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Lawful Conquest?

European Colonial Law and Appropriation Practices in Northeastern South America, Trinidad, and Tobago, 1498–1817
  • Constanze Weiske
Language: English
Published/Copyright: 2021
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Dialectics of the Global
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About this book

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).

Author / Editor information

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

Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
October 4, 2021
eBook ISBN:
9783110690149
Hardcover published on:
October 4, 2021
Hardcover ISBN:
9783110689990
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Front matter:
11
Main content:
343
Illustrations:
16
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