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Deciphering l’esprit d’internationalité: The 1872 Alabama arbitration and the pacifist antithesis of modern international law profession
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 January 2024
Abstract
In international legal historiography, it becomes a commonplace that the successful resolution of the Alabama dispute between Britain and the US by the 1872 Geneva Tribunal of arbitration – the 1872 Alabama arbitration – kindled the progressivist enthusiasm of liberal internationalists for projects of humanitarianism, the codification of international law, and international arbitration. The article aims to take this scholarship further by arguing that, against this backdrop of reformist enthusiasm for international law, two transnational social reform movements – pacifist internationalism and legalist internationalism – converged in a joint effort of social and intellectual mobilization in furtherance of an ordered system of international law and its judicial application in practice. The epitome of this encounter was the almost simultaneous creation of the International Law Association and the Institut de Droit International in 1873. The article shows that international jurists sought to delineate the nascent modern international law profession by strategically distancing their scientific cause of international law from the one embarked on by their pacifist counterparts. By demarcating international legal science in contrast to the contemporary pacifist activism of international law, international jurists set the parameters of their social networks, and manoeuvred for professional outreach. Yet it is precisely by bringing back the pacifist antithesis that had been deliberately relegated into the secondary by international jurists – ‘the men of 1873’ – that some previously under-emphasized aspects of the sensibility of l’esprit d’internationalité can be grasped.
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- © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Foundation of the Leiden Journal of International Law in association with the Grotius Centre for International Law, Leiden University
References
1 See M. Koskenniemi, The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870–1960 (2001), 11–97. This notion has become a common understanding among international legal historians. See also L. Nuzzo, Origini di una Scienza. Diritto Internazionale e Colonialismo nel XIX Secolo (2012), 133–44; S. Moyn, Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War (2021), 83; D. Bell, Dreamworlds of Race: Empire and the Utopian Destiny of Anglo-America (2020), 305–6.
2 See G. Rolin-Jaequemyns, ‘De L’étude de la Législation Comparée et du Droit International’, (1869) 1 Revue de Droit International et de Législation Comparée 1, at 17.
3 See Koskenniemi, supra note 1, at 3–4, 19.
4 A. Carty, ‘The Evolution of International Legal Scholarship in Germany during the Kaiserreich and the Weimarer Republik (1871–1933)’, (2007) 50 German Yearbook of International Law 29, at 36.
5 R. Cryer, ‘Déjà vu in International Law’, (2002) 65 Modern Law Review 931, at 934–5.
6 G. R. B. Galindo, ‘Martti Koskenniemi and the Historiographical Turn in International Law’, (2005) 16 EJIL 539, at 552–3.
7 G. Fitzmaurice, ‘The Contribution of the Institute of International Law to the Development of International Law’, (1973) 138 Recueil des Cours 203, at 212.
8 See D. Caron, ‘War and International Adjudication: Reflections on the 1899 Peace Conference’, (2000) 94 AJIL 4, at 9. See also Koskenniemi, supra note 1, at 40.
9 See I. Abrams, ‘The Emergence of the International Law Societies’, (1957) 19 Review of Politics 361; X. Chen, ‘The Institutionalization of International Law at a Crossroads: Pacifists, Jurists, and the Creation of the ILA and the IDI’, (2023) 117 AJIL Unbound 204.
10 See Abrams, ibid.
11 See P. M. Haas, ‘Introduction: Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination’, (1992) 46 International Organization 1.
12 See M. García-Salmones, ‘Walther Schücking and the Pacifist Traditions of International Law’, (2011) 22 EJIL 755, at 758–82; J. Hepp, ‘James Brown Scott and the Rise of Public International Law’, (2008) 7 Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 151.
13 For a comprehensive account and analysis of the Alabama arbitration see T. Bingham, ‘The Alabama Claims Arbitration’, (2005) 54 ICLQ 1.
14 See S. E. Cooper, Patriotic Pacifism: Waging War on War in Europe 1815–1914 (1991), 45–6.
15 H. Richard, International Arbitration and the Improvement of International Law: The Debate in the House of Commons, on Tuesday, July 8th, 1873 (1872), 24.
16 ‘The Uses of the Geneva Arbitration’, (1872) 3 (46) The Advocate of Peace (1847–1884) 221, at 221.
