TY - JOUR
AU - Miles, Kate
AB - Abstract Visual international law tells stories. Image and art supporting imperialism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries also projected the authority and universalism of international law. This article argues that depictions of treaty-making, of international legal theorists, and of conferences were about painting European international law as ‘successful’—telling stories of an authoritative, universal, and virtue-laden mode of international regulation. Visual international law lives beyond the more usual text-based understandings of the discipline, finding form in an array of shapes and stories. Encompassing not only the expected, such as photographic evidence and maps, its visual culture also manifests itself in paintings, sculpture, institutions, architecture, courtroom ritual, documentary, film, exhibition, theatre, symbols, and objects. The multiplicity of images through digital media might give the impression that the visual experience of international law is a twenty-first-century phenomenon, or, at least, a singularity largely confined to the second half of the twentieth. Yet, the visuality of international law reaches back centuries. This article explores one aspect of that history—the visual discourse of international law as an instrument of empire and as a form of propaganda in the spread and acceptance of international law as a universalising force for good. This is about painting international law, about the telling of stories, and about the role of the visual in the process of construction and imposition of international law. The analysis in this article engages with the deliberate projection of international law as a ‘civilising’ power and its portrayal as ‘successful’ and uncontested in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by those who had an interest in representing it as such. Recurring motifs in the painting of treaty-making between European and extra-European nations are explored, together with the reality those portrayals masked. I argue that powerful signals about the efficacy of international law were embodied within those depictions, as was also the case with imagery enlisted to contribute to and reinforce the authority of international law. In this vein, imposing portraits of prominent international legal theorists and the representation of international conferences as reasoned regulators and the purveyors of peace and order were also prevalent as a projection of the authority of international law. In this article, I explore the idea that, although there were, of course, artworks that sought to undermine imperial visions of international law, image and art were also undoubtedly co-opted as a form of propaganda to promote international law as a universally applicable and profoundly ‘good’ or virtuous mode of governance. PAINTING SUCCESSFUL INTERNATIONAL LAW: TREATY-MAKING It is well understood that international law not only emerged within a context of colonialism but was engaged as an instrument of imperial expansion. Various modes of law facilitated the imposition and maintenance of imperial control and, in turn, the doctrines of international law were shaped in fundamental ways by the colonial project.1 Antony Anghie articulated how concepts such as sovereignty were moulded in particular ways so as to engage specifically in ‘civilising the uncivilised world’, bringing the non-European ‘into the universal civilisation of Europe’.2 In the execution of empire and its ‘civilising mission’, the reality of law and its authority meant that the nature and experience of international law at the time was often variable, disorderly, and improvised.3 Inconsistencies were accommodated and various forms of jurisdictional pluralism were the norm in the engagement of empire, necessitating a fluid and ongoing process of unpredictable exchanges, shifting shape as circumstances required.4 The image principally presented, however, was quite different. In the nineteenth-century positivist account of international law, its emergence was often described almost as a serene act of inevitability—the extension of a fully developed, stable, sophisticated and universally applicable legal system to govern international relations.5 And visual tools employed also reflected that same message. One such particularly potent and repeated mode of representation was the portrayal of treaty-making in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries between European and extra-European nations.6 As with much art, the meaning of such paintings goes beyond what is illustrated literally within the frame.7 The act of treaty-making tended to be depicted as a harmonious occasion, a mutually-agreed resolution of conflict, and the terms of peace detailed in a binding international instrument. The message of the image was that order had been achieved through the operation of international law; a ‘civilising’ of the extra-European had been accomplished, bringing the extra-European into the universal ‘civilisation’ of Europe and into its world regulated by international law, amongst other legal, cultural, and political spheres. In essence, this was painting the ‘successful’ international law of the colonial. Representing treaty-making on the Island of St Vincent Paintings of imperial treaty-making, such as that by Agostino Brunias, Sir William Young Conducting a Treaty, 1773 (Figure 1), conveyed the idea of uncontested, ‘successful’ international law. Colonialism’s violence and invasion were erased in this painting, presenting the events as a voluntary accord between peoples and, in so doing, it projected self-constructed myths of colonialism being welcomed as the purveyor of law, order, and the benefits of ‘civilisation’.8 Figure 1. Open in new tabDownload slide Agostino Brunias, Sir William Young Conducting a Treaty with the Black Caribs of the Island of St Vincent, 1773, private collection Source: Photo © Christie’s Images/Bridgeman Images Figure 1. Open in new tabDownload slide Agostino Brunias, Sir William Young Conducting a Treaty with the Black Caribs of the Island of St Vincent, 1773, private collection Source: Photo © Christie’s Images/Bridgeman Images The staged theatricality of the scene is typical of this mode of painting where the imagery of the ‘noble savage’ is invoked, displaying the peoples of St Vincent as exotic and the ‘Other’. The event depicted is the recitation of the terms of the Anglo-Carib Peace Treaty of 1773, painted here as a process of negotiation, but one that was in reality dictated by the British. For the European viewer of the painting, the presence of the Treaty would have fed back into notions of the legality of British activities on St Vincent, referencing a legal foundation for their presence on the island, military assaults, settler expansionism, and commercial ventures. The portrayal of the interaction was designed for that European audience—the parties are pictured in discussion, during which the St Vincent peoples are persuaded by the fairness of the British terms.9 The arm of the seated British officer extended outwards, leaving him open-chested and exposed in a traditional signal of peace-offering, a gesture of magnanimity in providing an opportunity to the tribes to be embraced by civilisation. In the transmission of its message, this painting was as much the language of empire as if the words themselves had been used. The military conflict ostensibly resolved by the Treaty in the painting had been the result of incursions made by British settlers into Indigenous territory to appropriate land considered to be of better quality for sugar plantations. There was disquiet expressed in some quarters in Britain at the unprovoked nature of the attack and at its purpose, being the personal enrichment of the planters.10 However, this sentiment largely remained grounded in paternalistic approaches and the responses that ultimately prevailed appealed to the ‘noble’ cause of establishing ‘civilisation’ on St Vincent and, in standard imperial invocations of international law, it was asserted that the Indigenous Peoples were not properly cultivating the land and were therefore not acting in accordance with ‘the common law of nations’.11 Not only speeches in Parliament and publications, such as William Young’s exhortation to invest and participate in Britain’s settlements,12 were used to assuage concerns at imperial activities, but also artistic representations of idealised European and extra-European encounters—and Brunias’ Sir William Young Conducting a Treaty was a part of that practice.13 Neither Brunias nor William Young were disinterested participants in seeking to present a positive image of events on St Vincent. Young was a sugar plantation owner, President of the Commission for the Sale of Lands in the Ceded Islands, and Governor of Dominica; he was also Brunias’ patron. Brunias was deeply embedded in the colonial project. He travelled with Young, commissioned by him to produce a visual record of his work for the Sale of Lands Commission and to produce paintings specifically designed to encourage British settlement in the Caribbean. This was painting for a very particular purpose, a form of political propaganda.14 The paintings produced by travelling artists in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, such as Brunias, gleaned authority from their presentation as objective eyewitness accounts, so the positive vision of colonial encounters and the slave trade were understood by the European viewer as reality.15 Those images were imprinted into the European consciousness through their visibility in art galleries, institutions, and homes, as well as their reproduction in books.16 Enabling greater dissemination of the image, the Sir William Young Conducting a Treaty painting was included as a print in several editions of a well-known book, widely distributed throughout France and Britain, by Bryan Edwards, a prominent supporter of the slave trade and the British plantations in the Caribbean, written