BOOK: Simona FECI, L’acquetta di Giulia. Mogli avvelenatrici e mariti violenti nella Roma del Seicento (Rome: Viella, 2024). ISBN: 9791254696699

(Image source: Viella Editore) 

About the book

Nella Roma di metà Seicento, pochi anni dopo l’epidemia di peste, viene scoperta in modo rocambolesco l’esistenza di una rete di avvelenatrici: alcune preparano un veleno “perfetto”, conosciuto in tutta Italia come l’«acqua tofana», altre lo acquistano e se ne servono per liberarsi dei loro mariti. È il più clamoroso fatto di cronaca nera del secolo e uno dei pochissimi complotti tutti al femminile della storia. La trama collettiva che viene alla luce ci accompagna nelle pieghe di una città barocca dove trovano posto tutti gli elementi di un potenziale romanzo: amore e veleno, violenza, crimine e morte, sotterfugi ed esibizionismo, denaro e solidarietà. Pronte a sfidare il potere dei padri, il sapere dei medici e l’azione degli inquirenti, le protagoniste e le loro storie offrono uno straordinario passepartout per raccontare la condizione delle donne nel secolo di Artemisia Gentileschi, della monaca di Monza, di Cristina di Svezia.

About the author

Simona Feci is Associate Professor of Medieval and Modern Legal History in the Department of Law at the University of Palermo. She is a member of the PhD Committee on “Human Rights: Evolution, Protection and Limits” at the University of Palermo. She is President of the Società italiana delle storiche (Italian Association of Women Historians) (2016-2020), after serving on the executive board for two years (2014-2016). Her current research projects focus on the history of the family, domestic violence in the early modern period and women’s rights in Italy. Among her publications, see: Pesci fuor d’acqua. Donne a Roma in età moderna: diritti e patrimoni, Rome, Viella, 2004; La violenza contro le donne nella storia. Contesti, linguaggi, politiche del diritto (sec. XV-XXI), ed. with Laura Schettini, Rome, Viella, 2017.

Table of contents

Introduzione

1. Veleno e violenza
2. Venefici e narrazioni

1. Vite barocche di donne (quasi) comuni

1. Giovanna de Grandis
2. Le intermediarie
3. Girolama Spana
4. Veleni, fattucchierie, curiosità
5. L’acquetta

2. Un affare di donne

1. Una rappresentazione attendibile?
2. Identità, mobilità e socialità
3. La rete
4. Conflitti e violenza coniugale
5. Sottrarsi alla violenza, coltivare aspirazioni, inseguire desideri
6. Madri e figlie
7. Il prezzo della colpa
8. Brodini, minestre e altre prelibatezze
9. Congedarsi dal mondo
10. Brusii e sospetti

3. Il processo

1. Entra la corte
2. Veneficio e parricidio
3. La scoperta della trama
4. Il corpo del reato
5. Interrogatori, confessioni, testimonianze
6. «Per sradicar simil sorte di genti»
7. Cecilia Bossi «ucello di campagna»
8. La duchessa di Ceri

4. Memoria e fortuna dell’acquetta

1. La morte per via di giustizia
2. Storie cantate, relazioni e cronache
3. Il veleno e la peste
4. Il regime delle professioni
5. L’emulazione e la fama

Ringraziamenti

Bibliografia

More information can be found here.

BOOK: Victor LE BRETON-BLON, L'évolution de la lettre de change pendant la seconde modernité. Étude conjointe des actes de la pratique, des règlementations royales et des discours à travers le port de Bordeaux (1673-1789) [Etudes d'Histoire du Droit et des Ideés Politiques; 35] (Toulouse: Centre Toulousain d'Histoire du Droit et des Idées Politiques, 2025), 978-2-36170-299-1, € 40

 

(image source: Université Toulouse-Capitole)

On the author:

Victor Le Breton-Blon, docteur en histoire du droit de l'Université de Bordeaux, enseignant-chercheur contractuel à l'Université Bretagne-Sud. Ses thèmes de recherche portent sur l'Histoire du droit des affaires, l'Histoire de la vie économique, financière et monétaire de l'Ancien Régime et l'Histoire de la pensée économique.

