Certain (Mis)Conceptions: Westphalian Origins, Portraiture and Wampum

Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Date

2021

Source Publication

Chalmers, S., & Pahuja, S. (Eds.). (2021). Routledge Handbook of International Law and the Humanities (1st ed.). Routledge.

Abstract

Within a growing body of socio-legal scholarship focusing on the visuals of law, this paper considers international law as both story and image. This sometimes intimate relationship of text and imagery is examined through the Westphalian origin story alongside Dutch painter Gerard ter Borch’s 1648 painting, The Ratification of the Treaty of Münster. Further, in what is now known as North America, drawing upon wampum diplomacy that is also both law as story and visual imagery, this paper investigates a reading out of certain Indigenous contributions to European international law’s founding narratives. The exclusion of Indigenous knowledge, laws and voices from international law remains an ongoing challenge that this paper seeks to interrupt.

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