ARTICLE: Achille MAROTTA, "The Muslim Friend: Cross-Confessional Male Intimacy in Eighteenth-Century Italy" (The Journal of Early Modern History ) 230-252 [OPEN ACCESS]

 

(iamge source: Brill)

Abstract:

In early modern Italy, stereotypes about Muslim men’s supposed inclination towards the vice of ‘sodomy’ gave rise to fears that Christian masculinity was being tainted. Eighteenth-century court records from the Republic of Genoa and the Papal States contain numerous instances of cross-confessional male relations that faced persecution by state authorities. In each of these cases, Christian men were prosecuted for taking a sexually ‘passive’ role in relation to sexually ‘active’ Muslims, while the reverse scenario was never pursued. This article argues that the sexual focus of judicial authorities obscured the enduring bonds of affection and mutual obligation that developed between men across religious lines. The existence of these relationships unveils an intimate sphere of connections across faith in the early modern Mediterranean while highlighting an intersectional site of Christian social anxiety, where fears of religious contamination overlapped with concerns about same-sex intimacy.

Read the article in open access: DOI 10.1163/15700658-bja10076.

BOOK: Adriane SANCTIS DE BRITO, Seeking Capture, Resisting Seizure. An International Legal History of the Anglo-Brazilian Treaty for the Suppression of the Slave Trade (1826–1845) (Frankfurt am Main: Max-Planck-Institut für Rechtsgeschichte und Rechtstheorie, 2023). ISBN: 9783944773421 [OPEN ACCESS]

(Image source: Max-Planck-Institut)

ABOUT THE BOOK

The treaties to suppress the slave trade were the subject of intense legal battles and debates in the first half of the 19th century. By delving into the legal disputes that took place within the context of the Anglo-Brazilian treaty, this book highlights the political importance of what might at first glance be perceived as little more than argumentative hurdles over the rules and proceedings regarding the search and capture of ships. Some of these legal battles were carried out in the correspondence between the Foreign Offices, sometimes between diplomatic representatives or within mixed commissions, while still others involved the process of interpretation and the resignification that took place over the course of years and involved a multiplicity of exchanges between various actors and institutions.

Britain constantly pushed to expand the legal use of force and possibilities of capture within the spaces outlined by the treaty regime. Brazil actively engaged in the legal interpretation, and in so doing created an argumentative onus that would later continue to transform British legal approaches and the very expectations about the content of the law the two parties were applying.

By constantly challenging the scope and limits of the treaty, Brazilian representatives slowed down the process of abolishing the slave trade, thus preserving the perverse practice, while at the same time protecting Brazil’s independence against the expansion of British interference. Whether reading the bilateral treaty clauses as analogous to or differently from prize law or general international law, the day-to-day interpretation forged anti-slave trade rules that kept ships, instead on enslaved people, protagonists of slave trade suppression mechanisms.

This history of the Anglo-Brazilian treaty provides more detail about the mechanisms created by international law to combat the slave trade. It also reveals the complex legal translations of state inequality, humanitarianism, violence, and the fine line between war and peace.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adriane Sanctis de Brito’s research focuses on the international histories of legal imagination related to peace, humanitarianism, and the suppression of the slave trade. Currently, she is a visiting scholar at the Institute for Global Law and Policy at Harvard Law School. She received her PhD from the University of São Paulo and previously served as an adjunct professor at the university’s International Relations Institute. As a co-founder of the Brazilian think tank LAUT, she leads projects examining how contemporary reactionary movements reimagine and reconfigure legal language and human rights. The research for this book was made possible by scholarships that supported research stays at the University of São Paulo, the University of Melbourne, the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for Procedural Law, and the University of Helsinki.

More information and the entire publication can be found here.

CFP: 'Arguing over Empire: Hugo Grotius, European Expansionism and Slavery' - University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam Law Hub - 7 June 2024 [DEADLINE 15 January 2024]

 Call for papers

Arguing over Empire: Hugo Grotius, European Expansionism and Slavery

Location: University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam Law Hub

Date: June 7th , 2024

Key-note: Prof. John Cairns (University of Edinburgh)

Workshop Theme

The workshop ‘Arguing over Empire: Hugo Grotius, European Expansionism and Slavery’ is part of a series of conferences organized by the Grotiana Foundation preceding the celebration in 2025 of the 400 th anniversary of Grotius’ opus magnum On the Law of War and Peace (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 ‘Non-consequential theories of strict liability in historical perspective.’ The workshop is co-organized by the Paul Scholten Centre for Jurisprudence of the University of Amsterdam in cooperation with the Amsterdam Law Hub, with Grotiana, and with the ‘Servus-project’ funded by the NWO.

Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) is generally regarded as one of the ‘founding fathers 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 the only published chapter of the treatise during his lifetime, titled The Free Sea (Mare Liberum), 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 indigenous 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. 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 is another 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 On the Law of Prize and Booty 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. 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 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.

Conditions

A paper proposal of max. 300 words should be sent to j.giltaij@uva.nl and m.dewilde@uva.nl.

The deadline for submissions is January 15th , 2024. Applicants will be notified by February 26th, 2024 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. 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)