Right of conquest
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The right of conquest is the purported right of a conqueror to territory taken by force of arms. It was sometimes considered a principle of international law until the early 20th century.
Proponents state that this right acknowledges the status quo, and that denial of the right is meaningless unless one is able and willing to use military force to deny it. Further, the right was traditionally accepted because the conquering force, being by definition stronger than any lawfully entitled governance which it may have replaced, was therefore more likely to secure peace and stability for the people, and so the Right of Conquest legitimises the conqueror towards that end.
The way in which the Wars of the Roses ended in England is an example of how a nation may benefit from the Right of Conquest. The two rival factions, York and Lancaster, had fought a thirty year civil war which had cost over a hundred thousand lives. York was senior to Lancaster on the royal family tree, and entitled to their crown, but produced a female heiress; Lancaster was junior but had a male leader. This leader, Henry Tudor, therefore agreed to marry the Yorkist heiress, Elizabeth of York -- but he first had to take the throne by Right of Conquest (Battle of Bosworth Field) as he had no other practical entitlement to it.
Critics respond that "right of conquest" rewards military aggression and promotes rather than prevents war.
The Islamic legal term for property rights acquired by conquest is عنوة or عنوةً `anwatan, (literally "by force").
The completion of colonial conquest of much of the world (see the Scramble for Africa), the devastation of World War I and World War II, and the alignment of both the United States and the Soviet Union with the principle of self determination led to the abandonment of the right of conquest in formal international law. The 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact, the post-1945 Nuremberg Trials, the UN Charter, and the UN role in decolonization saw the progressive dismantling of this principle. Simultaneously, the UN Charter's guarantee of the "territorial integrity" of member states effectively froze out claims against prior conquests from this process.
[edit] Conquest and military occupation
In the post-Napoleonic era, the disposition of territory acquired under the principle of conquest must be conducted according to the laws of war. This means military occupation followed by a peace settlement. If there is a territorial cession, then there must be a formal peace treaty.
[edit] References
- Sharon Korman, The Right of Conquest: The Acquisition of Territory by Force in International Law and Practice, Oxford University Press, 1996.
[edit] See also
- Franz Oppenheimer's "conquest theory" of the State
- Fait accompli
- Invasion
- Status quo ante bellum
- Revanchism
- Property is Theft
- Might is Right
