Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The subject of war, from Salamanca to Sydney Cove

2009; Routledge; Volume: 21; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14781150802659341

1478-1166

Bruce Buchan,

Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence

Abstract Australia's colonisation by Britain (from 1788) was accomplished without the ‘consent’ of the Indigenous inhabitants, or the negotiation of any kind of treaty. The violence of the colonisers against the Indigenous inhabitants was never officially acknowledged to be a form of ‘conquest’ or ‘war’. This was in part due to the fact that the Indigenous inhabitants of Australia were not regarded by the colonisers to be subjects against whom a war could be waged. Australia's early colonisation offers an example of the conceptual myopia in the development of European discourses of international relations. Within these discourses, warfare was seen as an increasingly disciplined form of violent engagement between the subjects of sovereign states. European thinkers thus came to see ‘the subject’ of war as a self-disciplined, rights-bearing individual inhabiting a civil space underwritten by relations of private property and guaranteed by the sovereign state. In this way, the subject of war was differentiated from the undisciplined violence of non-subjects – those in rebellion against their sovereign, or those who were without sovereignty altogether. By the eighteenth century, this constellation of concepts was framed by notions of civilisation which tied the subject of war to an historicised account of the difference between supposedly ‘civilised’ societies and so-called ‘savage’ peoples. In this paper I will argue that notions of civilisation are central to our understanding of the development of IR discourse. Keywords: warsubjectinternationalstatecivilisation Acknowledgements Research for this paper was supported by a Griffith University Research Grant and by the Centre for Excellence in Policing and Security at Griffith University. I would like to thank the participants at the OCIS conference (Brisbane 2008) for their comments. I would particularly like to acknowledge the criticisms and suggestions made by Ian Hunter, Barry Hindess, Mark Finnane, Melissa Bull, Beth Greener-Barcham, Ian Hall, Reneé Jeffrey, Richard Devetak and the two anonymous referees for this journal. Notes 1 A. Bowes Smith, The Journal of Arthur Bowes Smith: Surgeon, Lady Penrhyn 1787–1789, ed. P.G. Fidlon and R.J. Ryan (Sydney: Australian Documents Library, 1979), 68. 2 This material is discussed more fully in Bruce Buchan, Empire of Political Thought: Indigenous Australians and the Language of Colonial Government (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2008). 3 David Boucher, ‘Property and Propriety in International Relations: The Case of John Locke’, in Classical Theory in International Relations, ed. Beate Jahn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 156–7, 176–7; Paul Keal, European Conquest and the Rights of Indigenous People: The Moral Backwardness of International Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 34–5; and Richard Tuck, The Rights of War and Peace: Political Thought and the International Order from Grotius to Kant (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 42–5, 102–8. 4 R.W. Mansbach, ‘Deterritorializing Global Politics’, in Visions of International Relations: Assessing an Academic Field, ed. D.J. Puchala (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2002), 103. 5 Barry Buzan, From International to World Society? English School Theory and the Social Structure of Globalisation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 44–5. 6 Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (London, Macmillan, 1977), 8, 5–21; H. Bull and A. Watson, eds., The Expansion of International Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984); Heather Rae, State Identities and the Homogenisation of Peoples (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 15. 7 For example, see Buzan and Little on ‘pre-international systems’, in B. Buzan and R. Little, International Systems in World History: Remaking the Study of International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 111–33. 