'Fascism, Imperialism and International Law: An Arch met a Motorway and the Rest is History...'

Leiden Journal of International Law (2018) 31 pp 509ndash538Ccopy Foundation of the Leiden Journal of International Law 2018 doi101017S0922156518000304

INTERNATIONAL LEGAL THEORY

Fascism Imperialism and InternationalLaw An ArchMet aMotorway and the Restis History

ROSE PARFITTlowast

AbstractWhat would happen to our understanding of international law and its relationship withviolence if we collapsed the distinction between our supposedly post-colonial lsquopresentrsquo andits colonial lsquopastrsquo between the sovereign spaces of the twenty-first century global order andthe integrated hierarchical space of fascist imperialism I respond to this question through aninvestigationintothephysicalcontoursofaprecise lsquoimperial locationrsquo30deg31prime00prime primeN18deg34prime00prime primeEThese co-ordinates refer to a point on the sea-edge of the Sirtica that is occupied today bythe Rarsquos Lanuf oil refinery one of Libyarsquos three most important such facilities In the late1930s however during Libyarsquos period of fascist colonial rule this was the point at which astate-of-the-art motorway the Via litoranea libica was crossed by a giant triumphal arch theArco dei Fileni Through a chronotopic reading of the temporal spatial and interpellativeaspects of this point its architecture and its history I suggest that fascist lawyers officialsand intellectuals accepted a horrifying truth about the relationship between international lawand violence ndash a relationship that twenty-first century doctrinal international law is loath toconfront concerningthe inherentlyexpansionist logicof thesovereignstate andthe inevitablyhierarchical ordering of the lsquointernational communityrsquo which stems from it

Keywordsfascism imperialism sovereignty statehood temporality

lowast Lecturer in Law Kent Law School Australian Research Council Discovery (DECRA) Research Fellow Mel-bourne Law School [rsparfittkentacuk roseparfittunimelbeduau] I would like to thank the manyfriends and colleagueswhose comments research assistance and encouragement contributed somuch to thearguments presented here including Noha Aboueldahab Nesrine Badawi Maddy Chiam Tomaso FerrandoEmily Grabham Richard Joyce Sara Kendall Philip Kenrick Martti Koskenniemi JohnMorss Luigi NuzzoLiliana Obregon Alice Riccardi Kerry Rittich Lulu Weiss and most of all Luis Eslava I am also extremelygrateful to the Institute for International Law and the Humanities at Melbourne Law School the Institutefor Global Law and Policy at Harvard Law School and the participants at the Law and Time Workshop atKent Law School and at the Legal TheoryWorkshop at Melbourne Law School The research presented herewas funded by the Australian Research Councilrsquos Discovery programme to which institution I extend mydeepest thanks The ideas and errors are all my own

available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms httpsdoiorg101017S0922156518000304Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore University of Melbourne Library on 31 Jul 2018 at 094944 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use

510 ROSE PARFITT

Full Name Rarsquos Lanuf (Approved ndash A) [Rarsquos Lanuf Variant ndash V]Primary Country Code LY (Libya)

Region Font Code (RC) 3 (AfricaMiddle East)Latitude in degrees minutes and seconds 30deg31prime00primeprimeN

Longitude in degrees minutes and seconds 18deg34prime00primeprimeEMilitary Grid Reference System (MGRS) co-ordinates 34RBU6650278557

Populated Place Classification (PC) No dataUS National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency 20181

lsquo[T]he place calls the event to mindrsquoSallust The JugurthineWar Ch LXXIX lsquoPhilaelignirsquo [86ndashc35 BCE]

1 INTRODUCTION LOCATION

Scattered about somewhat incongruously in an archaeological enclosure not farfrom the Libyan town of Rarsquos Lanuf one can find the remains of a triumphal archThis arch the Arco dei Fileni was commissioned in 1937 by the Governor-Generalof Libia Italiana Italo Balbo and designed by Florestano di Fausto perhaps themost celebrated of fascist Italyrsquos colonial architects The Arco one of the Mussoliniregimersquos most famous monuments also straddled one of its greatest technologicalachievements2 the Via litoranea libica ndash themotorwaywhich ran between its piersThis intersection occurred just at the point at which the TripolitaniandashCyrenaicaborder met the sea edge of the Sirtica desert point 30deg31prime00primeprimeN 18deg34prime00primeprimeE (seeFigure 1)

Completed in the aftermath of the brutal suppression of the Libyan resistancemovement following two decades of bitter struggle3 the Litoranea ran for 1800kilometres along the entire coastline of the colony from the French protectorateof Tunisia in the west to the British protectorate of Egypt in the east In doing sothis highway provided Italy with a concrete (in every sense) symbol of its now totalcontrol over these three recalcitrant North African territories Viewed in the lightof Italyrsquos merciless annexation of the Ethiopian Empire less than a year before4

contemporary commentators were correct to point out that the Litoranea was infact lsquonothing but amilitary highroad thinly camouflaged as a road to encourage themotoring touristrsquo5 TheArch complemented thismonumentalizationof Italyrsquos hard-won domination over Cyrenaica Tripolitania and Fezzan These three historicallyseparate and culturally distinct territories had first been seized by (liberal) Italy inthe Italo-OttomanWar of 1911ndash12 However Italyrsquos hold particularly over Fezzan

1 USNationalGeospatial-IntelligenceAgency available at geonamesngamilgnshtml (accessed9May2018)2 JL Wright lsquoMussolini Libya and the Sword of Islamrsquo in R Ben-Ghiat andM Fuller (eds) Italian Colonialism

(2005) 121 at 1223 See eg AA Ahmida The Making of Modern Libya State Formation Colonization and Resistance 1830-1932

(1994) 103ndash40 N Labanca La Guerra italiana per la Libia 1911-1931 (2012)4 See RS Parfitt lsquoEmpire des Negres Blancs The Hybridity of International Personality and the Abyssinia Crisis

of 1935-36rsquo (2011) 24 LJIL 8495 MHH MacCartney and P Cremona Italyrsquos Foreign and Colonial Policy 1914-1937 (1938) 4


FASCISM IMPERIALISM AND INTERNATIONAL LAW 511

Figure 1 The Arco dei Fileni and the Via litoranea libica Nazi propaganda image 23 September1940 Photo Berliner VerlagArchiv ccopy DPA Picture AllianceAlamy Stock Photo

had remained tenuous Itwas the fascist administrationwhich in 1934merged themtogether officially into a single colony known as Italian North Africa6

The Arco was unveiled on 16 March 1937 in a grand ceremony to mark theopening of the Litoranea ndash a ceremony presided over by Mussolini himself Andthere it stood with only the whistling of the ghibli winds for company for nearly40 years ndash the only visible structure for miles around The Litoranea (now betterknown as the Libyan Coastal Highway) is still in use primarily by tank trucks orthe battered Toyota pickups favoured by various militia These militia have beenstruggling since 2011 to gain control over the area home to some of the largestoilfields in the world ndash and in particular to capture the gigantic oil refinery at RarsquosLanuf whose imposing structures now dominate the landscape As for the Arcoitself it was blown up in 1974 byMuammarQaddafi then Revolutionary Chairmanof the Libyan Arab Republic All that remains to mark the spot at which it oncecrossed themotorway are traces of its concrete foundations which (at least in 2009)could still lsquojust be made out in the road surface close to the west end of the one ofthe airstrips at Rarsquos Lanufrsquo7

The conflict over this small area of land now home to Libyarsquos third-largest oilrefineryhasbeenfierceever since therevolutionwhichoustedMuammarQaddafiinOctober 2011 The Rarsquos Lanuf refinery has changed handsmany times ndash first passing

6 P Kenrick Tripolitania (2009) 1547 Ibid at 156


512 ROSE PARFITT

from lsquoregime loyalistsrsquo to lsquorebel forcesrsquo backed by NATO airstrikes authorized underUN Security Council Resolution 1973 (17 March 2011) to enforce the internationalcommunityrsquos lsquoresponsibility to protectrsquo Libyan civilians8 then from August 2014onwards passing from one rival faction to another in Libyarsquos increasingly complexand violent civil war Recently these factions have included the Islamic State ofIraq and the Levant (IS) which took control of the facility in January 2016 settingfire to four of its storage tanks the once official now rogue Petroleum FacilitiesGuard (PFG) which ousted IS the Operation Dignity forces of the Libyan NationalArmy (LNA) commanded by General Khalifa Haftar which ousted the PFG9 andthe Defence of Benghazi Brigades with whomDignity forces continue to spar10

Some of these factions are allied with one of Libyarsquos three rival governmentsthe General National Congress (GNC) established in 2012 in Tripoli (now a rumporganization known as the Government of National Salvation) the rival House ofRepresentatives which fled to Tobruk in mid-2014 after members of the originalGNC rejected the results of the June 2014 elections and theGovernment ofNationalAccord established in December 2015 under the UN-brokered lsquoSkhirat Agreementrsquonow also based in Tripoli11 For example Haftarrsquos LNA is (generally) supported bythe House of Representatives ndash in theory (not in practice) the legislative arm of theGNA Many of these militias also have external backing For instance in September2016 Dignity forces seized back control of the refinery from the PFG supported byEgyptian and UAE airstrikes12 and Russia is liaising with Haftar directly13 in spiteof the latterrsquos vociferous opposition to the Skhirat Agreement14 The US has beenlaunching regular airstrikes inLibyaagainst lsquoISmilitantsrsquo sinceAugust201615 In themidst of this confusionof conflicting jurisdictional claims and aerial bombardmentit is difficult to confirm whether the bumps in the tarmac left by the remnants ofthe Arco are still visible

So what are scholars of international law to make of the fact that these twostructures ndash a monument to the opening of a road symbolizing the integration andmilitarization of a fascist colony and an oil refinery at the centre of a civil conflictwhich has erupted in the wake of an international intervention executed by theself-styled agents of humanityrsquos lsquoprotectionrsquo ndash occurred more than eight decadesapart at exactly the same location The answer is not straightforward

8 UN Doc SRES1973 (2011) para 1 See A Orford lsquoWhat Kind of Law is Thisrsquo LRB Blog 29 March 2011 AOrford International Authority and the Responsibility to Protect (2011)

9 AB Ibrahim lsquoDignity Operation forces recapture Ras Lanuf oil portrsquo Libya Observer 14 March 201710 AB Ibrahim lsquoBenghaziDefense Brigades capture Ras LanufAirport in central Libyarsquo LibyaObserver 3March

201711 SeeM Fitzgerald andMToaldoAQuickGuide to LibyarsquosMainPlayers EuropeanCouncil for ForeignRelations

available at wwwecfreumenamapping_libya_conflict (accessed 9May 2018)12 AB Ibrahim lsquoForeign airstrikes rescueDignity Operationmilitias againrsquo LibyaObserver 18 September 201613 M Tsvetkova lsquoExclusive Russian Private Security Firm says it had Armed Men in East Libyarsquo Reuters 11

March 201714 A al-Warfalli lsquoEast Libyan commander Haftar says UN-backed government obsolete hints may run in

electionsrsquo Reuters 17 December 201715 E Schmitt lsquoUnder Trump US Launched 8 Airstrikes Against ISIS in Libya It Disclosed 4rsquo The New York

Times 8 March 2018



On the one hand international lawrsquos core doctrines are inclined to assure us thatthis is nothing but a coincidence 30deg31prime00primeprimeN 18deg34prime00primeprimeE (1937) and 30deg31prime00primeprimeN18deg34prime00primeprimeE (today) might be identical in spatial terms these doctrines suggest buttime holds them safely apart To give just a few illustrations the doctrine of sov-ereign equality (as re-articulated in Resolution 1973) insists that international lawis founded on a lsquostrong commitmentrsquo to the lsquosovereignty independence territorialintegrity and national unityrsquo of all states16 Similarly the doctrine of the non-useof force is often traced to the defeat of official fascism in 1945 together with fas-cismrsquos efforts to justify the use of force on the basis of the need for spazio vitale orLebensraum (lsquoliving spacersquo)17 Equally the emergence of the now-customary rightof lsquoall peoplesrsquo to self-determination in the 1960s and 1970s is understood to haverendered colonialism unlawful in much the same way as fascist expansionism hadbeen18 As these illustrations indicate from a doctrinal perspective the progress ofinternational law away from territorial expansionism (whether fascist or colonial)and towards sovereign equality has been such that the lsquopresentrsquo conflict in Libya(an independent state since 1951) seems from a doctrinal perspective to be whollyunconnected with the lsquohistoricalrsquo phenomenon of fascist imperialism19

