ideas + words. history, law, language, time, theory; historian of modern Europe, the state, international law, ideas, & knowledge. assoc. prof at Princeton
In ten short weeks (after ten long years), my book,
THE LIFE AND DEATH OF STATES:
CENTRAL EUROPE AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF MODERN SOVEREIGNTY
will be published by
@PrincetonUPress
1/3
this kid's had a bumpy path into material existence (imprint says 2020, but I saw her first only weeks ago), so there's all the more reason to welcome her warmly--
on the ends of empire in Central Europe, & the close entanglement of international orgs & post-imperial sovereignty
In a hard winter, inside what has felt like a longer life-winter, this little spark just dropped—
our book —
POWER AND TIME
Temporalities in Conflict and the Making of History
— is now out !
(20% off with code UCPNEW !)
(thread)
a little in love with our cover
featuring the gorgeous notational drawing of German artist Jorinde Voigt
Power and Time
Temporalities in Conflict and the Making of History
-- out this spring with Chicago
coming soon with OUP....
**Remaking Central Europe: The League of Nations & the Former Habsburg Lands**
ed. Peter Becker & me
exploring how the interwar international order took shape amid the wreckage of empire
& packed full with exciting new work
Martti Koskenniemi:
We are bound by the structures of language, but there are “moments when the frame breaks, the context breaks”
— moments “like love”
Decolonization and International Law
conference organized by
@samuelmoyn
and me
Princeton March 8-9
featuring
@Umut_Ozsu
,
@SurabhiRanganat
,
@CRWDietrich
, Adil Hasan Khan, Teresa Davis, Miranda Johnson, Sam Klug, Idriss Fofana & Priyasha Saksena
Nicola Sturgeon, Bernardine Evaristo, Theresa May, Ali Smith, Gary Younge, Lisa Nandy, Rebecca Solnit and many more choose their favourite books of 2023.
I’m very grateful to David - the perfect mentor - and so many other teachers, colleagues, students, and friends. Looking forward to paying this forward
In a bleak moment for academia, one truly good piece of news this year was that several wonderful younger colleagues at Princeton achieved tenure. Congratulations to
@xwen0113
,
@natasha_wheat
, Michael Blaakman,
@peterw536
, Basile Baudez, Flora Champy, and Greg Conti!
delighted that this symposium on my book is now out in
History of European Ideas
@HEIjournal
, ever so generously curated by
@AnneSchult
w reviews by Charles Maier, Nathaniel Berman, Kathryn Ciancia, & Clara Maier
Thanks to
@RemarqueNYU
for crucial support
"Law and the Time of Angels:
International Law's Method Wars and the Affective Life of Disciplines"
--I have a new piece in History&Theory that takes off from the "anachronism" debate to explore the relationship of law, time, and method more broadly
Ahead of my book's formal birth day next week, I have an essay in Austria's Die Presse today on the place of the Habsburg Empire in the state-ification of the world
@diepressecom
“In 1917, Lenin declared that he thought of borders and states as transient but necessary expedients…”
@lsehistory
’s Dina Gusejnova, brilliantly, on changing conceptualisations of sovereignty in Russian socialist thought
“In short, our leaders have lost sight of an essential truth: A university exists for values different from those that dominate the for-profit world”
François Furstenberg channeling the rage and sadness we all feel at how universities have lost their way
very surprised, and very grateful
--especially for the reminder of all the unexpected communities writers and readers make, more precious than ever in this cavernous year
Come join us at 5:30pm ET THIS Wednesday for the ILTIG meeting at
@asilorg
Annual Meeting and help us toast the WINNER of this year's International Legal Theory Scholarship Prize:
@natasha_wheatl
, for: ! 1/
We’re hiring in modern / early modern European history at Princeton — review of files to begin October 1
~ ~ ~
Assistant Professor. Early Modern or Modern European History. Tenure Track in Princeton, NJ for Princeton University
eek just a little excited about this generous review Ann Laura Stoler has written for our volume, *Power and Time: Temporalities in Conflict and the Making of History*
---which is out sooooonnnn
🤩🙏
This spring, Dirk Hartog & I are co-teaching a Princeton grad seminar called "Law and Legalities," traversing a range of topics, debates, and methods in legal history inclu legal pluralism, law&capitalism, law& difference/race, empire, human rights, custom, settler colonialism..
from tomorrow, small stores in Germany will be allowed to open again - the first stage of a gradual reopening. seemed like a good day to ride all the way in, and record the passing of this, or something of this, whatever this is
New in the Journal of Modern History:
"Trieste and Danzig after the Great War: Imperial Collapse, Narratives of Loss, Reconfigured Globalization" by Marco Bresciani and Klaus Richter
port cities, sovereignty, commerce...
Sydney friends!
