ESIL Interest Group History of International Law

ESIL Interest Group History of International Law

Thursday 16 March 2017

BOOK: Dejanirah COUTO & Stéphane PÉQUIGNOT (dir.), Les langues de la négociation. Approches historiennes [Histoire]. Rennes: PURennes, 2017, 288 p. ISBN 9782753553170, € 24

(image source: PUR)

The Presses universitaires de Rennes published Les langues de la négociation. Approches historiennes, edited by Dejanirah Couto and Stéphane Péquignot.

Book abstract:
Ce livre propose une enquête historique et exploratoire sur les enjeux, les usages et les conflits linguistiques liés aux négociations du Moyen Âge à l’époque moderne. Centré sur la diplomatie et le commerce, sur des moments de rupture, il réunit un ensemble d’études relatives à des négociations menées en Europe et autour de la Méditerranée, avec une ouverture comparative.

Table of contents:

  • Prendre langue(s) (Stéphane Péquignot)
  • "« Une diplomatie sans langue ? » La question des échanges linguistiques dans la diplomatie médio-byzantine" (Nicolas Drocourt)
  • "Les usages linguistiques dans les relations entre Almohades et Pisans (début XIIIe siècle)" (Pascal Buresi, Travis Bruce & Mehdi Ghouirgate)
  • "Aspects linguistiques de la diplomatie sicilienne au XIIIe siècle (1220-1290)" (Gian Luca Borghese & Benoît Grévin)
  • "Les langues des négociations au XVe siècle. L’exemple de Barcelone" (Stéphane Péquignot)
  • "« E perché costui è uxo di qua e intende bene la lingua » Remarques sur la communication entre marchands au bas Moyen Âge" (Maria Elisa Soldani)
  • « Traduttore, traditore » Vicissitudes linguistiques d’une ambassade portugaise dans les deltas du Gange et de l’Irraouaddy (1521) (Dejanirah Couto)
  • "Les problèmes de communication aux congrès internationaux De Westphalie à Ryswick (1643-1697)" (Guido Braun)
  • "Comment « parler français » aux « despotes » de l’Europe ? La question des normes du langage diplomatique à l’époque révolutionnaire" (Marc Bélissa)
  • "Connaissez-vous la théorie de la langue-soleil ? Une histoire européenne du fantasme scientifique dans la Turquie des années 1930" (Emmanuel Szurek)
  • "Conclusions" (Jean-Claude Waquet)
On the editors:
Dejanirah Couto est maître de conférences habilité à l’École pratique des hautes études. Ses recherches portent sur l’empire portugais et ses relations avec les pouvoirs politiques asiatiques (principalement les empires musulmans) à l’âge moderne.
Stéphane Péquignot est maître de conférences à l’École pratique des hautes études. Ses recherches portent sur la diplomatie et les pratiques de négociation au Moyen Âge, ainsi que sur la couronne d’Aragon et le royaume de Majorque.

More information on the PUR website.


JOURNAL: Journal of the History of International Law / Revue d'histoire du droit international XIX (2017), No. 1

(image source: Brill)

Brill announced the publication of the first issue of the 2017 volume of the Journal of the History of International Law.

Articles:
"The Forgotten Genocide in Colonial America: Reexamining the 1622 Jamestown Massacre within the Framework of the UN Genocide Convention" (John T. Bennett)
"Imperial Colonialism in the Genesis of International Law – Anomaly or Time of Transition?" (Paulina Starski & Jörn Axel Kämmerer)
"Piracy and Empire: The Campaign against Piracy, the Development of International Law and the British Imperial Mission" (Michael Mulligan)
"Beyond the Myth of a Non-relationship: International Law and World War I" (Oliver Diggelmann)

Book reviews:
"Imperial Justice: Africans in Empire’s Court , written by Bonny Ibhawoh" (Evelyn Mogere)
"Formalizing Displacement: International Law and Population Transfers , written by Umut Özsu" (Alain Zamaria)

More information on Brill's website.

Tuesday 14 March 2017

BOOK: C.H. ALEXANDROWICZ (ed. David ARMITAGE & Jennifer PITTS), The Law of Nations in Global History. Oxford: OUP, 2017, 464 p. ISBN 9780198766070, £ 80

(image source: OUP)

Oxford University Press publishes an edition of the work of C.H. Alexandrowicz, edited by David Armitage and Jennifer Pitts (The Law of Nations in Global History).

Book summary: 
The history and theory of international law have been transformed in recent years by post-colonial and post-imperial critiques of the universalistic claims of Western international law. The origins of those critiques lie in the often overlooked work of the remarkable Polish-British lawyer-historian C. H. Alexandrowicz (1902-75). This volume collects Alexandrowicz's shorter historical writings, on subjects from the law of nations in pre-colonial India to the New International Economic Order of the 1970s, and presents them as a challenging portrait of early modern and modern world history seen through the lens of the law of nations. The book includes the first complete bibliography of Alexandrowicz's writings and the first biographical and critical introduction to his life and works. It reveals the formative influence of his Polish roots and early work on canon law for his later scholarship undertaken in Madras (1951-61) and Sydney (1961-67) and the development of his thought regarding sovereignty, statehood, self-determination, and legal personality, among many other topics still of urgent interest to international lawyers, political theorists, and global historians.

