Making the World Safe for Investment
The Protection of Foreign Property 1922–1959

A full history of the development of the field of international investment law from 1922 to 1959 – and its consequences.

Andrea Leiter (Author)

9781009330459, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 2 March 2023

200 pages
23.5 x 15.5 x 1.5 cm, 0.43 kg

Western governments, companies, economists and lawyers established the international legal order now known as international investment law to protect foreign property from a redistribution of wealth through domestic law making. This book offers a pre-history of these legal arrangements, focusing on the time before 1959 and the ratification of the first bilateral investment treaty and the ICSID Convention. It introduces new archival material, such as arbitral awards, diplomatic notes and concession agreements, as well as scholarly writings pertaining to developments in these proceedings. These materials are systematised into a coherent argument on the protection of foreign property. The book develops the important role of concession agreements and their internationalisation for the making of international investment law, thereby insisting on the private law character of the foundations of the field. In doing so it displays the analytic force of viewing law as jurisdictional practice, rather than as a system of norms.

1. Making the world safe for investment
2. The Palestine railway arbitration 1922
3. The Lena Goldfields arbitration 1930
4. The Sheikh of Abu Dhabi arbitration 1951
5. The Abs-Shawcross draft convention 1959
6. Conclusions: the world is safe for investment.

Subject Areas: International arbitration [LBHT], Investment treaties & disputes [LBBM3], International law [LB], Investment & securities [KFFM], Economic systems & structures [KCS], Economic theory & philosophy [KCA]