CFP: Workshop 'Arguing over Empire: Hugo Grotius, European Expansionism and Slavery' - University of Dundee, 6-7 June 2024 [DEADLINE 31 AUGUST 2023]

(Source: University of Dundee)

Workshop Theme 

The Dutch humanist and jurist Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) is generally regarded as a ‘founding father of modern international law.’ However, he was also one of the early architects of Dutch colonial and imperial rule in the East Indies. Between 1604 and 1615, he served the Dutch East India Company (VOC) as a legal advisor and political lobbyist. In this capacity, he wrote memoranda and policy documents providing legal and political justifications for the Company’s commercial and military activities in monsoon Asia.  In 1604, Grotius was commissioned by the VOC to write a treatise to defend the seizure of a Portuguese vessel off the coast of Johor (present-day Singapore). In his lengthy treatise, currently known as On the Law of Prize and Booty (De iure praedae), he argued that the Portuguese violated the natural rights of the Dutch by preventing them from sailing to the East Indies and engaging in trade with native populations. As judicial recourse was lacking, even a private trading company such as the VOC could wage a ‘just war’ to enforce its natural rights. On the Law of Prize and Booty remained unpublished during Grotius’ lifetime, except for chapter 12, which appeared in 1609 as The Free Sea (Mare liberum), still a key text in international law today.   As VOC spokesperson at the Anglo-Dutch colonial conferences of 1613 and 1615, Grotius explained to the directors of the English East India Company (EIC) that the VOC was legally justified to monopolize the spice trade.  The inhabitants of the Spice Islands benefited from a protection/tribute exchange: by means of spice deliveries, they compensated the VOC for the high costs of providing armed protection against their enemies.  When the EIC directors pointed out that, in fact, the VOC used violence against native populations to impose its monopoly, they were told by Grotius that the natives’ unwillingness to stick to their contractual obligations to the VOC merely demonstrated the latter’s “perfidy,” which required punishment by the VOC.  Grotian thinking about natural law, contracts and just war thus legitimized Dutch expansion overseas and the dispossession of the native.  

Grotius’ On the Law of War and Peace (De iure belli ac pacis, 1625) is a case in point.  Although the author was an exile in Paris by then, he relied on many years of practical experience as a VOC advisor and lobbyist in writing his magnum opus. In On the Law of War and Peace, he elaborates the views presented in The Free Sea by conceptualizing the natural rights to travel and free passage, the rights to settle in uninhabited lands and use natural resources, and the right to free trade between ‘persons at a distance’ --invoked by Europeans to demand access to non-European markets and territories.  Likewise, Grotius defense of unequal alliances and protection/tribute exchanges figure prominently in On the Law of War and Peace.  As the author explains, unequal alliances and treaties can lead to a transfer of sovereignty, by allowing the ‘superior party’ to place garrisons on the territory of the ‘inferior party’.  Obviously, these are all arguments supporting the VOC’s claims-making in the East Indies, both against European competitors and native populations.  On the Law of War and Peace also provides a legal justification of slavery as part of natural law and the law of nations.  In the author’s view, those who are defeated in a just war can be enslaved under the law of nations, while human beings may also ‘voluntarily’ submit to slavery under natural law. Moreover, the children of the enslaved inherit the unfree status of their parents according to On the Law of War and Peace. 

The aim of this two-day workshop is to explore the many connections between Grotius’ thinking about natural law and the law of nations and his full-throated defense of European expansion overseas and slavery. We invite contributors to critically examine these connections by addressing the imperialist and colonialist readings of Grotius’ theory of natural rights, just war, property, unequal treaties and alliances, monopoly contracts, slavery, and the role of private actors (e.g., trading companies). We specifically welcome contributions that engage with the following questions:  

• What were non-European responses to, or engagement with, such imperialist and colonialist readings? For instance, how did East-Indian rulers receive and interpret, or indeed resist, Grotian conceptualizations of natural rights and (monopoly) contracts? Were alternative conceptualizations proposed to contest Grotius’ justification of slavery?   

• What was the relationship between the ‘Grotian tradition of international law’ and colonial practices in the early modern and modern eras? How were Grotian discourses of international law used to justify colonial warfare, native dispossession and slavery in the Americas, Asia and Africa between the 17th and 20th centuries?  For instance, how did Grotian ideas about natural law, freedom of trade and humanitarianism (protecting the oppressed from inhumane treatment) contribute to justifying colonial warfare, and what role did private trading companies play in these wars?  

