How does Asia feature in the history of international law? Very sparingly, according to multiple reviews of the Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law.1 Published in 2012, the Oxford Handbook was set up as a project to break new ground by ‘departing from the “well-worn paths” of how the history of international law has been written so far’.2 The aims included challenging the Eurocentricism of international legal history, and bringing within the frame things generally excluded from it – such as the ‘many other experiences and forms of legal relations between autonomous [extra-European] communities developed in the course of history’, including those ‘which were discontinued as a result of domination and colonization by European Powers’.3 Proceeding from this promising beginning, the Handbook included specific chapters on ‘China’, ‘Japan’ and ‘India’, as well as chapters on the ‘encounters’ with Europe of each.4 Without doubt, these proved to be interesting and revealing outings. Not least, they underlined how much remained to be studied and written of the very polities that European scholars from Mill to Hegel had declared to have ‘no history’ (to the productive irritation of generations of historians from these polities).5 Yet, as the reviews that followed publication of the Handbook perceptively noted, having had the run of six chapters in the sixty-six-chapter volume (about a dozen chapters across all non-European regions), these polities did not infiltrate other parts of the volume. That is, they did not leave the ‘regional’ section of the volume. Barring exceptions, the Handbook chapters on key international legal actors and themes did not draw upon non-European engagements, debates, concepts, practices or sources.6 Of ‘the 21 individuals presented in portrait, 19 [were] white European men’ (and one a white European woman).7 While Christianity was ‘all over’ the chapters, Islamic international law had ‘only a compartmentalized, isolated role … presented as largely ahistorical and static’.8 Encounters were had with Europe, but Asian polities did not meet each other, nor other non-European polities.9 The footnotes, tables of treaties and cases, and bibliographies also told a largely European story.10 And all this was perhaps unavoidable, explained one reviewer, given that volume had not opened up the logically prior question of what to look at, in identifying the history of international law.11 It had not distanced itself from the ‘discipline’s orthodox approach to sources’, which ‘direct[ed] scholars of “pre-modern” international law towards the writings of the “fathers of international law” [all European men], and … scholars of international law’s “modern” history to state consent’.12 These sources were European: they represented particular European innovations, responding to particular European experiences. Yet they were cast into universal categories into which non-Europeans did not fit – or rarely fit. Seen through the prism of these sources, non-Europeans, having few representatives either in the pantheon of fathers or in the club of possible consent givers, did not qualify as contributors to the history of international law. Clearly, then, some recalibration of what it meant to do the history of international law was needed. Only by engaging the question of ‘the history of what’, as Anne Orford has put it,13 could we begin to build a history of international law that engages with ‘extra-European experiences and forms’, as the Handbook had set out to do.

This chapter explores the legacies of indenture for international law in Asia through a survey of the existing scholarship and points to new directions for research. Focusing on indentured labor from India, which comprised the majority of labourers recruited under this system in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, it shows how indenture shifted definitions of emigrants and foreigners, shaped discourses on welfare in migration, and left its mark on international relations as they emerged in the aftermath of the two world wars. The chapter also discusses how questions of nationality and citizenship in the postcolonial period often overlooked the plight of the descendents of indenture in Asia, and concludes with speculations on what the new form of indenture is and the limits of drawing these historical analogies.

Chapter 7 explores how the human rights and humanitarian professionals employed by NGOs and IGOs conduct day-to-day diplomacy in the field. This includes providing immediate protection, conducting interviews, negotiating humanitarian access, monitoring detention facilities, and creating humanitarian space.

This chapter discusses the relationship between WTO law and other public international law (PIL), focusing on the interpretation of WTO law through the lens of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT). It examines how WTO dispute settlement bodies have approached non-WTO law, particularly in the context of treaty interpretation and potential conflicts between legal regimes. The chapter argues that while the VCLT provides a framework for interpretation, it has limitations in addressing conflicts between different agreements, as illustrated by the interaction between the Paris Agreement and the WTO. The authors contend that legislative solutions within the WTO are necessary to address these conflicts and ensure the WTO’s continued relevance in the face of global challenges like climate change.

Chapter 5 delves into the international civil service to show how IGO officials such as secretaries-general and high commissioners (and independent experts such as special rapporteurs) bargain and negotiate for human rights and humanitarian principles. It also explains the diplomatic functions of treaty monitoring bodies and courts in advancing respect for international human rights and humanitarian principles.