On the series:

Le Centre Toulousain d'Histoire du Droit et des Idées Politiques (EA 789) publie depuis 20 ans des travaux individuels et collectifs au sein de la collection Études d'Histoire du Droit et des Idées Politiques. Elle accueille les travaux d'historiens du droit mais aussi d'autres historiens et de juristes publicistes et privatistes.

Read more here. 

CONFERENCE: Gian Piero Bognetti, intellettuale nella Milano del Novecento. Note dal Fondo Bognetti conservato all’Istituto Lombardo (Milan: Istituto Lombardo Accademia di Scienze e Lettere; 21 MAR 2025 h. 9:30) [ONLINE]

(Image source: Istituto Lombardo Accademia di Scienze e Lettere)

La donazione da parte della famiglia all’Istituto Lombardo Accademia di Scienze e Lettere del Fondo Bognetti, nella sua articolata composizione, è l’occasione per ripensare e ricordare il percorso di studioso e ricercatore ‘curioso’ di Gian Piero Bognetti, appartenente ad una famiglia di educatori, di cui si ripercorrono le origini ottocentesche. Grande storico del diritto, come dimostra il suo incessante e originale lavoro scientifico, Gian Piero Bognetti è soprattutto un intellettuale, ricchissimo di interessi: dalla storia alla storia dell’arte, dall’archeologia alla letteratura, egli si rivela capace di costruire nella Milano del Novecento demi siècle una rete di relazioni con uomini di cultura nell’ambiente ambrosiano, nell’Italia di allora e al di là delle Alpi.

THE EVENT WILL TAKE PLACE IN HYBRID MODE: In person at the Sala Adunanze of the Istituto Lombardo, located at Via Brera 28, Milan, and online, according to the details provided in the flyer.

PROGRAMME

09:30 - Saluti introduttivi 

• Stefano Maiorana (Presidente Istituto Lombardo)

 09:40 - Prima sessione

Presiede Gigliola di Renzo Villata (Istituto Lombardo, Università degli Studi di Milano)

• Antonio Padoa Schioppa (Istituto Lombardo, Università degli Studi di Milano): Gian Piero Bognetti e la storia del diritto
• Gianmarco Gaspari (Istituto Lombardo, Università degli Studi dell’Insubria): Bognetti e il giovane Manzoni
• Marco Sannazaro (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano): Gian Piero Bognetti e Castelseprio: un rapporto di affetto e scienza
• Gian Maria Varanini (Deputazione di storia patria per le Venezie, Università degli Studi di Verona): Bognetti e il mondo veneziano

11:30 - Seconda sessione 

Presiede Antonio Padoa Schioppa (Istituto Lombardo, Università degli Studi di Milano)

• Gigliola di Renzo Villata (Istituto Lombardo, Università degli Studi di Milano): Gian Piero Bognetti e la sua corrispondenza: l’amplissima rete di relazioni di un intellettuale nella Milano demi siècle 
• Simonetta Polenghi, Valentina Chierichetti (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano): L’impegno educativo della famiglia Bognetti a Milano tra Otto e primo Novecento
• Rita Pezzola (Istituto Lombardo): Il Fondo Bognetti all’Istituto Lombardo Accademia di Scienze e Lettere

More information can be found here

JOURNAL: Focus Section "Re-Reading Historic Articles in the ZaöRV", Zeitschrift für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht/Heidelberg Journal of International Law LXXXIV (2024), nr. 4 [OPEN ACCESS]

(image source: Nomos)

Introducing the Anniversary Series (Robert Stendel)

Die Befreiung: Moslers europaföderale Sprengung des staatsrechtlichen Denkens (Armin von Bogdandy)

