European Conquest and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Part 2 pptx

European Conquest and the Rights of Indigenous Peoplesby the overarching goal of achieving self-determination which wouldallow indigenous peoples more control over the ‘pace and content’

The point of departure for the book, to reiterate, is the neglect of digenous peoples in the story of the expansion of international societyfrom Europe It should be abundantly clear from the discussion so farthat Europeans are not the only peoples to have colonised and sub-jugated indigenous peoples Further, while the indigenous peoples ofSouth and South-East Asia, for example, might once have been underEuropean rule, they are now ruled by ethnically different and dominantgroups of non-Europeans A study of the indigenous peoples of Southand South-East Asia would in itself be a complex and potentially vasttopic and for the sake of setting some limits to the book I have chosen todiscuss neither those regions, nor contemporary cases of non-Europeanrule over indigenous peoples This omission is not, I believe, one thataffects the claims made later in the book

in-A further restriction is that the contemporary examples cited in thebook relate to English-speaking rule and, in particular, what Havermancalls the Anglo-Commonwealth, comprised by Canada, New Zealandand Australia Apart from the discussion, in Chapter 2, of the conquest

of Mexico 500 years ago, Central America, South America and Mexico donot figure in this book This does not meant to imply they are unimpor-tant On the contrary, the struggles of indigenous peoples in those placesextend from the time of the Conquest and colonisation by Europeans,down to the present In colonial and post-colonial times the indigenouspeoples of Central and South America have been subjected to geno-cidal practices and continuing dispossession Forest peoples includingthe Yanomami in the Amazon Basin of Brazil have been faced with thedispossession of their traditional lands and, in some cases, extinction.The continual expansion of mining, agriculture and forestry interests is

a form of internal colonialism that often has tragic results for the tures and the survival of indigenous peoples As Susan Stonich puts it,economic development strategies, ‘along with growth in road building,lumbering, agribusiness, hydro-electric projects, mining and oil oper-ations, unregulated and planned colonisation, and the exploitation ofgenetic materials (and the associated cultural knowledge), pose an aug-mented threat to indigenous peoples’.52Together with indigenous peo-ples in other places, the indigenous peoples of Latin America thus sharecommon goals related to land rights, maintaining access to natural re-sources, and relief from human rights abuses All of these are subsumed

cul-52Susan Stonich (ed.), Endangered Peoples of Latin America: Struggles to Survive and Thrive

(Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2001), p xxi.

European Conquest and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

by the overarching goal of achieving self-determination which wouldallow indigenous peoples more control over the ‘pace and content’ ofthe development that affects the conditions of their existence.53

During the 1980s there was a significant growth of the indigenousmovement in Latin America and that movement has had an impor-tant role in promoting indigenous rights globally.54Alison Brysk char-acterises indigenous movements in Latin America as relying for theireffectiveness on a combination of identity and politics and internation-alisation In a major study of how indigenous movements have suc-cessfully sought to establish indigenous rights as international norms,she examines the links between local communities and the wider worldcommunity She argues that ‘welfare, human rights, and even survival’,

of the Indian peoples of Latin America, ‘are increasingly dictated byglobal forces beyond their control’ Even so, they have been able to chal-lenge ‘the states, markets and missions that seek to crush them’ They do

so by building global networks ‘In the spaces between power and mony, the tribal village builds relationships with the global village.’55

hege-An example of this is the campaign waged by the Zapatistas inthe southern Mexican state of Chiapas In January 1994 the self-styledZapatista National Liberation Army led by Subcomandante Marcosinitiated armed attacks against the Mexican state, aimed at securingimproved conditions and rights for the estimated 10 million indigenousIndian peasants in Mexico The Zapatistas soon shifted from acts ofviolence to extensive use of the Internet

The Zapatista use of international support and information networkshas been conscious and extensive; thousands of academics, journalists,and activists received frequent unsolicited e-mail from the “ZapatistasIntergalactic Network” The transnational network of Zapatista elec-tronic communication is so dense that a separate Web site has beenestablished just to track the proliferation of Zapatista homepages, list-

servs, [sic] archives, advocacy links and email addresses ’56

In March 2001 the Zapatista campaign seemed to have achieved successwhen Subcomandante Marcos led a peaceful march into Mexico City,but journalists and activists alike were quick to point out that many of

53 Brysk, ‘Weakness Into Strength’, p 41.

54 Hector Diaz-Polanco, ‘Indian Communities and the Quincentenary’, Latin American

Perspectives, 19: 3 (Summer 1992), p 15.