Table of contents:
1: 'This Modern Grotius': An Introduction to the Life and Thought of C.H. Alexandrowicz, David Armitage and Jennifer Pitts
PART ONE: THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE LAW OF NATIONS
2: Kautilyan Principles and the Law of Nations (1965-66)
3: Paulus Vladimiri and the Development of the Doctrine of the Coexistence of Christian and Non-Christian Countries (1963)
4: Mogul Sovereignty and the Law of Nations (1955)
PART TWO: ASIA AND THE LAW OF NATIONS
5: 'Jus Gentium' and the Law of Nature in Asia (1956)
6: Some Problems in the History of the Law of Nations in Asia (1963)
7: Le Droit des Nations aux Indes Orientales: Aux XVIe, XVIIe, XVIIIe siècles (1964)
8: Grotius and India (1954)
9: Freitas Versus Grotius (1959)
10: The Discriminatory Clause in South Asian Treaties in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (1957)
11: A Persian-Dutch Treaty in the Seventeenth Century (1958)
12: Puffendorf-Crull and the Afro-Asian World (1968-69)
13: A Treatise by J. H. G. Justi on Asian Government (1960-61)
14: Doctrinal Aspects of the Universality of the Law of Nations (1961)
15: G. F. de Martens on Asian Treaty Practice (1964)
16: The Continuity of the Sovereign Status of China in International Law (1956)
17: The Legal Position of Tibet (1954)
18: Is India a Federation? (1954)
PART THREE: AFRICA AND THE LAW OF NATIONS
19: Le Rôle des Traités dans les Relations entre les Puissances Européennes et les Souverains Africains (Aspects historiques) (1970)
20: The Partition of Africa by Treaty (1974)
21: The Role of Treaties in the European-African Confrontation in the Nineteenth Century (1975)
22: The Role of German Treaty Making in the Partition of Africa (1980)
23: The Juridical Expression of the Sacred Trust of Civilization (1971)
PART FOUR: THE RECOGNITION OF NEW STATES IN INTERNATIONAL LAW
24: Empirical and Doctrinal Positivism in International Law (1974-75)
25: The Theory of Recognition in Fieri (1958)
26: The Quasi-Judicial Function in the Recognition of States and Governments (1952)
27: Israel in Fieri (1951)
28: New and Original States: The Issue of Reversion to Sovereignty (1969)
29: The New States and International Law (1974)
30: The Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States (1975)
Bibliography of the Writings of C. H. Alexandrowicz
On the author and the editors:
Charles Henry Alexandrowicz (1902-1975) was a Polish scholar who pioneered research in the critical history of international law in the 1950s and 1960s. His works included World Economic Agencies, Law and Practice (1962); An Introduction to the History of the Law of Nations in the East Indies (1967); The Law of Global Communications (1971); and The Law-Making Functions of the Specialised Agencies of the United Nations (1973).
David Armitage is the Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History at Harvard University, where he teaches intellectual and international history. He is also an Affiliated Faculty member at Harvard Law School and an Affiliated Professor in Harvard's Department of Government. Among his publications are The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (2000), The Declaration of Independence: A Global History (2007), Foundations of Modern International Thought (2013), The History Manifesto (co-auth., 2014), and Civil Wars: A History in Ideas (2017).
Jennifer Pitts is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. She is author of A Turn to Empire: the rise of imperial liberalism in Britain and France (2005) and editor and translator of Alexis de Tocqueville: writings on empire and slavery (2001). She is currently completing a book,Boundaries of the International, that explores European debates over legal relations with extra-European societies during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 
More information with OUP

Friday 10 March 2017

CONFERENCE: Training, ideas and practice. The Law of Nations in the Long Eighteenth Century (Paris, 18/19 May 2017)

COLLOQUE JUNIOR CIERA - Training, Ideas and Practice
The Law of Nations in the Long Eighteenth Century



Day 1: 18 May 2017 (Maison de la Recherche/CIERA)

12:45
Welcoming

13:20
Keynote lecture by Luigi Nuzzo (Università del Salento)

14:00
Session 1: Training (president: Luigi Nuzzo - Università del Salento)

Zülâl Muslu (Université Paris Ouest Nanterre), Language and Power: the Spread of European Diplomatic Cuture in the Ottoman Empire through the Ecole de jeunes de langues 

Dante Fedele (KULeuven), La formation diplomatique dans la littérature sur l’ambassadeur et l’art de négocier (fin XVIIe-début XVIIIe siècle)  

Annika Haß (Université de la Sarre/EPHE), Librairie internationale et diplomatie (1789-1830)  