I’m so excited to bring this book back where it all started — and with the dream line up of LEA YPI and LISA FORD, too. Reception to follow. It would be lovely to see you —
Huge thanks to the fabulous Coel Kirkby and
@JSI_Sydney
There will be a panel on the book with Tara Zahra, Charles Maier, and Nathaniel Berman at the Remarque Institute at NYU on Friday April 21 – please join us in New York or on zoom! It would be wonderful to see you
3/3
Grateful to be part of this blockbuster volume — with a chapter on largely forgotten intl jurist Krystyna Marek — alongside so many wonderful scholars including Keisha Blain, Or Rosenboim, Glenda Sluga, Helen Kinsella + many more
@KeishaBlain
@IntHist
@Hkinsella6
@OrRosenboim
“Central Europe as Ground Zero of the New International Order”
—and a workshop for post-imperial sovereignty more broadly
I have a new essay in Slavic Review
What might happen if we told the history of International law from a coral atoll in the western Pacific?
From trading post to protectorate to colony to mandate to trust territory to sovereign state,
@CaitStorr
brilliantly reveals Nauru as symptom -not anomaly-of intl legal order
hiiiiiii australia
see you in 14days
“you will not be given a room key, because you are not allowed to leave your room”
thinking about the borders of this island state, the modes of their opening&closing, & all those who experience them as indefinite detention
"Presentism used to be so simple."
Marcus Colla of
@OxfordHistory
has written a thoughtful review article
@ContEuroHistory
on new books about time, incl Jenny Andersson's The Future of the World, Aleida Assmann's Is Time Out of Joint?, & our Power&Time
Miranda Johnson on indigenizing self-determination!
@SurabhiRanganat
on the ocean& decolonization!
@ssklug
on Republic of New Afrika! Priyasha Saksena on India, territorial sovereignty, Hyderabad!
@Umut_Ozsu
on hydrocarbon humanitarianism! + +
--you know, just all the good things
This special issue of the Journal of the History of International Law, co-edited by
@natasha_wheatl
and
@samuelmoyn
, on the history of the decolonisation of international law looks fantastic.
This year’s Davis seminar at Princeton with the theme Law and Legalities — all welcome!
As “Davis serf,” I’ll also be organizing, with
@samuelmoyn
, a conference on International Law and Decolonization in March 2019
I still remember Dan's discovery, some years ago, of a stash of Nazi identity documents sewn into the upholstery of a Czech armchair -- irresistible bait for the historical imagination. He set off to uncover the world of those documents, & Penguin has just published the tale
A historical detective story and a gripping account of one historian’s hunt for answers, THE SS OFFICER'S ARMCHAIR by Daniel Lee (
@daniellee550
) is a unique addition to our understanding of Nazi Germany. Read an extract here:
oh hello, you
I knew you when you were but a twinkle in your brilliant author's eye
—a vague but exciting future tense lingering in the stairwells of fayerweather hall
what a pleasure to meet your spined, papery self
Perry Anderson(Lineages) suggesting that the plurality of pre-capitalisms requires a correlate analytical plurality,in which law+politics carry an interpretive weight they lose in capitalism’s wake.Does someone pick this up explicitly?Grateful 4pointers
@Umut_Ozsu
@ntinatzouvala
“Wheatley hat eines der anregendsten Bücher der letzten Jahre im Bereich des Rechts, der Politik und Geschichte geschrieben.”
The Life and Death of States reviewed in Der Standard —
@PrincetonUPress
On how the specter of "genocide" as the ultimate transgression organizes our moral imaginary, blinding us to more systematic forms of violence against civilians, from the bombing of cities to drone strikes
@dirkmoses
's important and long-awaited new book is published today!
It tells the history of multinational empire and theories of sovereignty, of the end of the Habsburg Empire in the longer 20C history of “decolonization,” of modern legal thought, and the relationship between sovereignty and time
2/3
Don’t know if I can live up to
@FillaferFranz
’s characterisation of the book as “exquisite, stylish and scintillating,” but he gets it just right in describing the empire’s “permanent state of conceptual surgery,” and in this last paragraph too. I’m so grateful 🙃
In The Life and Death of States (
@PrincetonUPress
, 2023) Natasha Wheatley reveals how the Habsburg Empire became a laboratory of legal theories that also shaped our contemporary world order.
@FillaferFranz
reviews the book.
Read the review here:
I defended my beast of a dissertation f/t the epic Harold James, Phil Nord,
@natasha_wheatl
, David Cannadine, Quinn Slobodian,
@fred_marty
I make myriad arguments. Among them: cartels constitute a powerful, hidden & often anti-democratic governing institution of global capitalism
oh hejjj Berlin !
ach wie schön, wieder hier zu sein
Humboldting til Jan / holla at me europe / grateful to the
@AvHStiftung
, the FU,
@SConrad20
, the world
My mum, a librarian at a small college of further edu, has become a very active union delegate in recent yrs. Today, an online meeting of 200+ librarians resolved to close their libraries in defiance of management instructions.
