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This chapter begins with a brief history of the idea of succession, laying out the changing shape of legal discourse in the period prior to the project of codification in the 1960s. It then examines several features of the discourse as it developed during that time to identify the main theoretical, conceptual, and analytical ‘moves’ that have assisted in the formation of this particular field of international law, with a view to bringing to the forefront some of the quandaries that have tended to be ill-articulated in mainstream accounts. Some of the general ‘themes’ that appear to underpin approaches to the question of succession are discussed such as the differentiation between ‘de iure’ and ‘de facto’ succession and between ‘state continuity’ and ‘state succession’.

This chapter discusses the process of codification. Topics covered include: the move to codification, the part played by the International Law Commission and the International Law Association, the Waldock Reports, the relationship with the law of treaties, the question of new States, semi-sovereignty, dispositive treaties, and finally the adjustments made at the Vienna Conference. It is shown that those involved in the codification were unable to deal with the problem of succession in a way that did not draw within it questions of identity and status, or conclusions about the relationship between international and municipal law.

For those interested in the question of State succession, everything changed with the dramatic events of the 1990s: the dismemberment of the USSR and the SFRY, the partition of Czechoslovakia, and the unification of Germany. State succession, once again, came to the forefront. This chapter shows that for most of those working on succession after 1989, the problem was how to square what they knew about the subject (for which the 1978 Vienna Convention was always a convenient starting point) with what appeared to be happening around them. For some, this was evidently a problem-solving exercise, for others it was a question of principle, for others still it was simply a matter of mapping out what was taking shape by reference to the existing tenets of State succession as they saw them. With certain rare exceptions, it was the dissimilarity between past and contemporary practice that seemed most marked.

This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of the two main goals of the book, which are to develop a sense of what seems to be at stake when international lawyers turn to the question of succession and to examine how it was that international lawyers understood decolonization and what significance that process had for the understanding of their own discipline. It is argued that part of the problem with the formulation and codification of the law of State succession may be related to the idea that decolonization was a radical or constitutive moment: a moment at which international lawyers were faced not only with the task of managing political change on the ‘outside’, but of managing the decolonization of the legal imagination itself.

This concluding chapter presents a synthesis of discussions in the previous chapters. It suggests that Sir Henry Maine's account of emancipation — as encapsulated in a move from ‘status to contract’ — may have significance as regards the similar process of emancipation occurring in the middle of the 20th century in the form of decolonization, and for more recent debates concerning the putative ‘fragmentation’ of international law in the early 21st century. It then addresses the question how one might place the experience of decolonization in the context of the developing law of State succession, as experienced through the lens of late 20th-century transition.

Long before the Russian bonds were repudiated, the redrawing of territorial boundaries as a result of wars, annexations, and inheritances had raised the issue of the debt of territories that had either become independent or been incorporated into new nations. This issue was central in the case of the Russian bonds because the Russian revolution led to a division of the empire and the creation of new independent nations. This chapter analyzes the various statements made by successor countries. Many countries acknowledged on paper a form of liability but none ever repaid part of the Russian debt. It further shows that, on top of successor states, bondholders hoped that Russia would ask Germany to repay part of its debts in the framework of World War I reparations.