Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T01:13:18.096Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Case Study of the Construction of International Hierarchy: British Treaty-Making Against the Slave Trade in the Early Nineteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2007

Edward Keene
Edward Keene
Affiliation:
Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology, E-mail: edward.keene@inta.gatech.edu
Get access

Abstract

This article evaluates different theories of hierarchy in international relations through a case study of the treaty system that the British constructed in the early nineteenth century in an effort to abolish the slave trade. The treaty system was extraordinarily wide-ranging: it embraced European maritime powers, new republics in the Americas, Muslim rulers in northern and eastern Africa, and “Native Chiefs” on the western coast of Africa. It therefore allows for a comparative analysis of the various types of treaty that the British made, depending on the identity of their contracting partners. The article argues that a broadly constructivist approach provides the best explanation of why these variations emerged. Although British treaty-making was influenced by the relative strength or weakness of the states with which they were dealing, the decisive factor that shaped the treaty system was a new legal doctrine that had emerged in the late eighteenth century, which combined a positivist theory of the importance of treaties as a source of international law with a distinction between the “family of civilized nations” and “barbarous peoples.”Some of the arguments in this article were presented to a seminar at the University of Chicago, and I am grateful to members of the Political Science Department there for several valuable constructive criticisms. I would also like to thank Duncan Bell, Molly Cochran, Steve Hopgood, Andy Hurrell, Katja Weber, and the journal's two anonymous readers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of the article.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Organization , Volume 61 , Issue 2 , April 2007 , pp. 311 - 339
Copyright
© 2007 The IO Foundation and Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Alexandrowicz, Charles H. 1967. An Introduction to the History of the Law of Nations in the East Indies. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press.
Alexandrowicz, Charles H. 1973. The European-African Confrontation: A Study in Treaty Making. Leiden, Netherlands: Sijthoff.
Alexandrowicz, Charles H. 1974–75. Empirical and Doctrinal Positivism in International Law. British Yearbook of International Law 47:286–89.Google Scholar
Anghie, Anthony. 1999. Finding the Peripheries: Sovereignty and Colonialism in Nineteenth-Century International Law. Harvard International Law Journal 40 (1):1–80.Google Scholar
Bain, William. 2003. Between Anarchy and Society: Trusteeship and the Obligations of Power. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Bandinel, James. 1968. Some Account of the Trade in Slaves from Africa as Connected with Europe and America from the Introduction of the Trade into Modern Europe down to Present Time; Especially with Reference to the Efforts Made by the British Government for Its Extinction. London: Frank Cass.
Beachey, R. W. 1976. The Slave Trade of Eastern Africa. London: Rex Collings.
Berry, Christopher J. 1997. Social Theory of the Scottish Enlightenment. Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press.
Bethell, Leslie M. 1970. The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade: Britain, Brazil and the Slave Trade Question, 1807–1869. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
British Foreign Office. Various Years. British Foreign and State Papers (BFSP). London: Foreign Office.
Bull, Hedley. 1977. The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics. London: MacMillan.
Bull, Hedley. 1984. The Emergence of a Universal International Society. In The Expansion of International Society, edited by Hedley Bull and Adam Watson, 117–26. New York: Oxford University Press.
Bull, Hedley, and Adam Watson, eds. 1984. The Expansion of International Society. New York: Oxford University Press.
Buzan, Barry, and Richard Little. 2000. International Systems in World History: Remaking the Study of International Relations. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Clark, Ian. 1989. The Hierarchy of States: Reform and Resistance in the International Order. 2d ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cooley, Alexander. 2005. Logics of Hierarchy: The Organization of Empires, States and Military Occupations. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.
Corwin, Arthur F. 1967. Spain and the Abolition of Slavery in Cuba, 1817–1886. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Crawford, Neta C. 2002. Argument and Change in World Politics: Ethics, Decolonization and Humanitarian Intervention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Der Derian, James. 1987. On Diplomacy: A Genealogy of Western Estrangement. Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell.
Donnelly, Jack. 2006. Sovereign Inequalities and Hierarchy in Anarchy: American Power and International Society. European Journal of International Relations 12 (2):139–70.Google Scholar
Doty, Roxanne Lynn. 1996. Imperial Encounters: The Politics of Representation in North-South Relations. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Doyle, Michael W. 1996. Kant, Liberal Legacies and Foreign Affairs. In Debating the Democratic Peace, edited by Michael E. Brown, Sen M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller, 3–57. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Dunne, Tim. 2003. Society and Hierarchy in International Relations. International Relations 17 (3):303–20.Google Scholar
Elias, Norbert. 1978. The Civilizing Process: The History of Manners, translated by Edmund Jephcott. New York: Urizen Books.
