JOURNAL: Journal of the History of International Law/Revue d'histoire du droit international XXV (2023), no. 1

 

(image source: Brill)

Allying with Unbelievers: Hugo Grotius’s Letters to East-Indian Rulers (Marc de Wilde) (DOI 10.1163/15718050-bja10080) [OPEN ACCESS]
Abstract:

The article examines a series of letters written by Hugo Grotius to East-Indian rulers on behalf of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Drafts of these letters have been preserved at the Dutch National Archives. In his letters, Grotius developed several new ideas about alliances with non-Christians, which would later be included in his writings on natural law and the law of nations. He addressed the non-Christian rulers of the East Indies as sovereigns. He argued that the Dutch had a right to protect their non-Christian allies, even against other Christians, such as the Spaniards and Portuguese. Crucially, Grotius developed a justification for the VOC’s monopoly on the spice trade, which he defended as a just compensation for the expenses it had incurred in ‘liberating’ its East-Indian allies from Iberian ‘tyranny’. He thereby provided a legal framework for the VOC’s ‘informal empire’ in the East Indies.

 The Person of the State: The Anthropomorphic Subject of the Law of Nations (Adam Strobeyko) (DOI 10.1163/15718050-bja10076)
Abstract:

The analogy between the natural individual and the ‘person’ of the State has played an important role in the development of the law of nations. The early modern theorists of the law of nations have employed various anthropomorphic vocabularies in order to describe the State and to explain the functioning of international legal obligations. This article traces the role of anthropomorphic assumptions about the State in the writings of Hobbes, Pufendorf, Wolff and Vattel. It compares different conceptualizations of personhood of the State and traces the transition towards the view of the State as an autonomous subject of a distinct set of rights and duties under the law of nations. Finally, the article invites the audience in international law to re-examine our disciplinary conceptualizations of the person of the State as the subject of international legal obligations.

Civilising Violence: International Law and Colonial War in the British Empire, 1850–1900 (Christopher Szabla) (DOI 10.1163/15718050-bja10081) [OPEN ACCESS]
Abstract:

What was the relationship between international law and colonial warfare in the period of both increasingly formal imperialism and international law’s professionalisation and codification in the nineteenth-century’s second half? Existing work may lead to assumptions that international law would not be seen to apply to colonial wars, or served to justify them alone. This article turns away from previous focuses on the intellectual history of international law, prescriptive sources such as military manuals, and approaches extending from criminal law and colonial policing to demonstrate how and why imperial officials, politicians, and activists believed international law applied to colonial wars. Examining the British Empire, it shows how arguments about the use of international law in this period initially varied in the service of imperial interests, how and why public activism increasingly encouraged a more consistent approach – and discusses implications for the history and present of the law of armed conflict.

German Idealism after Kant: Nineteenth-Century Foundations of International Law (Robert Schütze) (DOI  10.1163/15718050-bja10078) [OPEN ACCESS]
Abstract:

What are the legal principles of German idealism in the long nineteenth century; and what conception(s) of international law do they offer? Opposing Kantian rationalism and its formalist law, two idealist reactions do emerge in the early decades of the nineteenth century. The first is offered by Hegel whose conception of state law will make him the principal representative of the future deniers of an objective international law. The second reaction comes from the German Historical School, whose moral and legal understanding of the people(s) does – on the contrary – develop a positive conception of international law based on a ‘society’ of nations. How, and to what extent, were these two idealistic approaches reflected in the international law textbooks of the age? This article investigates this question and finds that it is unquestionably the Historical School that came to dominate international law thinking in the long nineteenth century – and that not just in Germany but also in Italy and Great Britain. The nineteenth century is thus decidedly, under the influence of Savigny and the Historical School, a metaphysical century centred on an intrinsic connection between morality and law.

Book review symposium on Martti Koskenniemi, To the Uttermost Parts of the Earth

• ‘Commerce, Capitalism and the Law of Nations’ (Koen Stapelbroek)
• ‘The Struggle between Statehood and Civil Society’ (Jennifer Pitts)
• 'Theology and the Justification of Sovereignty and Property’ (Wim Decock)

Read all on Brill's website.