37 Pages Posted: 17 Mar 2014 Last revised: 17 Mar 2018

Date Written: March 15, 2014

Abstract

National self-determination serves as a chief justification for disunion, as well as union, of states in contemporary international law and politics. While theoretical debates over the meaning of national self-determination goes on, the historiography about it seems to reach a consensus: historical writings about national self-determination usually begins with the two modern revolutions in the late 18th century. Against this conventional narrative, this article provides a pre-history of national self-determination, that is, a genealogy of early modern territorial sovereignty and secession before the rise of national self-determination. While nationalism was absent in early modern international law, territory was largely treated as the property as the sovereign king. With various legal means including conquest, dynastic inheritance, discovery, and occupation, kings aggregated land and augmented their territories in Europe and America. Secessions were rare during that time; they were just a flip side of the logic of the composite kingly states. Ironically, in contradistinction to the modern era, unifying and separatist territorial change went easily and legally in the era of dynasticism.