The Protection of Foreign Property 1922–1959
17 February 2023
About the book
Western governments, companies, economists and lawyers established the international legal order now known as international investment law to protect foreign property from a redistribution of wealth through domestic law making. This book offers a pre-history of these legal arrangements, focusing on the time before 1959 and the ratification of the first bilateral investment treaty and the ICSID Convention. It introduces new archival material, such as arbitral awards, diplomatic notes and concession agreements, as well as scholarly writings pertaining to developments in these proceedings. These materials are systematised into a coherent argument on the protection of foreign property. The book develops the important role of concession agreements and their internationalisation for the making of international investment law, thereby insisting on the private law character of the foundations of the field. In doing so it displays the analytic force of viewing law as jurisdictional practice, rather than as a system of norms.
“What is at stake in the making of international investment law is the way ‘rightful’ ownership is defined and the way benefits are awarded to some and not to others.”Dr Andrea Leiter