Historiographies of International Law from a Chinese Perspective

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Adele Carrai
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
World Order ◽  
Global History ◽  
Global Power ◽  
Chinese Perspective ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Chinese Scholars ◽  
History Of International Law ◽  
Selection Of

One objective of the emerging global history of international law is to broaden its scope in an attempt to overcome Eurocentrism. In this context, China, not only as an emerging global power that can influence the creation of the normative principles grounding the future world order, but also with its history of international law, offers a counter-teleology to the classic progress narrative of international law understood as a science. This article presents a critical summary and analysis of the approaches of a selection of Chinese scholars to the history of international law. The current debates seem to be closely linked to a new conception of modernity that does not correspond with the Western conception. The Chinese perspective, in this sense, can help broaden the history of international law, especially when that history claims to be global.

The Law of Nations in Global History

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. H. Alexandrowicz
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Global History ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Law ◽  
History Of International Law ◽  
Regional Histories ◽  
International Rule

In recent years there has been a growing awareness of the need to write a global history of law of nations that disengages from parochial national and regional histories. It is hoped that these developments will bring centre-stage the work of Charles Henry Alexandrowicz (1902–75), a scholar who was among the first to conceptualize the history of international law as that of intersecting histories of different regions of the world. Alexandrowicz was aware that, while the idea of writing a global history of law of nations is liberating, there is no guarantee that it will not become the handmaiden of contemporary and future imperial projects. What were needed were critical global histories that provincialize established Eurocentric historiographies and read them alongside other regional histories. This book aims to make Alexandrowicz’s writings more widely available and read. The Introduction to this book sums up the context, issues, problems, and questions that engaged Alexandrowicz, as well as some of his central theses. His writings are a gold mine waiting to be explored. Alexandrowicz contributed to the effort of promoting the idea of international rule of law by rejecting a Eurocentric history and theory of international law.

Recent research in the history of international law

2016 ◽  
Vol 84 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 313-334
Author(s):  
Frederik Dhondt
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
International Law ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Global History ◽  
Intercultural Awareness ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Legal Thinking ◽  
History Of International Law ◽  
Interdisciplinary Scholarship

This review article treats the booming scholarship on the history of international law over the past decade. Works with a broader view (1), including the recent big-book syntheses and collective works, are contrasted with monographs (2), from studies of treaties and doctrine, over diplomatic practice to scholarship by historians and, finally, interdisciplinary scholarship. This texts provides a personal panorama of the wide array of scholarly perspectives on a common object: rules recognised in the community or society of states. New insights from history and social sciences, especially the turn to global history, open fresh prospects for ‘traditional’ legal historical research. Studying the encounter between ‘European’ international law and other continents rises our indispensable intercultural awareness. Yet, it should also serve to better understand the specificity of European legal thinking or diplomatic practice, and does not render research on the latter obsolete or redundant.


Pirate Passages in Global History

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Benton
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
European Perspective ◽  
Global History ◽  
New Approaches ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
Global Patterns ◽  
History Of International Law

This Afterword describes some limitations of conceptual histories of piracy and critiques the field’s enduring emphasis on pirates as hostes humani generis, enemies of all mankind. The volume’s chapters show a wide range of representations of pirates and move beyond the idea of a single or uniquely European perspective on piracy that can be compared or contrasted with other approaches. The Afterword summarizes key insights from the chapters and sketches several promising trajectories in research on piracy, including studies of global patterns of maritime violence, analyses of the spatial and political contexts of piracy, and new approaches to piracy in the history of international law.

‘This Modern Grotius’

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. H. Alexandrowicz
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
International Order ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Global History ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of International Law ◽  
Global Affairs ◽  
European Thought

This introductory chapter discusses the life and work of Polish–British scholar and lawyer, Charles Henry Alexandrowicz (1902–75). Alexandrowicz pioneered the historical study of international law in its extra-European contexts, a vein of research that is fundamental to the history of international law and to global history more generally. Unlike contemporary scholars who assume that international law was an exclusively European phenomenon, or those who find only Eurocentrism in various forms in the history of European thought on international and global affairs, Alexandrowicz recognized international law’s complicity with European imperial expansion and sought to find in history resources for a more egalitarian and less Eurocentric international order.

scholarly journals The Politics of History in the Late Qing Era: William A. P. Martin and a History of International Law for China

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 269-305
Author(s):  
Maria Adele Carrai
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Ancient China ◽  
Christian Mission ◽  
Late Qing ◽  
The Qing Dynasty ◽  
Politics Of History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Chinese Scholars ◽  
History Of International Law ◽  
The One

Abstract In the light of 19th-century attempts to universalize history and international law, the purpose of this article is to show how the theory of an Ancient Chinese international law matured and disseminated within one politics of history and helped generate another at the end of the Qing Dynasty. On the one hand, the middleman William Alexander Parsons Martin, who as part of his Christian mission and in order to make international law more acceptable to the Chinese, translated systematically international law into Chinese and attempted to universalize it by finding a proto-international law in Ancient China. On the other hand, Chinese scholars and officials sought to use Martin’s theory to universalize Confucianism and rectify international law according to what they believed to be their own superior morality and history.

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