Boundaries of the International : Law and Empire / Jennifer Pitts.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pitts, Jennifer, 1970- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

International law--History.

International law.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (294 pages)

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2018]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Against the dominant narrative first developed in the eighteenth century, which has held that international law had its origins in relations between sovereign European states that respected each other as free and equal, Boundaries of the International examines the deep entanglement of international law with European imperial expansion. As commercial relations with states such as the Ottoman and Empire and China intensified, European legal and political writers increasingly described them as anomalous and backward empires in a modern world of nation-states, even as European states were themselves expanding their imperial reach across the globe. The debate over the boundaries of international law included legal authorities from Vattel to Wheaton to Westlake but ranged well beyond professional jurists to political thinkers such as Montesquieu, Edmund Burke, and J.S. Mill, legislators and diplomats, colonial administrators and journalists. Dissident voices in this broader public debate insisted that European states had extensive legal obligations abroad. These critics provide valuable resources for the critical scrutiny of the political, economic, and legal inequalities that continue to afflict the global order.-- Provided by publisher

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction: Empire and International Law

Oriental Despotism and the Ottoman Empire

Nations and Empires in Vattel’s World

Critical Legal Universalism in the Eighteenth Century

The Rise of Positivism?

Historicism in Victorian International Law

Epilogue

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

Notes:

Includes index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 29. Aug 2018)

ISBN:

9780674986299

0674986296

9780674986275

067498627X

OCLC:

1027218809