in response to abolitionist campaigning.17 However, that print version altered the original image, depicting a smaller group of the Garifuna Peoples in order to give the impression of a more balanced encounter.18 Through various media then, there was significant exposure of the painting’s message, reaching a greater variety of audiences. The views of Brunias and Young, and the purpose of the painting, meant that any concerns as to the legitimacy of the military action taken against the Garifuna Peoples of St Vincent were not reflected in Sir William Young Conducting a Treaty; nor was the reality of on-the-ground warfare. By early 1773, the British were still unable to defeat the Garifuna Peoples outright. So as to resolve the impasse, they instead entered into the Peace Treaty depicted in the painting, in which British sovereignty over the island was acknowledged together with a prohibition on contact between the Garifuna and the French, who were pursuing rival European plantations, in exchange for clear demarcations between the lands of the Garifuna Peoples and British settler plantations. However, the tensions continued, erupting into further warfare (1795–1797) in which the Garifuna communities were ultimately defeated. In 1796, almost all were deported from their land by the British to the island of Balliceaux and from there in 1797 to Roatán and various areas in Central America.19 The treaty-making depicted in the Brunias painting was a statement from imperial Britain about Europe’s mode of international regulation and its universality—painting successful international law, operating in a smooth, uncontested fashion, its authority and benefits self-evident to all those portrayed within the scene. It was central to the legitimacy claims of international law that it should be regarded as universally applicable; hence, the importance of painting scenes of acceptance of the authority of European international law by extra-European nations. The actual operation of the Treaty was, however, far removed from the idyll of the painting. Functioning as a method of subjugation and a mechanism through which to obtain land, the Treaty was a key moment in the eventual expulsion of the Garifuna Peoples from St Vincent altogether. Not only was it not the universalising force for good of its portrayal, this instrument of international law was central to imperialist devastation and alienation of a People from their lands. Depicting land acquisition: the Treaty of Penn The promise of treaties entered into by Indigenous Peoples of what is now known as North America with Europeans, Canada, or the United States of America was not realised.20 Whilst ostensibly recognising Indigenous sovereign authority, they were instruments through which First Nations Peoples were marginalised and dispossessed of their lands, operating as a means through which their sovereignty could be extinguished.21 The image of the promise of such treaties, however, was perpetuated and the art portraying those key moments of international law in operation performed a vital function in maintaining that projected image—images of consensus on the universally applicable and beneficial nature of international law. A similar dynamic to that seen in the Brunias St Vincent painting is present in Benjamin West’s The Treaty of Penn, 1771–1772 (Figure 2), one in which treaty-making is given a central role as an instrument of authority, benevolence, and peaceful international regulation. In so doing, the propaganda machine for international law was deployed in a subtle and particularly effective manner, as the multi-layered messages of this painting became culturally internalised and the painting itself emerged as emblematic of how Britain and America perceived and constructed their own narratives of colonialism.22 Figure 2. Open in new tabDownload slide Benjamin West, Penn’s Treaty, 1771–1772 Source: Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Gift of Mrs. Sarah Harrison (The Joseph Harrison, Jr. Collection) Figure 2. Open in new tabDownload slide Benjamin West, Penn’s Treaty, 1771–1772 Source: Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Gift of Mrs. Sarah Harrison (The Joseph Harrison, Jr. Collection) West depicts a gathering to agree a peace treaty in 1682 between William Penn and the Lenni Lenape. There were no contemporaneous sketches of the meeting, so this rendition is entirely constructed by West.23 In fact, it is almost certain that any meeting did not occur as depicted, if at all. Rather, it has been suggested that West was seeking to send a very specific message, essentially an allegory of ‘Colonial America’, portraying the encounter as one in which the Lenni Lenape embrace European ‘gifts’ so as to bolster the legitimacy of the brutal colonial incursions into Indigenous territory that were continuing to occur in the eighteenth century.24 Again, much like the Brunias painting, the scene is an idealised vision of what Europeans in the eighteenth century were wanting to see in such an exchange. Compositionally similar to the Brunias work, with the figures set out in the open and stretching across the canvas in a neoclassical style to evoke both visual and political harmony, the Lenape weapons laid on the ground, the invocation of ‘noble savage’ imagery is again employed, with the Indigenous Peoples portrayed as ‘exotic’ and being welcomed into the fold of civilisation. The treaty and commerce, represented by the expanse of cloth, are the mechanisms through which this ‘civilising’ process is realised.25 In painting the Lenni Lenape, West based their figures on sketches he had made of classical Italian sculptures whilst studying in Italy, which accounts for the neoclassical style not only of the images, but of the painting as a whole.26 West overlaid the Europeans with a sense of beneficence picturing them dispensing gifts to the Lenni Lenape in what Beth Fowkes Tobin describes as an exercise of ‘political and economic power … disguised as the workings of a highly developed moral sensibility; in West's painting conquest is presented as an act of magnanimity.’27 The Lenape are depicted leaning in to see the merchants’ cloth and to listen to the explanations of the peace agreement as if keen to embrace what the treaty had to offer; in contrast, Penn and the Quakers are portrayed as more reserved, standing back, the artist not drawing attention to their actual ardent desire to acquire land—that their role here is that of bestowing the gifts of trade and civilisation, not of extracting promises of land and subservience.28 The somewhat dour clothing of the Europeans contributes to that air of solemnity, playing to their religiosity as Quakers and distracting from their actual role in the transaction as traders, colonisers, and land prospectors.29 The historical inaccuracy of their style of dress has been noted—it can only have been a deliberate decision of West’s as part of the casting of the Europeans in a more righteous light, as the actual dress of 1682 would have involved colour and finery, blurring the moral lines the painting has drawn between Penn and the Lenape.30 It also constitutes a calculated visual linking of the contemporary with the seventeenth-century mythology of the peaceful ‘William Penn Treaty’ to distract from the violent events and land seizures of the eighteenth century.31 Despite the imagery of consensus in this depiction of a treaty-signing, there is an undercurrent of violence contained within an ostensibly peaceful gathering. The Lenni Lenape would have been well aware of the brutal violence metered out to other Indigenous Nations where there had been resistance to European incursions into their territories.32 Treaty-making in the shadow of such a threat is clearly not the image of consent sought by West; nor that generated through the deliberate casting of Penn as a peaceful negotiator who purchases land lawfully following the conclusion of a treaty. The context in which these transactions actually occurred was one of coercion and that implicit threat of violence enabled the ‘peaceable’ dealings of Penn to be conducted as smoothly as they were.33 As Fowkes Tobin states, the Lenni Lenape ‘knew that this was the best deal they were going to get, and they took it.’34 However, the images of colonialism, and those of the tools of international law to realise those colonial aims, were carefully constructed to erase any express reference to the violence of the way in which they both operated. There are also the background scenes in the painting to consider. The European buildings and ships in the distance may well have been intended by West to convey a sense of the benefits of civilisation and the promotion of trade, but, they can rather be seen as foreshadowing the increasing European encroachment and appropriation of Indigenous land, indicative of the hostilities that were suffered by the Lenni Lenape in the early eighteenth century, in particular, the large-scale confiscations of land that occurred in 1737.35 West’s use of the imagery of peace and acquiescence was designed to erase the Lenape’s actual experience of conflict that followed on from the conclusion of the treaty. The context of the commissioning of the painting is central to understanding the messages embedded within the scene. Commissioned in 1770 by Penn’s son, Thomas Penn, the painting was produced against a backdrop of increasing settler hostilities towards the Lenni Lenape throughout the eighteenth century and criticism of Thomas Penn’s extensive purchases of land and his authorisation of land confiscations.36 Illustrating this scene placed his family’s activities in a positive light, not only evoking nostalgia and the Quaker narrative of peaceful relations between coloniser and colonised, but also professing the legality of his father’s actions, referencing the charter from the Crown, the resultant treaty with the Lenape, land purchases, and harmonious relations between the parties to those agreements.37 In other words, representing the signing of