Improvisations on a Semicolonial Theme, or, How to Read a Celebration of Transnational Urban Community

2000 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 889-926 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryna Goodman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
Urban Community ◽  
Colonial Modernity ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Foreign Presence ◽  
Over Time

Semicolonialism, as jürgen osterhammel noted, is a label that has been generally applied to China “without much regard for its potential theoretical implications” (Osterhammel 1986, 296). The partial character of semicolonialism—as incomplete colonialism—poses the question of what difference it made that throughout the modern period China never in fact became a subject nation, but retained sovereignty over nearly all of its territory and was recognized as a sovereign nation by international law. The writings of twentieth-century Chinese nationalists and a recent profusion of theorizing about colonialism and “colonial modernity” in China, by emphasizing colonialism (Barlow 1997), have perhaps obscured rather than clarified the answer to this question. Moreover, semicolonialism in China, as a gradual accretion of phenomena associated with imperialism, varied substantially over time. Its significance for understanding nineteenth-century China, when the foreign presence within China was still quite limited, remains unclear. Several decades of research on imperialism in Shanghai have produced much debate, but no clear mapping of“where, when, howand to whateffectdidwhichextraneous forces impinge” on Chinese life (Osterhammel 1986, 295).

Introduction

Veiled Power ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Doreen Lustig
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Private Business ◽  
Business Corporation ◽  
Conceptual Analogy ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Corporations have limited responsibilities in international law but enjoy far-reaching rights and privileges. International legal debates often conceive of this issue as a problem of business accountability for human rights violations. Conceptually, the issue of corporations in international law has focused on whether or not they are, or ought to be, recognized as ‘subjects’ of responsibility in international law and on the adequate conceptual analogy to the corporation. The introduction presents an alternative way of thinking about the role of international law and its relevance to the private business corporation. It traces the emergence of the contemporary legal architecture for corporations in international law and shows how modern international law constitutes a framework within which businesses and governments allocate resources and responsibilities—a framework that began to operate as early as the late-nineteenth century and continued throughout the twentieth century.

scholarly journals From Aristocratic to Ordinary: Shifting Modes of Elite Distinction

2020 ◽  
Vol 85 (2) ◽  
pp. 323-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam Friedman ◽  
Aaron Reeves
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Participation ◽  
Birth Cohorts ◽  
Elite Culture ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Over Time

How do elites signal their superior social position via the consumption of culture? We address this question by drawing on 120 years of “recreations” data ( N = 71,393) contained within Who’s Who, a unique catalogue of the British elite. Our results reveal three historical phases of elite cultural distinction: first, a mode of aristocratic practice forged around the leisure possibilities afforded by landed estates, which waned significantly in the late-nineteenth century; second, a highbrow mode dominated by the fine arts, which increased sharply in the early-twentieth century before gently receding in the most recent birth cohorts; and, third, a contemporary mode characterized by the blending of highbrow pursuits with everyday forms of cultural participation, such as spending time with family, friends, and pets. These shifts reveal changes not only in the contents of elite culture but also in the nature of elite distinction, in particular, (1) how the applicability of emulation and (mis)recognition theories has changed over time, and (2) the emergence of a contemporary mode that publicly emphasizes everyday cultural practice (to accentuate ordinariness, authenticity, and cultural connection) while retaining many tastes that continue to be (mis)recognized as legitimate.

Antarctic Archaeology

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Zarankin ◽  
Melisa A. Salerno
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
South Shetland Islands ◽  
Shetland Islands ◽  
The Past ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Dominant Narratives ◽  
Different Characteristics ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Over Time

Antarctica was the last continent to be known. Human encounters with the region acquired different characteristics over time. Within the framework of dominant narratives, the early ‘exploitation’ of the territory was given less attention than late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century ‘exploration’. Nineteenth-century exploitation was especially associated with sealing on the South Shetland Islands. Dominant narratives on the period refer to the captains of sealing vessels, the discovery of geographical features, the volume of resources obtained. However, they do not consider the life of the ordinary sealers who lived and worked on the islands. This chapter aims to show the power of archaeology to shed light on these ‘invisible people’ and their forgotten stories. It holds that archaeology offers a possibility for reimagining the past of Antarctica, calling for a revision of traditional narratives.

scholarly journals Creating the Aboriginal Vagrant

2018 ◽  
Vol 87 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda Nettelbeck
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Aboriginal People ◽  
Colonial Society ◽  
Colonial Governance ◽  
Emergent Discourse ◽  
Over Time

This article considers how shifting programs of Aboriginal protection in nineteenth-century Australia responded to Indigenous mobility as a problem of colonial governance and how they contributed over time to creating an emergent discourse of the Aboriginal “vagrant.” There has been surprisingly little attention to how the legal charge of vagrancy became applied to Indigenous people in colonial Australia before the twentieth century, perhaps because the very notion of the Aboriginal vagrant was subject to ambivalence throughout much of the nineteenth century. When vagrancy laws were first introduced into Australia’s colonies, Aboriginal people were exempt from them as a group not yet subject to the ordinary regulatory codes of colonial society. Bringing them within the protective fold of colonial social order was one of the principal tasks of the office of ‘protection’ that was introduced into three Australian jurisdictions during the late 1830s. As the nineteenth century progressed and Aboriginal people became more susceptible to social order policing, a concept of Indigenous vagrancy hardened into place, and programs of protection became central to its management.