On theotherhandhowever our faith (as scholars of international law) in the ideathat international lawrsquos trajectorywill inevitably be lsquoprogressiversquo is notwhat it oncewas Official bodies like the International Court of Justice continue to go about theirworkof deriving the current state of international law fromthe sources laiddownbyArticle38(1)oftheICJStatuteYetthatmethodhasbeensubjectedtoathoroughgoingcritiqueinrecentyearsThatcritiquehastakenonanimportanttemporaldimensionwith scholars seeking not only to contextualize international lawrsquos lsquoevolutionrsquo (forexample by drawing out the disciplinersquos colonial origins) but also to bring thoselsquopastrsquo origins to bear on international lawrsquos ostensibly post-colonial lsquopresentrsquo20Withthis critical scholars are increasingly challenging both the teleological temporalityof doctrinal international law (the idea that the more international law we havethe better the world will be) and the historicist temporality of mainstream history(generally suspicious of any effort thatmight be construed as sullying the remnantsof yesterdaywith the concerns of today)21 From the perspective of this new criticalinternational legal temporalityndash farmoreelastic thaneitherof its linear (teleologicalandhistoricist) counterparts ndash to insist that twoevents arenecessarilyheldapartbya

16 Res 1973 (2011) supra note 8 Preamble17 1945 Charter of the United Nations 1 UNTS XVI (1945) Art 2(4)Military and Paramilitary Activities in and

against Nicaragua (Nicaragua v United States of America) Merits Judgment of 27 June 1986 [1986] ICJ Rep 14para 188 See eg ME OrsquoConnell lsquoPeace andWarrsquo in B Fassbender and A Peters (eds) The Oxford Handbookof the History of International Law (2012) 272 at 291

18 UNDocARES1514(XV) (1960)LegalConsequences for States of theContinued Presence of SouthAfrica inNamibia(South West Africa) notwithstanding Security Council Resolution 276 (1970) Advisory Opinion of 21 June 1971[1971] ICJ Rep 16 at 31 para 52

19 See eg A Cassese International Law (2005) 37 MN Shaw International Law (2003) 30 P MalanczukAkehurstrsquos Modern Introduction to International Law (1997) 25

20 See eg A Anghie Imperialism Sovereignty and the Making of International Law (2004) G Simpson GreatPowers and Outlaw States Unequal Sovereigns in the International Legal Order (2004)

21 A Orford lsquoOn International Legal Methodrsquo (2013) 1 London Review of International Law 166 RS Parfitt lsquoTheSpectre of Sourcesrsquo (2014) 25 EJIL 297


514 ROSE PARFITT

distinction between lsquopastrsquo and lsquopresentrsquo is indeed a product of ideology22 The sameindeed might be said about the spatiality of international law Where the doctrinetends to narrate the division of theworld into a series of formally equal states simplyas a fact of life if not as an inevitable and inherently emancipatory developmentcritical scholars of international law and Indigenous scholars in particular havechallenged this assumption that statehood is a neutral natural and universal wayto organize collective life23

Building on this body of scholarship the question Iwant to explore in this articleis what would happen if we were to collapse the distinction between the (post-colonial) lsquopresentrsquo and (colonial) lsquopastrsquo ndash andbetween lsquosovereignrsquo and lsquoimperialrsquo spacendash in relation specifically to fascist colonialismMy jumping-off point here concernsthe situation both paradoxical and catastrophic which began to unfold with thepassage of Resolution 1973 under the aegis of which the lsquointernational communityrsquoauthorized the sacrifice of (in the end) between 10000 and 25000 Libyan lives inthenameof their own lsquoprotectionrsquo24 Rather than approaching international legalityas something that regulates the relations among a set of bounded jurisdictionsknow as states (together with certain other lsquointernational personalitiesrsquo) I willread international law here as something that can (still) be found embedded inand rebounding from the physicality of a particular location contributing to theconstitutionofparticular kindsof subjectivity The location Iwill examinehere is ofcourse point 30deg31prime00primeprimeN18deg34prime00primeprimeEhomeof the formerArcodei Fileni of the still-existent Rarsquos Lanuf refinery and of their tenacious companion the LitoraneaLibyanCoastal Highway

The approach I develop here in order to respond to this question is at oncemater-ialist and chronotopic Regarding the first element I followmy co-contributor LuisEslava in understanding the normative force of international law to be somethingthat operates not only through the disciplinersquos documents and institutions but alsothrough the physical contours of our daily existence the design of our homes thematerials from which our monuments are constructed the animals and vehicleswhich carryus about the fabric of our clothes the sandiness or siltiness of our soil25

Regarding the second element of this approach I follow the linguistic philosopherand semioticianMikhail Bakhtin in understanding subjectivity as a function of thenarrative relationship between time and space26 Bringing these two approaches

22 See most famously C Schmitt The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum[1950] (2006)

23 See eg A SimpsonMohawk Interruptus Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States (2014)24 These figures come fromCherif Bassiouni chair of the United Nations International Commission of Inquiry

on Libya which conducted a mission to Tripoli and rebel-held areas in April 2011 (lsquoUp to 15000 killed inLibya war UN rights expertrsquo Reuters 10 June 2011) and US senator John McCain reporting figures from theNationalTransitionalCouncil (inRMulhollandand JDeshmukh lsquoResidentsfleeGaddafihometownrsquoSydneyMorningHerald 3 October 2011) respectively See Orford supra note 8 A Chubukchu lsquoThe Responsibility toProtect Libya and the Problem of Transnational Solidarityrsquo (2013) 12 Journal of Human Rights 40

25 L Eslava Local Space Global Life The EverydayOperation of International Law andDevelopment (2015) L EslavalsquoTheMateriality of International Law Violence History and Joe SaccorsquosThe GreatWarrsquo (2017) London Reviewof International Law 49

26 MBakhtin lsquoFormsofTimeandtheChronotopeintheNovelrsquo inMHolquist (ed)TheDialogic ImaginationFourEssays byMM Bakhtin (translated byC Emerson andMHolquist) (1981) 84M Bakhtin lsquoThe Bildungsroman



together the task of this article will be to work out what kinds of subjects the ma-teriality of point 30deg31prime00primeprimeN 18deg34prime00primeprimeE produced in the 1930s and what kinds ofsubjects it continues to produce today In Section 1 I focus on the temporality ofthis location In Section 2 I address its spatiality In Section 3 I turn to the questionof subjectivity Somewhat disconcertingly the results produced by this approachsuggest that fascismrsquos understanding of self-determining subjectivity (lsquosovereigntyrsquoin the international legal context) as inherently expansionist hierarchical and vi-olent may have been more accurate than its liberal counterpart (more familiar todoctrinal international law today) Uncomfortable as this suggestion may be how-ever it does cast a certain kind of light on the otherwise puzzling tendency of aninternational legalorder committed to thedevelopmentof lsquofriendly relationsamongnations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination ofpeoplesrsquo to promote violence rather than to prevent it27

2 TIME

As its locationandaestheticsproclaimed theArcodeiFileniwas intended tosymbol-ize Italyrsquos right to traverse at will a frontier that was at once political and temporalLibyarsquos CyrenaicandashTripolitania boundaryhad itself been superimposed on top of theancient border between the Phoenician colony of Carthage (founded in 814 or 815BCE) and the Greek colony of Cyrene (founded in 630 BCE)28 It was the memory ofthe ancient border that theArchrsquos two eponymousfigures cast in bronze and lodgedin its attic (see Figure 2) were intended to evoke The legend of that desert frontier isdescribed by the Governor of the Roman colony Africa Nova Sallust (86ndash34 BCE) inhis famous accountTheWarwith Jugurtha Sallust relates that the Phileni twins twoCarthaginians were buried alive after patriotically agreeing to give up their lives inorder to preserve the more advantageous border they had just won in a race againsttwoCyrenaicans It was impossible to know according to Sallust whether the twinslost the race lsquodue to sloth or chancersquo for lsquoin those lands when the wind rises onthose level and barren plains it sweeps up the sand from the ground and drives itwith such violence as to fill the mouth and eyesrsquo29

That the governors of themuch later colony of Libia Italiana should have chosenan ancient name (from theGreekwordΛιβύη Libye) and ancientmyth as the themeof a monument to their power is of course unsurprising The willingness of theMussolini regime to portray Italy as the Roman Empirersquos rightful inheritor at every

and its Significance in the History of Realismrsquo in C Emerson andM Holquist (eds) Speech Genres and OtherLate Essays (translated by VWMcGee) (1986) 10 For amore developed account of thismethodology see RSParfitt lsquoNewer is Truer Time Space and Subjectivity at the Bandung Conferencersquo in L EslavaM Fakhri andV Nesiah (eds) Bandung Global History and International Law Critical Pasts and Pending Futures (2017) 49 Fora different application see M Valverde Chronotopes of Law Jurisdiction Scale and Governance (2015)

27 UN Charter supra note 17 Art 128 Kenrick supra note 6 at 15629 GS SallustTheWarwith Jugurtha 2nd ed (translated by B Thayer) (1931) para 79 See also J Quinn lsquoLibyarsquos

Ancient Bordersrsquo LRB Blog 17 March 2014


516 ROSE PARFITT

availableopportunity iswellknown30 althoughitwashardlya fascist innovation asGabrieleDrsquoAnnunziorsquosblood-spatteredpoemscelebrating the Islamophobiccarnageof thefirst lsquoLibyanWarrsquo of 1911ndash12 (see Figure 3) remindus31 However as the choiceof the legend of the Phileni twins indicates no less than the eclectic mix of RomanPharonic Phoenician and Hellenistic elements that went into the Archrsquos design32

fascist imperialism in Italy claimed not only the legacy of the Roman Empire as itspatrimony but actually the whole of antiquity

After Mussolinirsquos seizure of power in 1922 this temporally expansionist claimcame to be expressed more obviously in Libyarsquos built environment Central to thelsquocolonial modernrsquo architectural style which emerged in the late 1920s and early30s was the concept ofMediterraneanita (lsquoMediterraneannessrsquo) vigorously discussedin Italian architectural journals during this period33 As the anthropologist andarchitectural historian Mia Fuller explains la Mediterraneanita allowed architectslike di Fausto to incorporate elements of the Arab lsquovernacularrsquo into their buildingswith the claim that far from representing a degrading act of mimesis in relation toa supposedly inferior culture such incorporation spoke rather of the lsquoconclusionrsquoof the lsquoeternal task of Latinita [Latineity]rsquo34 According to the designer Carlo EnricoRava for example Italian architects working in this style were not borrowing fromArab culture but reasserting and lsquoperpetuat[ing] thework of Rome creating the newin its traces [so as to] renew and complete the still primitive local architectureof our colony with all the most modern technical and practical innovationsrsquo Theywere he said

[t]hefatedcenturies-oldvessels of thiseternalLatinspirit awholevernaculararchitecture that is typically Latin and belongs to us that is without age and yetis extremely Rational that is made of white smooth cubes and large terraces thatis Mediterranean and solar seems to be showing us the way to retrieve our mostintimate essence as Italians Our race our culture our civilization both ancient andnew are Mediterranean thus it is this lsquoMediterranean spiritrsquo that we should seek thecharacteristic of Italianita [Italianness] 35

Both in theory and practice then the materiality of daily existence echoed andreflected back the legal changes that were being enacted in Libya under the fascistcolonial administrationndashchanges that included themerciless lsquopacificationrsquo (in1931)of the Libyan resistance movement and the joint incorporation of Cyrenaica andTripolitania (though not Fezzan) into the Italian state (in 1939) to become its 19th

region (as in French Algeria)The Arco dei Fileni was of course hardly the minimalist lsquowhite smooth cubersquo

characteristic of the iconic villaggi di colonizzazione then under construction all over

30 See eg P Melgrani lsquoThe Cult of the Duce inMussolinirsquos Italyrsquo (1976) 11 Journal of Contemporary History 221at 229ndash30

31 See eg G DrsquoAnnunzio lsquoLa Canzone del sanguersquo in A Andreoli and N Lorenzini (eds)Gabriele DrsquoAnnunzioVersi drsquoamore e di gloria (1984) Vol II at 659 See L Re lsquoItalians and the Invention of Race The Poetics andPolitics of Difference in the Struggle over Libya 1890-1913rsquo (2010) 1 California Italian Studies 1 at 26

32 Kenrick supra note 6 at 15433 M FullerModerns Abroad Architecture Cities and Italian Imperialism (2007) 107ndash3534 CE Rava quoted ibid at 11735 CE Rava quoted ibid at 105