In addressing questions like these, we seek to understand the ambivalent relation between, on the one hand, Grotius’ innovate contributions to international law and humanitarianism, and, on the other hand, the use of his concepts to justify (Western) colonialism and imperialism.   

The workshop ‘Arguing over Empire: Hugo Grotius, European Expansionism and Slavery’ is part of a series of conferences preceding the celebration in 2025 of the 400th anniversary of Grotius’ opus magnum De iure belli ac pacis published in 1625. Previous conferences in this series have dealt with, e.g., ‘Grotius’ Contribution to Commercial  and Maritime Law’ and ‘Nonconsequential theories of strict liability in historical perspective.’  

Keynotes:  

A paper proposal of max. 300 words should be sent to M.J.Vanittersum@dundee.ac.uk and m.dewilde@uva.nl The deadline for submissions is 31 August 2023. Applicants will be notified by 15 October 2023 whether their paper proposal has been accepted or not.  The organizing committee will use two criteria in the selection of paper proposals: intellectual quality and potential fit with the workshop theme.  The workshop is meant to be interdisciplinary and small-scale, allowing plenty of time for discussion and interaction. Available slots are limited. However, the committee’s aim is to invite speakers from diverse backgrounds (age, geography, gender, and career status).   

The workshop takes place on location. Speakers who are unable to participate in person may do so online.  Unfortunately, the organizing committee is not able to cover the costs of accommodation or travel.  Selected speakers are requested to obtain funding themselves.   

Speakers are expected to submit a draft paper before 1 April 2024. These draft papers will be circulated in advance of the workshop. Each speaker will be given a 30-minutes time slot, which includes 20 minutes for presentation and 10 minutes for questions and discussion.   

Our aim is to publish (revised versions of) the presented papers in a leading international journal related to Grotius, the history of international law, or the history of colonialism.   

Organizing Committee: 

Inge Van Hulle (Leuven University and Max Planck Institute, Frankfurt am Main)  

Martine van Ittersum (University of Dundee)  

Jacob Giltaij (University of Amsterdam)  

Jeroen Vervliet (Max Planck Institute, Luxembourg)  

Marc de Wilde (University of Amsterdam) 

SEMINAR: Project Comparing Early Modern Colonial Law Launch Seminar

 

(Source: https://twitter.com/MancillaOrdenes/status/1494372509256495106/photo/1)

Developed at the university of Helsinki by the coordination of prof. Heikki Pihlajamäki, the project CoCoLaw (Comparing Early Modern Colonial Laws) aims to provide a comparative analysis of how early modern colonial laws of England, the Netherlands, Spain, and Portugal were structured. 

Our first event will happen on the 22nd of march, with Annemieke Romein and Mariana Armond Dias Paes as keynote speakers. 

 

Here is the registering form link:  https://www.lyyti.in/CoCoLaw_Launch_Seminar_Registration

CALL FOR PAPERS: The Dynamics of Early Modern Colonial Laws and Legal Literature (Helsinki: Faculty of Law, 26-28 OCT 2022)

 

(image source: Wikimedia Commons)

The conference organizers invite papers exploring how legislative strategies of early modern colonial empires affected each other, what they had in common, and how colonial laws emanating both from Europe and the colonies themselves developed into different directions. Conference papers will look at early modern colonial legislation of the empires in multiple contexts:  medieval inheritance of ius commune and legal pluralism; early modern transformations of legal orders, such as the growth of police regulation; and not the least, the local colonial realities and normativities.

Connected to the last point, contributions investigating local readings of “foreign” legal literature will also be welcome. One may ask what role legal literature had in the circulation of legal rules and concepts, and in confronting societal challenges. Examples from court practice and legislative bodies highlight these complex processes. “Legal literature” will not be understood in the sense of being strictly dogmatic or methodological, but in the broad sense of personally constructed texts on law, written for legal practitioners, both academically trained lawyers and laymen.  

This conference will bring together legal scholars, historians, and social scientists to explore the complex entanglements of early modern colonial laws. 

Confirmed keynote speakers are professors Thomas Duve (Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory, Frankfurt) and Andréa Slemian (University of São Paulo).