Abstract:

1951 befreite Hermann Mosler das deutsche juristische Denken transnatio- naler Phänomene aus den Fesseln des staatsrechtlichen Denkens. Medium der Befreiung war die Zeitschrift für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völ- kerrecht, Anlass der Vertrag zur Gründung der Europäischen Gemeinschaft für Kohle und Stahl (EGKS). Konkret legte Mosler einen Weg frei, das Gemeinschaftsrecht jenseits des staatsrechtlichen Dualismus von Landesrecht und Völkerrecht als eine neue und neuartige Rechtsordnung zu denken, und zwar in föderalen und verfassungsrechtlichen Kategorien. Er zeigt, dass der politische Wille zu einer völkervertraglich verfassten Föderation souveräner Staaten kein juristisches Paradoxon ist, sondern vielmehr ein Weg in eine bessere Zukunft. Voraussetzung ist allerdings staatsrechtliche Dogmen zu sprengen. So geht es zunächst geht es um die Fesseln, veranschaulicht an Aufsätzen, mit denen Carl Bilfinger in der ZaöRV das juristische Denken in der ersten Sattelzeit zu orientieren suchte. In deren Gegenlicht gewinnt Mos- lers Befreiung klare Konturen. Abschließend wird untersucht, welchen Fes- seln Mosler nicht entkam.

Outside of this section:

Constructing Youth as Progress: Tracing Shared Efforts of the League of Nations and the United Nations (Julian Hettihewa)

Abstract:

A more comprehensive understanding of progress and international law can be obtained if youth is included in the analysis. While youth is gaining increasing prominence in international law, it continues to be neglected by international legal scholarship. This is especially problematic in the context of progress and international law as youth is constructed by international law as progress. This article presents a historical account of youth’s construction as progress, focusing on the efforts of the League of Nations (LoN) and the United Nations (UN) to educate youth in order to promote peace, to prevent another world war. This contribution highlights the continuity of historical patterns and identifies the function of youth as progress as an instrument to conceal power-differentials. Furthermore, this article reveals structural commonalities between interna- tional law and youth. Both embody the Messianic announcement of something universally and inherently good, albeit always postponed: progress.

Visions of International Law in the Nineteenth Century: The Experience of the French Intervention in Mexico (Tania Tilano)

Abstract:

This article explores how Mexican liberal republicans engaged creatively with international law to contest the French Intervention (1862–1867). Their novel vision of enforcing international law through domestic criminal law went beyond mere appropriation; it was a projection of the future. Mexican republicans envisioned international law as a tool to mitigate the asymmetries between European powers and postcolonial nation-states like Mexico. The article demonstrates how postcolonial actors effectively deployed international law, showcasing its potential to contest hegemony on multiple levels: as a language, as a strategy, as an instrument, and as a symbol.

Book reviews:

• Gaillet, Aurore: La Cour constitutionnelle fédérale allemande. Recon struire une démocracie par le droit (1945-1961) (Peter Huber)
• Mahlmann, Matthias: Mind and Rights. The History, Ethics, Law and Psychology of Human Rights (Mónica Mazariegos Rodas)
• Duve, Thomas and Herzog, Tamar (eds.): The Cambridge History of Latin American Law in Global Perspective (Juan C. Herrera)

Issue DOI: 10.17104/0044-2348-2024-4 (open access) 

BOOK: Antonio Manuel HESPANA, Filhos da Terra. Mestizos Identities at the Margins of Portuguese Imperial Expansion (ed. Cátia A.P. ANTUNES/transl. Noelle RICHARDSON) [European Expansion and Indigenous Response, ed. George Bryan SOUZA; 45] (Leiden/Boston: Martinus Nijhoff/Brill, 2021), 421 p. ISBN 978-90-04-71350-5, € 135

 

(image source: Brill)

Abstract:

Filhos da Terra narrates the history over time of the so-called ‘Portuguese communities’ living outside the boundaries of the Portuguese Empire but identified locally and by other European empires as ‘Portuguese’. Concepts such as ‘tribe’, ‘diaspora’, and ‘society of métissage’ have been widely used to define these groups.