Libya (see Figure 4) Contrasting sharply with their emphasis on pure functionalitytheArchdisplayed amongotherdecorations an inscription inhugecapital letters36

the enormousbronzes of the Phileni twins lsquoevidentlywrithing indistressrsquo37 and twoelaborately carved reliefs38 In other ways however the Arch exemplified at leastdi Faustorsquos particular lsquovisione mediterranearsquo39 as this was embodied in the eclectic(to the point of kitsch) style for which his buildings remain famous40 Standing3085m tall built of concrete (that most modernist of materials) and faced with350 tonnes of travertine (that whitest and most Roman of limestones)41 the Arcorsquosvery physicality married the classical and the modern allowing it to operate asa kind of temporal tunnel between one and the other This effect was reinforcedby the fact that it was an arch ndash that marker of lsquoall things classical powerful andhistorically legitimatersquo42 or in di Faustorsquos words lsquoa thing entirely our ownrsquo (asItalians) through which lsquobuildings become dimensions of the [Italian] spiritrsquo43 Itsrich decorations were moreover visible only at close range From any distance itsoverwhelming impression (see Figure 2) would have been one of massive whitegeometric simplicity

The form of the Arch then aimed clearly at underscoring Italyrsquos claim to theseterritories through the enactment of a fold in the linear sequence of centuries tobring Libyarsquos periods of classical and fascist rule together But the memorial effectof this temporally twofold imperial international order was to obscure another onethat of the Islamic dar al-Islam to which from the seventh century CE until 1912Tripolitania Cyrenaica and Fezzan had been assimilated In effect the concept ofMediterraneita as expressed in the Arch wiped out nearly 400 years of Ottoman ruleand 13 centuries of Islamic political and territorial authority in Libya44 In doingso it gave material form to fascismrsquos colonization not only of the area traversed bythese territories but their past as well

Thoughhardly lsquofunctionalistrsquo theArcodeiFilenididhaveafunction thatofmark-ing the border between the two coastal regions which the Litorana Libica hemmedtogetherWhenobserved (as itwouldhavebeen) inconjunctionwith thismotorwaytherefore the Archrsquos otherwise retrospective sense of direction must have clashedspectacularly with the roadrsquos undeniably high-tech futuristic orientation Such anorientationwasofcoursenoless inkeepingwiththeaestheticsandpoliticsof Italianfascism than its neoclassical inclinations Just as they sought to lsquotrim the bourgeoisfatrsquo from the bodies and minds of Italians so the ideologues and institutions of the

36 From the poet Horace praising Emperor Augustus in the hymn lsquoCarmen Saecularersquo lsquoAlme Sol possis nihil UrbeRoma visere maiusrsquo (lsquoO fostering Sun may you never see anything greater than the City of Romersquo)

37 Kenrick supra note 6 at 15538 Ibid39 F Di Fausto lsquoVisione mediterranea della mia architetturarsquo (1937) 1 Liba 1640 Fuller supra note 33 at 129 BL McLaren lsquoArchitecture of Tourism in Italian Libyarsquo in Ben-Ghiat and M

Fuller (eds) supra note 2 at 171ndash341 Kenrick supra note 6 at 15442 Fuller supra note 33 at 13043 Di Fausto supra note 39 at 1844 A Abel lsquoDar al-Islamrsquo in P Bearman et al (eds) Encyclopaedia of Islam available at

dxdoiorg1011631573-3912_islam_SIM_1703 (accessed 9May 2018)


518 ROSE PARFITT

Figure 2 The Arco dei Fileni Nazi propaganda image 1937 ccopy Photo SueddeutscheZeitungAlamy Stock Photo

Mussolini regime sought to eliminate all that was lsquobarbaricrsquo and lsquodecadentrsquo aboutthe previous era45 The Duce frequently referred for example to the lsquostale breath of

45 M Dyal lsquoMussolinirsquos New Fascist Manrsquo Counter-Currentscom 16 October 2012 available atwwwcounter-currentscom201210mussolinis-new-fascist-man (accessed 22 April 2018)



the pastrsquo lsquoexhaledrsquo by the institutions of parliamentary democracy46 going so far asto recalibrate the calendar to begin on 29 October 1922 the day after the March onRome47 Indeed as historians of art in particular have pointed out far from being acontradiction this juxtaposition of past andpresentwas a distinctive andpoliticallyhighly-chargedelementof fascist aestheticsAs thearthistorianMarkAntliff arguescitingmanyotherexamplesof thiscombination fascismrsquos lsquoregenerativenationalismrsquowas notably Janus-faced

[T]o reinvigorate the body politic fascists looked beyond a decadent present to pasteras but they did not advocate a nostalgic return to say the era of Imperial RomeInstead they sought to incorporate qualities associatedwith past eras into the creationof a radically new society fully integrated with twentieth-century industrialism andtechnology In Sorelian fashion selectivemoments fromanationrsquos historical pastwereutilized for their mythic appeal as a catalyst for the radical transformation of presentsociety48

Understood in this physical and historical context the Litoranea offered one of themost tangible symbols of fascismrsquos self-understanding as the agent of an industrial-ized technified corporatist and hence truly modern future And it was of course inthis self-understanding that fascismrsquos notable debt to the art movement known asFuturismwas most clearly visible

A few years younger than Futurism whose founding manifesto was detonatedin 190949 fascism emerged in 1914 into a highly charged political and aestheticatmosphere already coloured by highly disruptive Futurist agitation Witness forexample the following account of a speech made in 1913 at the conclusion of theItalo-OttomanWar by Futurismrsquos leader Filippo TommasoMarinetti

Wewant an Italy that is sovereign and absolute The word lsquoItalyrsquo must prevail overthe word lsquofreedomrsquo

(Applause Ten minutes of pandemonium)

[A]ll necessary money brutality and blood for the vigorous practical completion ofthis Libyan exploit This completion is today the colonial Futurism of Italy I end withthe cry of lsquoLibya Foreverrsquo

(Shouts Cries of lsquoLibya Foreverrsquo Applause Indescribable confusion Arguments scuffles fist-icuffs punches slaps invasion by the carabinieri)50

Although Futurismrsquos momentum had peaked long before 1937 fascism had by thattime appropriated ndash and pastiched ndash many of Futurismrsquos most powerful tropes51

46 B Mussolini lsquoAddress to the National Corporative Councilrsquo (14 November 1933) in J T Schnapp (ed) APrimer of Italian Fascism (translated by JT Schnapp OESears andMG Stampino) (2000) 154 at 163

47 B Spackman lsquoFascist Purilityrsquo (2001) 13Qui Parle 13 at 2448 M Antliff lsquoFascism Modernism andModernityrsquo (2002) 84 The Art Bulletin 148 at 15049 FT Marinetti lsquoThe Founding and Manifesto of Futurismrsquo Le Figaro 20 February 1909 quoted in L Rainey

et al (eds and trans) Futurism An Anthology (2009) 2950 lsquoThe Battle of Florence ndash Great Futurist Serata at the Verdi Theatre December 12 1913 ndash A Condensed

(Physical and Spiritual) Report on the Battle ndash Marinettirsquos Speechrsquo Lacerba 15 December 1913 quoted in GBerghaus (ed) FT Marinetti CriticalWritings (translated by D Thompson) (2006) 175

51 TM Marinetti M Carli and E Settimelli lsquoArtistic Rights Championed by the Italian Futurists A Manifestoto the Fascist Governmentrsquo LrsquoImperoMarch 1923 quoted inG Prezzolini lsquoFascismand Futurismrsquo 3 July 1923in Rainey et al supra note 49 275 at 276


520 ROSE PARFITT

According to the Futurist artist Giuseppi Prezzolini for example lsquo[t]he cult of speedthe attraction to violent solutions the exaltation of exclusively national feelings all these are emotional attitudes that went from Futurism into Fascism withoutmissing a beatrsquo52

If oneof the Futurists had seen theArcodei Fileni (andperhaps someof themdid)the lsquopasseismrsquo of its decorative features and the lsquostatic grave oppressiversquo characterof its lsquopyramidalrsquo form and lsquohorizontal linesrsquo would certainly have filled them withrevulsion53 But the Litoraneamanifested everything that was beloved to FuturismIt slashed through a desert that had remained virtually unchanged since the fifthcentury BCE54 and which had until then been traversable only by camel under theguidance of a nomad that supposed living symbol of civilizational backwardness55

The road also decimated the journey time between Tripoli and Benghazi replacingthe painfully long voyage by fortnightly steamer56 accelerating the redeploymentof troops and bringing ever closer the exhilarating prospect of war ndash lsquothe worldrsquosonly hygienersquo according to the Futurist mantra57 Perhaps most importantly theLitoranearsquos high-speedpenetrationof theArch invokedprecisely the transformativecapacity for lsquointuitionrsquo that both Futurism and fascism valued so highly in theaggressive muscular male subjects of their common imagination

The importanceof intuition to thepolitical aestheticsof Futurismwasarticulatedmost explicitly by the painter and sculptor Umberto Boccioni Drawing heavily onthe philosophy of Henri Bergson and Georges Sorel Boccioni argued that it was thecapacity to intuit an objectrsquos potential for movement through time and space whichdistinguished the true (ie Futurist) artist58 For example in hisUnique Forms of Con-tinuity inSpace (1913) Boccioni sought toexpress a lsquofourthdimension inpaintingandsculpturersquo comprised of the three dimensions of volume together with an objectrsquoslsquopotential unfoldingrsquo in time as intuited by the artist59 The aesthetic gestureswhichexpressed this fusion of time and space into a lsquofourth dimensionrsquo aimed explicitly tolsquoawaken the beholderrsquos intuitive capacities and actively transform consciousnessrsquo60

lsquoIn contrast with other proponents of the fourth dimensionrsquo Antliff points out lsquoBoc-cioni assimilated this spatial concept into the Futuristsrsquo highly politicized campaignto renew Italyrsquo

52 Prezzolini supra note 51 at 27553 A SantrsquoElia lsquoFuturist Architecturersquo (11 July 1914) in Rainey et al supra note 49 98 at 198 SantrsquoEliarsquos target

was precisely the lsquoneoclassicalrsquo architectural style that the Arco dei Fileni exemplified As hismanifesto con-tinued for instance lsquo[t]henewbeautyof cement and iron isprofanedby the superimpositionof carnivalesquedecorative encrustations that are justified neither by structural necessity nor by our tastes encrustationsthat take their origins from Egyptian Byzantine or Indian antiquities or from that stupefying efflorescenceof idiocy and impotence that has taken the name of neo-classicismrsquo ibid at 201 (emphasis in the original)

54 Kenrick supra note 6 at 15555 Fuller supra note 33 at 356 Wright supra note 2 at 12257 Marinetti supra note 49 at 5158 U Boccioni Pittura e scultura Futuriste (Dinamismo plastico) [1914] (1997) See H Bergson The Creative Mind

An Introduction to Metaphysics [1934] (translated byML Andison) 1946) G Sorel Reflections on Violence [1908](J Jennings ed 2004)

59 Quoted in M Antliff lsquoThe Fourth Dimension and Futurism A Politicized Spacersquo (2000) 82 The Art Bulletin720 at 724

60 Ibid at 727



The Futurist correlation of the fourth dimension with a Bergsonian spatial-temporalflux made up of lsquoforce formsrsquo and lsquoforce linesrsquo unfettered by the limitations of three-dimensional space or measured lsquoclockrsquo time fused with a political program premisedon intuition and an antimaterialist call for national regeneration and imperialist ex-pansion61

Had any of the Futurists had the opportunity to zoom through the Arch alongLitoranea they would hardly have missed the transformative potential of thatexperience The roadrsquos sole purpose was after all to facilitate the acceleratedmove-ment of a mechanized object (ideally a tank) through both the space of the lsquounciv-ilizedrsquo desert and the multiple centuries referenced by the Arch From a Futuristperspective therefore the subject-passenger of such a vehicle could not fail to havebeen transfigured into one capable of intuiting ndash and hence participating in ndash fascistItalyrsquos expansionist project

Finally of course the Litoranea symbolized the domination and incorporation ofLibyandashacauseclose toFuturismrsquosheartMarinetti forexamplehadbeenprofoundlyimpressed by the cutting-edge military technologies he witnessed as a war reporterduring the Italo-Ottoman War In his La Battaglia di Tripoli he described CaptainCarlo Piazza historyrsquos first war pilot singing joyfullywhile spraying lsquorounds of leadinto the torrential sea of the enemyarmyrsquo62When in 1923Marinettiwrote anopenletter to the lsquoHead of the New Italyrsquo urging Mussolini to lsquounleash Italian youth in the conquest of an Italian Empirersquo he reproduced part of a 1911 manifesto inwhich he had congratulated the (then-liberal) Italian government onhaving lsquofinallybecome Futuristrsquo through its annexation of Libya lsquo[O]ur slim peninsularsquo he wrotelsquois swollen with creative genius and has the right to govern the worldrsquo63

