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Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 August 2017

Extract

The deep relation between the colonial past and contemporary international law has been convincingly established. Scholars from diverse backgrounds, employing a variety of approaches, have shown the multifaceted ways in which the colonial enterprise occasioned the birth of doctrines and practices that are still in common use. The conference that occasioned this symposium, the last of the project History of International Law: Between Religion and Empire, directed by Martti Koskenniemi, was held in Helsinki in October 2016 and approached the issue of the colonial legacy of international law from the point of view of specific histories. The ‘techniques of empire’ raised at the conference encompassed colonial governance in the broadest sense, looking at practices, norms and normative systems, doctrines and concepts, and events. The case studies making up the articles featured in the symposium treat subjects as diverse as the experiences of colonialism have been, assuming an array of forms. Even so, from the multiplicity of techniques certain patterns and themes emerge.

Type
INTERNATIONAL LEGAL THEORY: Symposium: Law between Global and Colonial: Techniques of Empire
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation of the Leiden Journal of International Law 2017 

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References

1 We mention just a few classics and important contributions in a now rich and diverse body of literature: A. Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law (2005); M. Koskenniemi, The Gentle Civilizer of Nations (2002); A. Orford, Reading Humanitarian Intervention (2003); L. Nuzzo, Origini di una Scienza: Diritto Internazionale e Colonialismo nel XIX Secolo (2012); M. Van Ittersum, Profit and Principle: Hugo Grotius, Natural Rights Theories and the Rise of Dutch Power in the East Indies, 1595-1615 (2006).

2 Wigger, I., ‘“Black Shame” – the Campaign Against “Racial Degeneration” and Female Degradation in Interwar Europe’, (2010) 51 Race and Class 3346, at 35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Ibid.

4 These actions were discussed in 1937 within a ‘Special Commission 3’ of the State Secret Police (der Geheimen Staatspolizei). An anonymous commission formed by two doctors, one lawyer and two anthropologic experts decided on the concrete measures. According to Eckart ‘the sterilisation was illegal’, and took place ‘in a space absolutely without law’ (‘im absolut rechtslosen Raum’). W.U. Eckart, Medizin in der NS-Diktatur, Ideologie, Praxis, Folgen (2012), 130–1.