Contested histories

Abstract

For the last couple of years, I have been revisiting the historical relationship between slavery and international law. In so doing, I often read and draw inspiration from the research carried out by members of the Institute for International Law and the Humanities. Many of them study the history, theory and practice of international law with a focus on inequalities and the lived realities of peoples of the Global South. Because they want to grasp the role of international law in global governance, they are attentive to – and attempt to destabilise – existing narratives that portray the role of international law in an excessively positive light. In this chapter, I wantto show that one such narrative pertains to slavery.