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This volume brings together anthropologists and historians to examine how property and ownership operate and are understood across contexts ranging from Roman provinces to modern-day piracy in Somalia. Among other things it examines the way legal property regimes intertwine with economic, moral-ethical, and political prerogatives.
This book questions the critical attitude that is informing the critical histories that have been flourishing since the ‘historical turn’ in international law. It makes the argument that the ‘historical turn’ falls short of being radically critical as the abounding critical histories which have come to populate the international literature over the last decades continue to be orchestrated along the very lines set by the linear historical narratives which they seek to question and disrupt, thereby repressing the imagination of international lawyers. It makes the point that the critical histories that have accompanied the ‘historical turn’ have contributed to the repression of disciplinary imagination just like other linear disciplinary histories. This book argues that the critical histories must move beyond a mere historiographical attitude and promotes radical historical critique in order to unbridle disciplinary imagination.
This new book by historian Lauren Benton offers a novel five-century history of violence in European empires from 1400 to 1900. Her focus is the hidden logic of limited war that drove conflict across many centuries and diverse regions. Never "minor" for the victims, Benton shows how such small wars-described as "border skirmishes" or "peacekeeping operations"-profoundly affected the lived experiences of people in empires around the world.
This volume explores how the quest for security reshaped the world over the course of the 19th century, altering the structures, hierarchies and dynamics of international relations during a pivotal moment in world history. Taking a unique approach to imperial and international history, the essays in this volume show how security propelled imperial expansion, supported institutions of cooperation, maintained networks of imperial actors and shaped experiences of imperial rule. Contending that security should be studied as a force in its own right, one that drove processes of colonization, civilization and commerce, Securing Empire shows how cooperation between and across empires hinged on shared notions of threats and common ways of countering them. In showing that security did not solely inform, support and complicate unilateral imperial endeavours, but also brought different imperial entities together and forged global modes of government, this book shows how integral security was to the 'global transformation' of the 19th century and the new world order that emerged.
Inspiring and distinctive, After Meaning provides a radical challenge to the way in which international law is thought and practised. Jean d’Aspremont asserts that the words and texts of international law, as forms, never carry or deliver meaning but, instead, perpetually defer meaning and ensure it is nowhere found within international legal discourse.
In Enemies of Mankind Walter Rech offers a contextual history of the collective security doctrine articulated by Swiss international lawyer Emer de Vattel (1714-67) in the authoritative treatise Droit des gens of 1758. With reference to Vattel’s writings and to early modern international history and legal thought more generally, Rech explores the meanings and functions of the enemy of mankind concept and its ramifications for collective security. This account complicates the canonical portrayal of Vattel as an advocate of state sovereignty and a critic of law enforcement in the international society, thus reappraising his place in the history of international law.