2020/02/06 by Jong–pil Yoon · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · #North African History and Literature #Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis #Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics #Protectorate #Argument (complex analysis) #Coercion (linguistics) #Colonialism #Scrutiny #Ideology #Treaty #Empire #Scholarship #Law #Political science #Sociology #Philosophy #Politics #Linguistics
paper · doi:10.1080/01916599.2020.1722725
openalex publication_date 2020/02/06 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
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.