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Laura Benton discusses how patterns of violence reshaped empires and global dynamics from the 15th to 20th centuries.

Image courtesy of interviewee. March 11, 2024

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This video video discusses a research project focused on the history of law within European empires and its impact on global legal history, particularly concerning the regulation of violence. The author argues that historical narratives have often separated the discussions of legal frameworks and the violence enacted by empires, predominantly focusing on Eurocentric perspectives and the evolution of laws of war during the late 19th and mid-20th centuries.

The research aims to explore how violence was regulated in European empires from 1500 to 1900. It notes that legal frameworks often justified violence, leading to atrocities despite attempts to limit warfare. The author highlights the pattern of "perpetual war," where conflicts were ongoing but occasionally punctuated by unstable truces, which, when broken, resulted in increased violence.

This video video also reflects on how these historical insights shed light on contemporary conflicts, linking past imperial justifications for violence to current geopolitical situations, such as Russia's invasion of Ukraine and ongoing conflicts in Gaza, emphasizing the tragic continuity of these patterns of violence and the challenges of regulating warfare effectively. Ultimately, the author expresses a desire for relevance in research to lead to better outcomes in understanding and managing these conflicts, highlighting the persistent difficulties in keeping small wars from escalating into greater violence and atrocities.

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Here are some articles that share themes or topics similar to the video you about the history of law in European empires, the regulation of violence, and its contemporary implications:

1. **“The Colonial Origins of International Law: European Empires and Imperial Violence”** - This article explores how international law is deeply rooted in colonial practices and how these historical foundations continue to influence modern legal frameworks concerning war and violence.

2. **“War and the Law of Nations: A Legal History of the West”** - This piece discusses the evolution of laws pertaining to war from a global perspective, focusing on how European imperial laws have shaped contemporary international humanitarian law.

3. **“Imperialism, War Crimes, and the Legal Construction of Violence”** - This article examines case studies of violence during colonial rule and discusses how legal structures were manipulated to justify acts of war and violence, shedding light on patterns that persist today.

4. **“The Violence of Empire: Examining Legal Justifications for Colonial Atrocities”** - This research analyzes various imperial legal documents and how they were used to rationalize colonial violence, similar to the historical narratives discussed in the original video.

5. **“Legal Histories of Violence: The Role of Law in Imperial Conquests”** - This article provides an overview of how legal disciplines have interacted with military history, focusing on the legal regulation of violence within European empires.

6. **“Resurrecting the Past: Historical Narratives of Violence and Their Impact on Modern Conflicts”** - This article links historical patterns of violence in empires to modern geopolitical conflicts, including a case study of contemporary war zones, resonating with themes from the original video.

7. **“From Colonization to Modern Conflict: The Persistence of Imperial Violence”** - This piece discusses how the dynamics of imperialism continue to affect current conflicts, including case studies from various regions, echoing the insights about Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the situation in Gaza.

These articles collectively explore similar themes of historical imperial violence, legal frameworks, and their implications for modern conflicts, making them relevant to the subject matter discussed in the original video.

X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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I've been thinking for a long time about the history

00:03.505 --> 00:05.805
of law in European empires

00:06.065 --> 00:09.365
and what effect that had on global legal history.

00:10.065 --> 00:13.365
And one of the things that I thought was that we hadn't

00:13.425 --> 00:17.205
yet taken consideration enough consideration of violence

00:17.665 --> 00:20.965
and the legal framework for violence, which

00:20.965 --> 00:23.645
of course is all over European empires.

00:24.395 --> 00:28.485
Instead, there's tended to be a separation between dealing

00:28.555 --> 00:30.565
with violence in empires

00:30.985 --> 00:34.485
and the story about the laws of war

00:34.505 --> 00:35.645
and how they're developed.

00:35.705 --> 00:39.645
And that has tended to be a very Eurocentric story, one

00:39.755 --> 00:44.285
that is focused on juridical writings in Europe

00:44.705 --> 00:46.765
or the later in the United States.

00:47.545 --> 00:49.085
And it's a later story.

00:49.345 --> 00:52.765
It hits these milestones of the development of the laws

00:52.765 --> 00:55.085
of war in the late 19th century,

00:55.305 --> 00:57.685
and then again in the middle of the 20th century.

