International Law and Justice Working Papers - IILJ

other countries, will one day recognize that they have themselves fed and raised the disturbers of
their own order as well.” 143
Note that Bulmerincq’s assault on ultramontanists and social democrats completely coincided
with Bismarck’s policies and campaigns. Also note that the book immediately preceded
Bulmerincq’s move from Dorpat to Wiesbaden, Germany. It is likely that he simply wished his
political views to be known in clear terms in his new homeland.
5.4. The Status and Future of the National Self-Determination in Bulmerincq’s Work
In his 1874 book, Bulmerincq also asked: has international law given to the peoples the right to
secede and create of their own nation states? He argued that the French revolution of 1789
initiated the international legal treatment of the “nationality principle”. Abbé Gregoire had
declared in 1795 meeting of the National Convent that the peoples were independent of each
other and sovereign. Moreover, on 5 March 1848, following the February revolution, Lamartine
had issued a proclamation of the French government insisting that peace should be based on the
recognition and respect of the independence of the peoples. 144 There was no doubt that the
unification of Germany in 1871 found its justification in the “nationality principle”. 145 Other
such examples were Greece, Belgium and Italy. The Italian author Manzini had even argued in
his 1851 work 146 that peoples rather then State were elementary units of international law.
Bulmerincq argued against this Manzinis’s view that there existed peoples without the unity of
their country or no country at all (the Jews) and that international law demonstrated that a
community of law could exist without being a community of nationalities. 147
143 P. 27.
144 P. 61.
145 P. 63.
146 Manzini, Della nazionalitá come fondamento del diritto delle genti.
147 Bulmerincq, p. 67.