On the author, editor and contributors:

Cátia Antunes, Zoltan Biedermann, Tamar Herzog, Noelle Richardson, Sophie Rose, and Ângela Barreto Xavier.  António Manuel Hespanha was Professor of Legal History and Theory of Law at the Faculty of Law, Nova University of Lisbon. His major work As Vésperas do Leviathan (1986) was groundbreaking in establishing a new history of the political institutions and of the nature of the State in Portugal in the Early Modern period. A prolific writer, he was guest professor at Yale University, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, University of Macau and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris). He was also the General Commissioner for the Commemoration of the Portuguese Discoveries Committee (1995-1998). For all his academic, intellectual, and political contributions, he was awarded the honor of Grand Official of the Military Order of Sant’Iago da Espada (2000) by the President of the Republic of Portugal, Jorge Sampaio.

Table of contents:

General Series Editor’s Preface
List of Illustrations
Foreword: Filhos da Terra in English – The Raison D’Être [OPEN ACCESS]
The Legal Dimensions of Empire: Filhos da Terra and the Normative Order [OPEN ACCESS]
Portuguese Identity, Métissage and Liminality  [OPEN ACCESS]
Translator’s Note [OPEN ACCESS]
Glossary [OPEN ACCESS]

Introduction
 1 A ‘Portuguese’ Identity?
 2 The Analytical Perspective

1 Chapter title to be come
 1 The Portuguese ‘Informal Empire’
 2 The ‘Shadow Empire’
 3 Developments in the ‘Historiography of the Atlantic’

2 Chapter title to be come
 1 Methodological Approaches in the Historiography of the ‘Informal Empire’
 2 Notes of Caution
 3 Observing Identity: Methodological Questions

3 Chapter title to be come
 1 The ‘Provinces of the Shadow Empire
 2 Guinea
 3 The Americas
 4 Angola
 5 Mozambique
 6 The Indian Ocean and South Asia
 7 Mainland Southeast Asia
 8 The Far East

4 Chapter title to be come
 1 The ‘Portuguese Tribe’

5 Chapter title to be come
 1 Power and Governance in the ‘Shadow Empire’

6 Chapter title to be come
 1 Questions of Identity: External Differentiation and Internal Homogeneity

7 Chapter title to be come
 1 The Universalism of the Portuguese

Afterthoughts: Conversing about Diversity in Empire

Bibliography
Index  [OPEN ACCESS]

Read more here: DOI 10.1163/9789004713512. 

BOOK: Aleksander GREBIENIOW, Estate Planning by Agreement in the Sources of Roman Law [Warschauer Schriften zum römischen Recht und zur europäischen Rechtstradition, eds. Tomasz GIARO, Jakob FORTUNAT STAGL, Maria NOWAK, and Aleksander GREBENIOW; 2] (Boston/Paderborn: Brill/Schöningh, 2025), XX + 459 p. ISBN 978-3-506-79508-3 [OPEN ACCESS]

 

(image source: Brill/Schöningh)

Abstract:

The present book encompasses various legal phenomena pertaining to wealth transfer mortis causa in the world of Roman law. It demonstrates that succession in property rights could be realised by agreements of various kinds, which – though not building a coherent legal concept and being much different from the modern understanding of contractual succession – served as will-substitutes, i.e. functional equivalents to the Roman testament. The study goes back to the ancient sources in order to select and examine any testimonies of agreements aimed at regulating patrimonial relationships after death: agreements having immediate effect between the living, those enforceable only at the death of the deceased, and finally, settlements altering the order of succession mortis causa long after his passing away. It uncovers a series of societal patterns of behaviour staying behind legal institutions. The extent of the already ancient phenomenon of estate planning by agreement and the diversity of the dogmatic issues involved provides a notable starting point for discussions on the contemporary inheritance law dogmas.