55 Alison Brysk, From Tribal Village to Global Village: Indian Rights and International Relations

in Latin America (Stanford University Press, 2000), p 2.

56 Brysk, Tribal Village to Global Village, p 160.

is emphatically not an intentional expression of Anglo-centric values.Nor should it be interpreted as overlooking the differences betweenthe ideologies of empire and the colonial practices of European states.

In his study of Spanish, British and French ideologies of empire fromaround 1500 to roughly 1800, Anthony Pagden demonstrates that thesedifferences were present from the beginning of European expansion.They were manifested in the divergence of approaches to settlement,contrasting conceptions of legal authority, and attitudes to race rela-tions In contrast to the Spanish settlers who ‘formally styled them-

selves as conquerors’ and reduced Indians to servitude, the British and

French either excluded ‘Native Americans from their colonies, or incorporate[d] them as trading partners.’58Whereas the Spanish thoughtthe conquest and subjugation of Indian peoples was legitimate, theFrench attempted to integrate them and the English to exterminatethem.59 The Spanish had an overwhelming concern with rights over

57Nash, ‘Reassertion’, Jason Rodrigues, ‘Long Haul’, The Guardian http://www.

guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,41503314,00.html accessed 3/21/2002, Duncan

Campbell and Jo Tuckman, ‘Zapatistas March into the Heart of Mexico’, The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4151908,00.html accessed 3/21/

2002, Naomi Klein, ‘The Unknown icon’, The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/

Archive/Article/0,4273,4145255.00.html accessed 3/21/2002.

58Anthony Pagden, Lords of all the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France

c.1500–c.1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), p 65.

59 Ibid., p 73.

European Conquest and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

people and the British with rights over property France and Britain garded the Spanish justification of conquest as ‘unsustainable’ and based

re-their own settlements ‘upon one or another variant of the res nullius, or

on purchase and “concession” ’.60In relation to the crucial matter of race,the Spanish and the French ‘established their first colonies with the ex-plicit if loosely understood, intention of creating a single cultural as well

as legal, and – uniquely in the French case – racial, community.’61Franceadopted a Roman approach to citizenship, which extended the rights

of French citizenship to those colonised It stood alone also in being theonly European power that ‘attempted to replicate [its] society in Americawith a mixed population’ by actively encouraging miscegenation.62

Differences such as these between the ideologies and practices ofEuropean powers had important and lasting effects on the peoplescolonised and can be traced through to the present There are elements

of this in the chapters that follow, but my purpose has been neither

to write a systematic history nor give a comprehensive account of theundeniable differences between European states

The layout of the book

Chapter 1 introduces a number of themes and concepts essential to theargument It first discusses the nature of international society, the place

of Hugo Grotius in its intellectual origins, and the English School andthe rationalist tradition, which have been the main bearers of the idea

It argues that although international society initially included uals, it became an exclusive society of states Also, that its expansionfrom Europe cannot be separated from dispossession, genocide and thedestruction of cultural identity Consequently, particular states that re-sulted from the expansion of Europe are morally flawed because ofunresolved issues related both to the acts that established them andtheir continuing practices with respect to their indigenous populations.International society is in turn morally flawed to the extent that it legit-imates and protects morally reprehensible states among those that con-stitute it Next the chapter surveys conquest, imperialism, empire andcolonialism as modes of expanding international society that assumedEuropean superiority and resulted in both domination and complexinteractions between cultures It argues that while the relationship be-tween Europeans and non-Europeans was generally one of domination,

individ-60 Ibid., p 86 61 Ibid., p 149 62 Ibid., p 150.