The conference is organized jointly by two projects, Comparing Early Modern Colonial Laws: England, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain (Academy of Finland, University of Helsinki) and Reading Law Glocally: Local Readings of Foreign Legal Literature in a Globalized World (Seventeenth to Early Twentieth Centuries) (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique / France, Ghent University, University of Helsinki, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid). The conference committee consists of professors Laura Beck (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), Serge Dauchy (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), Georges Martyn (Ghent University) and Heikki Pihlajamäki (University of Helsinki).

Please send, in one file, your abstract (max. 300 words) and short CV to the address: heikki.pihlajamaki@helsinki.fi. The language of the conference is English. There is no registration fee. The organizers will consider applications for reimbursement of travel costs and/or accommodation for junior researchers presenting papers. Participation online will be possible, and publication of the conference papers is foreseen.  

The deadline for submissions is March 31, 2022.  

WORKSHOP: Decolonization by Codification: The Making of the 1958 Penal Code in Late Colonial Nigeria, 4 January 2022

(Source: mpilhlt)

MPI-TAU Transnational Legal History Workshop

DATE: Jan 4, 2022 TIME: 19:00 - 20:30

SPEAKER: Rabiat Akande (Osgoode)

CONVENORS: Thomas Duve, David Schorr (TAU), Stefan Vogenauer

LOCATION: video conference

ROOM: For further information please contact mpitauwkshp@gmail.com

SEMINAR: La città come strumento di trasformazione dello spazio coloniale, Prof. Luigi Nuzzo - 2 dicembre 2021, Università di Tor Vergata

(Source: Storia del diritto)

BOOK: Gustavo César Machado CABRAL; Delmiro Ximenes de FARIAS; Sarah Kelly Limão PAPA (Orgs.). Fontes do direito na América Portuguesa: estudos sobre o fenômeno jurídico no Período Colonial (Séculos XVI-XVIII). (Editora Fi: 2021). ISBN: 978-65-5917-176-7. OPEN ACCESS.

 

(Source: https://www.editorafi.com/176america?fbclid=IwAR2luZHA23Ix-3oR8knVTtGbRyjCva0FtQwyOUNdImzQjHN8YY34e9IEYKY)

O livro é composto de diversos capítulos escritos pelos membros do NEDAP. Resultado de diferentes níveis de formação educacional, os artigos variam também no grau de profundidade, entretanto, sem comprometer a qualidade da obra. Percebe-se, no livro, um amadurecimento no trato com as fontes históricas, tão caras aos historiadores de formação, assim como também do uso de uma bibliografia recente do Brasil colonial. As filiações historiográficas e a corrente teórica utilizada pelo conjunto dos autores, tanto no processo de pesquisas, como na escrita dos capítulos, fica demonstrado e fundamentado. As escolhas do grupo confirmam o uso corrente de uma dada historiografia que muito tem influenciado a produção historiográfica colonial do Brasil nos últimos anos. Com esta obra, é possível perceber a complexidade do direito no período colonial, uma vez que existia uma pluralidade jurídica que englobava desde o direito do reino (ius patrium), o direito canônico, o direito local, entre outros até o direito comum europeu (ius commune). São abordados casos de jurisdição, envolvendo diversas autoridades coloniais, aplicação da justiça, eleições municipais, planejamento urbano, controle sobre a produção de aguardente, natureza jurídica dos ofícios, direito das viúvas, mas também análises sobre uma teoria do direito colonial brasileiro. Percebe-se uma variedade na inclusão de agentes distintos, embora indígenas e negros não tenham sido contemplados neste conjunto de trabalhos. Mas certamente é um excelente exercício de diálogo entre o Direito e a História, do qual profissionais de ambas as áreas se beneficiarão, mas principalmente os historiadores do direito, que se tem expandido na última década, resultado do maior diálogo entre estes profissionais. O campo científico da História do Direito ganha muito com essa obra que se tornará referência obrigatória para os estudiosos da história do Brasil no período colonial.

