Conference report Building Peace: Transitional Justice in the Early Modern World

On 3–5 April our team hosted the international conference ‘Building Peace: Transitional Justice in the Early Modern World’. Because our project has focused on transitional justice processes in early modern France, in particular in the aftermath of the French Wars of Religion, we wished to extend our scope to other pre-modern societies. Coined in the 1990s, transitional justice has attracted political scientists, legal scholars, and policy makers who have focused their analysis and evaluation of peace-building processes to contemporary conflicts, but it has mostly been overlooked by historians. The aim of this conference, therefore, was to encourage scholars of the early modern world to use the concept of transitional justice in their research.

The organizing team: Sherilyn Bouyer (left),
David van der Linden (center), and Marc Jaffré (right).

David van der Linden kicked off the conference with an introduction to transitional justice, suggesting how historians may use the concept and can in turn become valuable contributors to the field of transitional justice. The first panel focused on 'Ideas of Peace'. While Linda Kinstler proposed to consider the recurrence of oblivion clauses in peace treaties and how their meaning evolved over time, Kyle J. Dieleman showed the practice – or rather, malpractice – of peace during the Dutch Revolt’s Twelve Years’ Truce. After a lunch break, Rosanne Baars welcomed the next three speakers for the panel 'Actors of Peace'. Fanny Giraudier and Marc Jaffré, discussed the actors who shaped the making of peace in the aftermath of the French Wars of Religion; Joanna Vadenbring focused on the actors who pacified the conquered Swedish province of Scania. Each speaker reflected on the hierarchical order of power in peacebuilding, the commitment to peace, and the transformation of pacification measures into coercive tools by the actors in charge.

The first day ended on a high note, with a lecture by our keynote speaker Ronen Steinberg. We had invited him as he is among the few historians who have analysed transitional justice before the twentieth century, more precisely at the time of the French Revolution. Now that his research interest has shifted to the modern era, Steinberg presented the ideological framework that shaped the conceptualisation of transitional justice in the 1970s, and challenged the audience about the meanings of transitional justice and its application to the early modern world.

Keynote lecture by Ronen Steinberg. Photo: Rosanne Baars.

Day 2 of our conference started with a panel on 'Communicating Peace'. Austin Collins presented Abel Jouan’s depiction of the royal tour of France of the 1560s and Lorenzo Comensoli Antonini spoke of Pierre Mathieu’s Histoire des derniers troubles published in 1594–1595. Both presentations reflected on the power of constructing historical narratives and common memories to foster peacebuilding. The following panel, 'Abjudicating Peace', focused on the role tribunals can play during periods of transition from war to peace. Alexandre Lepesteur studied the possibilities and limits of the Parlement of Brittanny to investigate crimes during wartime, demonstrating the conditions in which justice could be rendered or silenced. Sherilyn Bouyer presented the findings of her study on the Chambre de l’Edit de Castres, demonstrating how Protestant and Catholic litigants actively engaged with the judicial institution implemented at the end of wars of religion but, surprisingly, hardly used it to settle confessional disputes. John Condren presented the rise and fall of Geneva’s revolutionary tribunal during the French Revolution period.

The afternoon panels, 'Peace Across Borders' and 'Transitional Justice and Empire', considered the role of the international context in peacebuilding. The role of foreign actors – as outsiders to civil disputes – in supporting support one’s cause or to mediate, accelerate, or prevent the escalation of conflicts was analysed both by Hanna Mazheika, who studied the contacts between King James I of England and Protestant nobles from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and Sofiane Bouhdiba, who discussed the Algerian-Tunisian War of 1735. Meggy Lennaerts demonstrated that not all conflict-resolution relied on top-down intervention, but rather depended on local communities’ decisions to ease tensions and deal with common challenges. The final panel of the day took us to the Americas: Tim Soriano gave a presentation on the status of pirates after the 1670s Treaty of Madrid, and Tania Ixchel Atilano presented the application and interpretation of the 1821 Treaty of Cordoba between Spain and Mexico. Both speakers considered the changing of legal identities in peacebuilding contexts: while these changes could offer possibilities for affected social groups, they could also represent a challenge, especially when opposing states interpreted peace differently and what it meant for affected communities.

Sherilyn Bouyer discusses the Chambre de l'édit of Castres. Photo: Rosanne Baars.

The last day of the conference began with the panel 'Restoring and Repairing the Past'. Borrowing the terminology used by Pierre-Jean Souriac, each paper dealt with the 'transactionality of justice', when two parties agreed on reciprocal concessions. Both Louis Sicking and  René Koekkoek spoke of the reparation of victims: Sicking talked of the use prize law and bilateral commissions as reparation mechanisms to prevent reprisal in medieval maritime conflict, while Koekkoek discussed the first restitution law enacted during the French Revolution authorising the return of confiscated possessions to French Protestants, conveying new national values of emancipation and justice. Souriac, finally, showed how Protestants and Catholics negotiated coexistence during the French Wars of Religion through royal concession, such as the place de sureté or local agreements with contracts of non-aggression. The last panel, 'Afterlives of Peace', began with a paper by Megan Williams, who reflected on the impact of generational change when passing down commitment to justice and peace negotiated in treaties. Elisabeth Hines wrapped up the panel, and the conference, with a presentation on the legacy of the East Indies Treaty of 1619 at a time of increasing competition and tension between Dutch and English East India Companies.

In sum, the conference marked an important step in historicizing transitional justice, as this was the first time different historians came together to discuss the application of transitional justice to early modern societies. The presentations showed the prospects but also the challenges to use a twentieth-century concept to understand past peacebuilding strategies. It has become clear, however, that early modern societies were no stranger to phases of transition, the concluding of peace, the design of specific instruments and strategies to enforce pacification, and the reconciliation of communities forced to coexist despite deep-seated conflicts. Transitional justice, therefore, is a concept that can help us to better analyze peacebuilding experiences before the twentieth century. Likewise, the early modern world offers many possibilities to explore and extend the study of transitional justice.

– by Sherilyn Bouyer