KDEC 9700 - Capitalism, Race, and International Law

This course examines how capitalism, imperialism and racism have co-constituted each other since the 15th century and how one of their most enduring allies in that collaboration has been international law. International law has been both the expression, the receptacle and the engine of the ideas and practices through which racial capitalism and imperial domination emerged and consolidated—from papal bulls and discovery doctrines to slave-trade treaties, capitulations, mandates, investment law, and contemporary regimes of trade, finance, and security. Anchored conceptually in Sylvie Laurent’s Capital and Race, the course mostly centers on “America”, a radical social experiment unique in global history that demands to be analyzed through a socio-historical-legal framework. But it also exposes students to critical histories of globalization and to theories explaining how international law structured extraction, dispossession, racial hierarchy, and accumulation. We will work with historical documents, legal instruments, and critical theory. The course is highly interdisciplinary, requiring students to navigate critical histories and historiography, history of ideas and global intellectual history, legal history, theories of global governance and political economy, decolonial theory, postcolonial theory, and Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), and critical race theory.

Particular attention is paid to decolonial and postcolonial theories and TWAIL. Students are also introduced to theories of historical writing, including issues of archives, silences, and epistemic violence. No prior knowledge of history, international law, or critical legal theory is required.

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Students will take a midterm exam that will cover Pr. Laurent’s first classes. They will also write a final essay (3000 words excluding footnotes). The topic of the essay will be disclosed at the very last session. Participation will be taken into account and will contribute to the award of one extra point (+1) or the loss of a point (-1).