the treaty in this way fulfilled a propaganda function for Thomas Penn. At the same time, it also served both the colonial narrative and that of the ideal of international law. Understanding the extent of its distribution is also important. William Penn’s Treaty was a widely copied painting even at the time of its completion, quickly becoming a recognisable image, and remained so, entering into the American consciousness as an iconic ‘settler’ representation of America.38 Copperplates were engraved of the image as early as 1775 by the English publisher John Boydell and were used to produce prints well into the twentieth century that were then circulated through America and Europe. Versions of the print appeared in texts distributed in Britain, France, and Germany all before 1800.39 In fact, Abrams points out that this painting ‘has been reproduced and reinterpreted perhaps more than any other American work, appearing often in textbooks as an actual portrayal of the historic event’.40 The image moved beyond the painting to become a part of popular American culture, appearing on products, such as fabrics, bowls and platters, and children’s card sets, and in advertisements.41 This painting was also a powerful portrait of successful international law. It alluded to a type of relationship that did not exist between the parties depicted, but in portraying the bringing together of these particular sovereign nations, it promoted international law as an authoritative peace-maker, as an international regulator, and, crucially, as universally applicable, accepted not just in a European context, but as a governing force for extra-European nations as well. In so doing, William Penn’s Treaty constituted a quintessential example of art as propaganda in the projection of an image of international law that served European interests. --------------------- It is well-appreciated that treaty-making was a method of extending empire.42 The nature, theory, and violent performative function of treaty-making in the colonial context, the act of claiming authority and territory embodied in the presentation of the treaty for signature, the ostensible exchange and consensus that was not, the defining of relationships, the commodification and erasure, the treaty-object itself, and the granularity of the individual terms and provisions were all present in the playing out of imperial treaty-making.43 Treaties during the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries were concluded as a result of colonial incursions, informal commercial-based empire, and the end of military conflict and hostilities between states, but they could also represent peaceful accord addressing a range of issues from trade to the protection of religious practice for citizens. For this reason, in addition to constituting a genuine, un-coerced agreement, a treaty could also confer the semblance of legality and therefore legitimacy to those that were the result of violence and invasion.44 Imperial treaties benefited from this dual possibility and the imagery of treaty-making invariably depicted the reaching of international agreement as the happy meeting of two sides, international law operating successfully as the arbiter of sovereign nations. The nature of persuasion through the projection of images of seventeenth to nineteenth-century treaty-making implicates theories and ideas on propaganda generally, as well as those on its imperial manifestation. Theorising propaganda engages a variety of approaches and definitions. Propaganda has been described as ‘rhetorics that secure a political/economic system that renders citizens governable rather than governing’;45 or a more generalised description as a manipulative practice that is intentional, but not necessarily one that is performed consciously, suggesting the inclusion of pervasive and subtle methods using social structures and the public themselves to disseminate the influencing material;46 or those that emphasise meeting a series of criteria, being, for example, (a) an intentional communication with the objective of influencing the views of the audience, (b) advantageous to the source of the material, and (c) communicated through a mass, one-way, non-interactive method; a set of criteria that encompasses a wide net of communicated information such as advertising, public relations, religion, and political electioneering.47 In essence, propaganda is a form of communication, disseminating ideas, images, and propositions, seeking to elicit an emotional response in the audience, the purpose of which is to influence public opinion and behaviour in the interests of the propaganda source.48 It is about manipulation and entails an appreciation of human vulnerability to the influence of suggestion in such a way that leads Ellul to assert ‘propaganda will always triumph over information’.49 In the context of imperial propaganda, it was about selling the ‘idea of Empire’ to a European audience. Notions of ‘noble’ causes such as spreading Christianity and ‘civilisation’, ‘heroism’ in military feats, and ‘pioneering’ courage in the face of ‘barbarism’ in ‘exotic’ places, were very much part of the playbook of image-construction so as to garner support for imperial activities.50 Text and visual-based forms of propagating stereotypes of empire were complex and not monolithic and there were, of course, works that undermined those messages, but the communication of the ideology of imperialism was pervasive, constructed and disseminated through literature, art and illustration, music hall and songs, children’s storybooks, school texts, newspapers, posters, products, prints, and pamphlets, public ceremonial celebrations, statues, and architecture.51 Internalised and entering popular imagination, imperial propaganda was diffused through Europe as a site of cultural reproduction of imperial ideology, representing to Europeans the desired self-image of both themselves and their imperial activities.52 And the same processes can be picked out around the visual representations supporting contemporary narratives of international law in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Images of the Brunias and West paintings of treaty-making discussed above were widely disseminated both at the time and long after through reproductions, books, and products, but their motifs and messages were also repeated on numerous occasions throughout the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in other paintings.53 Depicting treaty-signing through the commissioning of large-scale paintings was a particular type of expression of cultural encounter, a form of imperial propaganda, and a means of perpetuating narratives of international law. It was not only a way to manufacture or glorify victories and to project an image of fair-dealing, adherence to diplomatic protocol, and internationally lawful conduct,54 but also to communicate visual codes promoting international law as a successful, uncontested, universal, and ‘civilising’ governance mechanism. And those same approaches were also employed in the projection of the authority of international law. PROJECTING AUTHORITY The layers involved in the construction of authority are inevitably complex. With respect to the emergence of modern international law, it was particularly so. Over centuries, over space, through assertions of universal application, through sporadic application in practice, by way of variegated and parallel social, commercial, political, military, and legal dimensions, international law became infused throughout the collective Western mode of operating on the international plane.55 By text, treaty and trade; by warfare and invasion—but also through image. As with the promotion of a bloodless, successful, and beneficent international law in paintings of treaty-making, imagery was also enlisted to contribute to and reinforce the authority of international law. And it took a number of forms during the constitutive years from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, the most potent of which being the imposing portraits of prominent international legal theorists and the representation of international conferences as the purveyors of peace and order. Portraits of international law-makers Portraiture, as a genre, not only seeks to embody the likeness of the sitter, but also to send signals to the viewer about the way in which the subject is to be perceived.56 In this sense, there is a complicated relationship between depicting an actual person, story-telling, image-making, projecting, viewing, perceiving, and engaging with artistic conventions.57 Layers of meaning are infused through the images in a language of iconography, establishing a mode of communication between artist, sitter, and viewer.58 This in itself can be conceptualised in a number of ways, one approach being the characterisation by Shearer West of portraiture communication as a three-part construction in which:59 the presence of a specific individual in a portrait reminds us of the encounter between the artist and the sitter. This special aspect of portraiture has been explained using C.S. Pierce’s semiotic theory of the icon, index, and the symbol. According to Pierce, an icon looks like the thing it represents, an index draws attention to something outside the representation, and a symbol is a seeming arbitrary sign that is by cultural convention, connected to a particular object. A portrait has qualities of all three: it resembles the object of representation (icon), it refers to the act of sitting (index), and it contains gestures, expressions, and props that can be read with knowledge of social and cultural conventions (symbols). Of those three aspects, it is representation that Richard Brilliant emphasises, identifying the human element of portraiture as the feature that distinguishes it from other genres of art.60 He asserts that the association with a recognisable individual generates in the viewer particular approaches to perception.61 Others focus more on the nature of the