Abstract
Key studies have highlighted how Western law was central to the civilizing mission of colonialism, legitimizing conquest while presenting itself as a colonizer's gift for overcoming barbarism. But law was not just an imposition to dispossess resources and accumulate labor; it was also transformed by the contestations of First Nations and the new practices deployed in settler societies. In this context, the first international legal theories were aimed at subordinating third world societies and, at the same time, provided the foundations of Western legal apparatus, shaping racially the modern concepts of sovereignty, territory, and property.
Highlights
Key studies have highlighted how Western law was central to the civilizing mission of colonialism, legitimizing conquest while presenting itself as a colonizer’s gift for overcoming barbarism.[1]
Law was not just an imposition to dispossess resources and accumulate labor; it was transformed by the contestations of First Nations and the new practices deployed in settler societies.[2]
The first international legal theories were aimed at subordinating third world societies and, at the same time, provided the foundations of Western legal apparatus, shaping racially the modern concepts of sovereignty, territory, and property
Summary
Key studies have highlighted how Western law was central to the civilizing mission of colonialism, legitimizing conquest while presenting itself as a colonizer’s gift for overcoming barbarism.[1] But law was not just an imposition to dispossess resources and accumulate labor; it was transformed by the contestations of First Nations and the new practices deployed in settler societies.[2] In this context, the first international legal theories were aimed at subordinating third world societies and, at the same time, provided the foundations of Western legal apparatus, shaping racially the modern concepts of sovereignty, territory, and property Recent studies explain this process of subordination when settlers appropriated new lands in North America on behalf of Queen Elizabeth at the end of the sixteenth century.[3] Emerging practices of private property and colonial territory both ordered space and territory and operated through the idea of sovereignty. Land ownership was central to the imperial project, private property did not determine
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