8 Andrew Linklater, The English School of International Relations: A Contemporary Reassessment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 117–22. 9 Ibid., 134. 10 Rae, State Identities and the Homogenisation of Peoples, 48. 11 Bruce Buchan, ‘Civilization, State Sovereignty and War: The Scottish Enlightenment and International Relations’, International Relations 20, no. 2 (2006): 175–92; M.B. Salter, Barbarians and Civilization in International Relations (London: Pluto, 2002). 12 Tuck, Rights of War and Peace. 13 Rae, State Identities and the Homogenisation of Peoples, 64. 14 Anthony Pagden, ‘Stoicism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Legacy of European Imperialism’, Constellations 7, no. 1 (2000): 8–10; Francisco Vitoria, ‘On the American Indians’ [1539], in Francisco de Vitoria, Political Writings, ed. Anthony Pagden and Jeremy Lawrence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), q1, a2, 240–43; also 278–80. 15 Francisco Vitoria, ‘On Civil Power’ [1528], in Francisco de Vitoria, Political Writings, § 4, p. 7 16 Ibid., § 4, p. 9. 17 Ibid., § 8, pp. 14–15. 18 Ibid., § 10, pp. 18–19. 19 Vitoria, ‘On the Power of the Church’ [1530], Political Writings, § 3, pp. 103–4; K.E. van Liere, ‘Vitoria, Cajetan, and the Conciliarists’, Journal of the History of Ideas 58, no. 4 (1997): 615. 24 Josè de Acosta, Natural and Moral History of the Indies [1590], trans. F.M. López-Morillas, ed. J.E. Mangan (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 345–6. 20 Annabel Brett, Liberty, Right and Nature; Individual Rights in Later Scholastic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 135. 21 Ibid., 154–9. 22 Annabel Brett, ‘The Development of the Idea of Citizen's Rights’, in States and Citizens: History, Theory, Prospects, ed. Q. Skinner and Bo Stråth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 110. 23 Giovanni Botero, The Reason of State [1589] [1606], trans. P.J. and D.P. Waley (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1956), 85. 25 On Acosta's historical scheme see, Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 198; Jeremy Muldoon, The Americas in the Spanish World order. The Justification for Conquest in the Seventeenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), 66–71. 26 Acosta, Natural and Moral History, 359. 27 John Locke, Two Treatises of Government [1690], ed. P. Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), §108, p. 339. 28 Acosta, Natural and Moral History, 334–9. 29 Ibid., 445, also, 253–300. 30 See for example, Hugo Grotius, The Law of War and Peace [1625], trans. F.W. Kelsey (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1925), Bk I, chapter 1, 39, 43, chapter 2, 53; Samuel Pufendorf, The Whole Duty of Man According to the Law of Nature [trans. A. Tooke 1691], ed. Ian Hunter and David Saunders (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003), 55–6; Tuck, Rights of War and Peace, 78–108; Pagden, Lords of all the World, 66, 73–86. 31 Grotius, Law of War and Peace, Bk ii, 186–90; also, Pufendorf, Whole Duty of Man, 129; John Salter, ‘Hugo Grotius: Property and Consent’, Political Theory 29, no. 4 (2001): 544–5; Anthony Pagden, ‘Human Rights, Natural Rights, and Europe's Imperial Legacy’, Political Theory 31, no. 2 (2003): 180. 32 Annabel Brett, ‘Natural Right and Civil Community: The Civil Philosophy of Hugo Grotius’, The Historical Journal 45, no. 1 (2002), 41–2, 45–6; Martin van Gelderen, ‘The State and its Rivals in Early-Modern Europe’, in States and Citizens, ed. Skinner and Stråth, 85. 33 Vitoria, ‘On the Law of War’ [1539], Political Writings, § 3, p. 299. 34 Ibid., § 7, p. 301. 35 Ibid., § 5, p. 300. 36 Francisco Suárez, ‘A Work on the Three Theological Virtues’ [1621], in Selections From Three Works, Vol. II, trans. G. Williams, A. Brown and J. Waldron (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1944), 805. 37 Alberico Gentili, De Juri Belli Libri Tres [1612], trans. J. Rolfe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933), 12. 38 Ibid., 15, 22–3. Also Theodor Meron, ‘Shakespeare's Henry the Fifth and the Law of War’, The American Journal of International Law 86, no. 1 (1992), 9–10. 