00:58.225 --> 01:02.285
But it leaves out this whole realm of regulation

01:02.285 --> 01:05.565
of violence, outside Europe, in

01:05.585 --> 01:09.805
and on the edges of empires from 1500 to 1900.

01:10.345 --> 01:14.405
So I just began by asking a very open-ended question about

01:14.555 --> 01:19.485
what the legal frameworks were, for that kind

01:19.485 --> 01:21.365
of violence, which as I said,

01:21.425 --> 01:23.525
was ubiquitous in European empires.

01:23.745 --> 01:25.525
So I began this, as I said,

01:25.525 --> 01:29.725
with this very open-ended question about how

01:30.365 --> 01:33.445
violence was being regulated or attempts to regulate,

01:33.905 --> 01:38.485
or how it patterns of violence were generating, law

01:38.505 --> 01:42.045
and legal frameworks in, in European empires.

01:42.545 --> 01:45.605
So I began by really reading very widely

01:46.105 --> 01:50.325
and reading into accounts of small wars,

01:51.045 --> 01:54.565
attempts at peacemaking across the globe

01:54.705 --> 01:56.005
in European empires.

01:56.025 --> 01:58.765
And then I selected some case studies

01:59.065 --> 02:00.925
to dig more deeply into,

02:01.145 --> 02:04.005
and for those case studies, I did archival research

02:04.665 --> 02:07.005
in the British, archives

02:07.185 --> 02:09.805
and also in Spanish archives,

02:10.305 --> 02:13.485
and really looked hard to try to understand

02:13.915 --> 02:16.765
through those sources, those primary sources,

02:17.665 --> 02:20.725
how participants in these conflicts were talking about

02:21.085 --> 02:25.245
violence, how they were defending their actions, what sorts

02:25.245 --> 02:27.765
of legal arguments they were making in

02:27.855 --> 02:29.685
describing those conflicts.

02:30.265 --> 02:31.845
One of the surprising,

02:32.545 --> 02:36.685
and I will say also disturbing findings of the book,

02:37.935 --> 02:42.645
was that efforts to limit war to,

02:42.985 --> 02:44.805
kind of tamp down violence.

02:45.305 --> 02:50.175
And those efforts were sometimes very sincere, actually

02:50.755 --> 02:53.735
set up the conditions for atrocities to occur.

02:53.795 --> 02:58.335
And this was true in the Spanish Empire, in the,

02:58.505 --> 02:59.685
Portuguese, French

02:59.905 --> 03:03.325
and British empires, really across the globe.

03:03.905 --> 03:05.165
So one of the patterns

03:05.235 --> 03:08.805
that I discovered in researching this book, I,

03:09.285 --> 03:10.885
discovered is maybe not the right word.

03:10.985 --> 03:14.805
One of the patterns that became very clear, is

03:15.475 --> 03:18.965
that there were legalities of plunder,

03:19.665 --> 03:24.205
of captive taking and practices of rating

03:25.025 --> 03:28.485
and describing, the justifications for rating

03:28.635 --> 03:30.765
that really cut across the globe.

03:30.835 --> 03:33.325
They were across these empires.

03:33.325 --> 03:35.165
They operated in similar ways,

03:35.505 --> 03:39.045
and they were not unfamiliar to indigenous communities.

03:39.785 --> 03:43.845
And I focus in particular on practices of truce making.

03:44.305 --> 03:47.325
So you can begin to see in this one pattern,

03:47.475 --> 03:51.125
what I call a regime of plunder, that conquests

03:51.195 --> 03:53.605
what we think of as kind of stereotypical

03:54.505 --> 03:58.405
or central case conquests, the Spanish conquests

03:58.405 --> 04:01.045
of the Americas, other,

04:01.045 --> 04:04.045
British imperial conquests in the same period,

04:04.225 --> 04:07.645
and also later were really structured around

04:08.395 --> 04:11.045
this stop and go truce making.

04:11.385 --> 04:14.405
So it's much better to think about these

04:14.625 --> 04:19.405
as long perpetual wars interrupted by unstable pieces.

04:19.665 --> 04:24.245
Now, here's what happens when those truces broke down,

04:24.945 --> 04:27.205
as they almost inevitably did,

04:27.205 --> 04:30.845
and they really were structured to end, they are

04:31.605 --> 04:33.245
temporary pauses from war.