Table of Contents:

Preface................................................................................................ 3

CONTENTS....................................................................................... 4

Abbreviations...................................................................................... 7

Introduction....................................................................................... 11

1 The Methodological Framework...................................................... 15

1.1 Objective, Objects of Research and Thesis................................. 15

1.1.1 The Notion of Estate Planning............................................. 15

1.1.2 Correspondent Concepts in Ancient Roman Law.................. 17

1.1.3 Additio: The Notion of Contractual Succession.................... 27

1.1.4 Thesis................................................................................ 30

1.2 The State of the Field................................................................ 31

1.2.1 Romanistic Scholarship on Contracts of Succession Mortis Causa........................................................................................ 31

1.2.2 Roman Law and Social Realities......................................... 37

1.3 Sources, Methods, and Research Plan........................................ 52

1.3.1 Sources.............................................................................. 52

1.3.2 Method.............................................................................. 56

1.3.3 Research Plan.................................................................... 60

2 The Institutions of Estate Planning................................................... 62

2.1 Successio anticipata: Juridical Acts Concluded and Executed During Life............................................................................................... 62

2.1.1 Divisio ab intestato............................................................ 66

2.1.2 Donationes...................................................................... 127

2.1.3 Dowries........................................................................... 180

2.1.4 Peculia............................................................................ 185

2.1.5 Specific Cases of Anticipated Succession........................... 192

2.1.6 Conclusions Concerning Anticipated Succession................ 197

2.2 Juridical Acts Mortis Causa Enforced at Death......................... 200

2.2.1 Mancipatio familiae.......................................................... 200

2.2.2 Stipulationes.................................................................... 209

2.2.3 Pacta............................................................................... 237

2.2.4. Pacta Dotalia Mortis Causa............................................. 259

2.2.5 Mandatum Post Mortem and Related Institutions................ 295

2.2.6 Conclusions on Wealth Transfers Enforced at Death........... 318

2.3 Agreements Concerning Succession Mortis Causa Concluded Post Mortem........................................................................................ 324

2.3.1 Venditio hereditatis.......................................................... 324

2.3.2 Postmortal Pacts and Transactiones................................... 327

2.3.3. Conclusions regarding Postmortal Arrangements............... 335

3 Conclusions.................................................................................. 337

3.1 General Observations.............................................................. 337

3.2 Specific Observations............................................................. 340

3.3 Final Observations.................................................................. 350

4 Bibliography................................................................................. 354

5 Index of Sources........................................................................... 389

Read more here (DOI 10.30965/9783657795086). 

BOOK: Michael MILO, Julie FRASER, Brianne MCGONIGLE LEYH, E.G.D. VAN DONGEN (eds.), Sol Iustitiae Setting ? The Utrecht Law School and its Relation to Slavery (Den Haag: Boom Juridisch, 2025), 230 p. ISBN 9789462129726 , € 52

 

(image source: Boom)

Abstract:

Slavery was legal, in conformity with the law in force in the former colonies of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, until abolition on July 1, 1863. Seldom is it shown more clearly that the law as it stands may indeed be unjust and utterly abject. The consequences work their way through, which does not surprise at all. Precisely the academic institution that has law and justice as its domain, the law faculty, should be concerned with this past and with its relationship to the institution of slavery. How did the Utrecht law faculty, its professors, students and alumni relate to slavery? A dozen students and four supervisors researched aspects of this relationship. This book reports on that bewildering past and present.

On the editors and authors:

The editors and authors are associated with the Utrecht University Law School as professors and students. 

Read more here. 