signalling within the works. In this vein, theorising the visual communication of portraiture falls within Umberto Eco’s frame of reference on ‘pre-encoded subjects’ and the operation of discourses.62 That interaction between image, representation, and ‘sign-function’ or ‘sign-vehicle’ has been described as a form of transmission of meaning that is:63 predicated upon a system of signification that renders all portraits culturally encoded objects, with past and future iconic codes operating in the semantic space between the image, its “pre-encoded subjects,” and the spectator. Instead of likeness, … the study of portraits involved the analysis of discourse, the construction and reconstruction of audiences, and the anticipation of future critiques. These nuanced approaches to portraiture differ in their analyses, but all reiterate that its functions go beyond both the artistic and the capturing of the individual’s ‘likeness’. In light of this premise then, it is clear that the communication objectives of portraits of international jurists, such as Grotius, were layered and not simply about recording the physical traits of the sitter or show-casing artistic techniques; rather, they also conveyed messages to the viewer. Ascertaining the full extent of that signalling, however, necessitates not only an examination of contemporary portraiture trends within the relevant era, but also the portraits of judges and heads of state more generally. They were, and are, in an analogous fashion to those of international jurists, designed to project authority—to project the authority of the sitter and to function as a vehicle for imbuing the physical location of the painting with the associated sense of gravitas and authority.64 From the seventeenth century onwards, a multitude of portraits of international legal theorists were produced. These included images of key scholars such as Emer de Vattel,65 Samuel von Pufendorf,66 Jean-Jacques Rousseau,67 Henry Wheaton,68 and John Westlake,69 amongst others. Of the numerous theorists portrayed, however, none captured the collective imagination of ‘international law’ to the extent of Grotius. More than any other theorist, it was the image of Grotius that came to embody the ‘idea of international law’. Operating across centuries, that narrative manifests itself even in the twenty-first century in, for example, the Annual Grotius Lecture held at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, the Grotius Lectures of the American Society of International Law, the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies at Leiden Law School, and in the categorisation of a particular school of thought in international relations as the ‘Grotian tradition’.70 For this reason, the section in this chapter focuses on the numerous portraits of Grotius, exploring their contribution to the creation and perpetuation of both the narrative surrounding his importance for international law and the authority of international law more generally. Understanding the coding within the portraits of Grotius requires a consideration of the societal context of portraiture more generally in the Netherlands as well as those personal elements specific to Grotius. As Ann Jensen Adams explains, there is a ‘cultural power’ in portraits; and in Dutch seventeenth-century society, portraiture was a pervasive medium.71 In addition to providing a means by which individuals could create and project certain identities for themselves, portraits also reflected the ‘collective cultural imagination in the Northern Netherlands in the seventeenth century’.72 As a genre, Northern European portraiture of this era tended to follow specific conventions, containing both elements of the general and the particular. There was a generality and repetition of type, transmuting the values associated with that form to the sitter, but their individual attributes were also emphasised, marking out the particular, so the wealth, prestige, beauty, or profession became a part of the image-production process. As with portraiture in general, the relationship between artist, sitter, and viewer in Dutch seventeenth-century portraits was also an active one, constructing an identity designed to be perceived and a meaning to be projected.73 As a part of this identity-production process in portraits of Grotius the jurist, the iconography of authority and the institution of law is invoked. For this reason, Leslie Moran’s work on the portraits of judges as legal biography has relevance for understanding the way in which Grotius has been portrayed. Moran points to judicial portraiture as a dual-purpose method of image-making and image-management, not only of the individual, but also as the ‘self-fashioning of the institution’.74 In particular, he explains the way in which the aesthetics situate the individual within ‘a long-established tradition developed to represent social, political and institutional elites in a society.’75 In the case of the many portraits of Grotius over the centuries, it is the gravitas of international law that is also being asserted. The image of the individual and the institution are entwined, infusing each with the projected narrative. Moran describes the role of judicial portraits in the following terms:76 Through these portraits the individual’s image is fabricated according to the abstract ideas, values and virtues associated with the institution and the collective. Through the sitter’s image these institutional values and virtues are made visible, public and more accessible. This plays a role not only in the construction and representation of identity of the individual sitter but also importantly in the composition and construction of collective identities and of the identity of the institution. In similar fashion, key portraits of Grotius served a dual purpose. The simultaneous assertion of the existence of a universal international law and the exaltation of Grotius as its face projected the values associated with a scholar, legal prodigy, ‘father’ of international law,77 such as objectivity, rigour, and authority, on to the burgeoning field, while at the same time cloaking the image of Grotius with the gravitas of the collective, being an ‘international’ consensus of rules. The 1631 van Mierevelt portrait of Grotius (Figure 3),78 in particular, fulfilled that duality. Figure 3. Open in new tabDownload slide Michiel van Mierevelt, Hugo de Groot, 1631 Source: Collection Museum Prinsenhof Delft (photo Tom Haartsen) Figure 3. Open in new tabDownload slide Michiel van Mierevelt, Hugo de Groot, 1631 Source: Collection Museum Prinsenhof Delft (photo Tom Haartsen) Grotius commissioned several portraits of himself at different stages of his life and career to project a particular image of himself to the public,79 but it was the 1631 van Mierevelt portrait that became renowned (Figure 3). It was frequently reproduced and formed the basis for many other representations of Grotius in later centuries.80 However, at the time of its commissioning, the work served a specific purpose for Grotius. Arrested in 1618 for treason for his views on politics and religion and imprisoned in Loevestein Castle, from which he later escaped, his exile from the Dutch Republic brought both a sense of disillusionment with his homeland and an internationalist perspective to his scholarship.81 During this period, he published De jure belli ac pacis (on the law of war and peace), which articulated a systematic rationalisation of a universally applicable international law.82 In the Prolegomena of this treatise, Grotius refers to his ambitious objective of producing a comprehensive account of rules regulating the conduct of states:83 Many people have undertaken commentaries and digests of civil laws, both the Roman law and that of other nations; but few people have tackled the law which mediates between different countries, or between their rulers (whether the law stems from nature itself or from custom and tacit agreement), and so far no one at all has dealt with it comprehensively and methodically, though such a thing would benefit the human race. The completion of the van Mierevelt portrait came at a time when Grotius was seeking to promote both his book De jure belli ac pacis and his own reputation. In 1631, Grotius briefly returned to the Dutch Republic in an attempt to force the revocation of his exile, which did not eventuate, and also sat for the van Mierevelt portrait.84 Within this context, the portrait can be seen as a redemptive piece painted when Grotius was attempting to rehabilitate his reputation for posterity as an eminent and principled scholar and jurist. Van Mierevelt presents Grotius in the simple, dark colours that were used to denote an intellectual and combines this austere colour with the expensive, social status-reflecting, formal mode of dress of the ruff collar and the fine detail on the cloth of his doublet.85 It is a traditional, conservative, almost three-quarter-length composition, following the conventions of the day, unlike an earlier painting of Grotius aged 16 with its face-only representation, off-skew angle, more animated expression, and dynamic ruff (Figure 4).86 Figure 4. Open in new tabDownload slide Jan van Ravesteyn, Hugo Grotius at the age of 16, 1599 Source: Fondation Custodia, Collection Frits Lugt, Paris Figure 4. Open in new tabDownload slide Jan van Ravesteyn, Hugo Grotius at the age of 16, 1599 Source: Fondation Custodia, Collection Frits Lugt, Paris Jensen Adams expressly links the representation of seventeenth-century individuals in Dutch portraiture to the moral stoicism advocated in the writings of Grotius.87 In particular, she discusses De jure belli ac pacis and its underlying notions of moral restraint and self-control, referring to the ‘imaginative self-discipline’ represented in portraits from the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic.88 She describes the demeanour considered to be ideal, known by the term ‘tranquillitas’, as an internal state of serenity given external