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26 Law & Hist. Rev. 595 (2008)
From International Law to Imperial Constitutions: The Problem of Quasi-Sovereignty, 1870-1900

handle is hein.journals/lawhst26 and id is 623 raw text is: PART III. GOVERNING SPACE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW From International Law to Imperial Constitutions: The Problem of Quasi- Sovereignty, 1870-1900 LAUREN BENTON The roots of the international legal order have often been traced to inter- twining scholarly and political traditions dating back to the early seven- teenth century, in particular to early writings in international law and the rise of the nation-state in Europe. Recent scholarship has attacked this narrative from many angles. One approach has been to reexamine early modem European politics and discourse, in particular questioning whether, for example, the publication of Grotius's writings, or the Peace of West- phalia, functioned as a foundational moment in the history of the interstate order.1 A second, complementary approach has been to broaden the history of global order to encompass inter-imperial politics, including the legal relations of imperial powers and indigenous subjects.2 The two projects 1. There is a growing literature on the misreadings of Westphalia. See, for example, Stephane Beaulac, The Power of Language in the Making of International Law: The Word Sovereignty in Bodin and Vattel and the Myth of Westphalia (Leiden: Brill, 2004). The best work on reinterpreting Grotius against a common reading by international relations theorists is Edward Keene, Beyond the Anarchical Society: Grotius, Colonialism and Order in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 2. A classic study along these lines is C. H. Alexandrowicz, An Introduction to the History of the Law of Nations in the East Indies (16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967). See also Lauren Benton, Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History, 1400-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Lauren Benton is Professor of History at New York University <lauren.benton@ nyu.edu>. For helpful comments on earlier drafts, the author would like to thank David Armitage, C. A. Bayly, Thomas Bender, Fred Cooper, Manu Goswami, Daniel Hulsebosch, Benedict Kingsbury, Mark Mazower, William Nelson, Gyan Prakash, Benjamin Straumann, two anonymous reviewers for this journal, and the participants at the conference Law, War, and History, held at the Boalt School of Law, University of California, Berkeley, February 16-18, 2007. Law and History Review Fall 2008, Vol. 26, No. 3 © 2008 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

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