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Imperial Violence and the Laws of War
Conference jueves 23 de octubre de 2025. 19: 00 horas Madrid
Información General:
Sede de la Fundación Ramón Areces. Vitruvio, 5. Madrid.
Asistencia gratuita hasta completar aforo. Necesaria inscripción online previa. Interpretación simultánea.
El salón de actos está equipado con sistema de bucle magnético.
Speaker/s:
Lauren Benton - Yale University
- Programme
We usually locate the history of the laws of war in Europe. Standard accounts begin with late-medieval just war theorists and scholastic writers like Francisco de Vitoria. The narrative then turns to Hugo Grotius to describe the origins of the modern laws of war, before shifting to Emer de Vattel’s view that the regulation of war depended on agreements among states. The last phase of the development of the laws of war highlights the legal codes created in the late nineteenth century and the efforts of states in the twentieth century to outlaw major conflict and define standards for the humane conduct of war. This history looks radically different if we begin outside Europe, with practices and justifications for violence in small wars in European empires. Participants in these conflicts were forced to find ways to legally incorporate private violence in public war and to justify the authority of empires over warmaking in politically fragmented regions. Building on several examples—Portuguese raiding in the Indian Ocean and the Guaraní War in the Río de la Plata—this lecture describes how the actions of imperial agents, quasi-states, and Indigenous communities contributed to the regulation of war in the early modern world.
"The Ramón Areces Foundation is not responsible for the opinions, comments, or statements made by individuals participating in its activities".
Thursday, October 23
18:30 h.
Registro de asistentes.
19:00 h.
Bienvenida y presentación
José María Beneyto
Profesor visitante de la Universidad de Harvard y Catedrático de Derecho Internacional, Derecho Europeo y Relaciones Internacionales.
19:10h.
Conferencia. Violencia Imperial y Las Leyes de la Guerra
Lauren Benton
Yale University.
Lauren Benton
Barton M. Biggs Professor of History and Professor of Law. Yale University
A comparative and world historian, Benton writes about global legal history and the history of European empires, especially British and Iberian empires. She completed her Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University and holds an A.B. from Harvard University.
Benton’s research gauges the effects of legal conflicts on global and international orders. Her most recent book, They Called It Peace: Worlds of Imperial Violence, analyzes imperial violence between 1400 and 1900. Previous works examine constitutionalism in empires, histories of imperial sovereignty, law in slavery and abolition, and legalities of piracy. Before focusing on global legal history, Benton conducted ethnographic research on the informal sector and economic development in Latin America and Spain.
Benton is a recipient of the Toynbee Foundation Prize for significant contributions to global history. In 2022, she delivered the George Macaulay Trevelyan Lectures at the University of Cambridge. Other honors and awards include a Berlin Prize fellowship, a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, and membership in the Institute for Advanced Studies.
Before coming to Yale, Benton held faculty appointments at New York University and Vanderbilt University. She served as dean of humanities and dean of the graduate school at NYU and dean of arts and sciences at Vanderbilt. Benton was president of the American Society for Legal History in 2019-2020.
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