The Litoranea then embodied precisely the accelerated expansionism andmur-derousattitudeto lsquotraditionrsquosobelovedofFuturismandsoinfluential forthepoliticalaesthetics of fascism As the avenue through which the agents of Italian authoritycrossed the colony at a mechanical velocity which ploughed straight through anyputative camel caravan the road was clearly designed ndash amongmore obvious func-tions ndash to encourage Libyarsquos native inhabitants to internalize the lsquotruthrsquo of theirsupposedly anachronistic way of life and of the futility of resisting their incorpora-tion both psychic and somatic into the fascist imperial order As Balbo declared in1938

[t]he image of the cabila or tribe wandering in the desert at the orders of its chiefaccording to the ancient traditions dating back to the great migrations and the bar-barian invasions will [soon] be nomore than a distant memory in [Italyrsquos] new Libyanprovinces64

61 Ibid at 72062 FT Marinetti La battaglia di Tripoli (26 Ottobre 1911) (1912) 45ndash6 (my translation) My sincere thanks to

Tomaso Ferrando for tracking down a copy of this text for me63 FTMarinetti M Carli and E Settimelli lsquoThe Italian Empire [to BenitoMussolini ndashHead of theNew Italy]rsquo in

L Rainey C Poggi and LWittman (eds) Futurism An Anthology (2009) 273 at 27464 I Balbo speech toVoltaCongress (4ndash8October1938) quoted inCGSegreFourthShoreThe ItalianColonization

of Libya (1974) 104


522 ROSE PARFITT

3 SPACEThe dual temporality of theArcoLitoranea simultaneously lsquoclassicalrsquo and lsquofuturistrsquowas complemented by a spatial rationale which linked together three of Italianfascist imperialismrsquosmostdistinctiveconcepts spaziovitale imperialismodemograficoand the idea of the quarta sponda which characterized the Libyan coast as Italyrsquoslsquofourth shorersquo In distinct but often overlapping ways all three ideas sought tooverlay the formal integration of coastal Libya into Italy in 1939 with a series ofsynthetic images and in thisway to embed the union between state and colony intothe affective reality of theMediterranean

While fascism may have realized this goal most completely the idea that Libyahad once been and should again be an integral part of Italy was born much earlierthan 1922 Soon after Italyrsquos lsquounificationrsquo in 1861 (late by European standards) aseries of widely disseminated sociological and criminological investigations intothe causes of the crippling lsquobackwardnessrsquo of the Mezzogiorno (the Italian South)were published Studies such as Alfredo Nicefororsquos LrsquoItaliana barbara contemporanea(lsquocontemporary Italian barbarismrsquo) attributed this backwardness not to underdevel-opmentor traditionalismbut rather to racial inferiority65 AsLuciaRepointsout thelsquoshocking parallels perceived by the criminality promiscuity degeneracy lazinesssuperstition and squalor of the South and what was thought to be dark barbaricunevolved Africarsquo came increasingly to be explained on the grounds that ItalianlsquoSoutherners were primitive or ldquodarkrdquo Mediterraneans ndash racially African andCamitic or Semiticrsquo while Northerners lsquowere Aryan or Germanic and Slavicrsquo66 Formany establishing an overseas empire represented the best if not the only solutionto the twin problems of Italyrsquos thwarted great power ambitions and haemorrhagingemigration problem ndash both closely related to the lsquoSouthern questionrsquo By the lastdecades of the nineteenth century however there was little of the worldrsquos surfaceleft to claim leading one senator to lament that lsquothe possibility of Italy being com-pletely barred from the Orient and imprisoned in the Mediterranean makes [one]think of an animal which enclosed in an iron circle kills itselfrsquo67 As the Ot-toman Empirersquos reputation as the lsquosick man of Europersquo solidified and its Europeancredentials began to crumble Tripolitania Cyrenaica and Fezzan just across lsquooursearsquo (according to the Roman trope ofmare nostrum) offered an obvious lsquosolutionrsquo inthe form of an imperial outlet for Italyrsquos lsquosurplus populationrsquo68 Half a century laterin 1932 the veteran Blackshirt Dino Grandi (Ambassador to the United Kingdomat the time) was articulating the same lament though in an updated form Italy anation lsquoconfined and held captive within a closed searsquo was being denied its rightfulspazio vitale69

65 A Niceforo LrsquoItalia barbara contemporanea Studi sullrsquoItalia del Mezzogiorno (1898)66 Re supra note 31 at 20ndash167 Senator Vitelleschi speech before the Chamber of Deputies (1885) quoted in Fuller supra note 33 at 4468 On the international legal history of the idea of lsquosurplus populationrsquo see A Orford lsquoSurplus Population and

the History of International Lawrsquo (Centre for Critical International Law Annual Lecture Kent Law School30 November 2017)

69 D Grandi lsquoSpeech before the Senatersquo (4 June 1932) quoted in MacCartney and Cremona supra note 5 at284ndash5



This narrative of an expansionist right stemming frommaterial necessity almostas old as the Italian state itself was reinforced after 1922 by fascismrsquos identificationas a proletarian project Yet this sensibility too had pre-fascist roots For examplein a famous speech delivered during the 1911ndash12 lsquoLibyan Warrsquo the poet EnricoPascoli depicted Italy as la grande Proletaria (lsquothe great Proletarianrsquo)70 This powerfulmaternal figure Pascoli declared had at last lsquofound a placersquo for the workers she wasbeing forced to send abroad lsquoa vast region bathed by our searsquo71 Pascoli claimedthat North Africarsquos Islamic conquerors had lsquoseizedrsquo these territories illegitimatelylsquoclos[ing] off without cultivating it land that is necessary andworkable for all mentaking bread foodstuffs clothes and homes from the greater collectiversquo ie Italylsquothe great martyr of nationsrsquo72 The conquest of lsquoLibyarsquo would Pascoli argued bedoubly transformative re-civilizing these formerly Roman territories while simul-taneously resolving Italyrsquos social fragmentation In the lsquolists of the glorious dead ofthe wounded rejoicing in their luminous woundsrsquo lsquothe entire geography of Italyrsquowas drawn73 Libya as lsquonaught but an extensionrsquo of Italy lsquoconnected by the familiarsea roadrsquo Pascoli declared invoking the legend of a lost Roman road once said tohave linked Sicily with Tripolitania74 In Libya Italians would be able to lsquofarm theirown property on the soil of the Motherlandrsquo where lsquo[t]he laws they voted for willsafeguard themrsquo In this way lsquoLibyarsquo was cast as an amputated limb whose legalre-attachment would bring about the unification of the lsquomotherlandrsquo

Under fascism this proletarian spatiality morphed into the policy of lsquodemo-graphic colonialismrsquo even if prior to 1931 when the Libyan resistance was finallycrushed this policymetwith limited success In 1938 however a decreewas issuedat Balborsquos insistence articulating a plan to settle no less than 20000 Italian colonists(the so-called ventimila) in Libya every year for five years75 With the initiation ofthis policy the fascist state took full control over the settlement of Libya for the firsttime76 The land that was allocated with much fanfare to the settler families whoarrived in Libyaunder its aegis had been appropriated under a series of laws that hadfirst been instated in Tripolitania under the governorship of Giuseppe Volpi (1921ndash25) This legislation provided for the transfer of all lsquouncultivatedrsquo land to the publicdomain and the confiscation of land held by lsquorebelsrsquo77 Just as Pascoli had hopedfrom the original appropriation of Libya Balbo saw in imperialismo demografico atool which could craft the Italian state into a homogenous whole ndash this time with astrongly corporatist character Even the design of the farmhouseswhich the settlersfoundwaiting for themwas called upon to reflect this objective lsquoldquoTraditionalrdquo in ap-pearancersquo with lsquoclear but non-local references to Italian vernacular[s]rsquo these houses

70 AM Baranello lsquoGiovanni Pascolirsquos ldquoLa grande proletaria si e mossardquo A Translation and Critical Introductionrsquo(2011) 2 California Italian Studies (2011) 5

71 Ibid at 872 Ibid at 1173 Ibid at 1074 Re supra note 31 at 24ndash575 Regio decreto-legge 17May 1938 n 701 See Segre supra note 64 at 10376 Ibid at 9477 Decreto governatoriale 18 July 1922 ser A n 660 Regio decreto 15 November 1923 n 3204 Decreto

governatoriale 11 April 1923 ser A n 320 See Segre supra note 64 at 49


524 ROSE PARFITT

were designed specifically to emphasize lsquo[the] settlers belonging to the Italiannationrather than to any one regionrsquo78

Despite themany continuities which in Libya connected the imperialism of the1930s with the imperialism of Italyrsquos liberal era however the insistence on the in-corporation of coastal Libyawas distinctively fascistWhere liberal administrationshad constructed Libya as Italyrsquos foil and Libyarsquos local population as uncivilized in-truders fascismrsquos aimwas to integrate Libya and Libyans into a unified Italian spaceordered on the basis of hierarchy rather than dialectical opposition The image ofLibya as Italyrsquos lsquofourth shorersquo ndash in addition to its three other Mediterranean (Tyrrhe-nian Adriatic and Ionian) coasts ndashwas central to this idea79 anchoring Italyrsquos lsquorightrsquoto spatial expansion not only in the limitations of a territory deemed too small forits vigorously expandingpopulationbut also in the specifichistory of the ocean intowhich the Italian peninsula thrust itself Reinforced by the architectural trope ofMediterraneita fascist Italyrsquos imperial vision was one in which its social deeply frag-mented core territory and scattered imperial possessions could be transformed intoa single body This was an altogether different spatial rationale from that which laybehind the classic lsquosalt waterrsquo model associated with liberal imperialism in whichtitle to territory was claimed on the basis of an insurmountable otherness

Figure 3 Italian artillery in Tripoli during the Italo-OttomanWar 1911ndash12 Photo Bain NewsService courtesy of the United States Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

78 Fuller supra note 33 at 19579 Segre supra note 64 at xvi The image of Italy as lsquo[l]a grande Patria dalle quattro spondersquo came as so often from

DrsquoAnnunzio See lsquoLa canzone dei trofeirsquo (1911) reprinted inA Andreoli andN Lorenzini (eds) supra note 31at 676ndash7



Under Balborsquos governorship this incorporative logic reached a new extreme withthe decision to integrate Tripolitania and Cyrenaica fully into metropolitan Italywhile at the same time enhancing the legal protections given (in theory) to localcustoms80 At Balborsquos behest a decree of 9 January 1939 ndash the lsquocrowning piecersquo oflegislationintheplantocreateaquartaspondandashtransformedcoastalLibya intoItalyrsquos19th region81 This territorially integrationist move was accompanied by a parallelseries of measures aimed at achieving greater social integration between settlersand lsquonativesrsquo As the first families of the ventimila set sail on 28 October 1938 (thesixteenth anniversary of the March on Rome) they were left in no doubt as to theirposition at the vanguard of fascismrsquosmission to give lsquoproletarian Italyrsquo an lsquooutlet forits exuberant lifersquo82 Their role in concretizing the juridical integration of LibyawithItalywascapturedbythepoetAdrianoGrande lsquoNoonecriesanymorersquoGrandewrotebecause lsquo[t]heseaisoursWecross itas if itwereapiazzaAndwherewelandWestillfindItalyrsquo83 Uponarrival thesettlers foundeverythingwaitingfor them frommodelvillages to seeds and farming equipment The process of settlementwas overseen bya series of colonization companies in many cases the very same institutions (suchas the National Fascist Institute for Social Security) involved in the reclamation ofItalyrsquos own swamps and other peripheral areas This only underscored once againthe legal institutional and spatial relationship between Italyrsquos apparently endlessdouble-project of self-colonization through colonial conquest84

The local population of Libya was not excluded from this process of hierarchicalsocial (in)corporatization On the contrary the initiation of lsquointensive demographiccolonialismrsquo coincided with the start of a new phase in their relationship withItaly symbolized by Mussolinirsquos decision to style himself lsquoprotector of Islamrsquo85 Theinauguration of this new image was in fact the primary purpose of Mussolinirsquossecond trip to Libya in 1937 This visit reached its climax in a ceremony heldon 18 March two days after the unveiling of the Arco and Litoranea Urging thecrowd to pass on his words lsquothrough your towns and villages right into the tentsof the nomadsrsquo Mussolini proclaimed fascist Italyrsquos wish lsquoto demonstrate sympathytowards Muslims theworld overrsquo lsquoSoonwith its lawsrsquo declared lsquoRomewill showhow anxious it is for your future welfarersquo86 Mussolinirsquos strategy here accordingto the historian John Wright was to offer supposedly lsquodefenseless Muslims a trueldquoRomanrdquo (and thus universal) champion against the pusillanimous colonialism ofthe two leading Western democraciesrsquo Britain and France87 Accordingly a newdecree was passed extending the privileges that had previously been reserved for

