International Law as a Political Language, 1600–1859

Author(s):  
Walter Rech

By illustrating the history of Italian international law from the early seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century, this chapter explores the question of whether and to what extent this period may have been characterized by a genuinely Italian ‘tradition’ or approach to international legal issues. The chapter questions the notion of a monolithic Italian tradition in international law and shows that the commonality of topics and interests among Italian lawyers can best be read as part of broader trends in the European ‘law of nations’. Although they were concerned with nationally important matters such as maritime trade, the sovereignty of smaller polities and the relationship between State and church, Italian lawyers constantly defended their claims by resorting to the common European vocabulary of the ius naturae and ius gentium.

Author(s):  
Fernando Pérez Godoy

Abstract This study is part of the current trend of expanding ‘histories of international law’. From a regional perspective, I analyse not just the South American dimension of the process known as the ‘universalization of international law science’, but also focus on the ‘ideological use’ of ius gentium europaeum in the debate on the occupation of indigenous territories governing by the nation Mapuche in the south of Chile (1861–1883) and then the discussion on the legitimacy of the Saltpeter War between Chile and the Bolivian-Peruvian Alliance (1879–1884). I argue that the Chilean national legal discourse applied a core argument of nineteenth-century international law to legitimize its foreign policy in those conflicts: ‘the standard of civilization’. Thus, it is possible to speak about a domestic recreation of imperial logic as part of the globalization of the European law of nations in the nineteenth century.


Author(s):  
Bethânia De Albuquerque Assy ◽  
Florian Fabian Hoffman

Resumo: A resposta da Escola de Salamanca à crise cognitiva gerada pelo encontro entre europeus e ameríndios no século XVI tem se convertido em um dos momentos mais referenciados na historiografia colonial devido ao papel que desempenhou na formação do direito internacional (europeu). Embora a posição tradicional sobre o uso dos direitos naturais da Escola para enquadrar o relacionamento com os ameríndios tenha mitigado a universalidade colonizadora do incipiente ius gentium (europeu), (re)leituras post/descoloniais mais recentes expuseram esse movimento como uma mera estratégia para a subjugação epistêmica dos ameríndios. No entanto, de acordo com suas premissas historicistas, ambas as posições se concentraram no impacto da doutrina de Salamanca sobre a história europeia das ideias e deixaram (relativamente) sub-explorado seu significado como resposta à experiência de alteridade radical em relação ao encontro ameríndio. O recurso a linguagem de direitos dos salamanquianos também pode ser visto como uma maneira de lidar com o desafio perspectivista fundamental que a “razão” culturalmente diferente, ainda que epistemologicamente equivalente, dos ameríndios representou. A sua “solução” de um jusnaturalismo pluricultural historicamente concretizado não era inteiramente coerente nem livre do eurocentrismo. Mas sua gênese contrafactual por meio de uma combinação de realismo universalista escolástico tardio e de multinaturalismo indígena mostra que o encontro ameríndio era intelectualmente muito menos unilateral do que a recepção europeia histórica reconheceria. No entanto, essa abordagem exige não apenas uma virada (sutil) para uma perspectiva etnográfica, mas também uma reconstrução antropológica radical da historiografia do início da era moderna do direito internacional.Abstract: The School of Salamanca’s response to the cognitive crisis which the encounter between Europeans and Amerindians in the sixteenth century generated has become one of the most referenced moments in colonial historiography for the role it played in the formation of (European) international law. While the traditional position on the School’s use of natural rights to frame the relationship with Amerindians argued that it thereby sought to mitigate the colonizing universality of the incipient (European) ius gentium, more recent post/decolonial (re-)readings have exposed this move as a mere strategy for the epistemic subjugation of Amerindia. However, in line with their historicist premises, both positions have focussed on the impact of Salamancan thought on the European history of ideas and have left its significance as a response to the experience of radical alterity vis-à-vis the Amerindian encounte (relatively) underexplored. For the Salamancan’s resort to rights language can also be seen as a way to grapple with the fundamental perspectivist challenge that the culturally different yet epistemically equivalent ‘reason’ of the Amerindians represented. Their “solution” of a historically concretized pluricultural jusnaturalism was neither entirely coherent nor free from Eurocentrism, but its counterfactual genesis through a combination of late scholastic universalist realism and Amerindian multinaturalism shows that the Amerindian encounter was intellectually much less one-sided than its European reception history would acknowledge. Yet, this approach requires not only a (subtle) shift towards an ethnographic perspective but also a (radically) anthropological reconstruction of the historiography of early modern international law.


Author(s):  
Susan Longfield Karr

For humanist sixteenth-century jurists such as Guillaume Budé, Ulrich Zasius, Andrea Alciati the ‘rule of law’ was central. In response to the use of law and legal theory to legitimize arbitrary forms of authority, they called for substantive reforms in legal education and practice, which could alleviate the dangers of masking the arbitrary will of rulers with the language of security, utility, and the common good. By focusing on fundamental categories such as ius, natural law, and ius gentium they effectively argued for a universal ‘rule of law’ that could hold political and legal authorities to a higher criterion of justice. In so doing, they redefined fundamental legal categories, ideas, and terms that continue to underpin and structure modern understandings of universal jurisprudence and international law to this day.