Eltis, David. 1988. The African Role in the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. In De la Traite à l'Esclavage: Actes du Colloque International sur la Traite des Noirs, edited by Serge Daget, 503–20. Nantes, France: Société Française d'Histoire D'Outre-Mer.
Ferguson, Adam. 1995. An Essay on the History of Civil Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Finnemore, Martha. 2003. The Purpose of Intervention: Changing Beliefs About the Use of Force. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.
Finnemore, Martha, and Kathryn Sikkink. 1998. International Norm Dynamics and Political Change. International Organization 52 (4):887–917.Google Scholar
Fischer, Hugo. 1950. The Suppression of Slavery in International Law. International Law Quarterly 3:28–51, 503–22.Google Scholar
Gilpin, Robert. 1981. War and Change in World Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gong, Gerrit. 1984. The Standard of “Civilization” in International Society. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press.
Green, L. C., and Olive P. Dickason. 1989. The Law of Nations and the New World. Edmonton, Canada: University of Alberta Press.
Grewe, Wilhelm G. 2000. The Epochs of International Law. Translated and revised by Michael Byers. New York: Walter de Gruyter.
Grotius, Hugo. 1995. De Jure Praedae Commentarius. Translated by Gwladys L. Williams. Buffalo, N.Y.: William S. Hein.
Grovogui, Siba N'Zatioula. 1996. Sovereigns, Quasi-Sovereigns, and Africans: Race and Self-Determination in International Law. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Hertslet, Lewis. 1840. Hertslet's Commercial Treaties. London: Butterworth.
Hobson, John M., and J. C. Sharman. 2005. The Enduring Place of Hierarchy in World Politics: Tracing the Social Logics of Hierarchy and Political Change. European Journal of International Relations 11 (1):63–98.Google Scholar
Holbraad, Carsten. 1984. Middle Powers in International Politics. New York: St. Martin's Press.
House of Lords. 1849. Reports of Committees. Vol. 9: African Slave Trade.
Jones, Dorothy V. 1982. License for Empire: Colonialism by Treaty in Early America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kaufmann, Chaim D., and Robert A. Pape. 1999. Explaining Costly International Moral Action: Britain's Sixty-Year Campaign Against the Atlantic Slave Trade. International Organization 53 (4):631–68.Google Scholar
Keal, Paul. 2003. European Conquest and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: The Moral Backwardness of International Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Keck, Margaret E., and Kathryn Sikkink. 1998. Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.
Keene, Edward. 2002. Beyond the Anarchical Society: Grotius, Colonialism and Order in World Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Keene, Edward. 2005. International Political Thought: A Historical Introduction. Cambridge: Polity.
Kennedy, David. 1986. Primitive Legal Scholarship. Harvard International Law Journal 27 (1):1–98.Google Scholar
Kielstra, Paul Michael. 2000. The Politics of Slave Trade Suppression in Britain and France, 1814–48: Diplomacy, Morality and Economics. New York: St. Martin's Press.
King, James Ferguson. 1944. The Latin-American Republics and the Suppression of the Slave Trade. Hispanic American Historical Review 24 (3):387–411.Google Scholar
Koskenniemi, Martti. 1989. From Apology to Utopia: The Structure of International Legal Argument. Helsinki, Finland: Lakimiesliiton Kustannus.
Krasner, Stephen D. 1999. Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Lake, David A. 1996. Anarchy, Hierarchy and the Variety of International Relations. International Organization 50 (1):1–33.Google Scholar
Lake, David A. 2003. The New Sovereignty in International Relations. International Studies Review 5 (3):303–23.Google Scholar
Law, Robin. 1995. An African Response to Abolition: Anglo-Dahomian Negotiations on Ending the Slave Trade, 1838–77. Slavery & Abolition 16 (3):281–310.Google Scholar
Lesaffer, Randall. 2004. Peace Treaties from Lodi to Westphalia. In Peace Treaties and International Law in European History: From the Late Middle Ages to World War One, edited by Randall Lesaffer, 9–44. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Locke, John. 1967. Two Treatises of Government. Student ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mainville, Robert. 2001. An Overview of Aboriginal and Treaty Rights and Compensation for Their Breach. Saskatoon, Canada: Purich.
Marshall, P. J., and Glyndwr Williams. 1982. The Great Map of Mankind: Perceptions of New Worlds in the Age of Enlightenment. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Martin, Lisa. 1992. Coercive Cooperation: Explaining Multilateral Economic Sanctions. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Meron, Theodor. 1995. The Authority to Make Treaties in the Late Middle Ages. American Journal of International Law 89 (1):1–20.Google Scholar
Miers, Suzanne. 1975. Britain and the Ending of the Slave Trade. New York: Africana Publishing.