manifestation through a ‘sober, removed expression’, and associated with rulership.89 Portraits of this nature were designed to convey the psychological interior of the sitter to the viewer and the moral stoicism illustrated was intended to be met with approval.90 This is certainly reflected in the 1631 van Mierevelt portrait of Grotius, depicting the jurist in a sombre fashion, with the steady, measured gaze of authority; a well-to-do member of the establishment, but an intellectual, a morally sound individual whose knowledge and wisdom is to be respected and trusted. Nellen goes further, describing Grotius as having been depicted with a somewhat melancholy expression.91 Grotius commissioned what is a stylistically conservative portrait in ‘tranquillitas’ mode to represent his multiple roles, to convey his ideal neo-stoic moral disposition, and to cultivate the image of gravitas associated with statesman, scholar, historian, and great international jurist.92 In effect, it is the very rendition of authority itself. This 1631 van Mierevelt portrait not only served as a piece of personal propaganda for Grotius, but also as a projection of the authority of international law. Contributing to the promotion of De iure belli ac pacis as the authoritative text on rules of international law, the portrait also operated to promote the core idea of international law, and not just in the seventeenth century, but across time. In this sense, the notion of ‘shifting frames of reference’93 with respect to the reception of portraiture in changing temporal contexts is of interest. The representation of Grotius in that 1631 painting was repeated in engravings, included in later editions of his books, and reproduced in commentaries or responses to his work,94 all perpetuating and disseminating the image Grotius had cast for himself, which was then picked up and carried away in the nineteenth century as the ‘founding father’ of international law narrative. Martine van Ittersum notes the aggrandising of Grotius at the 1899 Hague Peace Conference, in particular, as a key moment in that framing of Grotius as the ‘father of international law’.95 Littered with the language of ‘progress’ and ‘civilisation’, speeches were given and commemorative events were held to honour Grotius. The United States Ambassador, Andrew Dickson White, and the American delegation more generally, took a high-profile role in lauding Grotius at the Conference, asserting his significance for the United States of America and, indeed, for humanity as a whole.96 Dickson White would later write to Andrew Carnegie in much the same tone, proposing Carnegie fund the establishment of an international court at The Hague.97 Again elevating the status of Grotius, Dickson White described his work in international law as ‘the greatest service ever rendered’ to humanity, recommended a statue of Grotius as a central feature within the proposed courtroom structure, and, recognising the impact of the visual on the communication of an idea, wrote:98 I would commission the foremost British, French, German and American artists to adorn the building with pictures, which shall show the progress of mankind as influenced by great agencies and victories of peace … [such as] Grotius writing his “De Jure ac Pacis”, the greatest service ever rendered to mankind by a book, or, indeed, by a man … Van Ittersum explains that it suited both the United States and the Netherlands at this time to play down Grotius’ scholarship as advocacy for the Dutch East India Company or VOC and Dutch expansionism, his religiosity and partisan politicking, and, instead, construct an ideal of international law, embodied in Grotius as its ‘father’, as universal, virtuous, authoritative, peace-making, and progressive.99 The continued use of Grotius’ image perpetuated the idea that the authority of international law was based on legitimacy, reason, virtue, extraordinary scholarship, and solid, sound principle. This is portrayed, for example, in the 1886 statue of Grotius in Delft by Franciscus Leonardus Stracké (Figure 5) where the physical features of Grotius have morphed into an ‘ideal’ rather than resembling him closely; the book and feather pen indicate a learned and scholarly individual, the stance and dress being that of ‘authority’, the statue form bringing a solidity to the two-dimensional image in portraiture. Figure 5. Open in new tabDownload slide Franciscus Leonardus Stracké, Statue of Hugo de Groot, Delft, 1886 Source: Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain Figure 5. Open in new tabDownload slide Franciscus Leonardus Stracké, Statue of Hugo de Groot, Delft, 1886 Source: Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain Furthermore, it was not enough that the statue alone was standing, but representations of the sculpture were produced to spread the image further afield, as in the print held by the New York Public Library (Figure 6) — in this way, ensuring the continued dissemination of the ‘idea’ of Grotius and the authority of international law. It proved to be a persistent and powerful narrative for the entrenchment and universalising of international law. Figure 6. Open in new tabDownload slide Unknown artist, Standbeeld voor Hugo de Groot te Delft, 1886 Source: The New York Public Library, “Hugo Grotius”, The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection Figure 6. Open in new tabDownload slide Unknown artist, Standbeeld voor Hugo de Groot te Delft, 1886 Source: The New York Public Library, “Hugo Grotius”, The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection International law as peacemaker, regulator and ‘civiliser’ The portrayal of European political conferences and congresses can also be seen as a part of the narrative of European law as successful international law, as a reasoned international regulator, the purveyor of peace and order, and as a projection of the authority of international law. An example of this is Henri-Camille Danger’s 1897 painting Les Grands Artisans de L'Arbitrage et de la Paix, (Figure 7), commissioned in anticipation of the 1899 Hague Peace Conference. Figure 7. Open in new tabDownload slide Henri-Camille Danger, Les Grands Artisans de L'Arbitrage et de la Paix, 1897 Source: Swarthmore College Peace Collection Figure 7. Open in new tabDownload slide Henri-Camille Danger, Les Grands Artisans de L'Arbitrage et de la Paix, 1897 Source: Swarthmore College Peace Collection There is an express reference in the title to the creators of arbitration and peace, and as being ‘great’. So, in this instance, the images speak of the eminence and gravitas afforded the figures and the institution of international law and arbitration and peaceful international regulation, but, as if to reinforce the imagery, in case the casual observer missed the rather unsubtle message of the painting itself, the artist states explicitly in the title the way in which the viewer is to read the work. Commissioned by a French merchant and prominent member of the Société Française pour L’Arbitrage entre Nations, Ansbert Labbé, the original painting was displayed at the 1898 Paris Salon, then presented to Tsar Nicholas, and its whereabouts are no longer known, but the image was reproduced extensively in promotional books and pamphlets for the peace movement, such as that pictured at Figure 7.100 As Arthur Eyffinger mentions,101 the composition of the painting deliberately echoes that of Raphael’s School of Athens (Figure 8),102 referencing all of the associated values portrayed in that Renaissance painting of knowledge, reason, wisdom, philosophy, and virtue, reflected also in the measured, ordered symmetry and harmony of the composition, so that in the piece by Danger, the projected image of international law and its European regulators was one of authority—learned men, order, reason, and civility. Figure 8. Open in new tabDownload slide Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio of Urbino), School of Athens, 1510 Source: Vatican Museums and Galleries, Vatican City/Bridgeman Images Figure 8. Open in new tabDownload slide Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio of Urbino), School of Athens, 1510 Source: Vatican Museums and Galleries, Vatican City/Bridgeman Images In an effort to visually eulogise peaceful international dispute settlement, Danger depicts notable individuals in the world of peace-making and arbitration. There is, however, no attempt at realism as those represented are from a range of eras, including: Confucius, Buddha, Isaias, Micheas, Aristophanes, Plato, Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, St Paul, Louis IX, Erasmus, Grotius, Vattel, Kant, Bentham, Tsar Alexander III, Jefferson, Franklin, Baroness von Suttner, Mancini, and Nobel.103 In a small conceit, he also reserved a place for both himself and Labbé in this fictional assembly, pictured at the far right of the painting, as two of a mostly obscured group of three men, they are standing next to the seated Pope Leo XIII.104 As if to reiterate the metaphorical rather than realist nature of the depiction, Danger has also painted in architecture from classical Greece as the background, the great columns framing the picture, together with a contemporary ship emerging on the left of the scene. The function of international arbitration was, however, more nuanced than that presented by Danger. It was certainly promoted as a peace-making mechanism in the nineteenth century,105 in particular through the reifying of international arbitration in the ‘peace through law movement’.106 And, as a form of international dispute settlement, it had its place as such. But international arbitration had also, at times, been linked with violence, and the threat of use of force, by Western powers to serve their own interests, protecting international capital flows and the foreign-owned property of their nationals.107 In such circumstances, the participation of extra-European states in arbitration had been forced through ‘gunboat diplomacy’.108 States on the receiving end