Índice

Apresentação  - Gustavo César Machado Cabral

Prefácio - Carmen Alveal

Parte 1 - Perspectivas conceituais

Uma teoria do direito para a América Portuguesa (Séculos XVI-XVIII) - Gustavo César Machado Cabral

Ordens normativas e América Portuguesa: o caso do direito colonial brasileiro (Séculos XVI a XVIII) - Victor Hugo Siqueira de Assis - Kauan Duarte Gondim dos Santos

Parte 2 Jurisdição, competência e conflitos

A atuação do Governador-Geral na Capitania do Rio de Janeiro entre 1650 e 1656: uma análise de casos com base nos conceitos de pluralismo jurídico e monarquia pluricontinental - João Victor Oliveira Freire

A iniciativa processual penal dos governadores-gerais do Brasil: As cartas do Conde de Castelo Melhor e do Conde de Atouguia e determinações de instauração de devassas (1650-1657) - Delmiro Ximenes de Farias

A administração colonial na América Portuguesa: Conflitos de jurisdição entre o Governo-Geral do Brasil, o Governo de Pernambuco e a Câmara de Olinda (1663 - 1668) - Sarah Kelly Limão Papa

Parte 3 - Experiências locais

Eleições no Brasil colonial: entre a imposição da norma régia e a manifestação do direito local - Lucas Igor Cavalcante Rodrigues

Fontes do direito e planejamento urbano na capitania do Ceará: os casos das vilas de Icó e Aracati - Gustavo César Machado Cabral - Ana Carolina Farias Almeida da Costa - Matheus Silva de Sá

Parte 4 - Administração e direitos em disputa

As reiteradas provisões para “não se fazer aguardente” e o uso de ordens e portarias como meio de efetivação de normas (1636 - 1664) - Joana Aymée Nogueira de Freitas - João Victor Diniz Ribeiro - Stéfano Gonçalves Lima

Legitimidade para pedir das viúvas no Século XVIII: a autonomia das mulheres na -América Portuguesa -Ana Luiza Barroso Caracas de Castro

A dupla natureza dos ofícios públicos intermédios na América Portuguesa da primeira metade do Século XVIII: entre a honra e o bem patrimonial -Wirdley Bernardino Pinheiro - Victor Alves Magalhães

Free E-book: https://drive.google.com/file/d/158hp73oYSAKddmrn8kL_sjV1ICLfUt7E/view 

BOOK: Nicole D. LEGNANI, The Business of Conquest - Empire, Love, and Law in the Atlantic World (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2020). ISBN 9780268108960, 55.00 USD

 

 (Source: University of Notre Dame Press)

The University of Notre Dame Press is publishing “The Business of Conquest - Empire, Love, and Law in the Atlantic World”.

ABOUT THE BOOK

The Spanish conquest has long been a source of polemic, ever since the early sixteenth century when Spanish jurists began theorizing the legal merits behind native dispossession in the Americas. But in The Business of Conquest: Empire, Love, and Law in the Atlantic World, Nicole D. Legnani demonstrates how the financing and partnerships behind early expeditions betray their own praxis of imperial power as a business, even as the laws of the Indies were being written. She interrogates how and why apologists of Spanish Christian empire, such as José de Acosta, found themselves justifying the Spanish conquest as little more than a joint venture between crown and church that relied on violent actors in pursuit of material profits but that nonetheless served to propagate Christianity in overseas territories. Focusing on cultural and economic factors at play, and examining not only the chroniclers of the era but also laws, contracts, theological treatises, histories, and chivalric fiction, Legnani traces the relationship between capital investment, monarchical power, and imperial scalability in the Conquest. In particular, she shows how the Christian virtue of caritas (love and charity of neighbor, and thus God) became confused with cupiditas (greed and lust), because love came to be understood as a form of wealth in the partnership between the crown and the church. In this partnership, the work of the conquistador became, ultimately, that of a traveling business agent for the Spanish empire whose excess from one venture capitalized the next. This business was thus the business of conquest and featured entrepreneurial violence as its norm—not exception.

 

The Business of Conquest offers an original examination of this period, including the perspectives of both the creators of the colonial world (monarchs, venture capitalists, conquerors, and officials), of religious figures (such as Las Casas), and finally of indigenous points of view to show how a venture capital model can be used to analyze the partnership between crown and church. It will appeal to students and scholars of the early modern period, Latin American colonial studies, capitalism, history, and indigenous studies.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nicole D. Legnani is assistant professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Princeton University. She is the translator of Titu Cusi: A 16th-Century Account of the Conquest.

