Global Histories of Constitutionalism: Exchanges of Ideas and Entanglements, c. 1850s–1940s
Abgeschlossenes Forschungsprojekt
Why do almost all countries have written constitutions, and how did constitutions become a well-nigh indispensable element of modern statehood? The project ‘Global Histories of Constitutionalism: Exchanges of Ideas and Entanglements, c. 1850s–1930s’ explores these questions by revisiting the global history of constitutions from the mid-19th century to the 1930s. The project will result in a volume bringing together 20 case studies from across the world, currently under contract with Cambridge University Press. It will offer analytical perspectives on constitutional history on a global scale, and will be supplemented by a selection of key translated sources, making these accessible to a broader readership interested in comparative constitutional history.
Traditional research on constitutional history has tended to operate under the assumption that constitutions are quintessentially Euro-American instruments of statecraft, studying constitutions outside the Western canon through separate national, or at best, regional lenses. Focused on tracing the translation of Euro-American models to a more or less receptive periphery, ‘from West to the Rest,’ such conventional accounts reduce non-European refractions of modern political ideas to derivative and irredeemably defective discourses. The results of this approach are often tales of unilinear transfer that leave non-Western societies little room for agency or creativity and, by design, relegate their contributions to shaping the modern world order to a secondary or supplementary role.
In the wake of critiques of methodological nationalism and the ‘global turn’ in historiography since the 1990s, a growing body of scholarship has likewise come to examine constitutional history through entangled and transcultural approaches, particularly since the 2010s. Yet, this historiographical movement remains insufficiently integrated. By analysing the broader context of the globalisation of constitutions and the interconnected experiences it encompassed, this project challenges persisting Eurocentric interpretations and offers a more inclusive study of constitutional history.
Frequently treated in tandem with the burgeoning of liberalism and the ideal of limited government, constitutions also fulfilled – and continue to fulfil – a host of further functions. Contributors examine, among others, the following dimensions:
- Constitutions as imperialist and anti-imperialist instruments: how constitutions operated both as instruments of imperialism and resources for anti-imperialist resistance, and the role they played in polities under imperial pressure (eg Japan, Korea, China, the Ottoman Empire, and Persia).
- Constitutions and colonialism: how constitutionalism was used in colonial contexts to envision futures beyond colonial rule.
- Constitutions as instruments of bureaucratic rationalisation and administrative efficiency.
- Constitutions and militarism.
- Religion and constitutionalism: constitutions often emerge when traditional modes of legitimation lose authority; yet they may also serve to stabilise and rearticulate them.
- Diversity management: constitutions as tools for organising ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity in the contexts of imperial transitions and the formation of nation-states.
The state-building functions of constitutionalism, as well as its relationship to imperialism and anti-imperialism, came into particularly sharp focus outside the Western world, in polities undergoing existential crises marked by internal upheaval and external threat. Through engagement with Western ideas, each other’s experiences, and the reconfiguration of vernacular traditions of governance, polities such as Tunisia (1861), the Ottoman Empire (1876/1908), Japan (1889), Korea (1899), the Philippines (1899), Russia (1906), Persia (1906), China (1908), Afghanistan (1923), Mongolia (1924), Ethiopia (1931), and Siam (1932) adopted constitutions in the late 19th or early 20th centuries. It was through this period of ‘constitutional fever’ that constitutionalism took root worldwide and became a hallmark of the modern state, furnishing new rationales for sovereign authority and new standards of progress and civilisation. The project’s central argument is that the contemporary world, in which constitutions are nearly universal elements of statehood, is a co-production shaped by a diverse array of actors across all continents.
Crucially, the volume enhances access to primary sources in global history by bringing to light hitherto unpublished and untranslated texts and introducing them to Anglophone audiences. Drawing on a wide spectrum of interconnected case studies and original sources, ranging from legal texts, archival records, speeches, books and newspaper articles to letters and correspondence, the volume illuminates how historical agents selectively adopted elements from diverse experiences and theories, combining them with their own legal and socio-political traditions to produce distinct versions of constitutionalism. Thereby, it demonstrates how this expansive process reshaped political self-understanding and transformed political and legal thought. Rather than treating political thought and experience within insulated national and regional contexts, the volume foregrounds how constitutions emerged through sustained interaction, adaptation, contestation and comparison.
The project advanced significantly through a conference held at Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory in 2024. A second international symposium will be held at the International Research Centre for Japanese Studies in Kyoto, Japan. The project will conclude with the publication of the edited volume in 2027.
Events
International Symposium on Global Constitutional History
(Co-organised by the Nichibunken Research Promotion Committee Symposium and the Takii Kazuhiro Research Group), International Research Centre for Japanese Studies, Kyoto, 7-8 March 2026.