of such imposition strenuously contested both the existence of an international minimum standard and the authority of international arbitral tribunals, a position encompassed within what became known as the Calvo Doctrine. Those states objected to the interference in their domestic affairs and derogation of sovereignty inherent in the military incursions and insistence on international arbitration that often followed on from disputes over foreign-owned property.109 This not-so-laudable role of international arbitration as a mechanism to support informal empire, its periodically imposed character and links to violent methods of international engagement, and its function as a protector of Western capital flows were not referenced in nineteenth-century visual representations of arbitration. Rather, it was presented as a universalising, peace-inducing, and profoundly good mode of governance. Depictions of international political gatherings and conferences were not only a feature of the rhetoric of international law as trusted peacemaker and regulator, but also that of authoritative and legally sanctioned ‘civiliser’. Just as with the imagery of treaty-making discussed earlier in this article, so too was the visual culture of international conferences and diplomacy tied into notions of colonialism as a ‘civilising mission’. One such example is the depiction of the Berlin Conference of 1884 (Figure 9).110 Figure 9. Open in new tabDownload slide Adalbert von Röler, The Berlin Conference on the Partition of Africa, 1884, Allgemeine Illustrierte Zeitung, Über Land und Meer, vol. 53, 1883/85 Source: Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain Figure 9. Open in new tabDownload slide Adalbert von Röler, The Berlin Conference on the Partition of Africa, 1884, Allgemeine Illustrierte Zeitung, Über Land und Meer, vol. 53, 1883/85 Source: Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain The decision to convene the Berlin Conference arose out of a complex dynamic amongst European states competing for commercial and political advantages in Africa and it came to symbolise the carving up of African territory amongst colonial powers.111 The General Act resulting from the Conference stated explicitly that it was designed to regulate “the development of commerce and of civilization in certain regions of Africa" and aimed at "increasing the moral and material wellbeing of the indigenous populations”.112 African nations were excluded from the Conference and were not consulted on the issues. The claiming of colonial territory within Africa was already well-advanced by the time of the Conference—it was entirely an imperialist exercise attempting to manage the process of territory appropriation and to ensure European trading access to African territories.113 The very specific invocation of the civilising mission, both formally in the General Act and in the rhetoric surrounding the Conference, as well as the use of international legal mechanisms, such as the format of a diplomatic conference and formally recorded agreement, gave the meeting a semblance of moral as well as legal authority and, in this way, contributed to the process of legitimising colonial acquisition of territory.114 Framed as a facilitator of the civilising mission, the convening of the Conference, in itself, served a propaganda purpose for those European states; the pictures of it particularly so. The engraving by Adalbert von Röler (Figure 9), and other such depictions of the Berlin Conference that appeared in newspapers,115 presented the meeting as the authoritative international regulator of colonisation and trade, as the very image of law and order: it was all conducted in an orderly fashion; international law in practice operating as a ‘civiliser’, its universal application accepted throughout the globe; and the international accord being the result of the careful, considered, altruistic decisions of the wise men in the room so as to bring the benefits of commerce and civilisation to Africa. That was the message projected by the von Röler engraving purporting to provide a visual record of the negotiations of the 1884 Berlin Conference. And it fed into the construction of an overall picture of nineteenth-century international law as a beneficent, peace-making, international regulator, which was a narrative that contributed to the justifying and enabling of colonial activities and the cementing of European international law as universal. CONCLUDING REMARKS The development of international law in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was a multi-layered process involving treaties, treatises, cases, diplomatic exchanges, the distillation of rules and principles, and the practice of states. It was also deeply entwined with the commercial and political expansionism of Western states, in which legal doctrine was shaped by the colonial encounter and the performance of informal empire. During this period, a narrative was constructed around ‘agreed upon’ rules of international law, projecting the universal authority of international law and framing it as a neutral, beneficent, ‘civilising’ international regulator of states. It is clear from the discussion in this article that imagery was also employed in the creation and sustaining of that narrative. A visual discourse was engaged in transmitting powerful messages of a ‘successful’, uncontested international law, its authority as a form of global ordering, and its role as an agent for civilisation. Through the portrayal of treaty-signing as an altruistic bestowal of European civilisation on extra-European peoples readily received, the European mode of international regulation was projected as ideal and universally applicable. Through the depiction of international legal theorists as the embodiment of international law—scholarly, authoritative, objective, possessing gravitas—and the representation of international conferences as the expression of reason, peace, civility, and order, so too was the image of international law constructed and disseminated as such. This article has explored some of the images and art that were co-opted in those processes and that acted as a form of propaganda for the promotion of international law as universal and as an intrinsically good governance model. Identifying the way in which visuality was employed in the construction of that particular idea of international law not only enhances our understanding of its history, but also of its contemporary operation. It should cause us to reflect on the visual international law that is currently acting upon both law-makers and wider communities—and whether it is also still perpetuating those same nineteenth-century notions of international law as an inherently virtuous, reasoned, authoritative, legitimate, and universal mechanism of ‘progress’ and good governance.116 The ideas in this article were presented at the European Society of International Law Annual Conference, International Law and Universality, Manchester, 13-15 September 2018, as ‘Depicting International Law as Universal: Image and Art as Propaganda’. The author gratefully acknowledges the permission granted to reproduce the copyright material in this article. Footnotes 1 A Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law (Cambridge UP, 2005); see also L Benton, Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History, 1400–1900 (Cambridge UP, 2002). 2 Anghie, above n. 1, 2–8; A Anghie, ‘The Evolution of International Law: Colonial and Postcolonial Realities’ (2006) 27 Third World Quarterly 739, 741–742; on the ‘civilising mission’ see, for example, E Creasy, Imperial and Colonial Constitutions of the Britannic Empire: Including Indian Institutions (Longmans, Green, and Co, 1872) 62–66; see also, for example, JR Seeley, The Expansion of England: Two Courses of Lectures (Macmillan and Co., 1883, 2nd ed. 1914); see also the discussion in A Fitzmaurice, ‘Scepticism of the Civilizing Mission in International Law’ in M Koskenniemi et al, International Law and Empire: Historical Explorations (Oxford UP, 2017) 359; ; see also the discussion in L Obregón, ‘The Civilized and the Uncivilized’ in B Fassbender and A Peters (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law (Oxford UP, 2012) 918. 3 See the discussion on imperial order and the inconsistent approach to international law and sovereignty in PG McHugh, ‘“A Pretty Gov[ernment]!”: The “Confederation of United Tribes” and Britain’s Quest for Imperial Order in the New Zealand Islands during the 1830s’ in L Benton and RJ Ross (eds.), Legal Pluralism and Empires, 1500–1850 (New York UP, 2013) 233, 234–236. 4 Ibid; see generally L Benton, A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400–1900 (Cambridge UP, 2010). 5 Anghie, above n. 1, 3–6, 37–39; see, for example, WE Hall, A Treatise on International Law (Clarendon Press, 3rd edn., 1890) 1; see also J Lorimer, The Institutes of the Law of Nations: A Treatise of the Jural Relations of Separate Political Communities (William Blackwood & Sons, 1883); H Wheaton, Elements of International Law (Little, Brown & Co., 1866). As a further example of nineteenth-century positivist conceptualisations, see J Westlake, Chapters on the Principles of International Law (Cambridge UP, 1894) 1–3. 6 See also for a discussion on the depiction of the Treaty of Versailles in K Miles, ‘Visuality of Versailles: Response and Reflection’ (2020) London Review of International Law 7–41. 7 See the discussion in L Moran, ‘“Every Picture Tells a Story”: Picturing Judicial Biography’ (2014) 14 Legal Information Management 27. 8 For the contemporary expression of such views, see, for example, W Young Considerations Which May Tend to Promote the Settlement of Our New West-India Colonies, By Encouraging Individuals to embark in the Undertaking (James Robson, 1764), 1–3, 11, 34–35. 9 A Smith, ‘Imperial Heroics’ in A Smith, David Blayney Brown and C Jacobi (eds.), Artist and Empire: Facing Britain’s Imperial Past (Tate Publishing, 2015) 84, 93. 