This podcast, the third in the series ‘Reckonings with Europe: Past and Present’ by Surabhi Ranganathan and Megan Donaldson, takes up the archive as an object through which relations between past and present are negotiated. Archives can take many forms, but the episode focuses on those most familiar to international lawyers—official and state archives. Such…

This podcast, the second in the series, ‘Reckonings with Europe: Past and Present’ by Surabhi Ranganathan and Megan Donaldson, reflects on calls for return of cultural artefacts looted under European empire. Experts estimate that over 90% of African cultural heritage is outside Africa, and often in the major world museums. This figure reflects the staggering scale…

I associate Guy Sinclair’s To Reform the World: International Organizations and the Making of Modern State very strongly with its cover image, Kandinsky’s ‘Circles in a Circle’ (1923). Circles are privileged visual representations of the global, but they only became so at a moment when scientific innovation permitted the apprehension of the earth as a globe. This…