Establishing expansion as a legal right: an analysis of French colonial discourse surrounding protectorate treaties

This essay analyses French literature on protectorates that was published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Firstly, I examine French understanding of protectorates with a focus on contrasting views about whether or not a protectorate treaty warrants the intervention of the prote...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inHistory of European ideas Vol. 46; no. 6; pp. 811 - 826
Main Author Yoon, Jong-pil
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Oxford Routledge 17.08.2020
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
'violation' argument
Coercion
Colonialism
Debates
Discourse analysis
excessive contextualization
French colonialism
Intervention
Orientalism
Protectorate treaties
Treaties
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Summary:This essay analyses French literature on protectorates that was published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Firstly, I examine French understanding of protectorates with a focus on contrasting views about whether or not a protectorate treaty warrants the intervention of the protector in the internal affairs of the protected. In doing so, I attempt to delineate specific ways legal scholarship engaged with the ideological construction of a supposedly uncivilized other. Then I move on to trace the development of a type of argument employed by the French to justify their colonialism that had to do with protectorate treaties. In the discussion, I explain the particular role the 'violation' argument played within French colonial discourse, both in the absence of the 'territorium nullius' argument, and in the face of critics of empire. Lastly, I place under scrutiny the relationship between the 'violation' argument and the distinction of two kinds of coercion - coercion of a state, and coercion of its representative.
ISSN:0191-6599
1873-541X
DOI:10.1080/01916599.2020.1722725