10 See for example, the speeches of Townshend, Trecothick, and Whitworth, December 9, 1772, in Cobbett et al., eds., The Parliamentary History of England: From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803 (T.C. Hansard, 1813) vol. 17, 568–569; see the discussion in JP Greene, Evaluating Empire and Confronting Colonialism in Eighteenth Century Britain (Cambridge UP, 2013) 6–10. 11 Greene, above n. 10, 2–6; see, for example, W Young, An Account of the Black Charaibs in the Island of St. Vincent’s; with the Charaib Treaty of 1773 and other Original Documents, Compiled from the Papers of the Late Sir William Young (J. Sewell, and Knight and Triphook, 1795) 21–22. The notion of terra nullius, being land occupied by no one, was extended to encompass a fiction devised to enable occupation of territory that was already occupied — that land not cultivated in the European sense amounted to not occupied; see also the discussion in H Freund, ‘Who Should be Treated “with every degree of humanity”? Debating Rights for Planters, Soldiers, and Caribs/Kalinago on St. Vincent, 1763–1773’ (2016) 13 Atlantic Studies 125, 127–129. 12 Young, above n. 8. 13 S Thomas, ‘Envisaging a Future for Slavery: Agostino Brunias and the Imperial Politics of Labor and Reproduction’ (2018) 52 Eighteenth Century Studies 115, 120. 14 Ibid, 117–118, 127; see also S Thomas, ‘“On the Spot”: Travelling Artists and Abolitionism, 1770–1840’ (2011) 8 Atlantic Studies 213. 15 Thomas, above n. 14. 16 Ibid. 17 Thomas, above n. 13, 127; B Edwards, The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies (John Stockdale, 1st edn., 1793, 3rd edn., 1801); an engraved print of the painting appeared in the 1801, 1807, and 1818–1819 editions of the Edwards’ book. 18 Smith, above n. 9, 93. 19 Greene, above n. 8, 12; C Taylor, The Black Carib Wars: Freedom, Survival, and the Making of the Garifuna (University Press of Mississippi, 2016); J Chun Kim, ‘The Caribs of St. Vincent and Indigenous Resistance during the Age of Revolutions’ (2013) 11 Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 117, 131. 20 H Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark, ‘Marked by Fire: Anishinaabe Articulations of Nationhood in Treaty-Making with the United States and Canada’ (2012) 36 American Indian Quarterly 119, 121–125, 142–143; GW Rice, ‘Teaching Decolonization: Reacquisition of Indian Lands within and without the Box — an Essay’ (2006) 82 North Dakota Law Review 811; see, for example, Treaty with the Six Nations (Mohawk, Seneca, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga, Tuscarora), Oct. 22, 1784, 7 Stat. 15 (at Fort Stanwix). 21 DK Richter, ‘To “Clear the King’s and Indians’ Title”: Seventeenth-Century Origins of North American Land Cession Treaties’ in S Belmessous (ed), Empire by Treaty: Negotiating European Expansion, 1600–1900 (Oxford UP, 2015) 45, 74; V Deloria Jr, Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties: An Indian Declaration of Independence (University of Texas Press, 1985); DE Wilkins and KT Lomawaima, Uneven Ground: American Indian Sovereignty and Federal Law (University of Oklahoma Press, 2001) 5–7, 32–55; H Oliff, ‘Treaties Made, Treaties Broken’, Partnership with Native Americans, 3 March 2011, <http://blog.nativepartnership.org/treaties-made-treaties-broken/> (at 2 June 2018). 22 See the discussion on the cultural significance of this painting in JH Merrell, Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier (WW Norton, 1999) 30; see also L Rigal, ‘Framing the Fabric: A Luddite Reading of Penn's Treaty with the Indians’ (2000) 12 American Literary History 557; A Cannon Palumbo, ‘Averting "Present Commotions": History as Politics in "Penn's Treaty"’ (1995) 9 American Art 28. 23 An actual treaty exchange has not been verified by historians, although the land purchases by Penn said to follow from that exchange are recorded. 24 A Uhry Abrams, ‘Benjamin West's Documentation of Colonial History: William Penn's Treaty with the Indians’ (1982) 64 Art Bulletin 59, 60. 25 Rigal, above n. 22. 26 See for a discussion on West’s neoclassical style, Rigal, above n. 22, 560; The State Museum of Pennsylvania, Commentary on the Exhibition: An Image of Peace: The William Penn Treaty <http://statemuseumpa.org/penn-treaty/creating/index.htm> (last accessed 28 December 2019). 27 B Fowkes Tobin, Picturing Imperial Power: Colonial Subjects in Eighteenth-Century British Painting (Duke UP, 1999) 56. 28 Ibid, 58–62; Rigal, above n. 22, 557; Cannon Palumbo, above n. 22, 33–36. 29 Fowkes Tobin, above n. 27, 58. 30 Ibid, 59–61. 31 Abrams suggests that the eighteenth-century dress was to give the scene an air of contemporaneity and to visually link the circumstances of Thomas Penn in the 1770s to the image of William Penn in 1683; see Abrams, above n. 24, 72; see also the discussion in Rigal, above n. 22, 560. 32 Fowkes Tobin, above n. 27, 62 33 Ibid, 62–63; V Green Fryd, Art and Empire: The Politics of Ethnicity in the United States Capitol, 1815-1860 (Yale UP, 1992) 28. 34 Fowkes Tobin, above n. 27, 62. 35 Ibid, 63–66; Abrams, above n. 24, 74; see Cannon Palumbo, above n. 22 on the trade promotion theme; see the discussion of Thomas Penn’s fraudulent ‘Walking Purchase’ of land in F Jennings, Ambiguous Iroquois Empire: The Covenant Chain Confederation of Indian Tribes with English Colonies from its Beginnings to the Lancaster Treaty of 1744 (WW Norton, 1984) 330–342. 36 Fowkes Tobin, above n. 27, 63–66. 37 Ibid, 63–65. 38 Ibid, 56. 39 The State Museum of Pennsylvania, above n. 26; see, for example, the print by Heinrich Guttenberg, reproduced in Guillaume-Thomas Raynal, Histoire Philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes (Jean-Léonard Pellet, 1789). 40 Abrams, above n. 24, 59–60. 41 The State Museum of Pennsylvania, above n. 26; Merrell, above n. 22, 30. 42 See the discussion in S Belmessous, ‘The Paradox of an Empire by Treaty’ in S Belmessous (ed), Empire by Treaty: Negotiating European Expansion, 1600–1900 (Oxford UP, 2015) 1. 43 See J Hohmann, ‘The Treaty 8 Typewriter: Tracing the Roles of Material Things in Imagining, Realising, and Resisting Colonial Worlds’ (2017) 5 London Review of International Law 371; see also R Buchanan and JG Hewitt, ‘Treaty Canoe’ in J Hohmann and D Joyce (eds), International Law’s Objects (Oxford UP, 2018) 491. 44 Belmessous, above n. 42. 45 GL Henderson and MJ Braun, ‘Introduction: A Call for Renewed Attention to Propaganda in Writing Studies and Rhetoric’ in GL Henderson and MJ Braun (eds), Propaganda and Rhetoric in Democracy: History, Theory, Analysis (Southern Illinois UP, 2016) 1, 3. 46 T Huckin ‘Propaganda Defined’ in GL Henderson and MJ Braun (eds), Propaganda and Rhetoric in Democracy: History, Theory, Analysis (Southern Illinois UP, 2016) 118. 47 EM Rogers, History of Communication Study (Free Press,1994) 214. 48 See the discussion in J Auerbach and R Castronovo, ‘Introduction: Thirteen Propositions About Propaganda’ in J Auerbach and R Castronovo (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Propaganda Studies (Oxford UP, 2013) 1; N Snow, ‘Propaganda’ in T Vos et al, The International Encyclopedia of Journalism Studies (John Wiley & Sons, 2019) 258. 49 J Ellul, ‘Information and Propaganda’ (1957) 18 Diogenes 61, 66. 50 J Springhall, ‘“Up Guards and at Them!” British Imperialism and Popular Art, 1880–1914’ in JM Mackenzie (ed), Imperialism and Popular Culture (Manchester UP, 1986) 49; D Ciarlo, Advertising Empire: Race and Visual Culture in Imperial Germany (Harvard UP, 2011); A Stouraiti, ‘Printing Empire: Visual Culture and the Imperial Archive in Seventeenth-Century Venice’ (2016) 59 The Historical Journal 635; see also B Beaven, Visions of Empire: Patriotism, Popular Culture and the City, 1870–1939 (Manchester UP, 2012); see generally CA Hagerman, Britain's Imperial Muse: The Classics, Imperialism, and the Indian Empire, 1784-1914 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); see also J Lewis, Empire of Sentiment: The Death of Livingstone and the Myth of Victorian Imperialism (Cambridge UP, 2018). 51 Springhall, above n. 50, 50–51; JM MacKenzie, ‘Introduction’ in JM Mackenzie (ed), Imperialism and Popular Culture (Manchester UP, 1986) 1, 3–10; J Coutu, Persuasion and Propaganda: Monuments and the Eighteenth-Century British Empire (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2006). 52 A Burton, ‘Rules of Thumb: British History and “Imperial Culture” in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Britain’ (2006) 3 Women’s History Review 483, 488–489. 53 See, for example, Thomas Daniell, Sir Charles Warre Malet Concluding a Treaty in 1790 in Durbar with the Peshwa of the Maratha Empire, 1805; regarding the Treaty of Allahabad, Benjamin West, Shah 'Alam Conveying the Grant of the Diwani to Lord Clive, August 1765, 1818; John Platt, The Signing and Sealing of the Treaty of Nanking in the State Cabin of H.M.S. Cornwallis, 29th August 1842, 1846; and into the twentieth century with Marcus King, Signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, 1939. 54 R Travers, ‘A British Empire by Treaty in Eighteenth Century India’ in S Belmessous (ed), Empire by Treaty: Negotiating European Expansion, 1600–1900 (Oxford UP, 2015) 132, 137–138, 144–145. 55 Benton, above n. 4. 56 S West, Portraiture (Oxford UP, 2004) 41; W Steiner, ‘The Semiotics of a Genre: Portraiture in Literature and Painting’ (1977) 21 Semiotica 111. 57 Steiner, above n. 56, 111–112. 58 A Carr, ‘Legends and Felons: Negotiating Portraiture, from Veneration to Vandalism’ (2005) 30 Canadian Art Review 101. 59 West, above n. 56, 41. 60 R Brilliant, Portraiture (Reaktion, 1991) 7–8. 61 Ibid. 62 See his classic text, U Eco, A Theory of Semiotics (Indiana UP, 1976). 63 Carr, above n. 58, 108; see this approach to Eco’s theories of interpretation in, for example, A Stewart, Faces of Power: Alexander’s Image and Hellenistic Politics (University of California Press, 1993) 66–69; see also the discussion in H Berger Jr., Figures of a Changing World: Metaphor and the Emergence of Modern Culture (Fordham UP, 2014) 55. 