She was so giddy on the ph I’m not sure she’ll sleep
"Capitulations Redux: The Imperial Genealogy of the Post–World War I 'Minority' Regimes"
Laura Robson in the AHR ---
The history of Ottoman sovereignty again with many secrets to share, especially for the history of international law
“Adjectives seem fairly innocent additions but look again. These small imported mechanisms are in charge of attaching everything in the world to its place in particularity. They are the latches of being.”
(Anne Carson)
This was a really rich and interesting conversation about the book in Vienna — grateful all over again for these perceptive and often surprising comments
Research Center for the History of Transformations
"Yet in a deeper sense the Right’s resort to judicial supremacy is not a sign of strength, but an admission of weakness: a beleaguered regime calls upon the authority of the court only to achieve what it cannot accomplish through electoral politics"
(
@karpmj
+ lincoln again, obv)
It is not enough to question the decisions, the justices, or even the structure of the current court — we need to challenge, as Abraham Lincoln did, the foundation of its power to determine the law.
The book offers a deep contextualization of Kelsen and the Pure Theory of Law in Central European political life: first re the Habsburg Empire's legal multiplicity, then its 1918 collapse and the problem of sovereignty after empire
“From this perspective, decolonizing political theory is less a recurring critique of Eurocentrism than an effort to shift the terrain of theorizing” itself, to alternative “positive or reconstructive” agendas
The always-essential Adom Getachew and Karuna Mantena 👇
An important intervention from
@AdomGetachew
and
@KMantena
. "Anticolonialism and The Decolonization of Political Theory," Critical Times, Duke University Press
On what literary scholars can teach international lawyers --
Anne Orford & others have embraced the role of anachronism in the history of international law. Chris Warren argues that this ultimately brings "international legal method closer to literature & literary scholarship"
On history & the social sciences --
inclu
Jennifer Pitts on intl politics
@samuelmoyn
on law
@MiraSiegelberg
on IR
Susan James on philosophy
Joel Isaac on anthropology
@DrHannahDawson
on feminism
Quentin Skinner on political philosophy
@adam_tooze
& Sheilagh Ogilvie on economics
🚨🚨🚨 This is not a test 🚨🚨🚨
The programme for the Modern European History Seminar is here. 🇪🇺
Five amazing scholars will present this Michaelmas Term, check out the information below
👇🤯👇
“The humanities teach us about how we live together & interact, whether historically, in the present day or into the future. The humanities enquire about the fundamental questions of what it is to be human”
@thelawcouncil
against the new Aust govt policy
In the current AHR ("year one of decolonization"):
a forum on
Indigenous Agency and Colonial Law, feat.
Miranda Johnson on the Million-Dollar Duck & Bending the Settler Contract
&
Bianca Premo and Yanna Yannakakis on Indian Jurisdiction in Colonial Mexico
Kelsen in his autobiog on how, in wake of WW1, he came to the view (as an “individualist”) that the economic system of liberalism could not provide economic security for the majority, and thus he could not conscionably support it, even if it was good for him and his class
Spectacular paper from Tuuli Talvinko on how the first invocations of EU’s “foundational values” (democracy, dignity, etc) come in the trade + financial agreements accompanying the integration of post soviet states in 1990s — the ideological gloss over brutal marketisation
Looking forward to Time, Space, and Violence in Current Histories of International Law
today at NYU
I’ll be talking about law, time, Orford, Koselleck, and Kantorowicz
Tomorrow
@nyuiilj
history & theory in IL workshop w Benton, Ford, Anghie, Simpson, Wheatley, Dyzenhaus, Hulsebosch, Cohen, Howse, Kingsbury, Glass, Schmalz and more; Space, Time & Violence in Current Histories of IL
on theory as poetry
I adore this Andrew Zimmerman reflection “History, Theory, Poetry” in the new issue of History of the Present
theory, like poetry, reawakens us to the strangeness of language and the world — it disrupts the self-evidence of meaning
aaaand one more exciting opening at Princeton:
Associate or Full Professor, Legal History of the United States
time period and specialization open
review of files begins Oct 7
please share widely!
Proud as punch of my student Ananya Malhotra
@ananyaagustinm
who will go to Oxford with a Rhodes scholarship to study the critical history of international justice
TOMORROW in Princeton:
the fabulous
@TehilaSasson
will be speaking at the Modern Europe Workshop on her book project --
"We Are the World: Markets and Morality at the End of Empire"
--a must for those interested in capitalism and humanitarianism
Next Thursday, June 3, we're having a booklaunch hosted by
@IntHist
@EUI_History
, moderated by Patricia Clavin, & featuring a panel with
@HeidiTworek
, Paul Betts, Pieter Judson, and Madeleine Herren. All welcome!
Mijn bespreking van het boek van
@natasha_wheatl
in
@nrc
, nav discussies over de grondwet. Het laat zien waarom Mitteleuropa niet alléén een voedingsbodem is voor illiberale tendensen, maar ook de fundamenten van onze rechtsstaat heeft beïnvloed.