80 McLaren supra note 40 at 16881 Segre supra note 64 at 105 201 n 1582 A Lessona Minister for Italian Africa speech (19 May 1937) quoted in CG Segre lsquoItalo Balbo and the

Colonization of Libyarsquo (1972) 7 Journal of Contemporary History 141 See Segre supra note 64 at 10783 Quoted in Segre supra note 64 at 109 See A Grande Poesie in Africa (1938)84 Ibid 89ndash9085 Wright supra note 2 at 12586 Quoted in ibid87 Ibid


526 ROSE PARFITT

settlers to lsquonativesrsquo who became eligible to apply for government subsidies to fundagricultural reclamation and development projects88

These changes to the property law in colonial Libya were mirrored by altera-tions made to the various forms of legal personality that were available to lsquonativersquoLibyans Under Balborsquos governorship a new system of lsquoparallelrsquo cultural develop-ment was instituted which maintained pre-existing legal protections with respectto language customs and religion but replaced protections for lsquotribalrsquo structureswith lsquoeconomic and political institutions similar to those of Italian nationalsrsquo89

The similar-yet-different status of the Italianimussulmani comparedwith the settlers(Italiani metropolitani) soon came to be legible in themost concrete elements of dailyexistence The lsquocentresrsquo that were built for lsquoresettledrsquo Libyan farmers for example(many of them by di Fausto)90 presented lsquopostcard-perfect images of North AfricaSettlementsrsquo with their lsquoarcades and minaretsrsquo Yet in doing so as Fuller points outthey also reduced these features to their lsquoessential signifiersrsquowhichpresentedLibyarsquosArab and Berber population with a series of lsquoartificial renderings of the very socialconfiguration [the] Italians had uprootedrsquo91 Then in 1939 a new law brought intobeing three classes of Italian citizen in Libya Until that time full Italian citizenshiphad been available upon application to all of Libyarsquos inhabitants Now they weredivided into cittadini metropolitani (a status available only to Italians) cittadini italianilibici (the default citizenship for lsquonativesrsquo) and cittadini italiani speciali This last lsquospe-cialrsquo status aimed at fulfilling another ofMussolinirsquos 1937 pledges to reward Libyanveteranswhohad been drafted in to fight in the Ethiopianwar and other loyalists92

in the interests of creating lsquoan elite leadership sympathetic to the Italiansrsquo93 Alongwith other measures (such as the broadcasting of Arabic programmes stressing thelsquobenefits of ldquoRomanrdquo justicersquo onRadioBari) the fascist administration sought to bringinto being lsquothe docile cooperation and goodwill of its Muslim subjectsrsquo who wouldoccupy a secure but peripheral position within the fascist body corporate lsquoas work-ers in the more menial tasks of empire-building as clerks and minor civil servantsin the colonial administration and as soldiers in the increasingly likely event ofanotherworldwarrsquo94 With the partitioning of vast tracts of land previously used forgrazing lsquoshifting cultivationrsquo suani (oasis gardens) and genanat (dry farms) Libyarsquosnew Indigenous leaseholders were required by law to transform themselves fromnomadic subsistence pastoralists (in the main) into settled and integrated ownersand exchangers of private property The devastating effects on the delicately bal-anced pre-1911 subsistence system and social order supplemented those of fascismrsquosbrutal final push for dominance in Libya completed six years earlier with the useof tactics from public hangings to starvation to appalling concentration camps95

88 RD 3 April 1937 n 896 See Segre supra note 64 at 10589 Ibid at 10490 Fuller supra note 33 at 19391 Ibid at 191ndash392 Segre supra note 64 at 210 n 1193 Ibid94 Wright supra note 2 at 125ndash695 Segre supranote64 at 144ndash7 SeegenerallyAhmida supranote3Onthe resistancemovement inTripolitania

see A Del BocaMohamed Fekini and the Fight to Free Libya (2011)



According to some estimates barely 50 per cent of Cyrenaicarsquos pre-1922 Bedouinpopulation remained alive by the time of Mussolinirsquos offer of lsquoprotectionrsquo96

What connection then did these changes havewith the nexus between theArcoand theLitoraneaAccording to thehistorianCaudioSegre lsquo[t]he constructionof theLitoranea Libicawas the physical counterpart of [the] administrative unityrsquo broughtabout by coastal Libyarsquos rhetorical and legal transformation into Italyrsquos lsquofourthshorersquo97 Viewed against the background of these legal changes the ArcoLitoraneaoffered a joint symbol of the distinctive integrated-yet-segregated spatial logic ofsocial life in fascist Libya Roaring through the Arch a passenger in the late 1930swould have seen an inscription and a carved panel on either side of her flash past ndashonecelebratingthecompletionoftheroad theotherthefoundingofthe lsquoNewRomanEmpirersquo (see Figure 2) The first panel showed lsquothe land surveyors with their pithhelmets and their drawings in the foregroundrsquo in the background lsquoArab workmenwith sledge-hammers stone-crushing machinery and the mineral-railway trucksrsquoBehind them was lsquoa camel-train bringing water in barrelsrsquo The foreground of thepanel opposite meanwhile was lsquooccupied by the Duce at the head of his troopssaluting the Re Imperatore (Vittorio Emanuele III)rsquo Behind the King were lsquothe Hillsof Rome with their monumentsrsquo and above them lsquoa farmer ploughing the landrsquo98

The passengerwould have been confronted in otherwords with a fleeting imagein which agriculture and industry metropole and colony Arab labourer and Italianfarmer had been first constituted and then assembled as the integrated parts ofa single socio-territorial machine Had that passenger been the father of a settlerfamily the journey through theArch (perhaps in a tractor)would havemirrored thespatial and legal changes that had just transformed him ndash almost overnight ndash froman impoverished sharecropper into a landowning farmer of the kind depicted onthe carved panels at his flank Indeed as one enthusiastic visitor from themainlanddescribed this territorial and social metamorphosis the lsquoreclamationrsquo of Libya hadshifted Italian braccianti (day-labourers) up to the status of contadini (peasants)leaving the position of braccianti vacant for native Libyans to occupy themselvesObservingthesettlersrsquoadoptionoflocalstylesofdressandmultipledialects lsquoblendinginto a local patoisrsquo garnished with Arabic words and customs it could at last besaid he continued that Italians had formed themselves into a lsquonew racersquo ndash at oncelsquoMussolinirsquos race [a] fascist race [a] colonial racersquo99 Had the passenger in questionbeen a soldier trundling through in an armoured vehicle or a tourist speedingthrough in a motorcar they would have certainly felt dwarfed by the sheer scale ofthe Arch and at the same time exhilarated at the speed at which it disappeared asthey sped away along the smooth new asphalt The message ndash that of the absolutesuperiority of the collective over the individual ndash was clear

96 Ilan Pappe TheModernMiddle East (2005) 2897 Segre supra note 64 at 8898 Kenrick supra note 6 at 15699 GP Callegari I villaggi libici (1941) 32ndash6 quoted in Fuller supra note 33 at 184


528 ROSE PARFITT

4 SUBJECTIVITY

The first two sections of this article have unpacked some of the ways in whichfascist legality was expressed in and reflected back from the physicality of colonialLibya and specifically from the intersection between the Arch and the road Wehave seen how the passage through the Arch was like so much of fascist lifea carefully staged experience designed to reinforce the juridical changes thoughwhichtheMussolini regimewas thenattemptingtocreateanewsetofhierarchicallyordered synthetic legal subjectivities for Libya Italy and the world at large On thesurface then fascismrsquos peculiarly monist approach to law (international colonialanddomestic) couldnotbemoredistinct fromdoctrinal international legal thinkingtoday grounded as the latter is in a formally equal notion of subjectivity operatingthrough a set of separate but equivalent scales (lsquosovereignrsquo states lsquoself-determiningrsquopeoples individual bearers of lsquouniversal human rightsrsquo and so on)100 If this is thecase we might ask whether fascismrsquos experiments have anything at all to tell usabout the relationship between doctrinal international law today and the kind ofviolence which Libya has been forced to experience on its path away from fascistcolonialism towards lsquosovereign statehoodrsquo

I will use this section to suggest that for all its pomposity and viciousnessfascismrsquos officials lawyers and philosophers accepted a truth about the conceptof self-determining subjectivity or lsquosovereigntyrsquo its material effects and logic ndasha logic which present-day doctrinal international law denies Like the architectsof Libia Italianarsquos villages monuments and roads the engineers of fascismrsquos pe-culiar corporatist-monist approach to domestic colonial and international lawunderstood that the connection between individual and international (legal) sub-jectivity was not merely lsquoanalogousrsquo (as the doctrine of international law assumeswith its image of the state as the individual lsquowrit largersquo)101 but rather enforceableinterpellative and constitutive In short my suggestion is that the act of thinkingabout and treating the state as a macro version of the lsquofreersquo and lsquoequalrsquo individual(the lsquodomestic analogyrsquo whether in its fascist or liberal form) has predictable anddeleterious effects on the distribution ofwealth power and pleasure ndash effectswhichfascism (and fascist international law) accepted and celebrated but which liberal-ism (and liberalpresent-day doctrinal international law) continues to reject if notconsciously to obscure

The crucial correspondence here concerns fascismrsquos notorious state fetishism ndasha fetishism which international law shares wholeheartedly if rather less stridentlyIn its doctrinal international legal form this fetish is formally and very strictly egal-itarian Thus while other lesser lsquointernational personalitiesrsquo may exist only statescan be lsquofullrsquo subjects of international law possessed of the complete set of lsquosovereignrsquorights and duties (including law-making powers) which cannot be lsquorestrictedrsquo inthe absence of explicit consent except in very exceptional circumstances (with the

100 See for an obvious example UN Charter supra note 17 Preamble101 See E de Vattel Le droit des gens ou Principes de la loi naturelle appliques a la conduite aux affaires des Nations et

des souverains [1758] (1916) 2 para 4 C BotticiMen and States Rethinking the Domestic Analogy in a Global Age(2009) M Koskenniemi From Apology to Utopia The Structure of International Legal Argument (2006) 71ndash157



recent emergence of so-called jus cogens norms)102 By contrast inter-war fascismattributed to the state a quasi-mystical capacity to surpass the temporal and spatiallimits of individual existence by condensing the subjectivities of all lsquomenrsquo into onendash or rather a hierarchy of lsquoonesrsquo each of themnation-stateswithmaterial capacitiesand therefore different sets of rights

According to Mussolini for instance ndash in a widely read exposition published inthe January 1935 edition of International Conciliation the journal of the CarnegieEndowment for International Peace ndash the state was not a lsquomere mechanical devicefor defining the spherewithinwhich the individualmay duly exercise his supposedrightsrsquo as assumed by the liberal understanding of the lsquorule of lawrsquo but lsquoan inwardlyaccepted standardrsquo the lsquosoul of the soulrsquo103 It was the state he insisted whichallowed lsquomanrsquo to lsquo[transcend] the brief limits of individual lifersquo by sublimating lsquohisrsquosubjectivity in its collective eternal lsquopersonalityrsquo104 Deploying a favourite Futuristtrope Mussolini described this lsquospiritualizedrsquo capacity as an lsquointuitionrsquo105 throughwhich the state was able to connect the lsquoliving reality of the presentrsquo together withlsquothe past and above all with the futurersquo and in this way to lead lsquomen from primitivetribal life to that highest expression of human power which is Empirersquo106 As inBoccionirsquos celebration of Futurist intuition fascist theory took for granted that thetemporal and spatial dynamic of international lsquopersonalityrsquo was one of inexorableexpansion ndash an expansion indeed that fascist Italy soon set about realizing throughits annexation of the Ethiopian Empire (1936) Albania (1939) parts of Yugoslavia(1941) and elsewhere Woven through this fascist conception of the citizen stateempire and even lsquofamily of nationsrsquo was a corporatist understanding of liberty orself-determination the integration of the individual into the lsquostate hierarchyrsquo wassaid to enhance rather than to diminish lsquo[h]is freedom to actrsquo which lsquono longerrestricted to the sphere of private interestsrsquo could lsquonowassert itselfwithin the entiresocial systemrsquo107

