ABSTRACT
Legal primitivism was a complex and multifaceted phenomenon that combined the search for the exotic other, interest in the roots of Western legal culture, colonial aspirations, and other things. As all studies on the origins of law have discovered, the search for a point of origin turns invariably to a discussion about the issue of whose origin is being sought (Feldbrugge 2003). The fascination of legal primitivism was similar to other popular and scientific enchantments with the exotic other, such as Ottomania, the romantic fascination with the Islamic East (Cavaliero 2010), or orientalism in general. The legal orientalism about China, described by Ruskola, elaborated on the fantastical and the fabulous accounts of Chinese law and culture that Western scholars used to convey the essential cultural difference (Ruskola 2013: 30–59). Equally, legal primitivism oscillated between fantasy and fact. In the colonial enterprise, legal primitivism was joined with the linkage between civilization and law in the legal understanding of the civilizing mission in international law, as outlined by Koskenniemi. The ideas of progress and civilization were applied to the colonial enterprise to determine degrees of sovereignty and tutelage on the basis of how moral, civilized, and legally competent the natives were thought to be (Koskenniemi 2002: 110–77).