ARTICLE: Eric LOEFFLAD, "Blood of Nations, Blood of Empire: Pan-Slavism as a Critique of International Law in Late Imperial Russia and Beyond" (German Yearbook of International Law LXVI (2023), nr. 1, 37-60)

 

(image source: Duncker & Humblot)

Abstract:

While international lawyers analysing Vladimir Putin’s ongoing actions and justifications through the broad arc of Russian history have no shortage of materials to draw upon, one comparatively under-explored discourse is the Russian tradition of Pan-Slavism. In this piece I argue that while Russian Pan-Slavism – and its invocation of a common Slavic destiny – provides an important resource, uncovering its origins and content requires a new approach to international legal history better attuned to the overlap between nationalism and imperialism. Towards this end I focus on how interactions within and between various empires, especially those in Central and Eastern Europe, gave rise to a distinctly Pan-Slavic consciousness that Russia ultimately championed through a distinctly paternalist anti-imperial imperialism. This contextual account culminates in a reading of Nikolai Danilevskii’s 1869 text Russia and Europe, the most iconic manifesto of Russian Pan-Slavism, as a critique of the international legal positivism that consolidated in the late-nineteenth century. Through this account, I seek to provide new insights into ongoing political contestations as well as international law’s variable functions as an active shaper of collective political identities.

On the author:

Eric Loefflad, University of Kent Canterbury, UK 

Read the article here (DOI 10.3790/gyil.2024.370076). 

JOURNAL: Special Issue Making the Village Fit for the Future: Rural Development in Twentieth-Century Asia (Comparativ. Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und Gesellschaftsforschung) XXXIV (2024), nr. 6)

 

(image source: Comparativ)

Abstract:

This journal issue re-evaluates rural reform in twentieth-century Asia. So far, historians have approached development outside the cities as a contingent dimension of empires and nation-states or as a derivative of urban planning efforts. By contrast, the case studies assembled here frame the history of villages and rural change as a decisive arena in which ideas and practices concerning the redesign of state and society were formulated, negotiated, and experimented with. Particularly during transitional years of accelerated historical change, such as after the world wars and during decolonization, the concept of the rural and rural communities functioned as a medium for diverse and often conflictive notions of the future, imaginations of socioeconomic order, and political aspirations. The authors of these development paths were not only international development experts or urban elites but also (self-proclaimed) representatives among rural communities who wove their vested interests, ideas, and norms into the fabric of development and modernization. In that light, this journal issue proposes to investigate more in detail to which extent, for whom, and with what consequences negotiations about the meaning of the rural gave shape to developmental ideas more generally. In other words, the case studies analyse rural history and the conceptual history of the rural in Asia as key elements of twentieth-century development history.

Introduction (Clemens Six) 
DOI 10.26014/j.comp.2024.06.01

Gendered Development Work and Non-State Primary Healthcare Provisions: The Skippo Medical Van Scheme in Rural India, c. 1940s to mid-1970s (Maria Framke)
DOI 10.26014/j.comp.2024.06.02
Abstract:

This article focuses on gendered rural development work in late colonial and early post-colonial India. Next to the question of livelihood generation and education, the issue of health and hence of women’s vulnerability, was taken up by members of the All-India Women’s Conference (AIWC). From the 1930s the AIWC had been interested in maternity and child welfare work. It lobbied for adequate medical aid to women and birth control. With independence looming, the organization turned its attention increasingly to the Indian villages. In 1946, the AIWC initiated a mobile van scheme, called Skippo, to provide primary healthcare facilities to remote rural areas. The article investigates the healthcare related work of the AIWC for rural communities, focusing on the formation and development of the Skippo van scheme, the ideas behind it and its successes and failures. By asking what motivated Indian women activists to work for the health of their fellow countrypeople in the villages, the article strives to understand how women scripted themselves into the narratives of national progress and development. Women activists of the AIWC established various entanglements with international actors and organizations in pursuance of rural development work. Examining these transnational networks of cooperation the article gives further insights in their nature, content, and outcome. It clearly demonstrates the beneficial influence of transnational nongovernmental networks for primary healthcare in post-colonial rural India, while also showing how Indian activists tied in the politics of international rural development.