it was not a simple tale of subjugation and denial Further, at its apogeeEuropean dominated international society was a society of empires.Contemporary international society, in which Europe has become muchless important, continues nevertheless, in important cases, to be a soci-ety of empires marked by cultural misunderstanding The chapter closes

by defining the principal legal terms used in substantiating claims tosovereign rights over people and territory and then explaining the legaland political significance of using the term ‘peoples’ rather than thesingular ‘people’

Chapter 2 concerns the incommensurability of cultures and the struction of ‘otherness’ in ways that justified the dispossession of in-digenous peoples It compares three different accounts of Europeanencounters with non-Europeans Each demonstrates the inability ofEuropeans to understand people from other cultures in their own terms,with the result that non-Europeans were progressively conceptualised

con-in ways that dehumanised them and enabled their dispossession andsubordination This argument is extended by a survey of concepts thatcategorised peoples as either ‘civilised’ or ‘uncivilised’, thereby mak-ing it easier to deny rights to peoples regarded as the latter It thenrehearses the idea of stages of development that provided further jus-tification for denying the rights of those seen as stuck in earlier stagesthat Europeans had moved beyond Finally it argues that the state ofnature and natural rights theory were also very effectively deployed tojustify dispossession

Chapter 3 advances the argument that international law was, at cial junctures of its history, a form of cultural imperialism It marked theboundaries between those who were and were not treated according

cru-to the norms the members of international society applied cru-to selves Over a period of 400 years following the conquest of Mexicothere was a progressive retreat by Europeans from conceding sovereignrights to particular non-European peoples During this span of timeinternational legal thought progressed from recognizing sovereignty innon-European peoples to recognizing limited or conditional sovereignty

them-to eventually denying it, especially in the case of peoples regarded

as ‘uncivilised’ Important moments in these developments were theSpanish debate of 1550–51 over the status of Indians as human beings,the adoption by legal theorists of Locke’s labour theory of propertyand the impact of social Darwinism Also relevant was, first, the dis-placement of natural law concerned with the rights and duties ofhumans everywhere by the positive law of states; and second, changing

European Conquest and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

conceptions of ‘otherness’ that constructed ideas of identity and ence in ways that did not comprehend cultural difference as compatiblewith equality of legal rights

differ-Chapter 4 concerns the contemporary claims of indigenous peoples

It first outlines the United Nations system as it pertains to indigenousrights It next explains the centrality of land to indigenous culture andidentity The argument concerning this is that land rights lead to claims

to self-determination which are interpreted by states as secessionist andresisted as conflicting with the fundamental norms of international so-ciety and international law Consequently, a major task is to consider thecontemporary meaning of self-determination and how it should be un-derstood in relation to the situation of indigenous peoples This leads

to consideration of the issues to be resolved, from the perspective ofinternational law, before indigenous aspirations to self-determinationcan be realised Of particular importance among these is the conflict be-tween human and indigenous rights The right of self-determination isone held by groups and in some cases this might undermine the essen-tial character of human rights The chapter closes with a discussion ofsome indigenous perspectives on self-determination and suggestionsthat sovereignty needs to be uncoupled from the state if indigenouspeoples are ever to recover fully authorship of their identity

Chapter 5 shifts the focus to three political and moral issues resultingfrom conquest and the subjugation of indigenous peoples The first ofthese is that the construction of others has resulted in a variety of harmsbeing done to them Second is the argument that ‘the West’ bears acollective responsibility for historic injustices This requires giving anaccount of how collective responsibility should be construed and oneargument is that it means engaging in dialogue, premised on othersbeing different but equal, that attempts to understand others in theirown terms Concerning historic injustices, I argue, contrary to JeremyWaldron,63 that some injustices are not superseded with the passage

of time and special measures are needed if they are to be satisfactorilyredressed Crucial to this argument is the philosophy of history andhow the relationship between past, present and future is interpreted.The final issue, already mentioned, is whether the legitimacy of statesdepends on the treatment of their indigenous populations and in turnthe worth of international society depends on the moral standing ofthe states that constitute it The position taken in the book is that the

