LL4GC      Half Unit
Global Commodities: the Foundations of International Law

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

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This course provides a critical introduction to the history of international law, with a focus on the colonial histories of Asia, Africa and the Americas. We take our cue from specific moments across this period during which key commodities—silver, spices, sugar, coffee, rubber, oil—entered into a then-nascent global commodity, focusing on the engendering, through the same process, of what has become the international legal system. The histories of the acquisition, production, and markets for the mass-consumption of these commodities tell the origin-story of today’s global economy in microcosm. Most significantly, their evolving regulation has provided the base for many central elements of the contemporary international and transnational legal architecture. In exploring this history, we will also touch on cross-cutting issues relating to some or all of the following areas of international law: human rights, trade law, environmental law, the law of the sea, the laws of war, investment arbitration, and animal welfare law. We will also look at theories of consumption and production more generally.

We begin with an introduction to terms and familiarise ourselves with some basic theoretical and historical texts. This is followed by a series of classes, situating the gradual regulation of an emerging global economy through the histories of specific commodities, cognizant of the state-formation processes, economic and legal theorising, and trans-global networking entailed in the consolidation of key commodity markets over time. Commodities covered may include the following: silver/gold, spices, tobacco, sugar, tea, coffee, cocoa, rubber, timber, livestock, whales, oil, carbon, data. In the final week, students will be asked to present on a commodity of their choice showcasing critical and historical research skills. The topic will be chosen in the second week of term and a draft presentation submitted for feedback at the end of reading week.

The course is predominantly historical and theoretical in nature, with an interdisciplinary element. It deals in the main with events from the colonial period (c.1515-1960) as they relate to the history of international and transnational law. It does not aim to prepare students for a career in commodities trading and does not focus in detail on contemporary financial, commercial or company law.

20 hours of seminars in the Winter Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.

Students will be expected to produce 1 presentation in the WT.

• Good backgrounders:
Amitav Ghosh, The Nutmeg's Curse (John Murray 2021)
Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads (Bloomsbury 2015)

• International law history:
Antony Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law (CUP 2005)
Martti Koskenniemi, The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law (CUP 2006), Chapter 2 (Sovereignty: A Gift of Civilization: International Lawyers and Imperialism, 1870-1914)

• Primary texts:
Francisco de Vitoria, ‘On the Law of War’ and ‘About the Indians Recently Discovered’ in Francisco de Vitoria, Political Writings, Anthony Pagden and Jeremy Lawrance (eds), (CUP 1991), 292-328
Hugo Grotius, The Freedom of the Seas, or the Right Which Belongs to the Dutch to take part in the East Indian Trade [Mare Liberum], trans. Ralph Van Deman Magoffin (OUP 1916)

• Commodity theory:
Stanley Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (Penguin 1985)
Igor Kopytoff, 'The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as a Process' in Arjun Appadurai (ed.) The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (1986) 3

• Legal theory:
Susan Marks (ed.), International Law on the Left (CUP, 2008), 1-29

• Colonial history:
William Beinart and Lotte Hughes, ‘Environmental Aspects of the Atlantic Slave Trade and Caribbean Plantations’ in Environment and Empire (OUP 2007)

Exam (100%), duration: 150 Minutes in the Spring exam period