39 Suárez, Selections, 816. 40 Francisco Vitoria, ‘On the American Indians’ [1539], Political Writings, Q 1, § 7–24, pp. 243–51. 41 Ibid., Q 3, § 2–8, pp. 278–83. 42 Ibid., Q 3, § 8, p. 283. Vitoria refers to ‘blameless self-defence’ at § 6, p. 282. See also, G. Scott Davis, ‘Conscience and Conquest: Francisco Vitoria on Justice in the New World’, Modern Theology 14, no. 4 (1997): 484–5; and, Roger Ruston, ‘Justice, Peace and Dominicans 1216–1999 IV, Francisco Vitoria: The Rights of Enemies and Strangers’, New Blackfriars 80, no. 935 (1999): 13. 43 David Boucher, Political Theories of International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 243–4. 44 Francisco Suárez, ‘A Treatise on Laws and God the Lawgiver’ [1612], in Selections, 342. 45 Ibid., 332. 46 A.G.Y. García, ‘The Spanish School of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: A Precursor of the Theory of Human Rights’, Ratio Juris 10, no. 1 (1997): 27. 47 Suárez, ‘A Treatise on Laws’, 349, 351. 48 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan [1651] (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), 271, 264. 49 Ibid., 268. Also Quentin Skinner, ‘States and the Freedom of Citizens’, in States and Citizens, ed. Skinner and Stråth, 15–17. 50 Hobbes, Leviathan, 187, 272. 51 Ibid., 234–5. 52 M.C. Williams, ‘The Hobbesian Theory of International Relations: Three Traditions’, in Classical Theory in International Relations, ed. Jahn, 264. 53 Locke, Two Treatises, § 88, pp. 324–5. 54 Ibid., § 93, p. 238. 55 Ibid., § 108, pp. 339–40; Boucher, ‘Property and Propriety’, 163–77. 56 More recent histories of European state formation have tended to emphasise its more haphazard nature. See for example, S. Gunn, D. Grummitt and H. Cools, ‘War and the State in Early Modern Europe: Widening the Debate’, War in History 15, no. 4 (2008): 371–88. 57 Bruce Buchan, ‘Civilization, State Sovereignty and War: The Scottish Enlightenment and International Relations’, International Relations 20, no. 2 (2006): 175–92. 58 ‘James Marriott to John Pownall, 15 February 1765’, LAC, R216-193-4-E. 59 Adam Smith, The Theory of the Moral Sentiments [1759], ed. D.D. Raphael and A.L. Macfie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), 205, 209; D.L. Blaney and N. Inayatullah, ‘The Savage Smith and the Temporal Walls of Capitalism’, in Classical Theory in International Relations, ed. Jahn, 143. 60 A central feature of Enlightenment conceptions of the ‘rules of war’ was that civilised Europeans were motivated by a heightened sense of honour. Honour was held to consist in the open conduct of battle in which the aim was to defeat the enemy by means which win the ‘approbation and esteem of mankind’. Waging war according to the ‘principles of humanity’ would lead to abstention from ‘slaughter as much as possible’ and the protection of non-combatants. J.J. Burlamaqui, The Principles of Politc Law: Being a Sequel to the Principles of Natural Law, Vol. II (Dublin: J. Sheppard and G. Nugent, 1776), 38, 209, 214. Considerations of interest also played a role in leading to finer calculations of the benefits of securing a peace favouring future commercial prosperity rather than continual conquest. Accordingly, under considerations of honour and interest ‘the Effusion of Blood is spar'd’, and indiscriminate reprisal is forbidden. Samuel Brewster, Jus feciale Anglicanum: or a Treatise on the laws of England relating to war and rebellion …, 2nd ed. (London: T. Cooper et. al., 1740), 7. See also Francis Hutcheson, A Short Introduction to Moral Philosophy in Three Books… (Glasgow: Robert Foulis, 1747), 232–4, 333; David Hume, ‘Of Refinement in the Arts’, in Essays Moral, Political and Literary [1777], ed. E.F. Miller (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1985), 274; Capel Lofft, Elements of Universal Law, and Particularly of the Law of England (London: His Majesty's Law Printers, 1779), 127. 61 D. Hume, The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688, Vol. II (London: J. Mcreery, 1807), 432. 62 Hume, ‘Of Refinement in the Arts’, 271. 63 Smith, Theory of the Moral Sentiments, 144–5. 