04:34.545 --> 04:37.325
War was often resumed with extra force,

04:37.955 --> 04:39.845
with an extra emotional charge

04:40.625 --> 04:45.405
and without any attention to the limits on violence in

04:45.405 --> 04:48.045
that aftermath of breaking down of truces.

04:48.465 --> 04:51.925
So that's when you get these very quite spectacular

04:52.345 --> 04:56.005
and tragic massacres in, in,

04:56.105 --> 04:59.645
of indigenous peoples in, European empire.

04:59.745 --> 05:03.325
So I analyzed that relationship in the book

05:04.265 --> 05:07.005
in a later period in the 19th century,

05:07.145 --> 05:08.685
things worked slightly differently.

05:08.835 --> 05:12.725
This is an era of global militarization when

05:13.285 --> 05:15.485
European empires are sending out armies

05:15.485 --> 05:18.365
and Nas on patrol around the world,

05:18.585 --> 05:21.365
and they are charging them with the protection

05:21.385 --> 05:23.445
of imperial subjects and interests.

05:23.905 --> 05:26.805
And they're also giving them authorization

05:27.465 --> 05:28.925
to engage in violence,

05:29.505 --> 05:30.725
but instructing them

05:30.915 --> 05:33.925
that they should only engage in a little bit of violence,

05:34.495 --> 05:38.085
small violence, they should not start major wars.

05:38.645 --> 05:42.245
Nevertheless, these instructions to keep wars small

05:42.345 --> 05:46.165
to use only limited force in a number

05:46.265 --> 05:48.565
of different ways, snowball,

05:49.305 --> 05:53.405
and you get outbreaks of really horrific campaigns of

05:53.915 --> 05:56.845
extermination and dispossession with

05:56.845 --> 05:58.405
Which, which we're all too familiar.

05:59.265 --> 06:02.125
One of the things I learned from the book was really

06:02.265 --> 06:05.325
to pay attention to this idea of perpetual war

06:06.025 --> 06:10.485
and to see perpetual war as a, a, a, a state

06:11.035 --> 06:14.125
that was existing in,

06:14.755 --> 06:16.045
empires historically.

06:16.825 --> 06:20.125
And then we begin to see these small wars

06:20.145 --> 06:24.365
as actually interrupted by unstable bouts of peace

06:25.105 --> 06:29.845
At the same time, I do in the book switch back from the

06:30.565 --> 06:33.565
examination of practices of warfare

06:34.025 --> 06:36.285
and justifications for conflicts.

06:36.745 --> 06:40.525
And look at the ways that European juris

06:40.705 --> 06:43.645
and lawyers were writing about the laws of war.

06:43.665 --> 06:45.005
And I think when we do that,

06:45.585 --> 06:47.725
we see something slightly different

06:48.315 --> 06:51.365
from the usual narratives of the history

06:51.365 --> 06:52.485
of international law.

06:52.825 --> 06:56.365
We see a very consistent effort to

06:57.545 --> 07:00.885
in fact think about how to describe

07:01.025 --> 07:03.725
and create a framework for limited war.

07:04.305 --> 07:07.245
It is one of the tragic findings of this book that

07:07.245 --> 07:11.325
that effort to create a regulatory framework for limited

07:11.865 --> 07:13.845
war did not work.

07:14.435 --> 07:15.445
It's still with us.

07:16.305 --> 07:21.005
And it, I say the other lesson from the book is,

07:21.275 --> 07:23.365
that we should be extremely humble

07:23.665 --> 07:28.085
and skeptical about our abilities to keep small wars small.

07:28.465 --> 07:30.325
You know, historians are always

07:31.445 --> 07:34.425
or often hopeful that when their books come out,

07:34.495 --> 07:37.145
they'll turn out to be deeply relevant

07:37.165 --> 07:40.025
to what's going on in the world so that people will turn

07:40.045 --> 07:42.345
to those books to try to understand the history

07:42.345 --> 07:43.345
of these phenomena.

07:43.985 --> 07:46.225
I would like to say that I wish I,

07:46.525 --> 07:49.585
my book were much less relevant to the world today.

07:50.245 --> 07:53.265
It, it had happened that as I was writing the book

07:53.285 --> 07:55.225
and I was in the middle of researching

07:55.605 --> 07:59.265
and writing, Russia invaded Ukraine.

08:00.125 --> 08:01.825
And, just months

08:01.885 --> 08:03.945
before the publication of the book,

08:04.405 --> 08:06.745
the War in Gaza broke out.