 

More info here

BOOK: Maia PAL, Jurisdictional Accumulation - An Early Modern History of Law, Empires, and Capital (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). ISBN 9781108497206, 85.00 GBP.

 

(Source: CUP)

Cambridge University Press is publishing an early modern history of law, empires and capital.

ABOUT THE BOOK

The majority of European early modern empires – the Castilian, French, Dutch, and English/British – developed practices of jurisdictional accumulation, distinguished by the three categories of extensions, transports, and transplants of authority. This book is concerned with various diplomatic and colonial agents which enabled the transports and transplants of sovereign authority. Through historical analyses of ambassadors and consuls in the Mediterranean based on primary and secondary material, and on the empires' Atlantic imperial expansions and conquests, the book makes a major analytical contribution to historical sociology. As an interdisciplinary exercise in conceptual innovation based on a Political Marxist framework and its concept of social property relations, the book goes beyond common binaries in both conventional and critical histories. The new concept of jurisdictional accumulation brings ambassadors, consuls, merchants, and lawyers out of the shadows of empire and onto the main stage of the construction of modern international relations and international law.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Maïa Pal, Oxford Brookes University

Maïa Pal is Senior Lecturer in International Relations, Department of Social Sciences, Oxford Brookes University.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Early Modern Extraterritoriality

2. Historical sociology, Marxism, and law

3. Social property relations

4. Ambassadors

5. Consuls

6. Colonial practices of jurisdictional accumulation

7. Analytical crossroads: Dominium, consuls, and extraterritoriality

8. Conclusion

Index.

 

More info here

BOOK: Serge DAUCHY, Heikki PIHLAJAMAKI, Albrecht CORDES and Dave DE RUYSSCHER (Eds.), Colonial Adventures: Commercial Law and Practice in the Making (Leiden-New York: Brill, 2020). ISBN 978-90-04-44293-1, 134.00 EUR.

 

(Source: Brill)

Brill is publishing a new book on the link between commercial law and practice and colonial expansion/maritime trade.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Colonial Adventures: Commercial Law and Practice in the Making addresses the question how and to what extend the development of commercial law and practice, from Ancient Greece to the colonial empires of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, were indebted to colonial expansion and maritime trade. Illustrated by experiences in Ancient Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa and Australia, the book examines how colonial powers, whether consciously or not, reshaped the law in order to foster the prosperity of homeland manufacturers and entrepreneurs or how local authorities and settlers brought the transplanted law in line with the colonial objectives and the local constraints amid shifting economic, commercial and political realities. 

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Serge Dauchy is Research Director at the CNRS (Lille) and Professor of Legal History at the University Saint-Louis of Brussels. His main research topics are the history of civil procedure, comparative history of central courts and the legal history of Québec and Louisiana. 

Heikki Pihlajamäki is Professor of Comparative Legal History at the University of Helsinki. He has published extensively on the legal history of Scandinavia, Europe and America, including Conquest and the Law in Swedish Livonia (ca. 1630-1710): A Case of Legal Pluralism in Early Modern Europe (Brill, 2017). 

Albrecht Cordes is Professor of Medieval and Early Modern Legal History and Civil Law at Goethe University Frankfurt/Main. His research is especially focused on the history of commercial law, Hanseatic legal history and the history of conflict resolution. 

Dave De ruysscher is Associate Professor at Tilburg University and Vrije Universiteit Brussels. As a legal historian and lawyer, he specializes in the history of commercial and private law of the Early Modern period and the nineteenth century. 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 Acknowledgements

 Contributors

 

Introduction: colonial Adventures: commercial Law and Practice in the Making

  Serge Dauchy, Albrecht Cordes, Dave De ruysscher, Heikki Pihlajamäki

 

The Rhetoric of Commercial Law in 4th-Century BC Athens

  David Mirhady

 

Trading along Hadrian’s Wall

  Paul du Plessis

 

Trade and Law in New Spain in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

  Oscar Cruz Barney

 

Scots Traders and Spanish Law in East Florida

  M.C. Mirow

 

How to ‘Mash up’ Lex Mercatoria from Civil Law fo Common Law: the Genesis of Lex Mercatoria in Lower-Canada History 1760–1866

  David Gilles

 

English Mercantilist Thought and the Matter of Colonies from the 17th to the First Half of the 18th Century

  Alain Clément

 