This chapter offers a quantitative analysis of female litigants in courts across three jurisdictions during the seventeenth century. Though the percentage of female litigants in common law courts remained low, an increasing number of women sought legal redress under equity law in England. In those colonies that established courts of chancery based on the English model, such as the Chesapeake Bay colonies and South Carolina, women also had the benefit of an equity jurisdiction that recognised exceptions to the doctrine of coverture. This chapter also presents remarkable evidence that women appeared as plaintiffs and defendants in more than half of the cases heard before the English ecclesiastical law courts, a percentage that far outstrips women’s participation in any court in the colonies.

The Belfast Agreement requires Ireland to provide an equivalent level of protection for human rights as applies in Northern Ireland, a requirement which would appear to cover the right to equality and non-discrimination. The lack of serious engagement with the North-South dimension is particularly notable given that the Belfast Agreement requires Ireland to provide an equivalent level of protection for human rights. The Belfast Agreement can be said to be explicitly founded upon a set of foundational general principles. Considerable emphasis is placed on the importance of equality as a key animating principle in the text of the Agreement. This reflects the reality that the history of segregation and discrimination in Northern Ireland means that any successful peace process will inevitably have to engage with the lack of equality that has and continues to burden the province.

This chapter defines women’s legal status in a variety of legal jurisdictions across the Anglo-American world, and examines how colonists adopted and modified English law in the earliest decades of colonisation. It argues that the complexity of the English legal system gave English women a decisive advantage over some of their colonial counterparts. While married women were limited in common law courts by the doctrine of coverture, other legal jurisdictions provided women with alternative avenues for legal redress when defending their property and persons. The two most important jurisdictions for women in England were equity law and ecclesiastical law, which both provided some remedy for the common law’s severity toward women.

In focusing on markets and commerce, this chapter discusses the complex cross-border institutions designed to encourage crossborder economic activity, and the cross-border flows of economic actors in their roles as tourists, commuters and students. It is concerned with the impact of devolution on everyday life through the prism of cross-border commerce. The story of cross-border economic cooperation is linked to the creation of North-South implementation bodies in 1999 under Strand Two of the Good Friday Agreement. The chapter shows how cross-border linkages and flows, with a consequent impact on everyday experience, have increased since 1999. One area where there is a strong impression of a cross-border market or commercial life working to its optimal level is that of shopping. Crossborder shopping is an issue that periodically (and temporarily) becomes a favourite topic for media interest and political oratory.

This chapter focuses on gender as an analytical identity category in the context of a changing, yet still deeply unequal, Northern Ireland. Unlike ethno-national identity, and to a lesser extent class, many women expressed a sense of their gender difference as something that was always there, omnipresent from their earliest childhood memories, that the sense of difference was innate. Several women talked at length about gender inequality in Northern Ireland as an observable social reality. A more promising analysis of gender inequality was offered by a much smaller number of women who recognised not only the extent to which such inequality impinges on their lives but also the potential to challenge and change it. Champions of equality were excited by the signing of the Good Friday Agreement on 10 April 1998 due to the specific inclusions with regard to human rights and equal opportunities.

This chapter tracks community relations initiatives in education over the last three decades and considers the potential for school-based encounters to deliver peace-building objectives. The chapter provides an overview of the contact theory. The policy imperative for school-based contact dates back to the early 1980s, when the Northern Ireland Department of Education made the first public statement of commitment to the development of a community relations policy. In 2007, against the backdrop of a statutory community relations programme with limited impact, two international philanthropic organisations (International Fund for Ireland and Atlantic Philanthropies) offered funding for the large-scale Sharing Education Programme (SEP) in Northern Ireland. Although SEP is still in relatively early stages of delivery, a body of evidence is beginning to accumulate that is consistent in finding that the model offers an effective means of promoting good relations.

This chapter examines the challenges facing women who want to participate in politics in Northern Ireland and touches upon the relationship between women inside and outside politics. It draws upon survey research to show changes in public attitudes and discusses outreach programmes that support women who wish to become involved. The chapter traces the post-Good Friday Agreement (GFA) journey for women through the political institutions and demonstrates that while some progress has been made, more is required. The Northern Ireland Local Government Association, supported by Arlene Foster MLA (then Environment Minister), introduced an annual networking dinner in Parliament Buildings for women politicians. The election to the first Northern Ireland Assembly followed within months of the GFA. In assessing the gender deficit, female MLAs in the 1998 Assembly cited male culture and attitudes as obstacles to their participation.