The Imperial Precipice: Jurists and Diplomats of the French Empire at the United Nations War Crimes Commission

Abstract

Delving into world-spanning legal agencies, histories of exiled diplomats and lawyers, this paper explores how Free France defended at the United Nations War Crimes Commission the vision of the interwar liberal order, one that reached across the global territories of the mandate system administered by the League of Nations, into the colonial territories of the French empire. From London to Chongqing, facing Vichy collaborationist authoritarian dictatorship in metropolitan France and anti-colonial pressures from the turbulent colonial frontiers, a handful of Free French jurists and politicians worked day and night to establish the imperial sovereignty of the French exile committee of general Charles de Gaulle, and restore French republicanism rooted in the legal tradition of Nicolas Fouquet, Jacques de Maleville and Léon Duguit. Drawing upon newly-unsealed UN and French archival materials, this paper documents Free France's intervention at the UNWCC, the activities of its representatives and reflection on empires, race and international law.