The evolution of international law: Colonial and postcolonial realities

Abstract

The colonial and postcolonial realities of international law have been obscured by the analytical frameworks that governed traditional scholarship on the subject. This article sketches out a history of the evolution of international law that focuses in particular on the manner in which imperialism shaped the discipline. It argues that colonialism, rather than being a peripheral concern of the discipline, is central to the formation of international law and, in particular, its founding concept, sovereignty. It argues that international law has always been animated by the civilising mission, the project of governing and transforming non-European peoples, and that the current war on terror is an extension of this project.

Notes

1 This article presents arguments that are developed at greater length in Antony Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

2 JHW Verzijl, International Law in Historical Perspective, 10 vols, Leiden: AW Sijthoff, 1968, Vol I, pp 435 – 436.

3 See Hedley Bull & Adam Watson (eds), The Expansion of International Society, New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. For an important critical treatment of the same theme, see Onuma Yasuaki, ‘When was the law of international society born? An inquiry of the history of international law from an intercivilizational perspective’, Journal of the History of International Law, 2, 2000, pp 1 – 66.

4 On this theme, see Martti Kosekenniemi, The Gentle Civilizer of Nations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp 98 – 178.

5 This approach draws heavily on the work of pioneering postcolonial scholars, eg Edward Said, Orientalism, New York: Pantheon Books, 1978; Said, Culture and Imperialism, New York: Knopf, 1993; and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, A Critique of Post-Colonial Reason, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.

6 Important works that deal with these themes include TO Elias, Africa and the Development of International Law, Leiden: AW Sijthoff, 1972; RP Anand, New States and International Law, New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1972; and CH Alexandrowicz, An Introduction to the History of the Law of Nations in the East Indies, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967. For a more recent work that offers an important Third World perspective, see Siba N'Zatioula Grovogui, Sovereigns, Quasi Sovereigns and Africans, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.

7 See Francisco de Victoria (1557/1917) De Indis et de Ivre Belli Relectiones, ed Ernest Nys, trans John Pawley Bate, Washington, DC: Carnegie Institute of Washington. This work consists of lectures that Vitoria gave with the titles that might be broadly translated as ‘On the Indians lately’ and ‘On the law of war made by the Spaniards on the barbarians’. Significantly, this is the first work in the series ‘The Classics of International Law’ published by the Carnegie Institute of Washington. Victoria is more usually referred to as ‘Vitoria’ and I have used the latter name.

8 Vitoria, De Indis, p 127.

9 Ibid, p 161.

10 Ibid, p 150.

11 Ibid, p 151.

12 Ibid, p 181.

13 See Alexandrowicz, An Introduction to the History of International Law in the East Indies.

14 John Westlake, Chapters on the Principles of International Law, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1894, p 141.

15 Ibid, p 142.

16 Makau wa Mutua, ‘Why redraw the map of Africa? A moral and legal inquiry’, Michigan Journal of International Law, 16, 1995, pp 1113 – 1176.

17 For an early and masterly account of the system, see Quincy Wright, Mandates Under the League of Nations, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1930.

18 This was stipulated by Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, which created the Mandate System. Ibid, p 591.

19 Peter Sluglett, Britain in Iraq, 1914 – 32, London: Ithaca Press, 1976, p 37.

20 The classic work on this subject is Mohammed Bedjaoui, Towards a New International Economic Order, New York: Holmes and Meir, 1979.

21 Fundamental norms, jus cogens norms, are an exception to this broad principle.

22 David Fidler, ‘A kinder, gentler system of capitulations? International law, structural adjustment policies, and the standard of liberal, globalized, civilization’, Texas International Law Journal, 35, 2000, p 387.

23 Niall Ferguson, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power, New York: Basic Books, 2003.

24 See, for example, BS Chimni, ‘International institutions today: an imperial global state in the making’, European Journal of International Law, 15 (1), 2004, pp 1 – 37.

25 See, for example, Robert Kagan, Of Paradise and Power, New York: Alfred Knopf, 2004.