Between Indigenous Agency and Imperial Expansion. Treaties and Treaty-making in Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas

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D Multivocality in Global History

Between Indigenous Agency and Imperial Expansion: Treaties and Treaty-making in Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas

Event Details

Date

VI. Friday, 12th September, 11:00-13:00
Location
K1073
Theme
D Multivocality in Global History

Convenor

Stefan Eklöf Amirell (Linnaeus University)
Ariel Lopez (University of the Philippines)

Chair

Stefan Eklöf Amirell (Linnaeus University)
Ariel Lopez (University of the Philippines)

Commentator

Ariel Lopez (University of the Philippines)

Panelists

Edward Keene (University of Oxford)
Inge van Hulle (KU Leuven)
Stefan Eklöf Amirell (Linnaeus University)
Saliha Belmessous (University of Oxford)

Papers

Edward Keene

How Empires Make Treaties, and How Treaties Make Empires

How Empires Make Treaties, and How Treaties Make Empires

This paper draws inspiration from two sources: global histories of law and diplomacy, and social network analysis in IR theory. It begins by noting the general importance of treaties to nineteenth-century international relations (ca. 1815-1914), including their particular role as an instrument for establishing and maintaining imperial forms of international order. It explains why the flexibility of treaties as a way of generating new kinds of obligations and relationships made them such a useful tool for imperialists, and considers some of the specific issues that arose within the context of imperial treaty-making. The paper then uses an analysis of treaty-making activity to compare different network structures in imperial and states-systems. It looks at the treaty-profiles of several individual states, ranging from major imperial powers such as Britain and France; through states that remained independent but were less deeply engaged in imperial expansion on their own account during the nineteenth century; to states and peoples that were eventually absorbed (in one way or another) by expanding empires, such as Bavaria, the Cherokee, Dahomey and Hyderabad. The paper presents this comparative analysis as a foundation for the further exploration of variations within nineteenth-century imperial orders, especially between intra-European and extra-European empires.
Inge van Hulle

Prestige and Ambition in Colonial Treaty-Making

Prestige and Ambition in Colonial Treaty-Making

This paper discusses a critical yet underexplored dimension within the history of treaty-making in imperial contexts, namely the social profile and practices of those who crafted and concluded treaties that transferred sovereignty and property to European states during the late nineteenth century. It shifts the analysis from a focus on the well-known protagonists of the ‘adventurer-explorer’-age to the everyday colonial agent. By delving into a wealth of unpublished diaries and published memoires, the paper delves into the overlooked narratives surrounding imperial treaty-makers, i.e. those of the agents of empires active on the ground whose identities, motivations, and backgrounds shaped the agreements and who described – often in detail – the substance of treaties, the negotiation-tactics and indigenous communities with whom they interacted. These individuals often built upon the strategies of their predecessors and used their experience in treaty-making as tools for personal advancement, such as acquiring pseudo-anthropological authority, and securing financial gain through publicizing their memoires and securing permanent functions within the colonial military and administration. By shifting the lens from treaties as static legal documents to the social contexts of their creation, this research highlights how the personal ambitions, ideologies, and socio-political standings of the treaty-makers influenced not only the content but also the political fate of these historical accords. By illuminating this neglected aspect, the study challenges conventional analyses within the history of international law, emphasizing that the very character of international agreements is inherently tied to those who craft them.
Stefan Eklöf Amirell

Cross-cultural Treaty-making and Negotiations: Kedah and the British Acquisition of Penang

Cross-cultural Treaty-making and Negotiations: Kedah and the British Acquisition of Penang

Recent research has shown that the British acquisition of Penang in the Malacca Straits from Kedah in 1786 was not based on a treaty or mutual agreement but that the island was seized illegally by the British. Over the following years, numerous letters were exchanged between, on the one hand, Sultan Abdullah and other notables of Kedah and, on the other hand, the English East India Company, represented by Francis Light, a naval officer in the service of the company who was fluent in Malay and had close ties to the Kedah elite. To date, the letters have been analysed mainly for the information they provide about the British policy of deception and manipulation in connection with their acquisition of Penang but they have so far not been used systematically to highlight the expectations and strategies deployed by the Sultan and other notables of Kedah in the diplomatic negotiations. This paper explores the cross-cultural relations between the EIC and Kedah and highlights how different historical experiences, models, norms and practices influenced the drawn-out treaty-making process that eventually, in 1800, led to the conclusion of a treaty in which Kedah ceded Penang to the British.
Saliha Belmessous

Treaties beyond European Boundaries

Treaties beyond European Boundaries

Ten years ago, I examined the extensive use of treaties by European powers to negotiate their imperial expansion, arguing that treaty-making enabled them to reconcile territorial expansion with a sense of moral and legal legitimacy. While that research touched on Indigenous peoples' use of treaties, the focus remained on European powers. In this paper, I aim to shift perspective and explore how Indigenous peoples understood treaties and used them to negotiate interactions with other polities, whether Indigenous or European. Specifically, I intend to investigate the diverse forms that treaties can take in Indigenous political contexts, moving beyond the emphasis on their materiality as written documents—a conventional view that has limited scholarly engagement with non-European legalities. I will argue that, in Indigenous politics, treaties may exist as oral agreements, material artifacts, relationships, physical structures, or even as people themselves.

Abstract

The publication of the edited volume Empire by Treaty, edited by Saliha Belmessous, in 2015, stimulated a renewed interest in the role of international treaties and treaty-making in the context of modern imperialism. Whereas the orthodox view, which emerged in the context of mid-twentieth century decolonisation, regarded treaties primarily as unequal instruments of Western imperialism, obtained largely by means of gunboat diplomacy, recent research in the fields of global history, new diplomatic history, and the history of international law has yielded a more nuanced and multi-facetted picture of the crucial role of treaties and treaty-making in colonial and imperial contexts. Researchers have for example highlighted how cross-cultural diplomatic encounters and personal relations influenced treaty-making processes, how Europeans tried to fit purportedly traditional practices of diplomacy and inter-polity relations into the international treaty-system, how non-European actors actively used treaties as a means of promoting their interests, how non-state actors frequently initiated treaty-making processes, and how individual treaties often were part of larger, long-term treaty-making projects promoted by leading international treaty-making parties. Other topics that have been explored include the sometimes flawed anthropolitcal understanding of how treaties were understood by non-Europeans, the sometimes substantial differences in the existing versions in different languages of the treaties and their subsequent paper-trails, e.g. with regard to biases and misrepresentations in the published and digitized versions of the treaties that to this day provide the main sources for research in the field. Ten years after the publication of Empire by Treaty, this panel takes stock of the current research in the field of treaties and treaty-making in imperial settings. It highlights some of the major research efforts currently underway on treaty-making in different parts of the world that were affected by European colonialism and imperialism.