63 Jeremy Waldron, ‘Superseding Historic Injustice’, Ethics 103: 1 (October 1992).

legitimacy of states with indigenous populations depends on the degree

to which those states engage in a politics of reconciliation, recognition,difference and cultural rights and that there is a case to answer aboutthe legitimacy of international society

Chapter 6 takes up the question posed by Timothy Dunne64of whetherthe rationalist tradition of thought about international relations remains

a prisoner of its ethnocentric origins or has instead, to use his words,the potential to reinvent itself for our post-colonial times It first arguesthat while the intellectual origins of rationalism do contain elementsnecessary for it to reinvent itself, it is nevertheless not an adequate ba-sis for establishing indigenous rights in the normative framework ofinternational society Rationalism draws on the very classical theorythat was implicated in the denial of indigenous rights and codified dif-ference Following discussion of this is a review of selected writingslocated in critical theory and post-modern approaches to internationalrelations that suggest ways of dealing with the barriers to cross-culturalunderstanding, ending the marginalisation of indigenous peoples andwidening their legal rights Central concerns of this body of writing areaccepting and dealing with difference, the meaning of autonomy andwhat is needed to achieve it, and, extension of the boundaries of moralcommunity Finally the chapter considers forms of political communitymost likely to accommodate the claims of indigenous peoples

The Conclusion first reiterates the theme of legitimacy and then gues for recognition of indigenous peoples as ‘peoples’ with the right ofself-determination in constitutional law and in international or globallaw It then revisits the barrier to self-determination posed by the ten-sion between human and indigenous rights Finally, it addresses theproblem of whether setting an international standard for the treatment

ar-of indigenous peoples represents an anti-pluralist view ar-of internationalsociety

64 Dunne, ‘Colonial Encounters’.

1 Bringing ‘peoples’ into international

society

This book is about the loss of life, land, culture and rights that resultedfrom the overseas expansion of European people and states followingColumbus’ voyages to the Americas in the late fifteenth century Atthat time the modern state and with it the European states system wasbeginning to emerge from the social and political structures of medievalChristendom By the end of the nineteenth century the states systemhad developed to the point of being known by its mainly European

members as the society of states or international society The story of the

expansion of international society to one that embraced the world as awhole has been written as one of states and the rivalry between them.War and its recurrence has long been assumed to be the central problem

of relations between states and a key institution of international society.The loss of life with which this book is concerned is not life lost inwar between states or in the numerous post-World War II intrastatewars of the Third World It is instead the losses that resulted from thearrival of Europeans, from the time of Columbus, in lands inhabited

by non-European peoples.1The story of the expansion of internationalsociety is simultaneously a story of the subjugation and domination ofothers in historically momentous ways that are frequently overlooked

1 The ensuing loss of Amerindian life, for example, was enormous James Tully writes that ‘The Aboriginal population of what is now commonly called the United States and Canada was reduced from 8 to 12 million in 1600 to half a million by 1900, when the

genocide subsided.’ Tully, Strange Multiplicity, p 19 In the case of Mexico, David Stannard

estimates that the population was reduced from about 25 million in 1519 to 1,300,000 in

1595; a reduction of 95 per cent David Stannard, American Holocaust (New York: Oxford

University Press, 1992), p 85 cited by James P Sterba, ‘Understanding Evil: American

Slavery, the Holocaust, and the Conquest of the American Indians’, Ethics 106: 2 (1996),

427 It is estimated that for the Americas as a whole 74–94 million Indians lost their lives

as a result of conquest compared with 40–60 million Africans captured for slavery who died on the voyage from Africa to America See Sterba, ‘Understanding Evil’, 430.

