AlexanderBukhThese Islands Are Ours: The Social Construction of Territorial Disputes in Northeast Asia. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2020. 232 pp. $70.00 (hbk), $66.50 (ebk)

Abstract

Chapter Four examines the Christian Hebraist understanding of law as 'the law of the land' and its anthropological implications, including the criteria of membership of a community. In formulating a nationalterritorial conception of law in contrast to the universalism of Christianity, Hebraists developed distinctions between native-born, resident alien and foreigner, and the rights and duties thereof, which continue today. The concluding chapter explores the abiding tensions and accommodations between a universalism (itself fraught with contradictions) that in the contemporary world can take the form of human rights regimes and the particularism of a national Hebraism. The issue of sovereignty is briefly investigated.As he acknowledges, Grosby is by no means the first to highlight the importance of Israelite conceptions in the rise of national models. Indeed, much of his text discusses previous interpretations of Hebraism. However, such treatments as they bear on nationalism (for example, Adrian Hasting's writings) are schematic. Grosby's study is both rich and sophisticated, drawing impressively on the several fields of theology, philosophy, sociology and intellectual history. A notable achievement is his drawing attention to the scholarly neglect of the role of law in the constitution of national states, when he demonstrates the importance of legal theorists, such as Selden, Coke and Grotius in defining the attributes of a national polity. This is a short book on a very large subject, and Grosby is fully aware of the complexities and ambiguities inherent in his topic. This is an important study that deserves a wide readership.