Abstract

As a state that occupied an unstable position on the continuum of late nineteenth-century European inter-imperial system of sovereignty—oscillating between a subject and an object of new forms of imperialism—I argue that the Ottoman Empire presents a unique case study through which to examine the process of legalistic exclusion of non-Western states from an emerging international system of legal relations. This article investigates the precarity of Ottoman sovereignty in the Horn of Africa at the end of the nineteenth century in relation to a growing European global legal hegemony. It historicizes the process of Ottoman exclusion from the ‘family of sovereign nations’ with all the rights and privileges that belonging to this exclusive group of European imperial states entailed. This is done through an excavation of the roots of nineteenth-century international law and its relation to the Ottoman state, followed by the demonstrative example of the Ottoman-British negotiations surrounding Ottoman rule in Zeila (Somalia) and Massawa (Eritrea) between 1885 and 1895.

摘要

作为一个在 19 世纪晚期欧洲帝国间主权体系的连续统一体中处于不稳定地位的国家——在新形式的帝国主义的主体和客体之间摇摆——我认为奥斯曼帝国提供了一个独特的案例研究，通过它检查过程将非西方国家排除在新兴的国际法律关系体系之外。本文调查了 19 世纪末奥斯曼帝国在非洲之角的主权与日益增长的欧洲全球法律霸权之间的不稳定性。它历史化了奥斯曼帝国被排除在“主权国家大家庭”之外的过程，以及属于这个专属欧洲帝国国家集团的所有权利和特权。这是通过挖掘 19 世纪国际法的根源及其与奥斯曼国家的关系来完成的，随后是 1885 年至 1885 年至1895 年。