Surrency and Burbank Prizes to Smiley

In this post, we'll note two prizes awarded at last month's annual meeting of the American Society for Legal History.  The Surrency Prize, awarded annually for the best article published in the Law and History Review, went to Will Smiley, “Rebellion, Sovereignty, and Islamic Law in the Ottoman Age of Revolutions,” Law and History Review 40:2 (2022): 229-259.  Here is the citation:

Will Smiley

Will Smiley’s “Rebellion, Sovereignty, and Islamic Law in the Ottoman Age of Revolutions” features deep research in multi-lingual, multi-national archives, erudite analysis, and compelling story-telling. This article connects the histories of the Ottoman Empire, Islamic law, and the global Age of Revolutions. Smiley examines how the Ottoman Sublime Porte in Istanbul used the Islamic law tradition to craft a law of rebellion that was useful to fighting foreign enemies and suppressing domestic dissenters. Islamic law both facilitated military power and constrained the actions of political administrators who were beholden to clerics, a Muslim public, and their own religious beliefs. Ultimately, the Porte forged a law of rebellion that justified retribution against those who resisted the Sultan’s authority, while simultaneously denying these rebels’ sovereignty. Smiley shows how this legal duality, positioning rebels as at once subject to a political power’s jurisdiction and belligerent outsiders, echoed across the Atlantic. Similar legal moves shaped Britain’s treatment of Greece, the Lieber Code, and the United States’ response to the confederacy. Smiley’s exploration of how the rule of law shaped empire, war, and rebellion holds both historical and contemporary insight.

Honorable Mention went to Alexandre Pelegrino, “From Slaves to I´ndios: Empire, Slavery, and Race (Maranha~o, Brazil, c.1740–90),” Law and History Review 40:4 (2022): 789-815.

The second prize we note here is the Jane Burbank Global Legal History Prize.  It also went to Will Smiley, “Rebellion, Sovereignty, and Islamic Law in the Ottoman Age of Revolutions,” Law and History Review 40:2 (2022): 229-259, with a citation:

Smiley’s elegant article assesses the global significance of the Ottoman government’s treatment of rebellious subjects as enemies at the turn of the nineteenth century. Although they lived within imperial territories and were claimed as subjects of the sultan, the Ottoman Porte began to define non-Muslim rebels as enemies under Islamic law. The move subjected rebels to extreme violence, including legal enslavement. Smiley assesses how this policy came about and places it in a global and comparative context. The result is a powerful argument about the imperial roots of an emerging international legal doctrine recognizing rebels as enemies but not bona fide belligerents.

Smiley recounts how Islamic jurisprudence informed the Ottoman Porte’s reactions to rebellions in Moldavid and Serbia. He labels the new classification of rebels as “dual sovereignty,” that is, placement outside the empire under Islamic law but inside it under international law. In Greece, the article shows, rebellious subjects were enslaved as enemies while the Ottomans also sought to block other empires from intervening inside Ottoman imperial territory. Other iterations of dual sovereignty, meanwhile, found adherents in Europe and the United States, also in connection with the legal status of rebels. During the US Civil War, the Lieber Code established the possibility of treating rebels as enemies without recognizing them as bona fide belligerents. Smiley pushes still further to reflect on the unexpected consequences of this legal approach. In the Ottoman empire, he suggests, the turn to Islamic law to justify enslavement of rebels placed unintended limits on state action.

As this summary shows, Smiley’s article contributes to the legal history of the Ottoman Empire, the history of Islamic law, and the history of international law. Committee members were impressed by the quality and range of the research, the subtleties of the analysis, and the clarity of the writing. The article models how to move artfully between local and global contexts.

Two Honorable Mentions were also announced.  One went to the runner-up for the Surrency Prize: Alexandre Pelegrino, “From Slaves to I´ndios: Empire, Slavery, and Race (Maranha~o, Brazil, c.1740–90),” Law and History Review 40:4 (2022): 789-815.  The other went to Juandrea Bates, “Unaccompanied Minors and Fraudulent Fathers: Civil Law in the Unmaking of Immigrant Family in Buenos Aires, 1869–1920,” Hispanic American Historical Review 102:1 (2022): 95-126.