Lawful Conquest?

European Colonial Law and Appropriation Practices in Northeastern South America, Trinidad, and Tobago, 1498-1817
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-3-11-068999-0
Verlag: De Gruyter

Buch, Englisch, 343 Seiten, Format (B × H): 160 mm x 236 mm, Gewicht: 747 g

Reihe: Dialectics of the global

The global expansion of European colonization is commonly perceived as lawful according to the valid European colonial law of the time. This book is substantially challenging this belief by uncovering its legal justifications based on discovery and terra nullius as retrospectively created legal fictions and demonstrating it´s untenability in practice. Focused on the critical reconstruction of Spanish and Dutch colonization practices in northeastern South America, Trinidad and Tobago between 1498 and 1817, the book offers an illuminating view on the European shadow of the colonial past in the Americas. Based on the application of an innovative comparative spatio-legal Global History approach to 1,770 excavated European colonial written sources from archives of both sides of the Atlantic in comparison to the colonial legal provisions of Europe´s most influential legal writers, the book, moreover, provides a substantial argument to the contemporary Caribbean-European reparation debate in favor of the return of Indigenous Peoples´ historical territories. Therefore, the book calls for the extension of the traditional territory approach to reparations of the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIPs) and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR).

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weiske, Constanze

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Weltgeschichte

Über Autor(innen)

Constanze Weiske, Global and European Studies Institute, University of Leipzig.