Arbitrating Empire: United States Expansion and the Transformation of International Law

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Allison Powers (Assistant Professor of History, Assistant Professor of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Arbitrating Empire

United States Expansion and the Transformation of International Law

Allison Powers (Assistant Professor of History, Assistant Professor of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison)

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English

Oxford University Press Inc
23 April 2025

History of other lands; 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000; Legal history; International law of territory & statehood; International arbitration

Series: Oxford Legal History

Arbitrating Empire offers a new history of the emergence of the United States as a global power-one shaped as much by attempts to insulate the US government from international legal scrutiny as it was by efforts to project influence across the globe. Drawing on extensive archival research in the United States, Mexico, Panama, and the United Kingdom, the book traces how thousands of dispossessed residents of US-annexed territories petitioned international Claims Commissions between the 1870s and the 1930s to charge the United States with violating international legal protections for life and property.

Through attention to the consequences of their unexpected claims, Allison Powers demonstrates how colonized subjects, refugees from slavery, and migrant workers transformed a series of tribunals designed to establish the legality of US imperial interventions into sites through which to challenge the legitimacy of US colonial governance. One of the first social histories of international law, the book argues that contests over meanings of sovereignty and state responsibility that would reshape the mid-twentieth-century international order were waged not only at diplomatic conferences, but also in Arizona copper mines, Texas cotton fields, Samoan port cities, Cuban sugar plantations, and the locks and stops of the Panama Canal.

Arbitrating Empire uncovers how ordinary people used international law to hold the United States accountable for state-sanctioned violence during the decades when the nation was first becoming a global empire-and demonstrates why State Department attempts to erase their claims transformed international law in ways that continue to shield the US government from liability to this day.

By: Allison Powers (Assistant Professor of History Assistant Professor of History University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 238mm, Width: 164mm, Spine: 22mm
Weight: 585g
ISBN: 9780190093006
ISBN 10: 0190093005
Series: Oxford Legal History
Pages: 296
Publication Date: 23 April 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Introduction: The Subjects of International Law Part I: Dispossessions Chapter 1: Arbitrating Debt Chapter 2: Arbitrating War Chapter 3: Arbitrating Citizenship Part II: Exposures Chapter 4: The World's Easement Chapter 5: Dangerous Precedents Part III: Foreclosures Chapter 6: Sovereign Inequalities Chapter 7: The Specter of Compensation Conclusion: Life and Property

Allison Powers is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Reviews for Arbitrating Empire: United States Expansion and the Transformation of International Law

In Arbitrating Empire, Allison Powers takes the story of law and empire into fascinating new terrain. Arbitral tribunals, she shows, were important parts of U.S. colonial strategy: the purpose was to assuage opposition and consolidate power. However, their attempts to bolster American legitimacy did not always go as planned. By focusing on the actions of ordinary people, Powers shows how legal tools could be turned against their makers. This is the book I've been waiting for: a multinational social history of international law that transforms our understanding of the U.S. empire. * Ben Coates, Associate Professor, Wake Forest University *