64 The Abbé Raynal denounced European Empire, but still saw European commerce as an agent of global civilisation by creating a globalised ‘mutual intercourse’ between nations. G.T.F. Raynal, A Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies (Edinburgh, 1782), Vol. I, 1–2; Vol. V, 223–36. 65 Adam Ferguson, Reflections Previous to the Establishment of a Militia (London, MDCCLVI), 18. 66 Adam Ferguson, Essay on the History of Civil Society [1767] (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1967), 216–17. 67 See for example, Immanuel Kant, ‘Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch’ [1795], in Kant's Political Writings, ed. H. Reiss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 103. Kant's arguments are explored more fully in Bruce Buchan, ‘Explaining War and Peace: Kant and Liberal International Relations Theory’, Alternatives 27, no. 4 (2002): 407–28. 68 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England [1765–69], Vol. I (New York: Legal Classics Library, 1983), II, 8. Also Emmerich Vattel, The Law of Nations or the Principles of Natural Law [1758], Vol. I, trans. C.G. Fenwick (Washington: Carnegie Institution, 1916), 86; Hutcheson, Short Introduction, 172–3; Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations [1776], ed. R.H. Campbell and A.S. Skinner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976; reprint Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1981), Vol. II, 626. 69 See for example: Vitoria, On the American Indians, § 4, p. 280; Francis Hutcheson, A Short Introduction to Moral Philosophy in Three Books (Glasgow: Robert Foulis, 1747), 159. I am indebted to Paul Turnbull for his suggestions here. 70 For examples of this view see, The Sydney Gazette, 2 October 1803, in The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, Vol. I, March 5, 1803 to March February 26, 1804, facsimile (Sydney: Trustees of the Public Library of NSW, 1963). 71 See for example, Anon., ‘Collins's Account of New South Wales, Volume II’, Edinburgh Review 2, no. 3 (1803): 35. 72 ‘Phillip to Lord Sydney, 10 July 1788’, Historical Records of Australia, I, 65 (subsequently HRA). Later governors were also to express the desire to effect ‘reconciliation’. See for example, The Sydney Gazette, 17 July 1805, in The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, Vol III. 73 ‘Phillip to Lord Sydney, 9 July 1788’, ‘Phillip to Secretary Stephens, 10 July 1788’ and ‘General Orders 13 December 1790’, HRA, I, 48–9, 62, 293. 74 See for example, ‘Hunter to Portland, 2 January 1800’, HRA, II, 402; D.D. Mann, The Present Picture of New South Wales [1811] (Sydney: John Ferguson, 1979), 33, 46. 75 ‘Governor Hunter to Duke of Portland, 2 January 1800’, HRA, II, 403, 402, 403–21. See for example, ‘Hunter to Lord Portland 20 June 1797’, HRA, II, 24; ‘King to Lord Hobart, 30 October 1802’, HRA, III, 582; ‘Governor King to Earl Camden 30 April 1805’, HRA, V, 306. The Sydney Gazette, 21 April 1805; 4 August 1805, in The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, Vol. III. 76 Jeremy Black, War and the World. Military Power and the Fate of Continents 1450–2000 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 4–17. 77 Josiah Filson, The Discovery, Settlement, and Present State of Kentucke (Wilmington: James Adams, 1784), 76, 80. 78 ‘Lieut-Gov Arthur to Sir George Murray, 12 Sept 1829’, HRA. Resumed Series III. Despatches and Papers Relating to the History of Tasmania, VII, January–February 1829, 607; ‘Report of the Aborigines Committee, 19 March 1830’, HRA, Resumed Series III, Despatches and Papers Relating to the History of Tasmania, VII, January–December 1830, 212. 79 The Sydney Gazette, 28 April 1805, in The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, Vol. III. 80 Nathaniel Ogle, The Colony of Western Australia: A Manual for Emigrants 1839 (Sydney: John Ferguson, 1977), 49. 81 My argument here owes much to Mark Finnane's excellent paper, ‘“Payback”, Customary Law and Criminal Law in Colonized Australia’, International Journal of the Sociology of Law 29 (2001): 293–310. 