Cait Storr, International Status in the Shadow of Empire: Nauru and the Histories of International Law
Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: Storr's book on Nauru has "political intentions" (p.38), and although it bears the word "histories" in its title, the concerns of the author are wholly related to the present.Grand terms and issues are evoked: TWAIL, "global justice and equality" (p.38), "Weberian Marxist sensibilities" (p.24), "imperial continuities" (and "dismantling" them, p. 10; 44; 245), as well as the present policies of the former colonial overlord Australia with regards to the Island of Nauru (with the notorious asylum seeker detention centers, p. 3; 252), etc.Originally written as a doctoral thesis at the University of Melbourne following a "brief consultancy" as a law student on a "temporary, UN-funded position" for the Parliament of Nauru in 2009 (p.xi), the book aims to demonstrate that it "no longer makes sense to think of Nauru as an anomaly in the international order …, Nauru was what was." (p.7) The first sentence of the first chapter explicitly repeats this "premise that the Republic of Nauru is not anomalous to the contemporary international legal order but deeply symptomatic of it" (p.9).However: Why should Nauru be an anomaly and to whom?Who said so and why does this matter?And given that this book so strongly relies on an alleged "anomaly"-paradigm (I recognised the term at least seven times, yet without reference to indicate against whom the book is arguing), how does the author define an "anomaly", and is there, to her, a normality in (contemporary? or various historical?) international legal order(s)?Moreover, why are such judgmental terms necessary to better understand the historical process the author aims to analyse -four shifts in Nauru's status that prove "imperial continuities"?The book's structure is rather conservative, as it is divided according to a time-tested colonial timeline indicating the "shift[s] in the international status of Nauru" (p.39) -as seen from the European halls of power: "1 -International Status, Imperial Form: Nauru and the Histories of International Law; 2 -From Trading Post to [German] Protectorate, 1888; 3 -From Protectorate to Colony to Mandate, 1920; 4 -From Mandate to [Australian] Trust Territory, 1947; 5 -From Trust Territory to Sovereign State, 1968; 6 -After Independence: Sovereign Status and the Republic of Nauru."Why is there no chapter on the pre-colonial status?Did international (power) relations in Nauru commence with the arrival of Europeans?While -ex negativo -normality is being invoked as a certain state under (20 th century?) international law, the book operates with another problematic terminology: "marginality".Storr claims that her decision to analyse imperial administrations and the post-colonial independence of a state -Nauru, "habitually regarded as marginal or anomalous within the international order" (again: by whom?) -is "a methodological and a political" choice
Source: Verfassung in Recht und Übersee
Author: Jakob Zollmann
Language: German
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4385459228