64 For a discussion of portraiture of heads of state and authority, see Steiner, above n. 56, 113. 65 See, for example, Unknown Artist, Emer de Vattel, c.1745–1765, Bibliothèque Publique et Universitaire, Neuchâtel. 66 See, for example, Joseph de Montalegre, Portrait of Samuel von Pufendorf, 1706, Engraving, Peace Palace Library, The Hague, Netherlands. 67 See, for example, Maurice Quentin de la Tour, Portrait of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1753, Musée d'Art et d'Histoire de Genève. 68 See, for example, George Peter Alexander Healy, Henry Wheaton, 1847, Brown University, Providence, United States of America. 69 See, for example, Marianne Stokes, Portrait of John Westlake, 1902, National Portrait Gallery, London. 70 For a discussion of ‘Grotius as narrative’ and of the hold Grotius has on the ‘imaginary’ of international law, see JD Haskell, ‘Hugo Grotius in the Contemporary Memory of International Law: Secularism, Liberalism, and the Politics of Restatement and Denial’ (2011) 25 Emory International Law Review 269; see also MJ van Ittersum, ‘Hugo Grotius: The Making of a Founding Father of International Law’ in A Orford and F Hoffmann (eds.), The Oxford Handbook on the Theory of International Law (Oxford UP, 2016) 82. Biographies of Grotius date back as early as 1727, see C Brandt and A van Cattenburgh, Historie van het leven van Huig de Groot (Joannes van Braam en Gerard Onder,1727). 71 A Jensen Adams, Public Faces and Private Identities in Seventeenth-Century Holland: Portraiture and the Production of Community (Cambridge UP, 2009) 1. 72 Ibid, 4. 73 Ibid, 23–26. 74 Moran, above n. 7, 28. 75 Ibid. 76 Moran, above n. 7, 28. 77 Grotius has been repeatedly referred to as the ‘founding father’ of international law. One such example can be seen in H Vreeland, Hugo Grotius: The Father of the Modern Science of International Law (Oxford UP, 1917). 78 Michiel van Mierevelt, Hugo de Groot, 1631, Stedelijk Museum Prinsenhof, Delft, Netherlands. 79 H Nellen, ‘The History of Grotius and His Printers, Explained on the Basis of Five Portraits’ (2011) 39 International Journal of Legal Information 210. 80 H Nellen, Hugo Grotius: A Lifelong Struggle for Peace in Church and State, 1583–1645 (Brill, 2015, trans. JC Grayson) 448; see, for example, an engraving, unknown artist, Hugo Grotius, after Michiel Mierevelt, c. 1631–1645, The British Museum; see also the portrait, Jacobus Houbraken, Huigh de Groot, c.1755–1780, National Portrait Gallery, London; Franciscus Leonardus Stracké, Statue of Hugo de Groot, 1886, Delft; oil painting, Boardman Robinson, Grotius, 1937, Great Hall, Department of Justice, Washington D.C. 81 Nellen, above n. 79, 216–219. 82 H Grotius, The Rights of War and Peace (1625), trans. J Barbeyrac (1724) and ed. R Tuck (Liberty, 2005). 83 Ibid, ‘Prolegomena’. 84 Nellen, above n. 79, 216–219. 85 In discussing the significance of dress in the seventeenth century Dutch portraiture of Van Dyck, Gordenker makes the observation that simple black dress should be seen as identifying the sitter as an intellectual, ‘a man occupied in the arts’, ‘a thinking, learned man’, ‘a man of letters’, or a philosopher; see EES Gordenker, ‘The Rhetoric of Dress in Seventeenth Century Dutch and Flemish Portraiture’ (1999) 57 The Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 87, 98–99; for the discussion on the more formal ruff collar, see Gordenker at fn. 51, 104; see also the discussion in Jensen Adams, above n. 71, 92; see also EES Gordenker, Van Dyck and the Representation of Dress in Seventeenth-Century Portraiture (Brepols, 2001) 61. 86 L Cumming, ‘Facial Awareness: Dutch Portraits: The Age of Rembrandt and Frans Hals’, The Observer, 24 June 2007, <https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2007/jun/24/art> (last accessed 2 June 2020); Jan van Ravesteyn, Hugo Grotius at the age of 16, 1599, Fondation Custodia, Collection Frits Lugt, Paris. 87 Jensen Adams, above n. 71, 90–93. 88 Ibid, 90–93. 89 Ibid, 80–81, 93. 90 Ibid, 93. 91 Nellen, above n. 80, 2. 92 See the discussion on Grotius’ combining of a scholarly and political career in J Waszink, ‘The Ideal of the Statesman-Historian: The Case of Hugo Grotius’ in J Hartman, J Nieuwstraten, and M Reinders (eds), Public Offices, Personal Demands: Capability in Governance in the Seventeenth–Century Dutch Republic (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009) 101. 93 Carr, above n. 58, 103. 94 See, for example, Hugo Grotius, engraving after the portrait by Mierevelt in Hugo Grotius Annotationes in libros Evangeliorum, 1641; see also the portrait in the 1689 edition of De jure belli et pacis (Abraham a someren, 1689); see the print, Jan Lamsvelt, Personificatie van het christelijke geloof bij het borstbeeld van Hugo de Groot, Titelpagina voor: H. de Groot, Vande Waarheyd des Christelyken Gods-dienst, 1684–1743, Rijksmuseum; see also the portrait in Johann Wolfgang Jäger, Hugonis Grotii libri tres De jure belli et pacis, observationibus theologicis, moralibus & politicis illustrati (Tubingae: Sumptibus Joh. Georgii Cottae, 1710), Yale Law Library; see the line engraving on paper, WW Ryland, Hugo de Groot, unknown date in 18th century, Scottish National Portrait Gallery; see the portrait, Jacobus Houbraken, Huigh de Groot, c.1755–1780, National Portrait Gallery, London. 95 Van Ittersum, above n. 70. 96 Ibid. 97 Andrew Dickson White to Andrew Carnegie, Letter, 5 August 1902, Archives, Andrew Dickson White Papers, Cornell University, Reel 87, Segment 3, p.545. 98 Ibid. 99 Van Ittersum, above n. 70, 87–100. 100 See, for example, G Quesnel, Les Grands Artisans de L'Arbitrage et de la Paix, (Impr. De Vaugirard, 1898). 101 A Eyffinger, The 1899 Hague Peace Conference: ‘The Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World’ (Kluwer, 1999) 334. 102 Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio of Urbino), School of Athens, 1510, fresco, Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican. 103 Eyffinger, above n. 101, 334–335. 104 Quesnel, above n. 100. 105 For example, such sentiments are expressed throughout The Proceedings of The Hague Peace Conferences: The Conference of 1899, Translation of the Official Texts (Oxford UP, 1920). 106 See the discussion in M Erpelding, B Hess and H Ruiz Fabri (eds), Peace through Law: The Versailles Peace Treaty and Dispute Settlement After World War I (Nomos, 2019); see also the discussion in Miles, above n. 6. 107 See the discussion in K Miles, The Origins of International Investment Law: Empire, Environment and the Safeguarding of Capital (Cambridge UP, 2013) 27–28, 49–52, 67–69. 108 See, for example, the 1902 bombing of the port at Caracas to enforce the establishment of a mixed claims arbitral commission to hear claims for the expropriation of foreign-owned property and for bond defaults recorded in JH Ralston, Venezuelan Arbitrations of 1903: Including Protocols, Personnel and Rules of Commissions, Opinions, and Summary of Awards, with Appendix Containing Venezuelan Yellow Book of 1903, Bowen Pamphlet Entitled "Venezuelan Protocols," and "Preferential Question" Hague Decision, with History of Recent Venezuelan Revolutions (Government Printing Office, 1904); see also the discussion in M Hood, Gunboat Diplomacy 1895–1905: Great Power Pressure in Venezuela (Allen & Unwin, 1975). 109 See the work of Argentinian lawyer and legal scholar, Carlos Calvo, after whom the doctrine is named: MC Calvo, Le Droit International Théorique et Pratique (Arthur Rousseau, 5th edn, 1896) first published in 1868, and then, five editions later, in its final form in 1896; see also D Shea, The Calvo Clause: A Problem of Inter-American and International Law and Diplomacy (University of Minnesota Press, 1955). 110 See, for example, wood engraving, Adalbert von Röler, The Berlin Conference on the Partition of Africa, 1884, Allgemeine Illustrierte Zeitung, Über Land und Meer, vol. 53, 1883/85 (Figure 9). 111 The Berlin Conference, 15 November 1884–26 February 1885, General Act of the Conference of Berlin Concerning the Congo, signed 26 February 1885, a copy of which is published in (1909) 1:1 American Journal of International Law, Supplement: Official Documents, 7. Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Ottoman Empire, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden-Norway, United Kingdom, and the United States of America were present at the Conference; see the discussion in Anghie, above n. 1, 90–97; see, in particular, Craven’s discussion of the Conference embodying the “ideology of colonisation” in M Craven, ‘Between Law and History: The Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 and the Logic of Free Trade’ (2015) 3 London Review of International Law 31, 32–36, 40–44. 112 General Act, above n. 111, preamble. 113 See Anghie, above n. 1, 90–97. 114 Ibid; see also the discussion on the symbolic significance of the Conference and the way in which it was seen as legitimising the colonial acquisition of territory in Craven, above n. 111, 32–36, 40–44. 115 See also, for example, wood engraving by Hermann Lüders, A Session of the African Conference in the Great Hall of the Reich Chancellor’s Palace in Berlin, Die Gartenlaube, 1884. 116 See for a discussion on the progress narrative of international law, T Altwicker and O Diggelmann, ‘How is Progress Constructed in International Legal Scholarship?’ (2014) 25 The European Journal of International Law 425; see also T Skouteris, ‘The Idea of Progress’ in A Orford and F Hoffman, (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Theory of International Law (Oxford UP, 2016) 940. © The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press.
TI - Painting international law as universal: imperialism and the co-opting of image and art
JF - London Review of International Law
DO - 10.1093/lril/lrab002
DA - 2021-03-27
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/painting-international-law-as-universal-imperialism-and-the-co-opting-TORnyLsyZM
SP - 367
EP - 398
VL - 8
IS - 3
DP - DeepDyve
ER -