82 See, for example, ‘Phillip to Secretary Stephens, 10 July, 1788’, HRA, I, 62; The Sydney Gazette, 31 March 1805, in The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, Vol. III. 83 Pierre Saint-Amand, ‘Original Vengeance: Politics, Anthropology, and the French Enlightenment’, Eighteenth-Century Studies 26, no. 3 (1993): 399–417. 84 Smith, Theory of the Moral Sentiments, 38. 86 ‘Lord Glenelg to Sir Richard Bourke 26 July 1837’, HRA, XIX, 48. 85 D.W.A. Baker, The Civilized Surveyor: Thomas Mitchell and the Australian Aborigines (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1997), 122–4. 87 ‘Gawler to Lord John Russell, 15 August 1840’, CO 13/16. 88 D. Bell, Ngarrindjeri Wurruwarrin: A World that Is, Was and Will Be (Melbourne: Spinifex, 1998), 429–30. 89 Taken from: South Australian Gazette, 17 September 1840, 1. British Archives, CO 16/1. The Aboriginal Protection Society complained of this incident in March 1841. ‘APS to J. Stephen, March 1841’, Miscellaneous Papers, Vol. 4, 1841, CO 13/23, British Archives. 90 Taken from: South Australian Gazette, 1 October 1840, 2, CO 16/1. 94 ‘Stanley to Grey January 19 1842’, in Correspondence Between Governor Grey and Lord John Russell 1843, BPP, Colonies Australia 7, 283; see also ‘Grey to Russell, July 5 1841’ and enclosures, 277–82. As J.W. Bull recounts, shortly after Grey's arrival in the colony, the Commissioner of Policy, Major O'Halloran, was dispatched to restore order on the overland trail, and was given specific instructions ‘not to levy war or to exercise belligerent actions against the aborigines of Australia’. J.W. Bull, Early Experiences of Life in South Australia (Adelaide: E.S. Wigg and Son, 1884; facsimile, Adelaide: Libraries Board of SA, 1972), 219. 91 James Stephen's note, ‘Gawler to Lord John Russell, 15 August 1840’, CO 13/16. 92 See Russell's memos of 22 February and 10 March in response to ‘Gawler to Lord John Russell, 5 September 1840’, CO 13/16. 93 ‘Grey to Lord John Russell, 11 June 1841’, Papers Relating to Colonization and Other Affairs in Australia 1842–44, BPP, Colonies Australia 7, 305; ‘O'Halloran to Governor Grey, 27 June 1841’, BPP, Australia 7, 309. 96 ‘Memorandum 18 April 1842’, GRG 5/83. 95 ‘Colonial Secretary to O'Halloran, 4 November 1842’, O'Halloran Papers, GRG 5/83, South Australian State Archives (subsequently GRG 5/83). 97 Brewster, Jus Feciale Anglicanum, 7, 30, 34, 51. 98 Ferguson, Essay, 131; Adam Ferguson, Remarks on a Pamphlet Lately Published by Dr. Price … (London: T. Cadell, 1776), 59. 99 Adam Ferguson, ‘Notes on the Enquiry into General Sir William Howe's Conduct in the American War, 10 May 1779’, in Correspondence of Adam Ferguson, Vol. II, 1781–1816, ed. Vincenzo Merolle (London: William Pickering, 1995), 562–4. 100 Ferguson, ‘Notes’, in Correspondence, 561. 101 Elbridge Colby, ‘How to Fight Savage Tribes’, The American Journal of International Law 21, no. 2 (1927), 279. 102 Joanna Bourke, ‘Barbarism vs Civilization in Time of War’, in The Barbarisation of Warfare, ed. G. Kassimeris (London: Hurst & Co, 2006), 20–21. 103 A.H. Kydd and B.F. Walter, ‘The Strategies of Terrorism’, International Security 31, no. 1 (2006): 49–80. 104 See for example, United States’ President George W. Bush's ‘Address to the United Nations General Assembly’, 23 September 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3132984.stm (accessed 20 May 2004); C.K. Rowley, ‘Terrorist Attacks on Western Civilization’, Public Choice 128 (2006): 1–6; C.A. Newland, ‘Fanatical Terrorism versus Disciplines of Constitutional Democracy’, Public Administration Review 61, no. 6 (2001): 643–50. 105 D.C. Rappoport, ‘The Four Waves of Modern Terrorism’, in Attacking Terrorism: Elements of a Grand Strategy, eds. A.K. Cronin and J.M. Ludes (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2004), 47–8. 106 D.A. Lake, ‘Escape From the State of Nature: Authority and Hierarchy in World Politics’, International Security 32, no. 1 (2007): 53–5. 107 S. Scheffler, ‘Is Terrorism Morally Distinctive?’, Journal of Political Philosophy 14, no. 1 (2006): 5; J. Kaplan, ‘The Fifth Wave: The New Tribalism?’, Terrorism and Political Violence 19 (2007): 545–70. 108 L. Richardson, ‘Terrorist Rivals: Beyond the State-Centric Model’, Harvard International Review 29, no. 1 (2007): 67–8.