17 See Cooper, supra note 14, at 46.
18 See W. H. van der Linden, The International Peace Movement 1815–1874 (1987), 365–415.
19 See W. Ladd, An Essay on a Congress of Nations, for the Adjustment of International Disputes Without Resort to Arms (1840), 13–17.
20 See V. L. Lambert, ‘The Dynamics of Transnational Activism: The International Peace Congresses, 1843–51’, (2016) 38 International History Review 126, at 130–3.
21 See M. Ceadel, The Origins of War Prevention: The British Peace Movement and International Relations 1730–1854 (1996), 427–31.
22 See M. M. Robson, ‘Liberals and “Vital Interests”: The Debate on International Arbitration, 1815–72’, (1959) 32 Historical Research 38, at 49–50.
23 See F. Passy, Revanche et Relèvement (1872), 16–17. See also M. Clinton, ‘“Revanche ou Relèvement”: The French Peace Movement Confronts Alsace and Lorraine, 1871–1918’, (2005) 40 Canadian Journal of History 431, at 437.
24 See Clinton, ibid., at 438.
25 See F. S. L. Lyons, Internationalism in Europe 1815–1914 (1963), 323–4.
26 M. Curti, The Learned Blacksmith: The Letters and Journals of Elihu Burritt (1937), 204.
27 Ibid., at 206–8.
28 See J. B. Miles, Association for the Reform and Codification of the Law of Nations: A Brief Sketch of Its Formation (1875), 4–10. See also Abrams, supra note 9, at 364–72.
29 See P. Tolis, Elihu Burritt: Crusader for Brotherhood (1968), 173–202.
30 See ‘Editorial Correspondence’, (1873) 4(4) The Advocate of Peace (1847–1884) 28, at 28; ‘Editorial Correspondence’, (1873) 4 (5) The Advocate of Peace (1847–1884) 36, at 37.
31 See The International Law Association, Reports of the First Conference Held at Brussels, 1873, and of the Second Conference Held at Geneva, 1874 (1903), 5.
32 See ibid., at 23–4, 43.
33 See É. de Laveleye, Des Causes Actuelles de Guerre en Europe et de L’arbitrage (1873), 161.
34 See D. D. Field, Draft Outlines of an International Code (1872).
35 See L. Levi, International Law with the Materials for a Code of International Law (1887).
36 See Abrams, supra note 9, at 363–4.
37 See T. Balch, ‘England and the United States: A Letter from Thomas Balch, Paris, March 31, 1865’, New York Daily Tribune, 13 May 1865, 4.
38 See ibid.
39 See F. Lieber, ‘International Arbitration: A Letter to Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State’, New-York Times, 22 September 1865, 4.
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid.
42 J. Westlake, ‘The Alabama Claims: To the Editor of The Daily News’, Daily News, 24 January 1868, 5.
43 Westlake’s attitude towards international arbitration was indeed full of contradictions. On the one hand, he called into question whether international arbitration could solve disputes concerning interpretations of international law, especially given the fact that international law was still at an underdeveloped stage. This was particularly the case in the Alabama dispute where rules of neutrality were uncertain and difficult to be agreed on by Britain and the US. Therefore, it was doubtful whether ‘arbitration is the true remedy in disputes as to international law’. On the other hand, Westlake thought that the opposition of John Russell (1792–1878) to arbitration ‘can hardly be deemed satisfactory’, and Westlake showed a sense of confidence in reaching a final arbitral resolution of the Alabama dispute. This article contends that Westlake’s vacillation was determined by his dissatisfaction with the primitive state of international law, and this was the reason why he was strongly in favour of the systematic development of international law. See ibid. John Russell was the British foreign secretary from 1859–1865 and the British prime minister from 1865–1866, and he was a persistent objector to the arbitral settlement of the Alabama dispute. His famous doctrine of ‘vital interests and honour’ was coined and popularized by his diplomatic dispatch of 30 August 1865 to the then American ambassador to Britain Charles Francis Adams (1807–1886). In the dispatch, Russell stated that ‘Her Majesty’s government are the sole guardians of their own honour’. See ‘Earl Russell to Mr. Adams, Foreign Office, August 30, 1865’, in The Case of Great Britain as Laid before the Tribunal of Arbitration (1872), vol. III, at 596–609.
