All the Seas Were Ink: Islamic Constitutionalism in Motion (book launch)

All The Seas Were Ink: Islamic Constitutionalism in Motion (Cambridge 2026) explores the material and textual life of law across a shifting global landscape: how law moves, what happens when it arrives, and how it gains its onward momentum and direction.

The much-travelled figure of Abu Bakar of Johor (1833-1895) provides its narrative and archival spine. His travels and encounters encapsulated a world of sovereigns in the shadow of empire, from Java to Japan, Delhi to Constantinople, Cairo to London: navigating archipelagic and imperial logics of authority, chasing sovereignty at sea, charting new spaces through travelling law and translating Islam. This talk charts the itineraries of the promulgation of Southeast Asia's first constitution, which has also been the longest-running continuous experiment in Islamic constitutionalism in the world. These itineraries lead us in new and critical directions in the study of the making of the modern Muslim state, revealing histories of imperialism and international law, and forgotten genealogies of sovereignty, constitutionalism, and Asian internationalism.

Speaker & chair biographies

Dr. Iza Hussin is Associate Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge and Mohamed Noah Fellow at Pembroke College Cambridge. She is the author of All The Seas Were Ink: Islamic Constitutionalism in Motion, The Politics of Islamic Law: Local Elites, Colonial Authority and the Making of the Muslim State, and articles on law, colonialism, religion and the modern state. She is Editor (with Engseng Ho and Rian Thum) of the Cambridge series Asian Connections, on the Editorial Boards of Law and Society Review and Indonesia and the Malay World, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for History and Economics. Her work has been supported by the European Commission, the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and L'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. She holds a PhD from the University of Washington, an MA from Georgetown University and an AM and AB from Harvard University.

Prof. John Sidel is Director of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, and the Sir Patrick Gillam Professor of International and Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

*Banner photo by Ivana Cajina on Unsplash

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