Eleventh Global Studies Conference

Abstract

The international settlement in the League of Nations following the First World War saw an immense increase in the interconnectedness of nations; yet, scholars have also noted the rapid decline and failure of political globalisation due to the rise of extremist ideologies that pointed to the inherent instabilities of the international system. One great effort of the League of Nations was to tackle a global challenge emanating from the widespread practice of forced labour and slavery in the vast colonial Empires and territories under Mandate control in the 1920s. It was the experience and works of individuals working in the commission to forge a normative framework that should abolish slavery as a global challenge and mark it as an international crime. The paper inquires into the establishment of slavery and forced labour as an international crime through the periods of the abolition of slavery under international law from the 1880s to the 1926 Slavery Convention. John Lugard’s role both as colonial administrator before 1918 and his direct involvement as expert in the League of Nations’ slavery commission are taken as an example to show the development from legal abolitionism under colonial practice towards an international criminalisation in the League of Nations’ system. The paper argues that the construction and marking of slavery as an increasingly condemned practice beyond borders can be taken as a classic case of establishing an international crime. The paper further argues that the influence of international lawyers dealing with normative orders in the context of colonialism and practices of colonial law itself to some extent hampered, but also facilitated the acceptance of slavery and forced labour as an international crime. The paper particularly addresses the role of the John Lugard within the international legal community towards criminalising forced labour since the Berlin and Brussels conferences on Africa (1885/90). It considers the rhetoric and practical use of anti-slavery rhetoric in the context of humanitarianism and the practice of forced labour and its acceptance in Europe prior to the First World War despite the presence of a staunch anti-slavery discourse by civil society movements especially in Britain and the United States. Lastly it inquires into the changes in the perception of forced labour during the first years under the League of Nations’ regime that led to the establishment of the Slavery Convention in 1926.