To Whom Belongs the Land? Territory, Sovereignty and Imperialism in the History of International Law

Abstract

This paper’s main objective is to substantiate that an accurate analysis and interpretation of (the acquisition of) territory in the history of the law of nations enables us to better understand and deal with current conflicts on territory in international law. More concretely, it answers the questions how the relation between territory, imperialism and international law has to be understood, in what way imperialism determined the nature of 20th-century international law and what this means for the territorial issues in the past, present and future of international law. The paper brings three themes together: first the evolution of international law, which, as will be shown, is a child of its time and functions like a perpetuum mobile; second, the central role sovereignty and property – as concepts closely related to territoriality – play in the confrontation between nations; and, third, the bridging of the past to the present in an accountable and reliable manner turns out to be the foundation of writing international legal history. In order to concretize the assessment of the influence of imperialism on international law, 19th-century imperialism will serve as a parameter and set the historical background, which, as will.