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Economic History of International Law Konstantina Durham E-Theses Letters of Blood and Fire: A Socio-Economic History of International Law TZOUVALA, KONSTANTINA How to cite: TZOUVALA, KONSTANTINA (2016) Letters of Blood and Fire: A Socio-Economic History of International Law , Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/11806/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 Abstract The financial crash of 2007-2008 brought words like ‘capitalism’, ‘capital’, and ‘socialism’ back in vogue. However, the discipline of international law remains to reflect systematically on its relationship with the ways in which wealth and power are produced and distributed. This thesis examines the relationship between international law, imperialism and capitalism through historical lenses, arguing that the diffusion of capitalist relations is a core function of international law. Analysing the nineteenth-century ‘standard of civilisation’, I contend that transforming (semi)colonised polities into centralised, territorialised states operating as guarantors of capitalist relations of production was at the core of the concept. Extraterritoriality in Japan and the Ottoman Empire serves as a case study to verify this statement and to highlight the transformative functions of the ‘civilising mission’. The Mandates System of the League of Nations established a system of partial internationalisation of this transformative process, while attempting to safeguard the long-term interests of capital through the introduction of limited forms of welfarism. My thesis then argues that decolonisation assumed the form of national statehood due to the transformative functions of nineteenth-century international law. Therefore, the attempt to push for a New International Economic Order was both a challenge to contemporary international law and a reaffirmation of its role in promoting capitalist relations on a global level. These reformist attempts did not succeed, however, and a new model of capitalist accumulation, neoliberalism, became hegemonic after 1990. The quantitative expansion and qualitative refinement of international law during that period was intrinsically linked to the neoliberal aversion to democratic and mass politics. The neoliberal reconstruction of Iraq in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion is interpreted in the light of this reality. In so doing, my thesis highlights the ongoing synergies between international law and capitalist expansion. 1 Letters of Blood and Fire: A Socio- Economic History of International Law Konstantina Tzouvala A Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Supervised by Dr G.I. Hernández Prof W. Lucy Durham Law School Durham University June 2016 2 Table of Contents Abstract .......................................................................................................................... 1 Title Page ....................................................................................................................... 2 Table of Contents ........................................................................................................... 3 Declaration ..................................................................................................................... 6 Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................ 7 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 8 The capitalist mode of production: a very brief introduction ..................................... 9 The ‘secret’ of primitive accumulation, imperialism and international law ............ 14 Structure, contribution and originality ..................................................................... 19 Chapter 1: Decoding ‘civilisation’: nineteenth-century international law and capitalist expansion ..................................................................................................................... 27 1:1 Beyond popular ‘illusions’: community, subjectivity and civilisation in nineteenth- century international law .......................................................................................... 28 1:2 Civilisation: what’s in a name? .......................................................................... 33 1:3 The limits of received wisdom and an alternative way forward ........................ 37 1:3:1 Civilisation v. Culture: The broader origins of the concept and its emphasis on institutions ............................................................................................................ 38 1:4 A way forward: capitalism as civilisation .......................................................... 43 1:4:1 Protecting individual rights and the rise of capitalism: the construction of the individual .............................................................................................................. 44 1:4:2 Constructing the Leviathan: modern nation-state as civilisation ................ 47 1:4:3 Abolition of slavery and free labour: vogelfrei labourers as civilisation .... 49 Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 51 Chapter 2: Extraterritoriality and the civilising mission: international law and social transformation in Japan and the Ottoman Empire ....................................................... 53 2:1 Extraterritoriality as the ‘crown jewel’ of the civilising mission ....................... 54 2:2 Japan and the Ottoman Empire: in search of common trends ............................ 58 2:2:1 Japan's successful encounter with extraterritoriality: 1858-1899 ............... 58 2:2:2 The Ottoman Empire: the slow emergence of sovereignty in the periphery of Europe ................................................................................................................... 67 3 2:3 Beyond culture: Constructing a materialist narrative of extraterritoriality ........ 74 Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 77 Chapter 3: The Mandates System and the twilight of ‘civilisation’: building sustainable capitalism in a transitional world ................................................................................. 79 3:1 The beginning of the end for formal empires: internationalism, socialism and the rise of nationalism in the periphery ..................................................................................... 80 3:2 The structure and the function of an experiment: oscillating between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.................................................................................................... 83 3:2:1 Article 22: continuation of the civilising mission by other means .............. 83 3:3:2 The Permanent Mandate Commission: supervising the experiment ........... 88 3:3 Capitalist transformation and international law: labour, trade and welfare in the Mandates .................................................................................................................. 92 3:3:1 From ‘civilised’ to ‘emancipated’: conditions for statehood under the Mandates System and the persistence of ‘civilisation’ ......................................................... 93 3:3:2 On continuities and breaks: the emergence of welfarism and the Mandate System .............................................................................................................................. 99 Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 103 Chapter 4: From decolonisation to the New International Economic Order: continuities and ruptures in international law ...................................................................................... 105 4:1 Decolonisation as homeopathy: the limitations of a revolution ....................... 106 4:2 From politics to economics: a sense of incompleteness and the quest for a just international legal order ......................................................................................... 113 4:2:1 NIEO as a legal project: saving international law from itself? ................. 114 4:2:2 Building a coherent narrative: development as a legal strategy ................ 117 4:3 NIEO as failure: asking some fundamental questions ..................................... 121 4:3:1 NIEO’s oscillation: from permanent sovereignty to ‘common heritage of mankind’ ............................................................................................................................ 122 4:3:2 Beyond (in)coherence: the politics of NIEO................................................. 125 4:3:2:1 The political context: from the divisions of the Cold War to
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