The Transplant and Adaption of Company Law in Colonial Victoria 1850–1900

  Phillip Lipton

 

Company Law transplants and Change in Colonial Southeast Asia

  Petra Mahy

 

From Denial to Opportunity: Chinese Access to Colonial Law in the Netherlands Indies (1800–1942)

  Alexander Claver

 

Corporate Law in Colonial India: rise and Demise of the Managing Agency System

  Umakanth Varottil

 

‘Neither the State nor the Individual Goes to the Colony in Order to Make a Bad Business’: state and Private Enterprise in the Making of Commercial Law in the German Colonies, ca. 1884 to 1914

  Jakob Zollmann

 

Customs Law in the Congo: on the Fiscal Bargaining Process between the Colonial State and Private Enterprise in Africa (1886–1914)

  Bas De Roo

 

The Birth of a Colonial City: Tianjin 1860–1895

  Luigi Nuzzo

 

Experiences and Experimentations: two Words between Two Worlds

  Bernard Durand

 

 Index

 

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JOURNAL: Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly (Vol. 71, No. 2)

 

(Source: Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly)

The Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly has recently published a special issue called “The Constitutional Legacies of Empire”. Here the table of contents:

Introduction: ‘The Constitutional Legacies of Empire’

Paul F Scott

99-107

Articles

Crown act of state and detention in Afghanistan

Jane Rooney

109-133

Foreign act of state and empire

Courtney Grafton

135-155

 ‘Something like the principles of British liberalism’: Ivor Jennings and the international and domestic, 1920–1960

Martin Clark

157-174

Unequal citizenship and subjecthood: a rose by any other name ...?

Devyani Prabhat

175-191

Constitutional law and empire in interwar Britain: universities, liberty, nationality and parliamentary supremacy

Donal K Coffey

193-209

Constitutionalism in the periphery: revisiting the roots of self-rule movements in Ireland and India

T T Arvind, Daithí Mac Síthigh

211-237

Constitutional legacies of empire in politics and administration: Jamaica’s incomplete settlement

Lindsay Stirton, Martin Lodge

239-260

The Privy Council and the constitutional legacies of empire

Paul F Scott

261-283

The constitutional influence of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council on the UK apex court: institutional proximity and jurisprudential divergence?

Roger Masterman

285-302

Notes and commentaries

Asymmetrical international law and its role in constituting empires: the ICJ Chagos Advisory Opinion

Gail Lythgoe

305-315

Law's empire: Mutua and Kimathi

Tim Sayer

317-324

Book review: (B)ordering Britain: Law, Race and Empire by Nadine El-Enany

Paul F Scott

 

More info here

BOOK: Nancy CHRISTIE, Michael GAUVREAU, and Matthew GERBER, eds., Voices in the Legal Archives in the French Colonial World “The King Is Listening” (London: Routledge, 2020). ISBN 9780367508067, 120.00 GBP

(Source: Routledge)

Routledge is publishing an edited collection on judicial practices and litigation during the first era of French overseas expansion.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Voices in the Legal Archives in the French Colonial World: "The King is Listening" offers, through the contribution of thirteen original chapters, a sustained analysis of judicial practices and litigation during the first era of French overseas expansion.

The overall goal of this volume is to elaborate a more sophisticated "social history of colonialism" by focusing largely on the eighteenth century, extending roughly from 1700 until the conclusion of the Age of Revolutions in the 1830s. By critically examining legal practices and litigation in the French colonial world, in both its Atlantic and Oceanic extensions, this volume of essays has sought to interrogate the naturalized equation between law and empire, an idea premised on the idea of law as a set of doctrines and codified procedures originating in the metropolis and then transmitted to the colonies. This book advances new approaches and methods in writing a history of the French empire, one which views state authority as more unstable and contested. Voices in the Legal Archives proposes to remedy the under-theorized state of France’s first colonial empire, as opposed to its post-1830 imperial expressions empire, which have garnered far more scholarly attention.

This book will appeal to scholars of French history and the comparative history of European empires and colonialism.

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Nancy Christie is Research Professor of History at the University of Western Ontario, London, Canada. She has published widely in the fields of empire, gender, law and the state.

Michael Gauvreau is Professor of History at McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada. He researches in the intellectual, religious, and social history of Canada and Quebec.

