Suzerainty
The term of suzerainty ( French suzerain "Oberhoheit, Oberherrschaft, Lehnsherr", as a parallel to sovereign from French sus "up, in the height" derived, which goes back to the synonymous Latin sursum , shortened from subversum ) was derived in the early days Modern times developed parallel to the concept of sovereignty and denotes the sovereignty of one state over another that has a limited, imperfectly developed sovereignty.
Concept history
The reason for the formation of the term is that in the Middle Ages and especially in the case of non-European empires - such as the Ottoman Empire , the Manchu Empire or the Mughal Empire - the exercise of state power was limited to certain objects in view of the low level of organization and the slow, imperfect communication channels . Usually this was the economic exploitation through the collection of taxes and the provision of people and material resources for military conflicts. The regulation of other needs has been left to local and regional factors (governors, municipalities, professional and religious corporations, landlords, etc.). Often the conquerors left the subjugated elites in their positions and contented themselves with the ritualized, formal recognition of their supremacy combined with a promise of loyalty beyond the aforementioned achievements. In constitutional law, such connections were referred to as state states . When the development of modern state structures in these great empires became unavoidable in the 19th century, the state structures that already existed in their center, which were to be further developed into the modern state, were encountered on the one hand, on the other hand on the continuing regional authorities or even new insurgent movements who in turn strived for statehood. In the case of the Mughal Empire, its dissolution coincided with the expansion of the British colonial power, which claimed the succession of the Great Mughals and thus also took over the constitutional construct of suzerainty.
A historical definition for suzerainty from the Anglo-Saxon legal system reads: “[…], suzerainty 'is a term applied to certain international relations between two sovereign States whereby one, whilst retaining a more or less limited sovereignty, acknowledges the supremacy of the other. "(German:" 'Suzeränität' is a term applied to certain international relations between two sovereign states, whereby one recognizes the suzerainty of the other with more or less limited sovereignty. ") On the one hand, this legal figure was used to describe the dependence of the Indian princely states on British India (the representative of the British crown as Emperor of India) used in the late 19th century, on the other hand to describe the dependence of the states tributary to the Ottoman Empire, as which the emancipating newly emerging nation states were organized in the 19th century. In the case of the Manchu Empire, it was used to denote the dependence of the external possessions in Central Asia, Korea and Southeast Asia in contrast to the Chinese core provinces.
Differentiation from other models of renunciation of sovereignty
Such relationships of dependency no longer exist in the present. There are numerous states whose foreign affairs, in particular, are handled by another state, e. B. Liechtenstein , Andorra and the Cook Islands . Another example is the relationship between Monaco and France . The authorization of the perceiving state does not follow from a legal superordinate order of these states - such superordinate and subordinate order would contradict the sovereign equality of all states - but from an international legal permission that can be revoked at any time. Nevertheless, the respective upper state of such conditions is sometimes still referred to as suzerain in international law. Informal relationships of dependency are also not included in suzerainty. Liechtenstein had been a sovereign principality since 1806. His sovereign was at the same time and primarily a member of the Austrian and Bohemian aristocracy and in this capacity was connected to the Austrian Empire and until after the First World War he did not reside in the capital of his state, in Vaduz , but in the imperial residence city of Vienna . Likewise, dependent territories, sub-countries and the like are not a case of suzerainty, because there are no shared, competing state powers, as in the British crown possessions of the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands .
However, the term suzerainty is still part of applicable law, as it can be found in some international treaties that are still in force , e.g. B. Art. 2 of the Convention on Slavery of 1926, Art. 1 of the Warsaw Convention on Carriage by International Air Transport of 1929 and Art. 2 of the Convention on International Civil Aviation of 1944.
Examples
- The Ottoman Empire was suzerain:
- Romania and its forerunners, the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia , as well as Serbia and Montenegro until the Peace of San Stefano (1878),
- Egypt until 1914,
- of the Principality of Samos until the Balkan Wars in 1913.
- According to the British view, China was the suzerain of Tibet in the first half of the 20th century .
- The Russian Empire can be seen as the suzerain of the Emirate of Bukhara and the Khanate of Khiva .
Web link
Individual evidence
- ^ Online Etymology Dictionary
- ↑ Pierer's Universal Lexicon 1857 - entry "Oberhoheit". zeno.org, accessed on September 26, 2015 .
- ^ Georg Jellinek : The doctrine of the relations of states. Alfred Hölder, Vienna 1882, pp. 137–157.
- ^ Georg Jellinek: Allgemeine Staatslehre. reviewed and supplemented by Walter Jellinek using the handwritten estate. 3rd edition, Häring, Berlin 1914, pp. 748-750.
- ^ Manley Hudson: Cases on International Law. 1929, p. 54.
- ^ Andreas von Arnauld : Völkerrecht. Heidelberg 2012, p. 34.
- ^ Georg Jellinek: The doctrine of the relations of states. Alfred Hölder, Vienna 1882, p. 156.