ABSTRACT
The creation of the modern world is inseparable from the birth of the Westphalian system of international law, in particular its core principle of national sovereignty. The principle of sovereignty has elevated the nation-state system as the most universal and fundamental of all political forms inherent to our modern world. This universalism has produced an asymmetrical system which divides the world into those who possess sovereignty and those who don’t. International law categorised Indigenous peoples and “nomads,” with the latter by declaring the lands upon which they had lived on for so many years as terra nullius. In the modern world, premised as it is on the concept of sovereignty, the annexation and occupation of terra nullius by a sovereign nation was considered neither invasion of another country nor illegal conduct. In other words, the asymmetrical power relations built on the principle of sovereignty precluded Indigenous peoples from the nation-state system, unilaterally subjecting them to colonial and settler-colonial conquest and domination. This chapter examines the foundational violence of the logic of sovereign nation as well as the principle of sovereignty, taking as an example Japan’s settler colonial policies towards the Indigenous Ainu of Hokkaidō.