Matthew Gerber is Associate Professor of History at University of Colorado at Boulder, USA. He specializes in the history of early modern France and its colonies.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part I: Reading Colonial Legal Records Against the Grain  1. Controlling Haitian History: The Legal Archive of Moreau de Saint-Méry  2. Proof of Freedom, Proof of Enslavement: The Limits of Documentation in Colonial Saint-Domingue  Part II: Between Metropole and Periphery  3. Silencing Madmen: The Legal Process of Interdiction, Saint-Domingue, Eighteenth Century  4. The Treatment of Domestic Servants in Canada’s Justice System Under the French Regime: A Conciliatory Approach?  5. Contesting the Seigneurial Corvée: Two Generations of Peasant Litigation in Eighteenth-Century Angoumois  Part III: Chains of Property and Obligation  6. Between Property and Person: The Ambiguous Status of Slaves in Eighteenth-Century Martinique, Guadeloupe and Saint-Domingue  7. Trust, Obligation, and the Racialized Credit Market in Pre-Revolutionary Cap Français  8. The Inhabitants "Appear Are Not Such Fools as a Menny Thinks": Credit, Debt, and Peasant Litigation in Post-Conquest Quebec  Part IV: Circuits of Power and the Testimony of the Marginal  9. The Voice of the Litigant, the Voice of the Spokesman?: The Role of Interpreters in Trials in Canada under the French Regime (17^th and 18^th Centuries)  10. Voices of Litigating Women in New France During the 17^th and 18^th Centuries: Elements of Research on the Judicial Culture of the Appellants in the Archives of the Royal Jurisdiction of Montreal (1693–1760)  11. Slaves as Witnesses, Slaves as Evidence: French and British Prosecution of the Slave Trade in the Indian Ocean  Part V: Divided Sovereignties, Legal Hybridities  12. When French Islands Became British: Law, Property, and Inheritance in the Ceded Islands  13. Contested Spaces of Law and Economy: Legal Hybridity and the Marital Economy Within Quebec’s Merchant Communities

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BOOK: Michael LOBBAN & Ian WILLIAMS (eds.), Networks and Connections in Legal History (Cambridge: University Press, 2020). ISBN: 1108490883, £ 85.00

(Source: CUP)

ABOUT THE BOOK

Network and Connections in Legal History examines networks of lawyers, legislators and litigators, and how they shaped legal development in Britain and the world. It explores how particular networks of lawyers - from Scotland to East Florida and India - shaped the culture of the forums in which they operated, and how personal connections could be crucial in pressuring the legislature to institute reform - as with twentieth century feminist campaigns. It explores the transmission of legal ideas; what happened to those ideas was not predetermined, but when new connections were made, they could assume a new life. In some cases, new thinkers made intellectual connections not previously conceived, in others it was the new purposes to which ideas and practices were applied which made them adapt. This book shows how networks and connections between people and places have shaped the way that legal ideas and practices are transmitted across time and space.

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Michael Lobban is Professor of Legal History at the London School of Economics and Political Science, England. He is the author of The Common Law and English Jurisprudence, 1760-1850 (1991) and A History of the Philosophy of Law in the Common Law World, 1600-1900 (2007), as well as one of the authors of volumes XI-XIII of The Oxford History of the Laws of England. 

Ian Williams is Associate Professor at the University College London Faculty of Laws, England. His research interests are principally in legal history, particularly early-modern English legal history. He is co-editor of Landmark Cases in Criminal Law.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction - Michael Lobban and Ian Williams

2. Networks and Influences: Contextualising Personnel and Procedures in the Court of Chivalry - Anthony Musson 

3. Men of law and legal networks in Aberdeen, principally in 1600-1650 - Adelyn Wilson 

4. Calling Time at the Bar: First women barristers and their networks and connections - Judith Bourne

5. The Thistle, the Rose, and the Palm: Scottish and English Judges in British East Florida - M. C. Mirow; 

6. 'The Bengal Boiler': Legal Networks in Colonial Calcutta - Raymond Cocks; 

7. The White Ensign on Land: The Royal Navy and Legal Authority in Early Sierra Leone - Tim Soriano; 

8. A Broker's Advice: Credit Networks and Mortgage Risk in the Eighteenth-century Empire - Julia Rudolph; 

9. Trans-Atlantic connections: The many networks and the enduring legacy of J.P. Benjamin -  Catharine MacMillan; 

10. Interpretatio ex aequo et bono, the emergence of equitable interpretation in European legal scholarship -  Lorenzo Maniscalco; 