44 M. Bernard, A Historical Account of the Neutrality of Great Britain during the American Civil War (1870), 494–5.
45 Ibid., at 504.
46 For the late-nineteenth-century Darwinist evolutionary understandings of international law in the progress of civilization, see C. Sylvest, British Liberal Internationalism, 1880–1930: Making Progress? (2009), 66–73.
47 See Balch, supra note 37, at 4.
48 See Lieber, supra note 39, at 4.
49 C. S. C. Bowen, The Alabama Claims and Arbitration: Considered from a Legal Point of View (1868), 67.
50 As arbitral settlement of the Alabama dispute became politically tangible when Edward Smith-Stanley (1799–1869) took office in June 1866, succeeding John Russell as British prime minister, international arbitration became a popular and frequently discussed theme across the transnational networks of social reformers. Stanley’s cabinet was in favour of a conciliatory settlement of the Alabama dispute, and in principle supported arbitral settlement of the matter. See A. Cook, The Alabama Claims: American Politics and Anglo-American Relations, 1865–1872 (1975), 34–6.
51 See T. Balch, ‘England and the United States’, (1867) 1(10) Social Science 201, at 201–2.
52 See G. W. Hastings (ed.), Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science: Belfast Meeting 1867 (1868), 258.
53 Ibid., at xxxi.
54 International arbitration had been an essential topic at the 1867 Belfast meeting, the 1870 Newcastle meeting, the 1871 Leeds meeting, the 1872 Plymouth and Devonport meeting, and the 1874 Glasgow meeting of the NAPSS.
55 For the status and function of the NAPSS in social and political reform, serving as the intermediary between politicians and parliamentarians on the one hand, and the public on the other hand, see L. Goldman, Science, Reform, and Politics in Victorian Britain: The Social Science Association 1857–1886 (2002).
56 See A. de Marcoartu, ‘On a Parliament of Nations and International Arbitration’, in E. Pears (ed.), Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science: Newcastle-upon-Tyne Meeting 1870 (1871), 165, at 165.
57 See L. Levi, ‘On the Washington Treaty, and its Influence on International Arbitration’, in E. Pears (ed.), Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science: Leeds Meeting 1871 (1872), 237, at 238.
58 E. Pears (ed.), Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science: Plymouth and Devonport Meeting 1872 (1873), 124.
59 See D. D. Field, ‘On a Project for an International Code’, in G. W. Hastings (ed.), Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science: Manchester Meeting 1866 (1867), 42, at 42–52.
60 See D. D. Field, ‘On the Community of Nations’, in G. W. Hastings (ed.), Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science: Belfast Meeting 1867 (1868), 63, at 63–9.
61 See D. D. Field, ‘Address on an International Code’, in C. W. Ryalls (ed.), Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science: Norwich Meeting 1873 (1874), 219, at 219–25.
62 See Koskenniemi, supra note 1, at 39–41.
63 For the full text of this letter see B. Röben, Johann Caspar Bluntschli, Francis Lieber und das moderne Völkerrecht 1861–1881 (2003), 260.
64 Ibid., at 282–3.
65 See J. C. Bluntschli, ‘Opinion Impartiale sur la Question de l’Alabama et sur la Manière de la Résoudre’, (1870) 2 Revue de Droit International et de Législation Comparée 452.
66 G. Rolin-Jaequemyns, ‘Chronique du droit international’, (1869) 1 Revue de Droit International et de Législation Comparée 138, at 153–4.
67 See A. Pierantoni, Gli Arbitri Internazionali e il Trattato di Washington (1872), 11–12.
68 See A. Pierantoni, La Questione Anglo-Americana dell’Alabama (1870).
69 See Pierantoni, supra note 67.
70 See Bluntschli, supra note 65, at 480.
71 See Rolin-Jaequemyns, supra note 2, at 225.
72 E. Pears (ed.), Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science: Newcastle-upon-Tyne Meeting 1870 (1871), 169.
73 J. Lorimer, ‘Courts of Arbitration’, New York Daily Tribune, 11 April 1874, 2.
74 Ibid.
75 T. D. Woolsey, ‘International Arbitration’, (1874) 1 International Review 104, at 130.
76 See H. Bellaire, Étude Historique sur les Arbitrages dans les Conflits Internationaux (1872), 17–18.
77 See P. S. Mancini, Della Vocazione del Nostro Secolo per la Riforma e la Codificazione del Diritto delle Genti e per L'ordinamento di una Giustizia Internazionale (1874), 48.