Transposing this theory of individual subjectivity to the international realmfascist jurists and diplomats embarked on the project of re-organizing the globalorder along hierarchical lines just as Italian society was being re-organized domest-ically108 Prior to its withdrawal from the League of Nations in 1937 for instanceItaly repeatedly denounced the lsquoabsurdityrsquo of the lsquoprinciple of absolute juridical par-ity among all Statesrsquo as codified in the Covenant109 on the grounds that states werelsquodifferentiated by their historical responsibilitiesrsquo110 Only if the League werelsquoproperly directed by amaster handrsquowould it lsquorise from its present impotence to give

102 For the classic exposition see eg SS Lotus Case (France v Turkey) PCIJ Rep Series A No 10 at 18103 B Mussolini lsquoThe Political and Social Doctrine of Fascismrsquo (1935) 16 International Conciliation 5 at 13ndash14104 Ibid at 21ndash2105 B Mussolini Fascism Doctrine and Institutions (1935) 7106 Mussolini supra note 103 at 10ndash11 21ndash2107 U Spirito lsquoCorporativismo as Absolute Liberalism and Absolute Socialismrsquo (1932) in Schnapp et al supra

note 46 154 at 163108 Ibid at 154109 1919Covenantof theLeagueofNations 27LNTS350Art 10However seeRParfittTheProcess of International

Legal Reproduction Inequality Historiography Resistance (2018)110 B Mussolini speech (1 November 1936) quoted inMacCartney and Cremona supra note 5 at 247


530 ROSE PARFITT

decisiveness and prestige to itself and tranquillity to the international systemrsquo111

Having failed in its efforts to lsquoreformrsquo the League (which it abandoned in 1937 in thewake of the Abyssinian Crisis) Italy attempted to bring this new hierarchical worldorder intobeing incollaborationfirstwithNaziGermany in the1939 lsquoPactof Steelrsquo112

and thenwithbothGermany and Imperial Japan in the lsquoTripartite Pactrsquo of 1940 (laterjoined by Hungary Romania Slovakia Bulgaria Croatia and nearly also by Thail-and)113 The objectives of these states in concluding these treatieswas explicitly thatof lsquostriv[ing] with united effort for the securing of their spazio vitaleLebensraum andthemaintenance of peacersquo114 and of establishing in thisway a lsquoneworderrsquo in Europeled by Italy and Germany and another in Asia led by Japan115 This project wasof course eventually terminated upon the victory of the lsquounited nationsrsquo in 1945(although it should be recalled that this victory was secured not only by enormousWestern Europeanmilitary sacrifices and American capital but also by the giganticscale of the resources deployed by the Soviet Union then firmly in the grip of JosefStalin by the carpet-bombing of German cities by Allied forces and by the worldrsquosfirst and only use of nuclear weapons against Japan) However when observed fromthe perspective of those communities which found themselves in fascist occupiedandor collaborationist Africa Europe Asia and the Pacific between 1922 and 1945(from the perspective of lsquonativersquo Libyans for example) it would be difficult to writethat lsquonew orderrsquo off as a complete failure

Once again however it is important to keep in mind that this fascist interna-tionalist dream did not come fromnowhere The idea that territorial expansionwasthe necessary corollary of truly lsquosovereignrsquo statehood for instance had long been afamiliar aspect of the logic of liberal diplomatic relations before fascism arrived onthe scene (as we have already seen in the Italian context) For instance when theBritish imperialist entrepreneur and statesman Cecil Rhodes declared in 1895 that

inorder to save the fortymillion inhabitants of theUnitedKingdomfromabloodycivilwarwe colonial statesmenmust acquire new lands for settling the surplus populationto provide newmarkets for the goods produced in factories andmines116

he only articulated for Britain something thatwas obvious to all of Europersquos imper-ial lsquosovereign equalsrsquo117 The legitimizing rationale of fascist expansionism was inother words identical to that of European imperialism but for one thing fascismrsquoswillingness to annex lsquosovereignrsquo European territory (as well as less-than-sovereignextra-European territory) in order to obtain the resources deemed lsquovitalrsquo to its con-tinued existence With this willingness fascism manifested its contempt not onlyfor the axiom of sovereign equality but also for the international lawrsquos lsquounrealisticrsquo

111 B Mussolini Sunday Dispatch 31 December 1933 quoted inMacCartney and Cremona ibid at 245112 1939 Pact of Friendship and Alliance between Germany and Italy Berlin 22May 1939 (lsquoPact of Steelrsquo)113 1940 Three-Power Pact between Germany Italy and Japan Berlin 27 September 1940 (lsquoTripartite Pactrsquo)114 Pact of Steel supra note 112 Preamble115 Tripartite Pact supra note 113 Arts 1 and 2116 Quoted in VI Lenin lsquoImperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalismrsquo in HM Christman (ed) EssentialWorks

of Lenin ldquoWhat Is to Be Donerdquo and OtherWritings (1987) 229117 See generally S Pedersen The Guardians The League of Nations and the Crisis of Europe (2015)



Europhilism118 It also shattered the white supremacism which underpinned theEuropean colonial project into a far more complex but equally brutal hierarchy ofracial supremacy according not only Africans Arabs and Indigenous peoples butalso European Jews Slavs Roma and others could legitimately be subordinated andif necessary liquidated119

Figure 4 Villagio Cesare Battisti Tripolitania designed by Florestano di Fausto 1 January 1934SourceWikicommons

Today by contrast and as noted at the start colonialism is considered wholly il-legitimate as a matter of international law120 The arrival of the customary rightof peoples to self-determination in the late-twentieth century meant that satiatingthe lsquovital needsrsquo of a statersquos increasingly numerous or wealthy population bymeansof territorial expansion (more commonly referred to today in terms of a healthilyexpanding lsquodomestic marketrsquo) was no longer a legitimate option (whether beyondor within Europe) However the same does not apply when it comes to the statersquosright to capture resources other than land for the same purpose The idea that anavailable lsquosupplyrsquo of lsquonatural resourcesrsquo coupledwith the lsquodemandrsquo associatedwith anational populationrsquos burgeoningwants andneeds constitutes an enforceable lsquorightrsquoto expansion into lsquoemerging marketsrsquo to which almost any form of opposition (inthe form say of tariffs or quotas) is prohibited constitutes the bedrock assumption

118 See N Berman lsquoBeyond Colonialism and Nationalism Ethiopia Czechoslovakia and ldquoPeaceful Changerdquorsquo(1996) 65Nordic Journal of International Law 421

119 See eg DWoodley Fascism and Political Theory Critical Perspectives on fascist Ideology (2010) 187ndash210120 See supra note 18


532 ROSE PARFITT

of the contemporary international trade and investment regime That regimersquos insti-tutions have been endowed with effective channels for countering such resistancein the form of state-state and investor-state disputemechanisms for example in theWorld Trade Organization North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement and Comprehens-ive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP11)121 Only themost powerful states ndash those with the biggest lsquomarketsrsquo and the largest reservoirs ofresources ndash can get away with resisting some of the rules they so rigorously enforceamongst their peers122

Approached from a twenty-first century doctrinal starting point the inexorablyexpansionist logic (from colonialism to neo-colonialism) of international lawrsquos coresubject the self-determining or sovereign state is difficult to see According to thetreaties custom and case law that regulate the coming-into-being and lsquointercoursersquoof states under international law it is simply a fact of life in the lsquointernationalcommunityrsquo that some communities happen to be sovereign states possessed ofan lsquoexternalrsquo right to self-determination while others just happen to exist withinthose states protected by the lsquointernalrsquo equivalent of that right123 With these rightsin place borders can be assumed to remain lsquodefinedrsquo populations lsquopermanentrsquo andstates lsquopeace-lovingrsquo at heart124 In practice however the pattern according towhichrights of lsquoexternalrsquo and lsquointernalrsquo self-determination have come to be distributedamong the worldrsquos communities and territories is neither random nor neutralInstead (as Marxist lsquoThird Worldrsquo Indigenous queer and feminist legal scholarscontinue to argue) this pattern has been determined over the course of five centur-ies by the accumulation and distribution of resources ndash most obviously lsquonaturalrsquoeconomic financial and technical resources but also and just as importantlymanyother forms of epistemological capital (as wemight call it) deriving from the racistgendered heteronormative and other discriminatory structures which continue toorder our everyday lives125

What a chronotopic investigation into fascist material practices of colonialismand international law contributes to this critique is a slight change in focus fromthe origins of inequality to its mechanisms of perpetuation In a world in whichthe only subjective relationship with any normative value is that between theindividual and the state (conceived as a macro individual) there is after all onlyone way to overcome the physical limit which death ndash mortality ndash places on lsquotruersquoself-determination This is of course through the establishment of a lsquobloodlinersquoprocreation the founding of a family then a tribe then a lsquonationrsquo and ultimatelythe formation of a nation-state This means of course that the extension of self-determining subjectivity in time must go hand in hand with the expansion ofself-determining subjectivity in space as generations multiply and begin to findthemselves in competition for resources This trajectory with its lsquosurvival of the

121 See generally D Deese (ed)Handbook of the International Political Economy of Trade (2014)122 See eg lsquoDonald Trump Says He Wonrsquot Back Down on Plan to Impose Steel Aluminium Tariffs despite

Republican protestsrsquoABCNews 6 March 2018123 See eg Reference re Secession of Quebec [1998] 2 SCR 217 para 138124 UN Charter supra note 17 Art 4(1)125 See generally Eslava supra note 25



fittestrsquo logic was axiomatic for Mussolini Boccioni Rhodes for inter-war Futuristsand fascists and pre-war imperialists generally as we have seen

Butwhich view is correct Is the lsquointernational communityrsquo a stable global patch-work quilt of sovereign equals comfortably producing and exchanging resourceswith one another in order to provide for the material needs of their lsquofixedrsquo pop-ulations126 Or is contemporary international legal order better characterized as avast accumulationof annexations colonizations peace treaties andboundary agree-ments whose unspoken violence and suppressed tensions are inexplicably absentfrom the doctrine to which international lawyers direct themselves when workingout questions of jurisdiction sovereignty and responsibility127

To respond to this question let me return one last time to this articlersquos com-parison between the physical dimensions and repercussions of point 30deg31prime00primeprimeN18deg34prime00primeprimeE in 1937 (the ArcoLitoranea nexus) and its physical dimensions andtheir repercussions in the years since 2011 (the disputed Rarsquos Lanuf refinery and itssurroundings) If we assume that Libya is indeed the sovereign equal of every otherstate in the international community (including those which regularly continue tocarry out air strikes within its territory) then the chronotopes of this point at thesetwo moments eight decades apart do seem to be very different from one anotherAs I argued in Section 1 the temporality of fascist legality was a double temporalitysimultaneously circling back to the purported universalism of classical antiquity(symbolized by the arch-ness and kitschy eclecticismof theArco) and dragging lsquoana-chronousrsquo aspects the lsquonowrsquoof the late-1930s intoaviolentlyaccelerating future (theepitomeofwhichwas the technical spectacle of the Litoranea itself) By contrast thetemporality of international legality today is typically narrated in the doctrine ofinternational law as singular linear and progressive as a long chain of lsquobreaksrsquo andlsquorenewalsrsquo in which the past is continually being left behind in order to validate thepresent128 In spatial termsmeanwhile as I outlined in Section 2 the legal thinkingand practice of fascist Italy was concerned with the incorporation of those peoplesit had drawn within Italian jurisdiction into an integrated macro-micro hierarchyof subjects domestic colonial and international ndash a story retold in the extendedroute of the Litoranea and in theArcorsquos decorations By contrast I suggested that thespatiality of orthodox international thinking today operates in theory on the basisof independent formal equality ndash even when in Libyarsquos case a full-scale militaryintervention only tenuously consensual is in the process of being authorized andexecuted129

Fascist subjects were meanwhile (as we saw) differentiated in terms of theirrights andduties on the basis of assumptions about their physical andpsychologicalattributes corresponding to the particular degree of deference expected of themtowards fascismrsquos corporatist legal order In colonial Libya for example (as the

126 1933Montevideo Convention of the Rights and Duties of States Art 1127 See eg ibid Montevideo Convention Art 3 and for a detailed doctrinal analysis J Crawford The Creation

of States in International Law (2004)128 N Berman lsquoIn theWake of Empirersquo (1999) 14American University International Law Review 1521129 Res 1973 supranote8 Preamble See also egMontevideoConvention supranote127Arts 3ndash5UNCharter

supra note 17 Arts 1(2) 2(1)


