{"title":"The Imperial Precipice: Jurists and Diplomats of the French Empire at the United Nations War Crimes Commission","authors":"Ann-Sophie Schoepfel","doi":"10.1163/15718050-bja10070","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\n Delving into world-spanning legal agencies, histories of exiled diplomats and lawyers, this paper explores how Free France defended at the United Nations War Crimes Commission the vision of the interwar liberal order, one that reached across the global territories of the mandate system administered by the League of Nations, into the colonial territories of the French empire. From London to Chongqing, facing Vichy collaborationist authoritarian dictatorship in metropolitan France and anti-colonial pressures from the turbulent colonial frontiers, a handful of Free French jurists and politicians worked day and night to establish the imperial sovereignty of the French exile committee of general Charles de Gaulle, and restore French republicanism rooted in the legal tradition of Nicolas Fouquet, Jacques de Maleville and Léon Duguit. Drawing upon newly-unsealed UN and French archival materials, this paper documents Free France’s intervention at the UNWCC, the activities of its representatives and reflection on empires, race and international law.","PeriodicalId":43459,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF INTERNATIONAL LAW","volume":"33 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1000,"publicationDate":"2022-07-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF INTERNATIONAL LAW","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15718050-bja10070","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"LAW","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Delving into world-spanning legal agencies, histories of exiled diplomats and lawyers, this paper explores how Free France defended at the United Nations War Crimes Commission the vision of the interwar liberal order, one that reached across the global territories of the mandate system administered by the League of Nations, into the colonial territories of the French empire. From London to Chongqing, facing Vichy collaborationist authoritarian dictatorship in metropolitan France and anti-colonial pressures from the turbulent colonial frontiers, a handful of Free French jurists and politicians worked day and night to establish the imperial sovereignty of the French exile committee of general Charles de Gaulle, and restore French republicanism rooted in the legal tradition of Nicolas Fouquet, Jacques de Maleville and Léon Duguit. Drawing upon newly-unsealed UN and French archival materials, this paper documents Free France’s intervention at the UNWCC, the activities of its representatives and reflection on empires, race and international law.
期刊介绍:
The object of the Journal of the History of International Law/Revue d"histoire du droit international is to contribute to the effort to make intelligible the international legal past, however varied and eccentric it may be, to stimulate interest in the whys, the whats and wheres of international legal development, without projecting present relationships upon the past, and to promote the application of a sense of proportion to the study of current international legal problems. The aim of the Journal is to open fields of inquiry, to enable new questions to be asked, to be awake to and always aware of the plurality of human civilizations and cultures, past and present.