Natasha Wheatley

  • Fellowship year:2014-2015
  • University: Columbia University
  • Dissertation Topic/Category: Early Modern Europe
  • Dissertation Title: Historical Rights and New World Orders: Imperial Sovereignty and its Afterlives in Central Europe, 1848-1848
  • This dissertation analyzes cultures of sovereignty in late Austria-Hungary and their afterlives in the interwar international order.  By tracing notions of the "historical rights" of the empire's historic principalities within the frame of imperial law, it tracks understandings of the divisibility of sovereignty and suspended statehood, as well as the nature of legal continuity and legal pluralism.  In showing how concepts and vocabularies from the imperial constitutional tradition conditioned the emergence of the "new international order" in 1918-1919, the dissertation explores the mutual implication of imperial, constitutional, and international law.