Grotiana ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-44
Author(s):  
Francesca Iurlaro

This article tackles the issue of whether and how Hugo Grotius conceives of custom as a formal source of the law of nations. The main claim of it is that not only custom plays a fundamental role in Grotius’s thought, but that his reflections mark a fundamental turning point for the history of customary international law. A crucial role in this process of re-conceptualization is played by Grotius’s reading of Dio Chrysostom, whose oration On custom provides him with an integrated account of custom as a ‘normative practice’ based on rhetorical judgment (as opposed to the Scholastic interpretation of custom as reiteration of voluntary acts). Consequently, I argue that Dio Chrysostom’s text helps Grotius to transpose the question of the normative legitimacy of custom from a moral to an interpretative level. To conclude, I will show that Grotius adopts two different rhetorical strategies to prove the existence of customary norms of ius gentium.


Veiled Power ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 15-27
Author(s):  
Doreen Lustig

During the latter part of the nineteenth century, international lawyers begin to conceive themselves as part of a modern discipline of law. This chapter returns to the debate over the legitimacy of the operation of chartered companies in Africa during this period. The dissolution of the charters towards the end of the century was reflected in the suspension of the debate over companies in international legal commentaries for almost a century. The silence following international lawyers’ active critique over the chartered companies could be conceived as a testament to the irrelevance of international legal ideas, institutions, and practices to the history of private business corporations in colonial and other global settings. This chapter argues against such an interpretation and unravels the relevance of international law to economic actors by analysing this episode from the vantage point of the Royal Niger Company operations in Africa. I argue that the dissolution of the charters did not represent a failure, as previously thought, but rather a multifaceted transformation through which the relationship between economic agents and governmental agents was renegotiated. Further, I assert that while material conditions are crucial to understanding the chronicle of the Charter’s dissolution, international law is pivotal to unraveling the contours of the alliance that replaced them.


Author(s):  
Paz Reut Yael

This chapter explores the inseparable nature of the relationship between religion—more specifically, Christianity—secularism and international law. As the history of international law itself reveals, its inauguration as a liberal profession depended on a group of men who shared a particular universal intuition and cultural agenda that mirrored their western Christian European and cosmopolitan backgrounds at the end of the nineteenth century. Thus, the chapter scrutinizes the Catholic School of Salamanca as a case study that mirrors how Christianity—Catholic missionarism more accurately — became an integral part of international law to date, focusing on how and why the Salamancans’ specific re-configuration of the public/private has become a resilient and persistent formula to this day.


Author(s):  
Henning Grosse Ruse-Khan

This chapter looks at how rule-relations within the international intellectual property (IP) system have developed from continuity (in constantly raising minimum standards) to resilience (against certain forms of increasing protection). It considers the evolution of the international IP system from the nineteenth century onwards, examining how each succeeding changes and additions to the system had established a relationship of continuity which integrates existing standards and adds new ones. The chapter then turns to the emergence of another revolutionary change. The integral nature of the common goals established in TRIPS’ object and purpose creates a form of ‘resilience’ of the multilateral system over attempts for inter-se modifications. Moreover, international law has appropriate tools so that those charged with applying, implementing, and interpreting multilateral IP norms can give effect to this resilience both in relations of interpretation and relations of conflict.


Author(s):  
Cristina Vatulescu

This chapter approaches police records as a genre that gains from being considered in its relationships with other genres of writing. In particular, we will follow its long-standing relationship to detective fiction, the novel, and biography. Going further, the chapter emphasizes the intermedia character of police records not just in our time but also throughout their existence, indeed from their very origins. This approach opens to a more inclusive media history of police files. We will start with an analysis of the seminal late nineteenth-century French manuals prescribing the writing of a police file, the famous Bertillon-method manuals. We will then track their influence following their adoption nationally and internationally, with particular attention to the politics of their adoption in the colonies. We will also touch briefly on the relationship of early policing to other disciplines, such as anthropology and statistics, before moving to a closer look at its intersections with photography and literature.


1983 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amechi Okolo

This paper traces the history of the relationship between Africa and the West since their first contact brought about by the outward thrust of the West, under the impetus of rising capitalism, in search of cheap labour and cheap raw material for its industries and expanding markets for its industrial products, both of which could be better ensured through domination and exploitation. The paper identifies five successive stages that African political economy has passed through under the impact of this relationship, each phase qualitatively different from the other but all having the common characteristic of domination-dependence syndrome, and each phase having been dictated by the dynamics of capitalism in different eras and by the dominant forces in the changing international system. Its finding is that the way to the latest stage, the dependency phase, was paved by the progressive proletarianization of the African peoples and the maintenance of an international peonage system. It ends by indicating the direction in which Africa can make a beginning to break out of dependency and achieve liberation.


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