This event will be held virtually as a Zoom webinar and streamed via YouTube
Live. There will be no in-person event.
To register and access live stream links, visit the event page on our website:
https://harriman.columbia.edu/event/virtual-event-russian-empire-and-international-law
Please join us for a the inaugural event of the "Russia's Worlds" lecture series. Peter Holquist (Ronald S. Lauder Endowed Term Associate Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania) will discuss his forthcoming book project "'By Right of War': The Discipline and Practice of International Law of War in Imperial Russia, 1868-1917" alongside Will Smiley (Assistant Professor of the Humanities, University of New Hampshire), who will present his work on "Slaves, Prisoners, and International Law between the Ottoman and Russian Empires, 1739-1878." The two presentations will be followed by a roundtable discussion and a brief Q&A.
“By Right of War” addresses the emergence and consolidation of the law of war as codified, positive treaty law. The intellectual lineage for the law of war dates back at least to Hugo Grotius (1583-1645). But it was only from the mid-nineteenth through the early twentieth century that the law of war as we know it today, such as the criteria for distinguishing "legal combatants" from "illegal combatants," crystallized into formal codes defining the "laws of war." And Imperial Russia plays a surprisingly prominent, indeed precocious role in this story. "By Right of War" traces the historical foundations of this international legal order and tests the methodological assumptions about its origin and functioning. It examines the factors leading Imperial Russia to articulate fundamental principles of international law that continue to hold today. At the same time, this study measures the actual application of these principles in concrete cases of military occupation from 1877 to 1917. In so doing, "By Right of War" tests the degree to which these emerging norms shaped actual military conduct.
The Ottoman-Russian wars of the eighteenth century reshaped the map of Eurasia and the Middle East, but they also birthed a novel concept--the prisoner of war. For centuries, hundreds of thousands of captives, civilians and soldiers alike, crossed the legal and social boundaries of these empires, destined for either ransom or enslavement. But in the eighteenth century, the Ottoman state and its Russian rival, through conflict and diplomacy, worked out a new system of regional international law. Ransom was abolished; soldiers became prisoners of war; and some slaves gained new paths to release, while others were left entirely unprotected. These rules delineated sovereignty, redefined individuals' relationships to states, and prioritized political identity over economic value. In the process, the Ottomans marked out a parallel, non-Western path toward elements of modern international law. This story offers new perspectives on the histories of the Ottoman and Russian Empires, of slavery, and of international law.