08:07.725 --> 08:12.495
And, throughout the period in which I was

08:12.495 --> 08:15.495
writing, there is this ongoing,

08:15.965 --> 08:20.015
so-called War on Terror that of course is,

08:20.425 --> 08:23.495
ubiquitous across, polities in the world today.

08:24.155 --> 08:28.215
So this history really did help me personally

08:28.475 --> 08:33.135
to think about some of the continuities

08:33.725 --> 08:37.735
from imperial warfare into the present in these conflicts.

08:37.735 --> 08:41.975
So, just to give an example, when Putin, justified

08:42.635 --> 08:45.375
his invasion of Ukraine,

08:45.475 --> 08:47.255
or Russia's invasion of Ukraine,

08:48.195 --> 08:52.135
he was using imperial tropes, imperial languages.

08:52.715 --> 08:54.855
He was talking about a phenomenon that is

08:54.855 --> 08:58.605
Covered in the second half of my book, which is the way

08:58.675 --> 09:01.925
that you, that empires justified violence

09:02.315 --> 09:04.645
through the protection of subjects.

09:04.985 --> 09:07.045
So we use this language of protection

09:07.225 --> 09:08.805
and the language of policing.

09:09.185 --> 09:10.445
He called it,

09:10.685 --> 09:13.845
a special military operation rather than a war

09:14.225 --> 09:18.445
that's very consistent with Empire State's efforts

09:18.945 --> 09:21.365
to describe what they're doing as,

09:22.025 --> 09:24.245
as actually police operations

09:24.545 --> 09:27.485
or, measures short of war.

09:28.185 --> 09:29.965
So there, that is an example.

09:30.055 --> 09:33.005
There are other examples too, from the War on Terror

09:33.095 --> 09:37.485
where there's an attempt to kind of keep tamp down,

09:37.685 --> 09:41.485
violence and keep it at a level that is somehow labeled

09:41.745 --> 09:44.005
as small, even when

09:44.675 --> 09:48.805
they accumulate these operations into very significant,

09:48.865 --> 09:53.725
events and often with a lot of civilian, loss of life.

09:54.545 --> 09:56.485
And of course, in the Gaza War,

09:56.785 --> 09:59.485
we have atrocities heaped on atrocities.

10:00.145 --> 10:04.885
And, it is a, a war that falls into, a pattern

10:05.155 --> 10:09.765
that unfortunately, unfortunately in the long history of,

10:09.985 --> 10:14.685
humanity is very familiar of an ongoing conflict

10:15.115 --> 10:18.165
with these unstable bouts of peace in between.

10:18.785 --> 10:22.485
And when they end, all hell breaks loose.

10:22.985 --> 10:26.765
And so, I'm sorry to say that the history

10:27.425 --> 10:31.165
has helped me to think critically about these conflicts

10:31.195 --> 10:34.685
because I wish that we were now in a very different phase

10:34.825 --> 10:39.485
and did not have to contend with, these small wars

10:39.485 --> 10:43.445
that are not so small that have really very big consequences

10:44.065 --> 10:46.605
and that often lead to atrocities.

Legal Frameworks and Violence in European Empires

00:00:00 - I've been thinking for a long time about the history of law in European empires and what effect that had on global legal history. And one of the things that I thought was that we hadn't yet taken consideration enough consideration of violence and the legal framework for violence, which of course is all over European empires. Instead, there's tended to be a separation between dealing with violence in empires
00:00:34 - and how they're developed. And that has tended to be a very Eurocentric story, one that is focused on juridical writings in Europe or the later in the United States. And it's a later story. It hits these milestones of the development of the laws of war in the late 19th century, and then again in the middle of the 20th century. But it leaves out this whole realm of regulation
00:01:05 - and on the edges of empires from 1500 to 1900. So I just began by asking a very open-ended question about what the legal frameworks were, for that kind of violence, which as I said, was ubiquitous in European empires. So I began this, as I said, with this very open-ended question about how violence was being regulated or attempts to regulate,
00:01:38 - and legal frameworks in, in European empires. So I began by really reading very widely and reading into accounts of small wars, attempts at peacemaking across the globe in European empires. And then I selected some case studies to dig more deeply into, and for those case studies, I did archival research
00:02:07 - and also in Spanish archives, and really looked hard to try to understand through those sources, those primary sources, how participants in these conflicts were talking about violence, how they were defending their actions, what sorts of legal arguments they were making in describing those conflicts. One of the surprising, and I will say also disturbing findings of the book,
00:02:42 - kind of tamp down violence. And those efforts were sometimes very sincere, actually set up the conditions for atrocities to occur. And this was true in the Spanish Empire, in the, Portuguese, French and British empires, really across the globe. So one of the patterns that I discovered in researching this book, I,

