juristes, reconnaissant dans son préambule « qu’à toutes les périodes de l’histoire le génocide a infligé de grandes pertes à l’humanité ». L’intérêt d’un tel bilan vaut aussi en histoire. La question se pose en effet de l’application du concept (juridique) de génocide aux réalités mouvantes de l’histoire, en particulier à un moment où de larges pans du passé sont vécus comme appartenant toujours à notre présent. Il ne s’agit pas de nier l’existence d’exterminations de masses, mais de déterminer si le concept de génocide apporte un élément supplémentaire de compréhension aux processus étudiés.

Durant cette journée de rencontre, juristes et historiens, spécialistes du génocide, noueront un dialogue, nous l’espérons, fructueux. Leurs débats seront articulés autour de quatre questions : 1) Interdiction du génocide : des violences et « légendes noires » au crime de droit coutumier ; 2) Auteurs de génocide : individuels, collectifs et/ou institutionnels ; 3) Conditions du génocide : intentions et/ou processus génocidaires ; et 4) Justice et vérité du génocide : « passé qui ne passe pas » et « assassins de la mémoire ». Le traitement de ces questions sera bien entendu l’occasion de revenir sur différents cas de génocide dans l’histoire, y compris dans l’histoire du droit international.

Intervenantes et intervenants : Monique Chemillier-Gendreau (université Paris Cité) ; Christian Ingrao (CESPRA, École des hautes études en sciences sociales/CNRS) ; Mark Levene (université de Southampton) ; Rafaëlle Maison (IEDP, université Paris-Saclay) ; Jean-Clément Martin (IHMC, université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) ; Guénaël Mettraux (Chambres spécialisées pour le Kosovo, La Haye & Dickinson Law School, université d’État de Pennsylvanie) ; Henry Rousso (IHTP, CNRS) ; William Schabas (université de Middlesex, Londres).

More info with CdF.

LECTURE SERIES: "Histoires et mémoires des Africains Européens de l’Antiquité à nos jours", Cycle Europe du Collège de France (Paris, November 2024)

Source: Collège de France

Description:

Ce cycle de quatre conférences aura pour but d’explorer les histoires et les expériences des personnes d’ascendance africaine afin de comprendre de quelle manière leurs trajectoires sont intimement liées à l’histoire de l’Europe. On s’attellera à examiner les changements liés aux perceptions et aux représentations des personnes d’ascendance africaine au fil des siècles. Un regard critique sera ensuite porté sur la manière dont leurs histoires ont été concentrées sur la période coloniale (XVe-XIXe siècle) et la manière dont le préjugé de couleur est devenu central dans la notion de race. Ces communautés, souvent perçues comme victimes, ont réussi à émerger des traumas au travers de diverses pratiques mémorielles qui seront examinées. La question des héritages du passé pour le présent sera également abordée, notamment autour des enjeux mémoriels, des réparations et du corps comme lieu de lutte politique mais aussi comme outil de guérison du trauma.

For the full program, click here.

BOOK: Lyndsay CAMPBELL & Shaunnagh DORSETT, "Legal Histories of Empire: Navigating Legalities" (Taylor & Francis, 2024)

Source: Taylor & Francis

Description:

This collection brings together an international group of scholars in order to provide new insights into the diversity of imperial legalities.

Across empires, legalities were produced not just – or even – through the imperial imposition of laws and legal forms, but through local processes of negotiation and contestation. Far from the metropoles, local actors found ways to creatively navigate and subvert imperial frameworks and laws and to create space in which to shape new legalities, responsive to local circumstance and need. Covering topics as diverse as smuggling in eighteenth century Jersey, the criminalisation of female market women in World War II-era southern Nigeria, and whiteness and race in ‘sexual perversion’ cases in twentieth-century Malaya, the collection elaborates new legal histories of empire. Drawing from Britain, Ireland, Australia, Canada, the USA, India, Sri Lanka, Africa and Malaysia, the collection brings together chapters that examine the stories of the peoples of empires and shows how they constituted, experienced, navigated and subverted the legal complexities of living under empire.

This book will be of interest to scholars and researchers in law and history, but also to those with relevant interests in post-colonial and cultural studies, as well as in criminology and sociology.

More info and table of contents with the publisher.