The nineteenth century was for Ethiopia a century of inner consolidation. During that time the Ethiopian rulers step by step restored the power accredited to their dynasty which they had lost in endless feuds during the eighteenth century. On the coast the Porte claimed suzerainty over the strip down to the Strait of Bab el Mandeb and even Zeila. Turkish occupation was actual only at Massawa; from there Turkey controlled the commerce with north Ethiopia; in most other places Turkish control was nominal. The chiefs of the Danakil coastal tribes were practically independent. When, however, about the year 1839, the French Compagnie Nanto-Bordelaise bought from the local Danakil chiefs the village of Edd, which today belongs to Italian Eritrea, with a district extending three leagues inland, the Porte protested, and the French Government repudiated the purchase. But the rights of the purchasers to the soil were not questioned, and a French company still claimed them in 1862.

One of the danger spots in after-war Europe is the “autonomous territory” of Memel. So many questions are constantly being raised about it that a sketch of its background is necessary. A prominent French writer, for instance, stated in 1926 that the population were “au point de vue ethnique, moitie polonais et moitié lithuanien,” when as a matter of fact there are only a very few Poles in the whole area with its population of 140,000 or more.

One of the most significant developments of the 19th and early 20th centuries has been the rapid expansion of constitutional government and the resultant rôle of representative bodies in the important function of concluding international agreements. While treaty-making remained for many centuries largely in the hands of unchecked executives, the trend of the past 150 years–at least until the recent rise of dictatorships in Europe–has been toward the conferring of more and more power upon the representative branch. The importance of this movement is especially significant when we consider that interstate contacts have rapidly multiplied during this same period and international contractual relationships correspondingly increased.

The problem of jurisdiction is of even greater importance in international law than it is in the domain of municipal law. This may easily be understood because, up to the present, no international tribunal has been furnished with obligatory jurisdiction binding upon all States. In consequence, the judicial settlement of many international disputes depends upon the preliminary question whether any tribunal has jurisdiction over the case. Although since the foundation of the Permanent Court of International Justice at The Hague a tribunal invested with a very comprehensive jurisdiction exists, it is, nevertheless, significant that in many cases before the Permanent Court a plea to the jurisdiction has been raised with the obvious intention of preventing a legal decision on the merits.