Book Talk: Empire By Law
Join us for a conversation with author Aimee M. Genell
This exclusive book talk event for Empire by Law: The Ottoman Origins of the Mandate System in the Middle East will feature legal history expert Prof. Will Smiley, and the book’s author, Pardee School of Global Studies professor, Prof. Aimee M. Genell. Presented by the Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies, the Department of History, Classics, and Religion, the Department of Political Science, and the Faculty of Law at the University of Alberta.
Monday, November 16th, 2026 | TIME & LOCATION TBC
Empire by Law traces the Ottoman roots of the post-imperial political order through an analysis of the inter-imperial contest over international law and the meaning of autonomy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Genell argues that "privileged" provinces were central to the way in which the state conceptualized its sovereignty, and provided an important alternative model for imperial organization among the empire's diverse subjects.
Smiley's commentary will connect Empire by Law with other recent scholarship on the non-western origins of international law, while also asking what it can teach us about possible futures of international order in a deeply uncertain moment.
Aimee Genell, Author
Aimee Genell is an Assistant Professor of International History and International Relations at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. Her research focuses on the history of the late Ottoman Empire and its entanglements with Europe in the arena of international law. Columbia University Press published her manuscript, Empire by Law: The Ottoman Origins of the Mandate System in the Middle East in 2026. She has published and co-authored several articles on Ottoman legal history from an international perspective, including, among others, “The Well-defended Domains: Eurocentric International Law and the Making of the Ottoman Office of Legal Counsel” (Journal of Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association).
Will Smiley
Will Smiley is an Associate Professor at the University of New Hampshire, where he teaches in the Humanities, International Affairs, Justice Studies, and History programs. He is a historian of the Middle East, Eurasia, and international law. Smiley is the author of From Slaves to Prisoners of War: The Ottoman Empire, Russia, and International Law, published by Oxford University Press, as well as To Save the Country: A Lost Treatise on Martial Law (co-authored with John F. Witt), and articles in International Journal of Middle East Studies, Law and History Review, and Comparative Studies in South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.