534 ROSE PARFITT

Archrsquos reliefs illustrated) the bottom rungs of the socio-legal ladder were occupiedby dominated colonial subjects the middle rungs by obedient settlers (farmingfamilies andworkers)while the top rungswere inhabited bymen likeGrandi Balboand of course Mussolini the leader of the all the Blackshirts It was upon theirsupposedly virile aggressive disciplined-yet-audacious subjectivity that the idealof the ultra-fascist lsquonew manrsquo was modelled just as it was in the lsquomacrorsquo version ofthis lsquopersonalityrsquo imagined as being embodied in the super-sovereign fascist stateitself In its most potent manifestations then the leading subjects of the fascistlegal imagination were unashamedly violent hierarchical and expansionist130 Bycontrast international lawrsquos subjectsmicro andmacro are all in theory equally freepacific and orderly131

Whichof these twovisionsof subjectivity correspondsmost closely to thatwhichpoint 30deg31prime00primeprimeN 18deg34prime00primeprimeE (2011 ff) calls into being and reflects back We canthink through this question chronotopically once again Spatially this lsquolocationrsquo istodaylargelyoff limits toallbut thealliesofcertainmilitias security forcesorarmiesMany of these are implacably hostile either to the international communityrsquos plansforLibyarsquos future(aswithHaftarrsquosLibyanNationalArmy)or indeed(aswithIS) tothelsquodazzling and deceptive slogansrsquo they attribute to international law per se132 As theimages broadcast back from this point by bullet-proofed war photographers reveal(seeFigure 5) thecontrastbetweenthestate-of-theartoil refinery(constructedinandthroughamultitudeof international contracts between theLibyan state andvariousmultinational companies) and its devastated surroundings is indeed nothing shortof dazzling133 Conduct an image search for lsquoRarsquos Lanufrsquo andone can see the refineryrsquosnarrow concrete chimneys swathed in pale-green rigging shimmering in the heata mile or so back from the remains of the Litoranea surrounded by a skid-markeddesert strewn with rubbish and shrapnel This juxtaposition it might be arguedoffers a graphic illustration of the mismatch between international lawrsquos doctrinalexpectations about Libyarsquos subjectivity as a lsquosovereign statersquo recently liberated fromauthoritarianism on the one hand and the material reality of Libyarsquos century-longlsquotransitionrsquo towards lsquosovereign equalityrsquo on the other

We might continue here by noting that just as fascist Italy set out legally toincorporate coastal Libya into the lsquomotherlandrsquo as Italyrsquos lsquofourth shorersquo so the aim

130 See RS Parfitt lsquoThe Anti-Neutral Suit International Legal Futurists 1914-2017rsquo (2017) 5 London Review ofInternational Law 87

131 UN Charter supra note 17 Art 1(2)132 Amirul-Mursquominin Abu Bakr al-Husayni al-Qurashi al-Baghdadi lsquoA Message to the Mujahidin and

the Muslim Ummah in the Month of Ramadanrsquo Al Hayat Media Centre 1 July 2014 reprin-ted in lsquoIslamic State Leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi Encourages Emigration Worldwide ActionrsquoSITE Intelligence Group 1 July 2014 available at newssiteintelgroupcomJihadist-Newsislamic-state-leader-abu-bakr-al-baghdadi-encourages-emigration-worldwide-actionhtml (accessed 30May 2018)

133 The operating contracts for the Rarsquos Lanuf and neighbouring Es Sider facilities are held by Libyarsquos state-run National Oil Corporation (NOC) in partnership with a host of multinationals including Trasta Energybased in the United Arab Emirates the French company Total Norwayrsquos Saga Petroleum and a US con-sortium consisting of Marathon Oil Hess and ConocoPhilips (V Walt lsquoBig Oil Companies in the CrossFire as Libyan Violence Eruptsrsquo Fortune 5 March 2015 lsquoCompany Profile Mabruk Oil Operationsrsquo avail-able at wwwmabrukoilcompage_id=4 (accessed 22 April 2018)) Its storage tanks were built by theSwiss firm Vitol (Vitol lsquoNOC and Vitol to Build Storage Tanks in Libyarsquo Vitol 11 June 2008 available atwwwvitolcomnoc-and-vitol-to-build-storage-tanks-in-libya (accessed 22 April 2018)



of OperationUnified Protector (2011) was explicitly that of lsquointegrat[ing] Libya fullyinto the twenty-first-century world economy in transparent ways where Libyarsquos oilwealth is used for the benefit of all of Libyarsquos citizensrsquo by a different mechanismthat of lsquoprivatising some of [its] state monopoliesrsquo134 Underpinning the legitimacyof this twenty-first century incorporative project was the presumed (or one mightsay lsquointuitedrsquo) desire of the Libyan people to participate as equals in the globaleconomy (routinely depicted as the primary aimof theArab Spring uprising of 2011in general)135 To be a lsquofreersquo and lsquoequalrsquo individual within a lsquosovereignrsquo state was theuniversal lsquobirthrightof everymanwomanandchildrsquo asUSSecretaryof StateHillaryClinton asserted in March 2011 when making the case for military interventionbefore the UN Human Rights Council136 Released from Qaddafirsquos peculiar anddeeply authoritarian form of rule (described in The New York Times as lsquoa mixture ofutopian socialism Arab nationalism [and] Third World revolutionary ideology with a streak of Bedouin supremacismrsquo)137 Libya was expected in 2011 to risefrom the flames fully equipped with lsquodemocratic processes and institutions goodgovernance rule of law national reconciliation and respect for human rights andfundamental freedomsrsquo138 When we look at photographs of Rarsquos Lanuf today it isthis vision of the lsquofreersquo and lsquoequalrsquo Libyan citizenwhich the looming presence of RarsquosLanuf refinery (and its anxious but invisible international investors) demands139

Howeveras thebleaklandscapethatsurroundstherefineryrsquosburned-outcolumnsand abandonedwarehouses shows that demand continues to echo across the desertwithout a reply ndash or at least without the reply which it was expecting Libya andLibyans have not it seems taken up the opportunity that was offered to them bythe lsquointernational communityrsquo Far from lining up at the door of the refinery to offertheir labour lsquofreelyrsquo to the global economy many of them have been compelled toeither join one of the militias or flee from them to Europe or elsewhere This wasnot however part of the plan State populations after all are meant to be lsquosettledrsquoHaving been reconstituted as the subjects of a lsquorealrsquo ndash market ndash democracy thatis supposed to (as Clinton explained) lsquodeliver results for [its] citizensrsquo140 Libyansare expected to look to their own elected representatives to provide them with alsquolevel playing fieldrsquo uponwhich to compete on formally equal terms for theworldrsquosresources (including their own) Having been liberated not only from fascism andcolonialism but now also from socialism Libyan citizens are naturally prohibitedfrom competing on someone elsersquos pitch So too are the millions of other citizens

134 Senior State Department official speaking at a press briefing in advance of US Secretary of State HillaryClintonrsquos visit to Libya E Labott lsquoClinton makes Unannounced Visit to Libyarsquo CNNcom 18 October 2011available at wwwcnncom20111018worldafricalibya-clintonindexhtml (accessed 9May 2018)

135 See A Hanieh Lineages of Revolt Issue of Contemporary Capitalism in the Middle East (2013)eg A Hanieh lsquoEgyptrsquos ldquoOrderly Transitionrdquo International Aid and the Rush to Struc-tural Adjustmentrsquo Jadaliyya 29 May 2011 available at wwwjadaliyyacomDetails24041Egypt60s-lsquoOrderly-Transitionrsquo-International-Aid-and-the-Rush-to-Structural-Adjustment (accessed 22April 2018)

136 H Clinton Address to the UNHuman Rights Council 3 March 2011137 M Bazi lsquoWhat did Qaddafirsquos Green Book Really SayrsquoNew York Times 27 May 2011138 Clinton supra note 136139 See eg International Monetary Fund Libya Staff Report for the 2013 Article IV Consultation (2 May 2013) 1140 Clinton supra note 136


536 ROSE PARFITT

who are fleeing through Libya from poverty and violence in Syria Iraq BangladeshCote drsquoIvoire and elsewhere141

These so-called lsquoeconomicmigrantsrsquo are cast as alien intruders bymany of Libyarsquosfellowsovereignstates includingthosewhoparticipatedsoenthusiastically inOper-ationUnifiedProtector142HavingdisembarkedfromtheTripolitanianorCyrenaicancoast (in some cases from the Rarsquos Lanuf terminal itself143) tens of thousands of in-dividuals ndash aspiring settlersmoving in thewrong direction along themythical Romanroad ndash are once again being accused of lsquotaking bread foodstuffs clothes and homesfrom the greater collectiversquo144 This time however their theft arises not only fromtheir historic occupation of land without cultivating it (or in this case withoutextracting oil from it) efficiently but also and more recently from their efforts toescape the damage and chaos into which that land has gradually been thrust in thename of their own individual and collective emancipation145

Ironically (or perhaps not) one consequence of the escalating global refugee crisishas been a strong resurgence of support for the supposedly outdated and discardedjudicial and political institutions of fascism146 This is not however the connectionbetween lsquocolonialrsquo and lsquofreersquo Libya that I want to draw attention to Themore salientconnection I suggest concerns the hierarchical position that contemporary Libyacontinues to occupy not just in spite of but because of the formal egalitarianism ofthe international community intowhich it has just been so violently (re)integratedThe rationale behind that violence and that hierarchy are clear if competitive lsquofreersquoand lsquoequalrsquo individuality within a lsquosovereignrsquo state really is the lsquobirthright of everyman woman and childrsquo147 then Libyarsquos ongoing lsquofailurersquo as a sovereign state canonly stem148 fromLibyansrsquo own failure tomanifest thematurity and rationality thatare deemed necessary to lsquoreject violence uphold equality and play by the rulesof democracyrsquo (andnot from the intervention of the outsideworld)149 This is indeedthe message which Libya and Libyans have been receiving from the lsquointernationalcommunityrsquoas thecivilwarcontinuesAtasummit inmid-2015 forexampleFranceGermany Italy Spain theUKandtheUSurged lsquoallLibyandecisionmakers toshowinthiscrucialmoment [the]responsibility leadershipandcouragersquonecessarytosigntheSkhirat Agreement then in the process of being drafted by theUNrsquos (Italian) Special

141 See the statistics regularly updated on the UNHCRrsquos lsquoMediterranean Situationrsquo page available atdata2unhcrorgensituationsmediterranean (accessed 22 April 2018)

142 See eg L Dearden lsquoUKAccused of Trapping Refugees inWarzone After Boris Johnson Vows to Stop ldquoIllegalMigrantsrdquo Crossing Medrsquo The Independent 23 August 2017 I MannHumanity at Sea Maritime Migration andthe Foundations of International Law (2016)

143 M Micallef lsquoExclusive Interpol Issues ISIS Alert onMediterraneanrsquoMigrant Report 3 July 2015144 Pascoli supra note 70 at 11145 Res 1973 supra note 8 Preamble146 See eg F Finchelstein and F Bosoder lsquoIs Fascism Returning to Europersquo The New York Times 13 December

2015147 Clinton supra note 136148 A Engel lsquoLibya as a Failed State Causes Consequences Optionsrsquo (2014) 24 Washington In-

stitute Research Notes available at wwwwashingtoninstituteorgpolicy-analysisviewlibya-as-a-failed-state-causes-consequences-options (accessed 22 April 2018)

149 Clinton supra note 136



Representative to Libya Bernardino Leon150 When the lsquointernational communityrsquoreconvened in Paris on 2 October 2016 to address the ongoing crisis representativesfromEgyptGermany ItalyQatar SaudiArabia SpainTurkeyUAEUKand theUSArsquowere present along with lsquoUN Special Envoy Martin Kobler and EU foreign policychief Federica Mogherinirsquo but no Libyans had been invited When questioned onthis point French officials suggested it had been an accidental oversight resultingfrom lsquothe rapid organising of the eventrsquo151

Figure 5 A revolutionary and a refinery confront the fallout Rarsquos Lanuf 2011 Photo ccopy BenjaminLowyGetty Images

5 CONCLUSION EMPIRE

This article has compared thematerial dimensions of the locationmarked by the co-ordinate 30deg31prime00primeprimeN 18deg34prime00primeprimeE at two differentmoments in time offering up thiscomparison as a sobering example of international lawrsquos failure to shake off the leg-acyofEuropeanimperialismBeyondthishowever Ihavealsosought tosuggest thatthe specifically fascist history of this lsquoimperial locationrsquo reveals something preciseabout the relationship between international law and violence This lsquosomethingrsquoconcerns the inherently expansionist logic which animates international lawrsquos

