Diritto e colonialismo tedesco in Cina: una storia europea

Autore: Luigi Nuzzo
In: Storica. 76 • anno XXVI, 2020
doi:10.23744/3568
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Abstract

The thematic horizon of this article is the colonial expansion of Western powers in China in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. The focus is on the legal strategies deployed by Germany when it occupied the bay of Jiaozhou and obtained a settlement in Tianjin. This episode illuminates Western strategies of colonial governance and the role played by legal discourse in the process of production of a new social space. At the same time, taking a closer look to the history of international law and to the relationship between law and violence, this article aims to reveal the darker (and hidden) side of modern international law. The «strange» legal tools that allow Germany to transform Jiaozhou in a colony and inaugurate a settlement in Tianjin are an extraordinary point of observation for reading the theoretical discussions of European jurists on the exceptional nature of non-Western spaces and their populations and analyzing the changes undergone by the concept of sovereignty beyond Western borders.

Keywords: International Law; German Colonialism; Tianjin; Jiaozhou.