Patterns of Plunder in Imperial Conquests

00:03:10 - One of the patterns that became very clear, is that there were legalities of plunder, of captive taking and practices of rating and describing, the justifications for rating that really cut across the globe. They were across these empires. They operated in similar ways, and they were not unfamiliar to indigenous communities.
00:03:44 - So you can begin to see in this one pattern, what I call a regime of plunder, that conquests what we think of as kind of stereotypical or central case conquests, the Spanish conquests of the Americas, other, British imperial conquests in the same period, and also later were really structured around this stop and go truce making.
00:04:14 - as long perpetual wars interrupted by unstable pieces. Now, here's what happens when those truces broke down, as they almost inevitably did, and they really were structured to end, they are temporary pauses from war. War was often resumed with extra force, with an extra emotional charge and without any attention to the limits on violence in
00:04:48 - So that's when you get these very quite spectacular and tragic massacres in, in, of indigenous peoples in, European empire. So I analyzed that relationship in the book in a later period in the 19th century, things worked slightly differently. This is an era of global militarization when European empires are sending out armies
00:05:18 - and they are charging them with the protection of imperial subjects and interests. And they're also giving them authorization to engage in violence, but instructing them that they should only engage in a little bit of violence, small violence, they should not start major wars. Nevertheless, these instructions to keep wars small to use only limited force in a number
00:05:49 - and you get outbreaks of really horrific campaigns of extermination and dispossession with Which, which we're all too familiar. One of the things I learned from the book was really to pay attention to this idea of perpetual war and to see perpetual war as a, a, a, a state that was existing in, empires historically.

Regulating Violence: Lessons from Imperial Warfare

00:06:20 - as actually interrupted by unstable bouts of peace At the same time, I do in the book switch back from the examination of practices of warfare and justifications for conflicts. And look at the ways that European juris and lawyers were writing about the laws of war. And I think when we do that, we see something slightly different
00:06:51 - of international law. We see a very consistent effort to in fact think about how to describe and create a framework for limited war. It is one of the tragic findings of this book that that effort to create a regulatory framework for limited war did not work. It's still with us. And it, I say the other lesson from the book is,
00:07:23 - and skeptical about our abilities to keep small wars small. You know, historians are always or often hopeful that when their books come out, they'll turn out to be deeply relevant to what's going on in the world so that people will turn to those books to try to understand the history of these phenomena. I would like to say that I wish I, my book were much less relevant to the world today. It, it had happened that as I was writing the book
00:07:55 - and writing, Russia invaded Ukraine. And, just months before the publication of the book, the War in Gaza broke out. And, throughout the period in which I was writing, there is this ongoing, so-called War on Terror that of course is, ubiquitous across, polities in the world today.
00:08:28 - to think about some of the continuities from imperial warfare into the present in these conflicts. So, just to give an example, when Putin, justified his invasion of Ukraine, or Russia's invasion of Ukraine, he was using imperial tropes, imperial languages. He was talking about a phenomenon that is
00:08:58 - that you, that empires justified violence through the protection of subjects. So we use this language of protection and the language of policing. He called it, a special military operation rather than a war that's very consistent with Empire State's efforts to describe what they're doing as, as actually police operations or, measures short of war.

Unpacking the Consequences of Small Wars

00:09:30 - There are other examples too, from the War on Terror where there's an attempt to kind of keep tamp down, violence and keep it at a level that is somehow labeled as small, even when they accumulate these operations into very significant, events and often with a lot of civilian, loss of life. And of course, in the Gaza War, we have atrocities heaped on atrocities.
00:10:05 - that unfortunately, unfortunately in the long history of, humanity is very familiar of an ongoing conflict with these unstable bouts of peace in between. And when they end, all hell breaks loose. And so, I'm sorry to say that the history has helped me to think critically about these conflicts
00:10:44 - and did not have to contend with, these small wars that are not so small that have really very big consequences and that often lead to atrocities.

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