Lost Rural Futures: Agrarian Nationalism and Industrial Dissent in Modern China (Mark E. Frank & Tristan G. Brown)
DOI 10.26014/j.comp.2024.06.03
Abstract:

A debate in the early 1940s between two social scientists, Yang Kaidao and Zhou Xianwen, reinvigorated a national conversation about China’s relationship with agriculture. Clearly China’s roots were agrarian, but was it destined to remain “a country founded on agriculture” with the rural village as the focal point of the state and the nucleus of society, or must the republic industrialize in order to survive? If the answer seems obvious to the present-day observer, it remained debatable on the eve of the communist revolution. This paper uses the Yang-Zhou debate as a window on past visions of an agrarian future that were impassioned yet full of irony: agricultural fundamentalists pointed to settled agriculture as a distinctive and transhistorical feature of the Chinese state, but their arguments and policy recommendations echoed similar movements in Japan, Italy, Latvia, and many other twentieth-century states. We contend that China’s twentieth-century agrarian fundamentalism should be acknowledged both as a pivotal yet underexplored cornerstone of Chinese nationalism and as a key link in a broader global agrarian-nationalist movement that largely dissipated after the Second World War.

Modernization through Rural Development: German Development Aid in Southeast Asia in a European Setting, 1930s–1970s (Andreas Weiß)
DOI 10.26014/j.comp.2024.06.04
Abstract:

After the loss of its colonies, Germany had to find new strategies to connect with the world. This article examines the continuities and differences after the two world wars when the Weimar Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany tried to re-establish their contacts with the non-European world through development aid for the agricultural sector. Following German agricultural ‘experts’ from the (semi-)colonial period to the independence of Siam/Thailand and the Dutch East Indies/Indonesia, this paper asks how these different German states combined agricultural modernisation and development aid over time. It argues that personal connections originating from the interwar period are more important to understand the steering of German development aid in the 1950s than the Cold War, which has dominated much of the historical literature to date. A closer look also reveals that West German development aid was surprisingly flexible and non-ideological. This is all the more surprising against the background of the European and international context that influenced West Germany’s relations with Southeast Asia, as West Germany was caught up in the systemic competition of the Cold War confrontation, especially through the existence of the second German state, the German Democratic Republic.

Forum

The Transformation of the Perception of Change since the late Eighteenth Century (Harald Kleinschmidt)
DOI 10.26014/j.comp.2024.06.05
Abstract:

Using Lévi-Strauss’s dichotomy of hot and cold societies, this article examines culture- and epoch- specific perceptions of change in conjunction with attitudes toward pasts. It argues that a transformation of the cold perception, seeking to keep change at bay, into the hot perception, focused on promoting change, took place in Europe at c. 1800. This transformation concurred with the strengthening experience of a gap disjoining past from present and of the felt need to conjoin past with present through historiography. In other parts of the planet, however, the cold perception of change prevailed jointly with the experience of continuity from past into future. The discrepancy between these perceptions of change and attitudes toward pasts has ushered in conflicts during and after colonial rule and has suspended or even suppressed endogenous potentials for change in groups subject to colonial rule.

