Filipe Antunes Madeira da Silva defended his thesis

On 29 November 2022, Filipe Antunes Madeira da Silva defended his PhD thesis, entitled "The Conquest of the Devil’s Paradise: International Law, Frontier-Making and Capitalist Power" and written under the supervision of Professor Emmanuelle Tourme-Jouannet, before a jury composed of Professors Helena Alviar García, George Rodrigo Bandeira Galindo, Jorge L. Esquirol, Horatia Muir Watt and Anne Orford.

The thesis tells a history of international law in the making of a commodity frontier in the Amazon. It focuses on the incorporation of a particular place called Putumayo into capitalist dynamics, which started during the first Amazon rubber boom at the turn of the nineteenth century. Taking a genealogical approach to analyse archival materials, it examines the legal practices and discourses of frontier actors at different places and scales who have used a range of mechanisms to shape capitalist expansion. In revealing how these actors circulated and interacted to exploit and distribute natural resources, the thesis proposes a decentred and expanded history of international law that sheds light on its intimate relationship with capitalist power. In that sense, the thesis also shows how international law legitimises and organises the expansion of international legal authority over new territories, resources and populations while enabling some space to challenge the expansion of the capitalist frontier.

This thesis defence is the culmination of a long journey of studies at Sciences Po and the Law School that started in 2009 at the Euro-Latin American Campus of Sciences Po in Poitiers. Filipe would like to thank all the people who have been part of this journey. He continues his research and teaching as an Assistant Professor at the University of Rosario in Colombia.