Bringing ‘peoples’ into international society

by the emphasis on states and interstate conflict Consequently whilethe expansion of international society is the departure point for thisstudy, it is concerned not just with states and the society of states butwith the immediate and lasting consequences of European expansionfor non-European peoples

The purpose of this chapter is to clarify various key terms and cepts that inform the discussion in later chapters First it concerns theidea of international society and the relationship it has with both Grotiusand rationalism as a tradition of international theory It outlines somekey points about the expansion of international society and makes thesuggestion, which is taken up in Chapter 5, that the moral legitimacy

con-of international society is open to question The second section cusses conquest, imperialism, empire, colonialism and colonisation asthe methods of expansion of international society It points out that whilethe relationship between Europeans and non-Europeans was generallyone of domination, it is not a simple tale of subjugation and denial Therelationship also involved a complex interaction between cultures thatdid not necessarily deny the agency of non-Europeans Next some termsrelated to the rights of non-Europeans at different junctures of thoughtabout international law are defined The chapter closes with an expla-nation of the choice of ‘peoples’ in the chapter heading in preference tothe singular ‘people’

dis-International society and its expansion

International society is a society of states but its intellectual roots lowed the inclusion of individuals It is the core concept of what MartinWight called the ‘rationalist’ tradition of international relations theory.His reason for giving it this name derives from his identification ofHugo Grotius as a seminal thinker about international society, and con-sequently as a foundational figure of rationalism In Grotius’ writingsnatural law is an essential element and the content of that law is known

al-by the use of right reason It represents divine law but is discoverable al-byrational human beings ‘Reason’, Wight explained, ‘is a reflection of the

divine light in us: “Ratio est radius divini luminus” This is the justification

for using the word Rationalist in this special sense in connection withinternational theory.’2To call a tradition of thinking about internationalrelations ‘rationalist’ was then to associate it with the element of reason

2 Wight, International Theory, p 14.

European Conquest and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

contained in the conception of natural law Rationalists were those whomaintained the tradition of natural law and because it concerned the

‘rights and duties attaching to individual human beings’3it meant cepting that individuals as well as states were subjects in internationalrelations Grotius’ vision of international society was one that combinednatural law and the positive law of states as essential components of thelaw of nations

ac-When assessing Grotius’ contribution to thought about internationalrelations, Hedley Bull argued that his work is ‘cardinal because it statesone of the classic paradigms that have since determined both our un-derstanding of the facts of life of inter-state relations and our ideas as

to what constitutes right conduct’.4 That paradigm was internationalsociety and as three of five features standing out in Grotius’ conception

of it, Bull identifies the centrality of natural law, the universality of ternational society, and the place of individuals and non-state groups.5Grotius thought of international society as containing individuals aswell as states and as being universal It was ‘not just the society of states,

in-it is the great society of mankind’.6And it ‘was not composed merely ofChristian or European rulers and peoples but was world-wide’.7How-ever, the idea of it being ‘world-wide and all-inclusive’ gave way inthe eighteenth and particularly the nineteenth centuries, ‘to the ideathat it was a privileged association of Christian, European, or civilisedstates ’8

Claire Cutler similarly argues that Grotius’ writings reflect ‘the sence at the time of a clearly perceived distinction between individualand state personality’ Alongside states, individuals held rights and du-ties under international law and these were universal.9For Cutler ‘[t]hemost profound component of the Grotian world view is the assumptionthat there is a universal standard against which the actions of statesmay be judged’.10 Natural law entailed not only ‘the essential identity

ab-of the individual and the state’ but also ‘provided the “element ab-of versalization” necessary to the conception of a universal moral order’.11

uni-3 A Claire Cutler, ‘The “Grotian Tradition” in International Relations’, Review of

Interna-tional Studies, 17: 1 (1991), 46.

4 Bull, ‘Importance of Grotius’, in Bull, Kingsbury and Roberts (eds.), Hugo Grotius, p 71.

5 The other two are ‘Solidarism in the Enforcement of Rules’ and ‘The Absence of national Institutions’.

Inter-6 Bull, ‘Importance of Grotius’, p 83 7 Ibid., p 80.

8 Ibid., p 82 and see Gerrit W Gong, The Standard of ‘Civilization’ in International Society

(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984).

