Together with Dr Love Rönnelid (Stockholm University, Sweden) Matilda Arvidson is convening the stream Critical Nordic Colonial Legal Histories, at the Critical Legal Conference, 15–18 September 2024, in Lund. Both project participants Matilda Arvidsson and Simon Larsson are presenting papers at the conference within the stream.
Stream info: Whereas de-colonial moves in academia have productively restructured the academic field of legal history globally, the Nordic field(s) of legal history has remained relatively unmoved, continuously focusing on reinforcing its canon of national legal (male, white) heroes, centralizing institutions, practices, and archives. Critical inquiries into the legal history of formal colonies – e.g. the Swedish colonies of the Swedish Gold Coast (1650-63), New Sweden (1638-1655), Sant Barthélemy (1784–1878), Guadeloupe (1813-14), and Parangipettai (1733); and the Danish colonies of Tranquebar (1620–1845), Serampore (1755–1845), Nicobar Islands (1756–1848/1868), Iceland (1536/1814–1944), the Faroe Islands (1536/1814–present), Danish West Indies (1666–1917), and Greenland (1721/1814–present) – are for the major part close to non-existent, with only very little critical legal historical work on former colonies and more critical work on the legal colonial histories of peoples still formally under colonial Danish rule (especially the colonial legal history in Greenland). Not to mention the specific question of the legal history of the colonization of Sápmi. But beyond the (largely missing critical legal historical scholarship on) formal colonial legal histories, many colonial legal interventions pursued was part of missionary work, philanthropy, and international trade and corporations (e.g. the legal history of the Swedish sugar trade as part of the transatlantic economy including slave trade), are almost entirety absent in core legal history debates, scholarships, and curricula in the Nordic countries and contexts.
Figure 1: Colonial administration French Congo, ca 1908, Swedish National Archives
As much of the work on informal empire indicates, the underlying economic aims of European powers could often be achieved without formal colonization. These aims included achieving access to raw materials and labor, as well as markets to offset (manufactured) goods from the North. Indirect, and typically legal, means of achieving the desired economic setup were often preferred to formal colonization as the latter was perceived as politically and economically costly. Often enough, imperial powers attempted to achieve their economic aims through international law, for example through the so-called unequal treaties. While the Nordic countries were not leading in writing such treaties, it was customary to later replicate the deals obtained by the larger colonial powers in the treaty practice of other countries. By way of consequence, treaties with countries such as the Ottoman Empire, Siam, and China also started to apply in relation to Nordic countries. Moreover, some of the economic setups achieved by the British Empire followed the so-called open-door approach, where other (European) countries were allowed similar advantages as those obtained by Britain. Nordic countries, trading companies, and individuals stood to gain from the economic setups thus achieved. Individual cities – such as Gothenburg: a harbor city and destination for transatlantic trade in sugar – flourished as a result. Even as this informal imperial legal history is being addressed in critical (international) legal scholarship, the lesser known and “minor” actors – such as the Nordic countries and actors from the Nordics – are by and large left outside the scope of critical scholarly inquiries. To what extent was law implicit in extracting raw materials and labor from the so-called periphery to the Nordic metropoles? Which legal setups enabled industrialization and where? These are questions yet to be answered.
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