Mill, John Stuart. 1882. Dissertations and Discussions: Political, Philosophical and Historical. New York: Henry Holt.
Milner, Helen. 1993. The Assumption of Anarchy in International Relations Theory: A Critique. In Neorealism and Neoliberalism: The Contemporary Debate, edited by David A. Baldwin, 143–69. New York: Columbia University Press.
Mössner, Jörg Manfred. 1972. The Barbary Powers in International Law: Doctrinal and Practical Aspects. In Grotian Society Papers 1972: Studies in the History of the Law of Nations, edited by Charles H. Alexandrowicz, 197–221. The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff.
Muldoon, James. 1979. Popes, Lawyers and Infidels: The Church and the Non-Christian World, 1250–1550. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Nadelmann, Ethan A. 1990. Global Prohibition Regimes: The Evolution of Norms in International Society. International Organization 44 (4):479–526.Google Scholar
Nanda, B., and M. C. Bassiouni. 1972. Slavery and Slave Trade: Steps Toward Eradication. Santa Clara Lawyer 12 (2):424–42.Google Scholar
Neumann, Iver B., and Jennifer M. Welsh. 1991. The Other in European Self-Definition: An Addendum to the Literature on International Society. Review of International Studies 17 (4):327–48.Google Scholar
Newbury, C. W. 1965. British Policy Towards West Africa: Select Documents. Vol. 1, 1786–1874. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press.
Nussbaum, Arthur. 1947. A Concise History of the Law of Nations. New York: Macmillan.
Nwulia, Moses D. E. 1975. Britain and Slavery in East Africa. Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press.
Onuf, Nicholas Greenwood. 1989. World of Our Making: Rules and Rule in Social Theory and International Relations. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.
Pagden, Anthony. 1990. Spanish Imperialism and the Political Imagination: Studies in European and Spanish-American Social and Political Theory, 1513–1830. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.
Phillimore, Robert. 1879. Commentaries upon International Law. 3d ed. London: Butterworth.
Ray, James Lee. 1989. The Abolition of Slavery and the End of International War. International Organization 43 (3):405–39.Google Scholar
Robinson, James Harvey. 1929. Civilization. London: Encyclopedia Britannica.
Robinson, Ronald, and John Gallagher (with Alice Denny). 1961. Africa and the Victorians: The Official Mind of Imperialism. London: Macmillan.
Salter, Mark Basil. 2002. Barbarians and Civilization in International Relations. London: Pluto Press.
Singer, J. David, and Melvin Small. 1966. The Composition and Status Ordering of the International System: 1850–1940. World Politics 18 (2):236–82.Google Scholar
Strang, David. 1991. Anomaly and Commonplace in European Political Expansion: Realist and Institutionalist Accounts. International Organization 45 (2):143–62.Google Scholar
Temperley, Howard. 1991. White Dreams, Black Africa: The Antislavery Expedition to the River Niger 1841–1842. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.
Tuck, Richard. 1987. The “Modern” Theory of Natural Law. In The Languages of Political Theory in Early Modern Europe, edited by Anthony Pagden, 99–119. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tuck, Richard. 1999. The Rights of War and Peace: Political Thought and the International Order from Grotius to Kant. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
United Kingdom. Public Records Office. Colonial Office (CO) Papers. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office.
United Kingdom. Foreign Office (FO) Papers. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office.
Vincent, R. J. 1990. Order in International Politics. In Order and Violence: Hedley Bull and International Relations, edited by J. D. B. Miller and R. J. Vincent, 38–64. New York: Oxford University Press.
Vitoria, Francisco de. 1991. Political Writings, edited by Anthony Pagden and Jeremy Lawrance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wallace, Michael D. 1973. War and Rank Among Nations. Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books.
Walker, R. B. J. 1993. Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Waltz, Kenneth N. 1979. Theory of International Politics. Reading, Mass: Addison-Wesley.
Watson, Adam. 1992. The Evolution of International Society: A Comparative Historical Analysis. London: Routledge.
Weber, Katja. 2000. Hierarchy Amidst Anarchy: Transaction Costs and Institutional Choice. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Wendt, Alexander. 1999. Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wendt, Alexander, and Daniel Friedheim. 1995. Hierarchy Under Anarchy: Informal Empire and the East German State. International Organization 49 (4):689–721.Google Scholar
Westlake, John. 1894. Chapters on the Principles of International Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wight, Martin. 1977. Systems of States. Leicester, England: Leicester University Press.
Wolff, Christian Freiherr von. 1972. Jus Gentium Methodo Scientfica Pertractatum. In Gessamelte Werke. Hildesheim, Germany: Olms.
Zeldin, Theodore. 1977. France, 1848–1975. Vol. 2, Intellect, Taste and Anxiety. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press.