Raphael Cahen (VUB/FWO), Hauterive et l’École des diplomates

17:10-17:20
Coffee Break

17:20-18 :50  Session 2 : Circulation of Ideas and Diplomatic Networks (president: Christine Lebeau) 
Benjamin Durst (Universität Augsburg), Gedruckte Vertragssammlungen als Medien des Völkerrechts in Theorie und Praxis  

Stephan F. Mai (Universität Wien), Diplomatic Immunity between Theory and Practice: Abraham de Wicquefort (1606-1682) as a Case Study 

19:30  Conference dinner (presenters only)  

Day 2: 19 May 2017 (Fondation Biermans-Lapôtre/CIUP)

08:00-08:30
Welcome and coffee


08:30-10:00 Session 2 (part 2): Circulation of Ideas and Diplomatic Networks (president: Christine Lebeau, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne)  Frederik Dhondt (VUB/UAntwerpen/UGent-FWO), A Pragmatic Utopian ? Saint-Pierre’s vision on Perpetual Peace and its Practical Legal Background in Regency Diplomacy  
Alice 
Bairoch de Sainte-Marie (Université de Genève), La conception des devoirs du négociateur en Nouvelle-France: heritage métropolitain ou cas particulier ? 


10 :00-10 :10
  Coffee Break 


10 :10-13 :20
  Session 3 : Transformation of the Law of Nations (president: Miloš Vec, Universität Wien/IWM)  Patrick Milton (Freie Universität Berlin), The Guarantee of the Peace of Westphalia in the Law of Nations and its Impact on European Diplomacy  
Elisabetta Fiocchi Malaspina (Universität 
Zürich): Trans-forming the Law of Nations in Diplomacy: the Case of the 18th Century Italian Peninsula  
Omer 
Duran (Istanbul University): The Legal Status of the ‘Memleketeyn’ (Wallachia and Molodvia) according to the Ottoman-Islamic Law of Nations  Victor Simon (Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne): La dignité impériale des rois de France en Orient: titulatures et traductions dans la diplomatie franco-ottomane



13:20-14:30
Lunch

14:30-15:15  Final debate - Conclusion
(
Miloš Vec-Universität Wien/IWM)


Organising Committee

Raphael Cahen (Orléans/VUB-FWO)

Frederik Dhondt (VUB/UAntwerpen/UGent-FWO)

Elisabetta Fiocchi Malaspina (Zürich)

Scientific Committee
Jacques Bouineau (Université de La Rochelle)
Paul De Hert (VUB)
Dirk Heirbaut (UGent)
Christine Lebeau (Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne)
Gabriella Silvestrini (Università del Piemonte Orientale)
Matthias Schmoeckel (Universität Bonn)
Antonio Trampus (Università di Venezia)
Miloš Vec (Universität Wien/IWM)

Venue  Day 1: Maison de la Recherche (28, Rue Serpente ; 75006 PARIS)  Day 2 : Fondation Biermans-Lapôtre (9A, Boulevard Jourdan ; 75014 PARIS) 



Sunday 5 March 2017

DIGITIZED SOURCES: The French Foreign Affairs Library on Gallica



The Library and Archives of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs count among the most famous and precious on earth. Besides the evident political or cultural information on the relationship between France and the rest of the world, many documents of an indirectly or directly relevant legal nature are kept in the Ministry's dépôts in either La Courneuve or Angers (consular archives).

In 2010 and 2011, the Ministry signed a cooperation agreement with Gallica, the Bibliothèque nationale de France's praised and omnipresent digital library. Within this framework, 312 "livres jaunes" have been scanned, ranging from 1799 to 1947. These series contains reports on French foreign policy to parliament and French or foreign leaders.

This only adds to the importance of Gallica as a source for historians of international law. Many standard manuals on public international law, but also journals (Revue de droit étranger, Revue de droit international et de législation comparée, Revue d'histoire diplomatique) are available in fulltext, for free, from anywhere in the word. A precious resource in a time of predatory pricing for commercial databases.

Friday 3 March 2017

BOOK: ONUMA Yasuaki, International Law in a Transcivilizational World. Cambridge: CUP, 2017, forthcoming. ISBN 9781139175951

(image source: Cambridge UP)

Professor ONUMA Yasuaki (University of Tokyo) publishes International Law in a Transcivilizational World with Cambridge University Press.

Book abstract:
With the resurgence of Asian nations such as China, current West-centric international law is changing in the twenty-first century. There is a pressing need to address these changes within international legal studies and overcome potential conflicts between existing and emerging powers. This structural transformation also demands a change in understanding of existing ideas and institutions. This book explores a 'trans-civilizational' approach to international law, supplementing and modifying two other prevalent perspectives: international and transnational. By considering these three layered viewpoints, this book highlights the complex phenomena surrounding the history and development of international law. The author also considers how international law operates and functions within diverse forums such as diplomatic negotiation, international organizations, and domestic political processes. This book will appeal to international law scholars and students, as well as those interested in the rise of non-Western powers and its impact on the prevalent ideas and institutions of the world.
More information on the Cambridge University Press website.