Chair for Globalisation and Legal Pluralism

From the mid-19^th century onwards, many regions underwent fundamental legal changes by taking orientation from Western and especially European models. The extraterritoriality to which countries such as the Ottoman Empire, Japan, China, Siam and Ethiopia were subject, and which they perceived as a challenge to their judicial sovereignty, but also other forms of diplomatic or economic pressure provided the impetus for legal reforms.

The symposium, organized together with the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Theory, offered the participants from Asia, Europe, Australia and the USA a platform for discussions across national borders to gain a better understanding of the cultural translation processes and legal transformations that took place in these spaces under pressure from the Western European powers. Considering a broad scope of different countries and settings facilitated a critical reconception of the globalization of Western European law in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

Research retreat of the Max Planck Research Group “Translations and Transitions”

The research group, which explores reforms aligned with European law in legal systems of non-colonised countries at the turn of the 19^th century, discussed the workshop with the cooperation partners and the planned common book at its retreat from 5 to 7 September 2022 at the Law Faculty.

The retreat primarily centred on finalising the script and filming clips for a joint video, which highlights similarities and differences in the development of legal practices adapted to each respective society. The video illustrates that the path to “translated modernism” was a shared experience of Japan, China and the Ottoman Empire in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

The agenda also included the presentation of two doctoral thesis projects, planning for an online symposium, and plans for future cooperation after the project’s official completion at the end of 2022.