‘A wrong done to mankind’: colonial perspectives on the notion of universal crime
| Date | 01 September 2017 |
| Published date | 01 September 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0047117817723066 |
| Author | Sinja Graf |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117817723066
International Relations
2017, Vol. 31(3) 299 –321
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0047117817723066
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‘A wrong done to mankind’:
colonial perspectives on the
notion of universal crime
Sinja Graf
National University of Singapore
Abstract
Current debates on ‘crimes against humanity’ address its history and its potentially neo-imperial
effects in international relations. In reference to these issues, this essay abstracts the idea of universal
crime from the contemporary concept of ‘crimes against humanity’ and analyzes its mobilizations
in early-modern perspectives on the legitimacy of European colonialism. First theorizing the easy
union between notions of universal crime and arguments about European imperialism, I then draw
on arguments by Vitoria, Gentili, and Grotius. I find that they rely on the idea of an offense injuring
all mankind to negotiate colonial relationships between European powers and peoples abroad as
well as between European powers vis-à-vis one another, both within Europe and in non-European
spaces. The essay concludes by offering three venues for inquiry into the concepts of universal
crime and crimes against humanity, namely their political productivity, their historical circulation,
and their contemporary neo-imperial character.
Keywords
crimes against humanity, European colonialism, Gentili, Grotius, history of international political
thought, imperialism, intellectual history, international law, international relations, universal
crime, Vitoria
Introduction
Proudhon famously quipped ‘whoever invokes humanity wants to cheat’. Such longstand-
ing concerns about ‘humanity’ as a universalist normative cover for particular power
interests1 have been complemented more recently by critiques of vague uses of the term
Corresponding author:
Sinja Graf, Department of Political Science, Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, National University of
Singapore, AS1, #04-45, 11 Arts Link, 117570 Singapore.
Email: polgsu@nus.edu.sg
723066IRE0010.1177/0047117817723066International RelationsGraf
research-article2017
Article
300 International Relations 31(3)
in international relations scholarship. These criticisms have noted that international rela-
tions theorists are content with invoking humanity as a self-evident moral grounding of
their arguments, while failing to substantiate the term in two important ways. First, theo-
rists do not clarify whether they are using the term in an empirical or a normative sense.2
Second, they rely on the charisma of the concept without explaining the precise nature of
its normative authority that is necessary to substantiate their arguments.3 The first creates
confusion, the second entails a certain shortsightedness and both ultimately undermine the
conclusions drawn from arguments articulated in the register of ‘humanity’.4
These critiques put pressure on contemporary arguments for legitimate coercion in
international politics that rely on the language of humanity and humanitarianism. To
illustrate, the ‘military humanism’ that was first criticized in the wake of the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) operation in Kosovo5 has arguably persisted
through the crises in Libya and Syria.6 The complications of both have also not dimin-
ished interest in the ‘Responsibility to Protect’.7 Given that the vocabulary of humanity
is alive and well in political and academic discourses on international politics, we require
a more nuanced account of the work it can do in International Relations theory.
The argument set forth here contributes to concretizing the uses of ‘humanity’ by
focusing on the conceptual connection between humanity and criminality in historical
texts of international political theory. To analyze the nexus between the notion of man-
kind and the concept of a crime or an offense, the article abstracts from the contemporary
norm of ‘crimes against humanity’ to the notion of a universal crime. I treat ‘universal
crime’ as an umbrella term for various historical expressions of the idea that certain acts
injure the entirety of mankind.8 The value of making the distinction between crimes
against humanity and universal crime is that the latter allows for an analysis of the idea
of a single act injuring all of mankind that is not tied to the particularities of ‘crimes
against humanity’ as codified in positive international criminal law. There seems to be,
after all, no compelling reason to constrain analyses of the notion of a universal injury as
it circulates in political discourses over time by the twentieth-century legal definition of
crimes against humanity.9 To do so would not only ignore the ways in which the term
crimes against humanity contemporarily circulates beyond legal scholarship and court
proceedings, but would also overlook a rich history of the idea of universal crime that
predates the formalization of the current international crime.
This article examines how-late medieval and early-modern international political theo-
rists have actually used the term ‘humanity’ or ‘mankind’ to discuss a range of political –
and colonial – relationships. Given that the universalist vocabulary of offenses against
mankind is a signature of international thought as it developed in the context of European
colonialism, the perspective adopted here follows Martin Wight’s argument that the ‘“the-
ory of humanity” […] verges upon a theory of colonial administration’.10 The historically
colonial setting of notions of universal crime throws a critical light on the contemporary
reliance of the vocabulary of humanity to lay claim to the authority to exercise political
coercion across sovereign boundaries in the name of a universal humanity.11
In analyzing how the concept of humanity structures arguments on colonial relation-
ships via the notion of universal crime, the article focuses on the concept’s political
productivity. I argue that late-medieval and early-modern thinkers mobilized the idea of
an offense against mankind in order to make claims about the appropriate ordering of a
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