OPEN SOURCE LAUNCH: Teaching the Law of Nations in King Leopold's Foreign office: L. Arendt's course "Le droit des gens" (2 MAY 2022, 17-18:30, Faculty Council Room/MS Teams)

-

 

(image source: Belgian State Archives, all rights reserved)

This event is a presentation of 175 pages of manuscript course notes on the law of nations (Le droit des gens) linked to a course taught at the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Belle Époque, retrieved in Louis (Léon) Arendt's private papers in the Belgian State Archives (Fund BE-A0510.320). The inventory can be consulted on the State Archives' website.

Edouard Louis Léon Marie Arendt (1843-1924) was the director-general of political affairs (1886) in the Belgian Foreign Office in the heyday of King Leopold II's reign. He entered the Ministry as 'attaché' in 1870. Belgium's security on the European continent, and of course the affairs of the Congo Free State were the dominant themes of his time in office as a civil servant (1870-1912).

Biographical details can be found in the entry by Jacques Willequet in the Biographie nationale de Belgique. His father, Academy member and Professor at the Catholic University of Leuven Wilhelm Arendt (1808-1865) authored a seminal treatise on Belgian permanent neutrality in 1845. The text can be consulted on Google Books.

Louis Arendt authored 'hundreds' of legal memoranda elaborating the theory and practice of Belgian permanent neutrality. For an introduction to the topic. Henri Haag devoted a lenghthy article to Arendt's memorandum written in 1911 and its use on the eve of World War One (Bulletin of the Royal Commission for History, open access on Persée).

Arendt provided a hand-written 'Préface' on the left-hand side of the first page, stating:

Jusqu'à la page 82 (lois de la guerre) ce cours a été copié, sous révision préalable, sur un cahier déjà ancien d'un élève peu rigoureux. D'où des fautes, des vieilleries, des phrases incorrectes. La suite elle-même n'a subi aucune correction, mais a été donnée à mes chers élèves. 3 septembre 1904. Tiré à 9 exemplaires.

The purpose of this OSF-site is not to provide a full-fledged analysis of Arendt's treatise. That is the subject of research articles and chapters. The current wiki shares the text in a transcription as it can be found in the State Archives. We did not interpolate (i.e. errors in the text are indicated with [sic]), since most the French grammar and vocabulary used in 1904 largely conforms to what we use nowadays.

Prof. Dhondt's oral contribution at the conference "Law(s) and International Relations", held in Orléans (15-17 Sept 2021) can provide a glimpse of the richness of this source.

This event is hybrid: participants can either go physically to the Faculty of Law's Council Room, or register for the Teams-event here. 

The fully transcribed source can be consulted on the Open Science Foundation's website: DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/E7HXS.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

CEREMONY: Doctorate Honoris Causa Prof. em. dr. dr. h.c. mult. Martti KOSKENNIEMI (Brussels: VUB (Aula Q), 1 JUN 2023, 11:00) (REGISTRATION MANDATORY)

-
Image
(image source: VUB - Marcom) The Vrije Universiteit Brussels will award a doctorate honoris causa to Prof. em. dr. dr. h.c. mult. Martti KOSKENNIEMI (University of Helsinki), at the proposal of the Faculty of Law and Criminology (initiated by prof. Frederik Dhondt ). Prof. Koskenniemi is incontourable   as scholar in public international law in the last two decades, specifically for its history and theory. His magnum opus   From Apology to Utopia. The Structure of International Legal Argument  (Lakimiesliiton Kustannus, 1989, 2nd ed. Cambridge university Press, 2006), the subsequent The Gentle Civilizer of Nations, The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870-1960   (Cambridge university Press, 2001) and the recent To The Uttermost Parts of the Earth. Legal Imagination and International Power, 1300-1870  (Cambridge university Press, 2021) are mandatory reading for anybody in the field of international legal history.     The ceremony will be held at the VUB's Campus of Humanities, Sc
Read more

PHD DEFENSE: Wouter DE RYCKE, "Justifying Utopia. A Legal History of the International Peace Movement (1815-1873)" (Brussels: Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 14 SEP 2023)

-
Image
Drs. Wouter De Rycke (PhD-researcher on FWO Junior Fundamental Research Project G015420N The Legal Construction of Peace, 1815-1870. Networks and Arguments ) will publicly defend his PhD-dissertation Justifying Utopia. A Legal History of the International Peace Movement (1815-1873) (576 p., submitted with the permission of the Board of the Faculty of Law and Criminology on 29 June 2023 and approved for public defense by the jury on 4 September 2023) on Thursday 14 September 2023  at 15:00 .  Wouter holds a Bachelor of Arts in Language and Literature (UGent, 2012), and a Bachelor and a Master of Laws (UGent, 2015 and 2017). Early in the Spring of 2020, he was a visiting researcher ( Gast ) at the Max Planck Institute for Legal Theory and Legal History (Frankfurt am Main). Wouter has disseminated and published work in progress as well as research results at national and international fora , and managed to generate  press attention . He is a member of CORE since 1 October 2017, and taugh
Read more

SYMPOSIUM KEYNOTE: Prof. Martti Koskenniemi on "The Law of an International Civil Society: The Road not Taken" (Brussels: VUB, 15 SEP 2023) [Hybrid]

-
Image
(image source: VUB/MARCOM ) On Friday 15 September, at the invitation of drs. Wouter De Rycke and dr. Raphaël Cahen, Prof. em. dr. dr. h.c. mult. Martti Koskenniemi (University of Helsinki, doctor honoris causa of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in 2023 ) will hold a public keynote entitled:  The Law of an International Civil Society: The Road not Taken This lecture will take place in Room I.0.02  on the VUB's Campus of Humanities, Sciences and Engineering at 09:45 . It is also possible to attend the lecture online.  Prof. Koskenniemi's lecture is the keynote of a symposium  Imagining Peace in the Long Nineteenth Century (1789-1914). In Search of New Actors and Vocabularies  assembled by drs. Wouter De Rycke and dr. Raphaël Cahen .  The symposium  ‘Imagining Peace in the Long Nineteenth Century. In search of New Actors and Vocabularies’  aims to investigate unofficial forms of normative peace-thinking in the long nineteenth century. In the period roughly between 1789 and 1914,
Read more