150 Joint Statement on Libya by the Governments of France Germany Italy Spain the United Kingdom andthe United States Washington DC 30 June 2015 available at geusembassygovjoint-statement-on-libya-by-the-governments-of-france-germany-italy-spain-the-united-kingdom-and-the-united-states-june-30 (ac-cessed 22 April 2018)

151 lsquoParis meeting on Libya fails to make progress Libyans not invitedrsquo Libya Herald 3 October 2016


538 ROSE PARFITT

lsquosovereignrsquo subjects As Libyarsquos experience illustrates only too vividly these sub-jects relate to each other not as lsquopeace-lovingrsquo neighbours of equal standing butinstead as rivals and predators The problem of course ndash a problem which fascismaccepted as a fact of lsquosovereignrsquo life but which present-day international legal doc-trine is reluctant to confront ndash is that states cannot all be permitted to lsquogrowrsquo in thisway whether through territorial conquest or through the lsquoliberalizationrsquo of theirlsquoaccessrsquo to an increasing array of lsquoresourcesrsquo (from newly lsquoformalizedrsquo Third Worldlsquohousingmarketsrsquo to lsquoindigenous knowledgersquo and beyond)

It is this expansionist logic I suggest which constitutes the precise connectionbetween the spatio-temporality of 30deg31prime00primeprimeN 18deg34prime00primeprimeE in 1937 and the chro-notype of point 30deg31prime00primeprimeN 18deg34prime00primeprimeE today One may have been frighteninglyorderly impeccably groomedand lsquocolonialrsquo The othermaybephysically devastatedfrighteningly chaotic and lsquosovereignrsquo Nonetheless in a context in which expansionhas always been by definition the only route to a form of statehood that lsquodeliversrsquoboth the previous life and the contemporary existence this lsquoimperial locationrsquo offerconcrete reminders of what it has meant for Libya and Libyans to become con-testants in a zero-sum game which they cannot win but will never be permitted tolose


1 Introduction Location

2 Time

3 Space

4 Subjectivity

5 Conclusion Empire

510 ROSE PARFITT

Full Name Rarsquos Lanuf (Approved ndash A) [Rarsquos Lanuf Variant ndash V]Primary Country Code LY (Libya)

Region Font Code (RC) 3 (AfricaMiddle East)Latitude in degrees minutes and seconds 30deg31prime00primeprimeN

Longitude in degrees minutes and seconds 18deg34prime00primeprimeEMilitary Grid Reference System (MGRS) co-ordinates 34RBU6650278557

Populated Place Classification (PC) No dataUS National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency 20181

lsquo[T]he place calls the event to mindrsquoSallust The JugurthineWar Ch LXXIX lsquoPhilaelignirsquo [86ndashc35 BCE]

1 INTRODUCTION LOCATION

Scattered about somewhat incongruously in an archaeological enclosure not farfrom the Libyan town of Rarsquos Lanuf one can find the remains of a triumphal archThis arch the Arco dei Fileni was commissioned in 1937 by the Governor-Generalof Libia Italiana Italo Balbo and designed by Florestano di Fausto perhaps themost celebrated of fascist Italyrsquos colonial architects The Arco one of the Mussoliniregimersquos most famous monuments also straddled one of its greatest technologicalachievements2 the Via litoranea libica ndash themotorwaywhich ran between its piersThis intersection occurred just at the point at which the TripolitaniandashCyrenaicaborder met the sea edge of the Sirtica desert point 30deg31prime00primeprimeN 18deg34prime00primeprimeE (seeFigure 1)

Completed in the aftermath of the brutal suppression of the Libyan resistancemovement following two decades of bitter struggle3 the Litoranea ran for 1800kilometres along the entire coastline of the colony from the French protectorateof Tunisia in the west to the British protectorate of Egypt in the east In doing sothis highway provided Italy with a concrete (in every sense) symbol of its now totalcontrol over these three recalcitrant North African territories Viewed in the lightof Italyrsquos merciless annexation of the Ethiopian Empire less than a year before4

contemporary commentators were correct to point out that the Litoranea was infact lsquonothing but amilitary highroad thinly camouflaged as a road to encourage themotoring touristrsquo5 TheArch complemented thismonumentalizationof Italyrsquos hard-won domination over Cyrenaica Tripolitania and Fezzan These three historicallyseparate and culturally distinct territories had first been seized by (liberal) Italy inthe Italo-OttomanWar of 1911ndash12 However Italyrsquos hold particularly over Fezzan

1 USNationalGeospatial-IntelligenceAgency available at geonamesngamilgnshtml (accessed9May2018)2 JL Wright lsquoMussolini Libya and the Sword of Islamrsquo in R Ben-Ghiat andM Fuller (eds) Italian Colonialism

(2005) 121 at 1223 See eg AA Ahmida The Making of Modern Libya State Formation Colonization and Resistance 1830-1932

(1994) 103ndash40 N Labanca La Guerra italiana per la Libia 1911-1931 (2012)4 See RS Parfitt lsquoEmpire des Negres Blancs The Hybridity of International Personality and the Abyssinia Crisis

of 1935-36rsquo (2011) 24 LJIL 8495 MHH MacCartney and P Cremona Italyrsquos Foreign and Colonial Policy 1914-1937 (1938) 4









512 ROSE PARFITT










Times 8 March 2018












514 ROSE PARFITT













2 TIME







516 ROSE PARFITT






















518 ROSE PARFITT





















520 ROSE PARFITT











60 Ibid at 727











of Libya (1974) 104


522 ROSE PARFITT














524 ROSE PARFITT













526 ROSE PARFITT














528 ROSE PARFITT

4 SUBJECTIVITY















530 ROSE PARFITT

















532 ROSE PARFITT
















534 ROSE PARFITT
















536 ROSE PARFITT














5 CONCLUSION EMPIRE





538 ROSE PARFITT





2 Time

3 Space

4 Subjectivity

5 Conclusion Empire








512 ROSE PARFITT










Times 8 March 2018












514 ROSE PARFITT













2 TIME







516 ROSE PARFITT






















518 ROSE PARFITT





















520 ROSE PARFITT











60 Ibid at 727











of Libya (1974) 104


522 ROSE PARFITT














524 ROSE PARFITT













526 ROSE PARFITT














528 ROSE PARFITT

4 SUBJECTIVITY















530 ROSE PARFITT

















532 ROSE PARFITT
















534 ROSE PARFITT
















536 ROSE PARFITT














5 CONCLUSION EMPIRE





538 ROSE PARFITT





2 Time

3 Space

4 Subjectivity

5 Conclusion Empire











514 ROSE PARFITT













2 TIME







516 ROSE PARFITT






















518 ROSE PARFITT





















520 ROSE PARFITT











60 Ibid at 727











of Libya (1974) 104


522 ROSE PARFITT














524 ROSE PARFITT













526 ROSE PARFITT














528 ROSE PARFITT

4 SUBJECTIVITY















530 ROSE PARFITT

















532 ROSE PARFITT
















534 ROSE PARFITT
















536 ROSE PARFITT














5 CONCLUSION EMPIRE





538 ROSE PARFITT





2 Time

3 Space

4 Subjectivity

5 Conclusion Empire



2 TIME







516 ROSE PARFITT






















518 ROSE PARFITT





















520 ROSE PARFITT











60 Ibid at 727











of Libya (1974) 104


522 ROSE PARFITT














524 ROSE PARFITT













526 ROSE PARFITT














528 ROSE PARFITT

4 SUBJECTIVITY















530 ROSE PARFITT

















532 ROSE PARFITT
















534 ROSE PARFITT
















536 ROSE PARFITT














5 CONCLUSION EMPIRE





538 ROSE PARFITT





2 Time

3 Space

4 Subjectivity

5 Conclusion Empire

516 ROSE PARFITT






















518 ROSE PARFITT





















520 ROSE PARFITT











60 Ibid at 727











of Libya (1974) 104


522 ROSE PARFITT














524 ROSE PARFITT













526 ROSE PARFITT














528 ROSE PARFITT

4 SUBJECTIVITY















530 ROSE PARFITT

















532 ROSE PARFITT
















534 ROSE PARFITT
















536 ROSE PARFITT














5 CONCLUSION EMPIRE





538 ROSE PARFITT





2 Time

3 Space

4 Subjectivity

5 Conclusion Empire











518 ROSE PARFITT





















520 ROSE PARFITT











60 Ibid at 727











of Libya (1974) 104


522 ROSE PARFITT














524 ROSE PARFITT













526 ROSE PARFITT














528 ROSE PARFITT

4 SUBJECTIVITY















530 ROSE PARFITT

















532 ROSE PARFITT
















534 ROSE PARFITT
















536 ROSE PARFITT














5 CONCLUSION EMPIRE





538 ROSE PARFITT





2 Time

3 Space

4 Subjectivity

5 Conclusion Empire

















520 ROSE PARFITT











60 Ibid at 727











of Libya (1974) 104


522 ROSE PARFITT














524 ROSE PARFITT













526 ROSE PARFITT














528 ROSE PARFITT

4 SUBJECTIVITY















530 ROSE PARFITT

















532 ROSE PARFITT
















534 ROSE PARFITT
















536 ROSE PARFITT














5 CONCLUSION EMPIRE





538 ROSE PARFITT





2 Time

3 Space

4 Subjectivity

5 Conclusion Empire










of Libya (1974) 104


522 ROSE PARFITT














524 ROSE PARFITT













526 ROSE PARFITT














528 ROSE PARFITT

4 SUBJECTIVITY















530 ROSE PARFITT

















532 ROSE PARFITT
















534 ROSE PARFITT
















536 ROSE PARFITT














5 CONCLUSION EMPIRE





538 ROSE PARFITT





2 Time

3 Space

4 Subjectivity

5 Conclusion Empire

522 ROSE PARFITT














524 ROSE PARFITT













526 ROSE PARFITT














528 ROSE PARFITT

4 SUBJECTIVITY















530 ROSE PARFITT

















532 ROSE PARFITT
















534 ROSE PARFITT
















536 ROSE PARFITT














5 CONCLUSION EMPIRE





538 ROSE PARFITT





2 Time

3 Space

4 Subjectivity

5 Conclusion Empire








524 ROSE PARFITT













526 ROSE PARFITT














528 ROSE PARFITT

4 SUBJECTIVITY















530 ROSE PARFITT

















532 ROSE PARFITT
















534 ROSE PARFITT
















536 ROSE PARFITT














5 CONCLUSION EMPIRE





538 ROSE PARFITT





2 Time

3 Space

4 Subjectivity

5 Conclusion Empire







526 ROSE PARFITT














528 ROSE PARFITT

4 SUBJECTIVITY















530 ROSE PARFITT

















532 ROSE PARFITT
















534 ROSE PARFITT
















536 ROSE PARFITT














5 CONCLUSION EMPIRE





538 ROSE PARFITT





2 Time

3 Space

4 Subjectivity

5 Conclusion Empire







528 ROSE PARFITT

4 SUBJECTIVITY















530 ROSE PARFITT

















532 ROSE PARFITT
















534 ROSE PARFITT
















536 ROSE PARFITT














5 CONCLUSION EMPIRE





538 ROSE PARFITT





2 Time

3 Space

4 Subjectivity

5 Conclusion Empire









530 ROSE PARFITT

















532 ROSE PARFITT
















534 ROSE PARFITT
















536 ROSE PARFITT














5 CONCLUSION EMPIRE





538 ROSE PARFITT





2 Time

3 Space

4 Subjectivity

5 Conclusion Empire








532 ROSE PARFITT
















534 ROSE PARFITT
















536 ROSE PARFITT














5 CONCLUSION EMPIRE





538 ROSE PARFITT





2 Time

3 Space

4 Subjectivity

5 Conclusion Empire










534 ROSE PARFITT
















536 ROSE PARFITT














5 CONCLUSION EMPIRE





538 ROSE PARFITT





2 Time

3 Space

4 Subjectivity

5 Conclusion Empire








536 ROSE PARFITT














5 CONCLUSION EMPIRE





538 ROSE PARFITT





2 Time

3 Space

4 Subjectivity

5 Conclusion Empire




5 CONCLUSION EMPIRE





538 ROSE PARFITT





2 Time

3 Space

4 Subjectivity

5 Conclusion Empire

538 ROSE PARFITT





2 Time

3 Space

4 Subjectivity

5 Conclusion Empire

'Fascism, Imperialism and International Law: An Arch met a Motorway and the Rest is History...'

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Transcript of 'Fascism, Imperialism and International Law: An Arch met a Motorway and the Rest is History...'