The International Law on Foreign Investment

It is one of the paradoxes of international law that the multinational corporations which conquered states, ruled over people, engaged in extensive international trade, founded colonies, pillaged vast riches from other peoples, committed many genocides and controlled armed forces was never subjected to international law. It is a phenomenon that international lawyers must explain. The explanation that international law was law between states and that therefore multinational corporations did not have personality to be made subject to international law, though still repeated, is a shibboleth that hardly hides the fact that this fiction enabled the hiding of colossal misconduct on the part of the powerful classes that ruled the states of Europe. There is agreement in the recent studies made of the British East India Company that it was indistinct from the ruling class of the United Kingdom. The same could be said of the Dutch East India Company, whose employee, Hugo Grotius, is celebrated as the founder of international law. Theories created by international lawyers ensured that the identities of those who profited from the misfeasances of these early multinational corporations were never revealed.