9 Cutler, ‘Grotian Tradition’, 45 10 Ibid., 48 11 Ibid., 46.

Bringing ‘peoples’ into international society

Her further argument is that Bull’s rejection of natural law in favour

of positive international law meant his conception of international der could not accommodate a universal moral order and is necessarilyconfined to a morality of states.12

or-For Martin Wight international society is not merely an idea but apolitical and social fact known by inference from the way states andother actors behave.13As observers of this behaviour we conclude thatthere is an international society because states behave as if there is one.International society is, according to Wight, ‘the habitual intercourse ofindependent communities, beginning in the Christendom of WesternEurope and gradually extending throughout the world’.14For HedleyBull also, international society is implicit in and revealed by the practice

of states; but in particular by the way they identify and articulate rules toguide their relations with one another In a frequently quoted sentence,

he asserts that:

A society of states (or international society) exists when a group of states,

conscious of certain interests and common values, form a society in thesense that they conceive themselves to be bound by a common set ofrules in their relations with one another, and share in the working ofcommon institutions.15

In Bull’s version of international society the primary function of thesecommon institutions is to provide a foundation for order between states(international order) According to Wight, ‘[I]f there is an internationalsociety then there is an order of some kind to be maintained, oreven developed.’16 International society necessarily supports a norma-tive order that accepts the legitimacy of states and the society constituted

by them The rules meant to maintain or develop order between statesare, for the most part, determined by the great powers of the time, buttheir aims are not necessarily those of all states In many ways, inter-national society is never more than an expression of the interests of thegreat or dominant powers that determine the rules of membership andconduct

In the lexicon of international society it is by articulating and ing rules and norms that states advance their common interests; but

observ-12 Ibid., 53–8 13 Wight, International Theory, p 30.

14 Martin Wight, ‘Western Values in International Relations’, in H Butterfield and M.

Wight (eds.), Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics (London:

George Allen & Unwin, 1966), p 97.

15Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society (London: Macmillan, 1995), p 13.

16 Wight, ‘Western Values’, p 103.

European Conquest and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

what exactly is the basis of these common interests? One way of ing this is to situate international society in relation to the distinctionbetween practical and purposive associations.17International society isgenerally seen as a ‘practical association’ in which states, driven by theneed for coexistence and the imperatives of cooperation under anarchy,establish certain rules to govern their relations and participate in theworkings of institutions to support those rules.18 The case for seeinginternational society as a practical association is that the over-ridingcommon interest of states is simply to coexist without conflict ratherthan to achieve common values During the Cold War, for instance, theUnited States and the former Soviet Union both articulated and agreedupon rules meant to guide their mutual relations, but they had verylittle common interest apart from the important one of avoiding nuclearwar Consequently, they found rules that would allow them to coexistwithout direct, armed conflict.19 Rules of practical association imposerestraints that allow states to coexist and they may be expressed in cus-tom, in positive international law, or in unspoken rules The goal ofcoexistence is achieved primarily through respecting the so-called basicnorms in inter-state behaviour: sovereign equality, independence andthe rule of non-intervention

answer-A major problem in conceiving of international society as a practicalassociation is that it assumes that ‘the identities and purposes of statesare formed prior to social interaction’ It overlooks the fact that inter-national society is constituted by the inter-subjective understandings ofstates and other actors It is through their mutual relations that the iden-tities and interests of states are formed ‘States create institutions notonly as functional solutions to cooperation problems, [as in a practicalassociation] but as expressions of prevailing conceptions of legitimateagency and action that serve, in turn, as structuring frameworks for thecommunicative politics of legitimation.’20

17 Terry Nardin, Law, Morality and Relations of States (Princeton University Press, 1983).

Nardin defines a purposive association as one in which the constituents ‘are associated in

a cooperative enterprise to promote shared values, beliefs, or interests [and] are united by their convergent desire for the realisation of a certain outcome that constitutes the good they have come together to obtain’ By contrast, the ‘values of a practical association are those appropriate to the relations among persons who are not necessarily engaged in any common pursuit but who nevertheless have to get along with one another They are the very essence of a way of life based on tolerance and diversity,’ pp 9–14.

18 See Bull, The Anarchical Society, Nardin, Law, Morality, Robert Keohane, International

Institutions, and Brown, ‘International Theory and International Society’.