11. Shakespeare and the European Ius Commune - R. H. Helmholz; 

12. Law Reporting and Law Making: the Missing Link in Nineteenth-century Tax Law - Chantal Stebbings; 

13. John Taylor Coleridge and English Criminal Law - Philip Handler

More information here

BOOK: Georg L.K.A. CHRIST & Franz-Julius MORCHE, eds., Cultures of Empire: Rethinking Venetian Rule 1400–1700. Essays in Honour of Benjamin Arbel (Leiden-Boston, Brill, 2020). ISBN: 978-90-04-42760-0, €149.00

(Source: Brill)

ABOUT THE BOOK

Series: The Medieval Mediterranean, Volume: 122

This book investigates perceptions, modes, and techniques of Venetian rule in the early modern Eastern Mediterranean (1400–1700). Against the backdrop of the controversial notion of the Venetian realm as a colonial empire, essays from a range of specialists examine how Venice negotiated control over the territories, resources, and traditions of different empires (Byzantine, Roman, Mamluk, Ottoman) while developing its own claims of authority. Focusing in particular on questions of belonging and status in the Venetian overseas territories, the volume incorporates observations on the daily realities of Venetian rule: how did Venice negotiate claims of authority in light of former and ongoing imperial belongings? What was the status of colonial subjects and ships in the metropolis and in foreign territories? In what ways did Venice accept and continue old forms of imperial belonging? Did subordinate entities join in a shared communal identity? The volume opens new perspectives on Venetian rule at the crossroads of empire and early modern statehood: a polity negotiating and entangling empire. 

Contributors are Housni Alkhateeb Shehada, Giacomo Corazzol, Nicholas Davidson, Renard Gluzman, Deborah Howard, David Jacoby (ZL), Marianna Kolyvà, Franz-Julius Morche, Reinhold C. Mueller, Monique O’Connell, Gerassimos D. Pagratis, Maria Pia Pedani (†), Dorit Raines, and E. Natalie Rothman.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Georg Christ, Ph.D. (2006), Universität Basel, Senior Lecturer in Medieval and Early Modern History at the University of Manchester. His research mainly focuses on the late medieval Eastern Mediterranean and Veneto-Mamluk trade and political relations. 

Franz-Julius Morche, Dr. phil. (2013), Universität Heidelberg, is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study and the Department of History, Durham University. He was previously a member of the ERC research team “Communication and Empire: Chinese Empires in Comparative Perspective” at King’s College London and Leiden University.

More information here

CALL FOR PAPERS : “One Empire, Many Colonies, Similar or Different Histories?”, Australian and New Zealand Law and History Society(Auckland, N-Z, 9-12 December), DEADLINE : 15 July

(Source : ANZLHS)

CALL FOR PAPERS (DEADLINE IS ON 15 JULY)  : 

Abstracts are invited from scholars bringing historical perspective on law who wish to gather at The University of Auckland and AUT University – there to listen to and discuss papers and panels on aspects of law in history. The 2020 theme invites a comparative lens on British imperial and colonial histories. Other papers with an historical perspective on law might include work that positions law in a specific temporal frame; deals with histories of law, lawmaking, and legal ideas; or has a focus on legal institutions and their personnel. Proposals from postgraduate and early career researchers are welcome.

Individual paper proposals for a 20 minute presentation must include an abstract (no more than 300 words) and a biographical statement (no more than 100 words).

Panel proposals by 3 or 4 speakers should include the above, plus a panel title and brief rationale for the panel as a whole (no more than 300 words).

SYMPOSIUM : 9-12 DECEMBER 2020

39^th Annual Conference of the Australian and New Zealand Law and History Society scheduled to be held in Auckland, 9^th-12^th December 2020 will go ahead. 

HOW TO APPLY : 

All abstracts must be submitted to Karen Fairweather: k.fairweather@auckland.ac.nz  

Graduate students are invited to apply for Kercher Scholarships to assist them in attending the conference. Please apply to Katherine Sanders: k.sanders@auckland.ac.nz by 31 August.  

 

MORE INFORMATION : https://anzlhs.org/