Health as a Social Agent in Ottoman Patronage and Authority

2007 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 147-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miri Shefer Mossensohn
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Medical System ◽  
Social Policies ◽  
Social Agent ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Over Time

AbstractOttoman society and its medical system of the early modern period and the nineteenth-century demonstrate the marriage of medicine and power. I present the view from the imperial center and focus on the aims and wishes of the Ottoman elite and imperial authorities in İstanbul as they were embodied in state activities, such as formal decrees and policies meant to be implemented all over the empire. For the Ottoman elite, medicine was always a significant imperial tool, but it was neither the only tool of control, nor the most important one. The extent to which the Ottoman elite used medicine in its social policies changed over time. A comparison between the Ottoman use and distribution of health and food from the early modern period until the nineteenth century illustrates this point. It was especially during the nineteenth century that medicine was intentionally-and successfully-implemented as a mechanism of control in the Ottoman Empire.

Slavery

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen L. Esquith ◽  
Nicholas D. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Western World ◽  
Moral Reasons ◽  
Moral Significance ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
Moral Economic ◽  
Political Value

The moral, economic and political value of slavery has been hotly disputed by philosophers from ancient times. It was defended as an institution by Plato and Aristotle, but became increasingly subject to attack in the modern period, until its general abolition in the Western world in the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century our belief that slavery is fundamentally unjust has become a benchmark against which moral and political philosophies may be tested. Both utilitarians and contractarian philosophers have argued against slavery in general and the enforceability of slavery contracts more specifically, although for very different moral reasons. Others have argued that only by viewing slavery from the standpoint of the slave can its moral significance be understood.

Anarchy over Law? Towards a Genealogy of Modern War Justifications (1789–1918)

2021 ◽  
pp. 147-166
Author(s):  
Hendrik Simon
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Order ◽  
Mirror Image ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of International Law ◽  
Modern War

Hendrik Simon follows up on Anuschka Tischer’s analysis of European justifications of war. He turns to transformation of this discourse’s vocabulary in the context of the nineteenth century: to this day, most textbooks on the history of international law and international relations contain the proposition that European states held a sovereign right to go to war (liberum ius ad bellum) in the nineteenth-century international order. The latter is still understood as an anarchic mirror image of the modern international order, which (supposedly) emerged in the first half of the twentieth century. This assumption is challenged in this chapter: by outlining a genealogy of modern war justifications, starting with the French Revolutionary Wars, Hendrik Simon seeks to deconstruct liberum ius ad bellum as a myth which emanated from the realist and liberal narratives of the emergence of the modern international order. The fundamental argument is that the ‘long’ nineteenth century is not the anarchic converse of the modern discourse on war and international order—but its epoch of birth.

scholarly journals From Contract to Status: A Comment on Nico Krisch’s The Decay of Consent

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 108 ◽  
pp. 8-9
Author(s):  
Tom Ginsburg
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
International Law ◽  
Security Council ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
World War ◽  
Main Mode ◽  
Formal Equality ◽  
Over Time

In the mid-nineteenth century, the great anthropologist Henry Sumner Maine observed that legal systems tended to move over time from “status to contract” by which he meant that rights and duties were increasingly determined by consent rather than social or demographic factors. Maine’s thesis might have been applied to international law during the long era of high positivism, in which consent became the dominant principle after the Peace of Westphalia. Formal equality of states meant that formal treaties—”contract”—were the main mode of interaction. Even in the post-World War II era, consent played a major role, in part because the Security Council—the chief vehicle for legal exercise of “status”—was anemic. International organizations served as vehicles for the development of multilateral treaties of increasing scope and depth. Status and power were hidden rather than acknowledged elements of the system.

Sovereignty beyond the West: The End of Classical International Law

2011 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arnulf Becker Lorca
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Community ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
The West ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
Post War

AbstractThe historical processes through which international law became, conceptually, a universal legal order and, geographically, an order with a global scope of validity, are long and complex. These transformations, which began to appear during the second half of the nineteenth century, did not end until post-War-World-II decolonization. This article examines one particular aspect of these transformations: once non-Western states were admitted and begun to participate in the international community, did the rules of international law governing the interaction between Western and non-Western States change? What did it mean for semi-peripheral states to acquire sovereignty? The article argues that during the first decades of the twentieth century, semi-peripheral lawyers realized that sovereignty, so longed-for during the nineteenth century, conferred, under classical international law, much less autonomy and equality than they had anticipated. Moreover, at the turn of the century, the specific challenges faced by semi-peripheral states in their interaction with Western powers shifted, so that classical international law exhausted its power and stopped being useful. The article thus offers, from the perspective of the semi-periphery, an explanation of the shift from classical to modern international law.

Rewriting Histories of the Use of Force

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agatha Verdebout
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Traditional Account ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
State Practice ◽  
History Of

It is commonly taught that the prohibition of the use of force is an achievement of the twentieth century and that beforehand States were free to resort to the arms as they pleased. International law, the story goes, was 'indifferent' to the use of force. 'Reality' as it stems from historical sources, however, appears much more complex. Using tools of history, sociology, anthropology and social psychology, this monograph offers new insights into the history of the prohibition of the use of force in international law. Conducting in-depth analysis of nineteenth century doctrine and State practice, it paves the way for an alternative narrative on the prohibition of force, and seeks to understand the origins of international law's traditional account. In so doing, it also provides a more general reflection on how the discipline writes, rewrites and chooses to remember its own history.

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