19 Paul Keal, Unspoken Rules and Superpower Dominance (London: Macmillan, 1983).

20 Chris Reus-Smit, ‘The Politics of International Law’, unpublished manuscript.

Bringing ‘peoples’ into international society

While there are certainly elements of practical association in tional society it is better regarded as essentially purposive As well asbeing a society of states, international society is a moral community Amoral community is one in which the members concede to each otherrights and obligations with regard to being treated alike The members

interna-of such a community do not regard themselves as being bound to treatnon-members as they would treat fellow members This is not to saythat they never will treat others according to the same rules Just thatthey don’t see themselves as in any way bound to do so Implicit inthis idea is that moral communities have boundaries that draw the linebetween who belongs and who does not Or, to put this another way,between who gets included and who gets excluded In essence, moralcommunities have rules; not only about the rights and duties membersowe each other, but also rules determining rightful membership.For example, at the end of the nineteenth century the great powers ofEurope proclaimed ‘the standard of civilisation’ as the criteria for mem-bership of international society To be counted as members of interna-tional society, and consequently as subjects of international law, politicalentities had first to attain this standard, which stipulated a level of po-litical and social organisation recognised by Europeans The standard

of civilisation was thus a crucial instrument for drawing the boundariesbetween the ‘civilised’ and ‘uncivilised’ worlds, and for determiningwho did or did not belong to international society At the present timeits place appears to have been taken, as Gerrit Gong rightly suggested

in the early 1980s, by the human rights record of states.21It is this, aboveall else, that confers the degree of legitimacy on states necessary forthem to be accepted as rightful members of international society In itsconstabulary role of determining legitimacy, international society is apurposive association

Legitimacy is fundamental also to a further sense in which tional society is purposive In an important revision of Bull’s under-standing of international society, Fred Halliday renders ‘society’ as inter-societal and inter-state homogeneity.22His sense of international society

interna-is one that incorporates the links between the internal structures of cieties and the international pressures that shape them The term refers,

so-in essence, to the idea that as a result of so-international pressures states

21Gong, Standard of ‘Civilization’, and Jack Donnelly, ‘Human Rights: A New Standard of Civilization?’, International Affairs 74: 1 (1998).

22Fred Halliday, ‘International Society as Homogeneity’, in F Halliday Rethinking

Inter-national Relations (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994).

European Conquest and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

are compelled, increasingly, to conform to each other, in their internalarrangements An international society is then one in which states inthe same vicinity have similar governments and uphold similar, or atleast compatible, ideals Conceived in this way, international society isnecessarily limited to states with similar domestic arrangements based

on a shared political culture It is not a pluralistic international society inwhich, so long as there are rules to guide mutual relations, the internalrelations should not matter

In Bull’s account of international society order between states is thecentral concern Whether we are talking about the society of states atthe beginning of the twentieth century or international society in the1970s and early 1980s, when Bull was writing about it, the idea of inter-national society focuses attention, in the first instance, on great powers

As an approach to contemporary international politics it is tally state-centric and has been concerned largely with order in rela-tions between states and the role of great powers in either buttressing

fundamen-or undermining it There is consequently justification ffundamen-or Martin Shaw’scriticism that the theory of international society was ‘a central ideology

of the international system in the Cold War period’.23At the same time

as promoting an idea of the common good it served as a justification formaintaining the status quo as essential to international order Neverthe-less, against this has to be set Bull’s argument that, in their revolt againstthe West, Third World states adopted and employed fundamental con-cepts of international society to break the political hold great powershad over them.24

Fundamental to the rules underpinning international order is mutualrecognition, which Wight identifies as one of the distinguishing charac-teristics of historical states systems For there to be a system of states,without which there cannot be either international society or order, statesmust mutually recognise each others’ right to sovereign independence

An international society is for this reason a community of mutual nition Unless states do recognise each other as legitimate and sovereignactors there can be no basis for agreement over the practices that are toguide their mutual relations ‘It would be impossible to have a society ofsovereign states unless each state, while claiming sovereignty for itself,

recog-23 Martin Shaw, Global Society and International Relations (Cambridge: Polity Press,

1994), p 119.

24 Bull, ‘The Revolt Against the West’, in Bull and Watson (eds.), The Expansion of

Interna-tional Society.