Kant’s Juridical Theory of Colonialism

Abstract

Kant’s objections to colonialism are cast in juridical terms, focusing on the ways in which it is contrary to requirements of right under his conception of international law. Colonial conquest is an illicit ground for going to war, and colonization is an illicit mode of conduct after a war, even if the war itself was fought on other grounds. This chapter explains Kant’s arguments for the following claims: (i) Acquiring territory or securing markets is never a legitimate ground for war. (ii) Conquest is wrongful, but colonization is a defective form of conquest, worse than simply incorporating the territory into the conquering nation. (iii) Although colonial rule is not itself rightful, it has its own internal standard of adequacy, which colonial powers historically failed to satisfy.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 26 citations exist upstream.