This volume contains the papers presented at a multi-disciplinary conference, held at Utrecht University’s Senate Hall on 19 September 2013, on the occasion of the tercentenary of the Peace of Utrecht. The conference intended to examine the enduring effects of the Peace Treaties concluded at Utrecht in 1713, from the perspectives of the disciplines of (international) law, history and international relations. Three themes were selected, which each would be addressed in contributions from those three disciplines: (1) The Peace of Utrecht: the European Balance of Power; (2) The Peace of Utrecht: Relationship to Colonial Regimes and Trade Monopolies; and (3) The Peace of Utrecht: Ideas and Ideals; the Development of the International Legal Order. On the third theme, the perspective from international relations unfortunately could not be presented.
The papers presented at the conference and now included in this volume, in three Parts in the order of the themes as mentioned above, have been subsequently updated, and an additional general contribution has been added at the beginning of this volume, on the Behaviour of Negotiators at diplomatic conferences.
The conference was part of a two-day event taking place in Utrecht and The Hague under the overarching theme of “The Art of Peace Making”. 2013 was also the centenary of the inauguration of the Peace Palace, where on 20 September 2013 the second part of the event took place, a conference under the title “Contemporary Peace Cases: What Lessons to Learn?”.1
At the Utrecht conference, the objective was not just to look at the Peace Conference of 1712–1713 and the resulting treaties, examining their significance, explaining what happened there and why, and how the settlements made there affected European international relations in the subsequent period, but the idea was to attempt to also look at the question if we can identify any traces in the current world that could be regarded as their possible ‘enduring effects’. What current situations or thoughts could we trace back to Utrecht 1713? Some are obvious, for example the territorial settlements that still determine or raise issues about boundaries in the world (e.g., Canada; Gibraltar); others may be less so clearly present, such as consequences of the slave trade or theories of international relations. This is what the authors of the nine chapters that follow have attempted to explore.
The idea for this conference was developed with Martti Koskenniemi, during his stay in Utrecht in 2012 while he held the Belle van Zuylen visiting chair of humanities. I would like to thank him, as well as Duco Hellema and David Onnekink of the History Department of Utrecht University, for their help in preparing the conference. The Board of Utrecht University and the Faculties of Law and of Humanities provided the much-needed financial support, which is gratefully acknowledged. Finally I express my thanks to Ingeborg van der Laan of Brill Nijhoff Publishers for her patience and assistance in preparing this volume for publication.
Alfred H.A. Soons
Utrecht, June 2019
This conference resulted in the publication: “The Art of Making Peace: Lessons Learned from Peace Treaties”, edited by Steven van Hoogstraten, Nico Schrijver, Otto Spijkers and Anneleen de Jong, Brill 2017.