A symposium is scheduled to take place online from December 7 to December 9 2022, which has been organised by the Max Planck Research Group, “Translations and Transitions: Legal Practice in 19th Century Japan, China, and the Ottoman Empire”, at the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory (Frankfurt). The theme of the event will be: Legal orders under pressure:
Non-Western experiences of legal transformations in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Subjects for papers may include, but are by no means limited to:
- The autonomy/heteronomy of the legal transformation processes: multiple agencies and layers, complex positioning towards Europe and European law; negotiating tradition, religion, and identity within the reform processes.
- The connections/disconnections between the countries under pressure: To what extent did they observe, emulate, contest, or hamper each other? What impact did these connections and/or disconnections have on the legal reform processes in the respective countries?
- To what extent did non-state actors play a role in the legal reform processes, not only on the local and national levels, but also on the supra and transnational levels? What role did transnational movements such as Pan-Asianism,Pan-Islamismt, Pan-Arabism, Anti-colonialism, or the transnational dimension of nationalism play in the exchange between the countries?
- How did the concept of justice and the understanding of law change? How did such an epistemological shift translate into legal practice?

The Symposium will be conducted in English. Applicants are invited to submit an abstract of up to 350 words (including a title, full name, email address, and institutional affiliation), and a short biography of up to 100 words to zuelal.muslu@univ.ac.at by 25th May 2022.
Successful applicants will be informed by 15th June 2022. Symposium papers are expected by 20th November 2022, and the symposium will take place virtually from 7th to 9th December 2022.