78 E. Rouard de Card, L’arbitrage International Dans le Passé, le Présent et L’avenir (1877), x.
79 See Fitzmaurice, supra note 7, at 213.
80 See C. L. Lange, ‘Histoire de la Doctrine Pacifique et de Son Influence sur le Développement du Droit International’, (1926) 13 Recueil des Cours 171, at 397–8.
81 See notes 26–28 and accompanying text, supra.
82 For the foundation and activities of the IDI in its early years see Koskenniemi, supra note 1, at 11–97. See also M. Koskenniemi, ‘Gustave Rolin-Jaequemyns and the Establishment of the Institut de Droit International (1873)’, (2004) 37 Revue Belge de Droit International 5; V. Genin, ‘L’institutionnalisation du Droit International Comme Phénomène Transnational (1869–1873): Les Réseaux Européens de Gustave Rolin-Jaequemyns’, (2016) 18 Journal of the History of International Law 181.
83 Liber and the Swiss jurist Gustave Moynier (1826–1910) had already advocated for an international congress of jurists to tackle the knotty questions of international law for some years. But it was at the time of Miles’s visit to continental Europe for the initiative of the ILA in early 1873 that Rolin-Jaequemyns finally made up his mind and circulated his confidential note of March 1873. See Abrams, supra note 9, at 367–71.
84 See Chen, supra note 9, at 207.
85 ‘Communications Relatives à L’Institut de Droit International’, (1873) 5 Revue de Droit International et de Législation Comparée 667, at 671.
86 See G. Rolin-Jaequemyns, ‘De la Nécessité D’organiser une Institution Scientifique Permanente pour Favoriser L'étude et les Progrès du Droit International’, (1873) 5 Revue de Droit International et de Législation Comparée 463, at 479.
87 See S. C. Neff, Justice Among Nations: A History of International Law (2014), 221–43; A. Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law (2004), 40–52; M. García-Salmones Rovira, The Project of Positivism in International Law (2013), 20–4.
88 See The International Law Association, supra note 31, at 9. The IDI delegation was composed of eight members, including Mancini, Bluntschli, Félix Esquirou de Parieu (1815–1893), Rolin-Jaequemyns, Tobias Asser (1838–1913), Carlos Calvo (1824–1906), Franzvon Holtzendorff (1829–1889), and de Laveleye. However, only five of them were present at the Brussels conference: Mancini, Bluntschli, Rolin-Jaequemyns, Calvo, and de Laveleye.
89 Ibid., at 17, 25.
90 Ibid., at 20, 35.
91 Ibid., at 36.
92 Ibid., at 36–7.
93 See T. Balch, International Court of Arbitration (1874), 15.
94 J. Lorimer, ‘The Institute of International Law Founded at Ghent’, (1873) 17 Journal of Jurisprudence 617, at 625–6.
95 See The International Law Association, supra note 31, at 23, 43.
96 Art. 1 of the 1873 IDI Statutes, see note 85, supra, at 708.
97 Art. 4 of the 1873 IDI Statutes, see ibid., at 708.
98 See Rolin-Jaequemyns, supra note 86, at 465.
99 See note 85, supra, at 703–4.
100 Ibid., at 708.
101 See de Laveleye, supra note 33, at 175–95.
102 See Abrams, supra note 9, at 372.
103 See Mancini, supra note 77, at 54.
104 This was one of the essential arguments of the German jurist Levin Goldschmidt (1829–1897) in his 1874 report submitted to the IDI on the questions of international arbitral procedures. Goldschmidt argued that arbitral settlement could only be applied to disputes of legal nature, and non-legal disputes were not admissible for arbitral judgement based on the rules of law. See Goldschmidt, ‘Projet de Règlement pour Tribunaux Arbitraux Internationaux’, (1874) 6 Revue de Droit International et de Législation Comparée 421, at 424–5.
105 See note 85, supra, at 674.
106 See Koskenniemi, supra note 1, at 40.
107 A. Eyffinger, T.M.C. Asser (1838–1913): ‘In Quest of Liberty, Justice, and Peace’ (2019), 541–2.
108 See Rolin-Jaequemyns, supra note 86, at 480.