Book reviews

•  Chris Gratien: The Unsettled Plain: An Environmental History of the Late Ottoman Frontier, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2022, 318 pp. (Ramazan Hakkı Öztan)
• Janet Polasky: Asylum Between Nations: Refugees in a Revolutionary Era, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023, 312 pp. (Matthieu Ferradou)
• Matthijs Lok, Friedemann Pestel, Juliette Reboul (eds.): Cosmopolitan Conservatisms: Countering Revolution in Transnational Networks, Ideas and Movements (c. 1700–1930), Leiden: Brill, 2021, 434 pp.(Matthias Middell)
• Melanie Judgen, Dee Smythe (eds.): Unsettling Apologies: Critical Writings on Apology from South Africa (Law, Society, Policy Series), Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2022, 312 pp. (Mechthild Nagel)
• Faeeza Ballim: Apartheid’s Leviathan: Electricity and the Power of Technological Ambivalence, Athens: Ohio University Press, 2023, 167 pp. (Ulf Engel)
• Silke Hackenesch (ed.): Adoption across Race and Nation: US Histories and Legacies, Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2022, 229 pp. (Benedikt Stuchtey)
• Simon Godard: Le laboratoire de l’internationalisme. Le CAEM et la construction du bloc socialiste, Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 2021, 325 pp. (Sara Lorenzini)
• Jie-Hyun Lim: Global Easts: Remembering, Imagining, Mobilizing, New York: Columbia University Press, 2022, 344 pp. (Jean-Numa Ducange)

Read more here.

 

BOOK: James Q. WHITMAN, From Masters of Slaves to Lords of Lands. The Transformation of Ownership in the Western World [Studies in Legal History, eds. Lisa FORD, Thomas MCSWEENEY & Reuel SCHILLER] (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025), ISBN 9781009497534, 35 GBP

 

(image source: CUP)

Abstract:

Today we think of land as the paradigmatic example of property, while in the past, the paradigmatic example was often a slave. In this seminal work, James Q. Whitman asserts that there is no natural form of ownership. Whitman dives deep into the long Western history of this transformation in the legal imagination – the transformation from the ownership of humans and other living creatures to the ownership of land. This change extended over many centuries, coming to fruition only on the threshold of the modern era. It brought with it profound changes, not only in the way we understand ownership but also in the way we understand the state. Its most dramatic consequence arrived in the nineteenth century, with the final disappearance of the lawful private ownership of humans, which had been taken for granted for thousands of years.

On the author:

James Q. Whitman is a professor at Yale Law School. He is the author of numerous books and articles, including Hitler's American Model (2018), The Verdict of Battle (2012), The Origins of Reasonable Doubt (2008) and Harsh Justice (2003) and the recipient of many awards.

Read the book online: DOI 10.1017/9781009497541.

DATABASE: Histoire et droit militaires (Université Paris Sorbonne-Nord)

 

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Dr. Paul Chauvin Madeira (Université Paris Sorbonne-Nord) created a database with over 7000 entries on military law and history.

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BOOK: Alan TZIVKA NISSEL, Merchants of Legalism. A History of State Responsibility (1870-1960) [Cambridge Studies in International and Comparative Law, eds. Larissa VAN DEN HERIK & Jean d'ASPREMONT](Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024) , 418 p. ISBN 9781009378642, € 122,55

 

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Abstract:

Since the United Nations finalised its Draft Articles on the Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts in 2001, most of the attention has been on the codification history of the topic. Alan Nissel widens the historic lens to include the pre-United Nations origins, offering the first extensive study on the American contribution to the modern law of state responsibility. The book examines the recurring narrative of lawyers using international law to suit the particular needs of their clients in three key contexts: the US turn to international arbitration practice in the New World, the German theorisation of public law in the setting of its national unification, and the multilateral effort to codify international law within world bodies. This expanded historical framework not only traces the pre-institutional origins of the code, but also highlights the duality of State responsibility doctrines and the political environments from which they emerged.

Table of contents:

Acknowledgements
1. The responsibilities of States in International law: an overview
2. The US turn to the technique of international arbitration
3. The creation of State responsibility in the New World
4. International responsibility as German philosophy
5. State responsibility as World order
Epilogue: from State responsibility to the responsibility of States
Bibliography
Index.

On the author:

Alan Tzvika Nissel is an Assistant Professor at the Pepperdine Caruso School of Law where he teaches international and property law-related courses. He is also CEO of Wilshire Skyline, a Los Angeles-based asset management company. Dr. Nissel received his LL.D. in international law from Helsinki University under the supervision of Martti Koskenniemi. 

 More information with the publisher, DOI 10.1017/9781009378659.