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Conquest involves achieving control of another entity's territory through war or coercion.[1] Historically, conquests occurred frequently in the international order, and practical norms hardly governed them under rule of law, including in military and international law.[2] In the 19th century especially, nationalism and the rise of nation states complicated conquests. After World War I, as the League of Nations was established and, after World War II, with the United Nations, prohibitions against conquests were codified.[2] Since this time, major (successful) conquests have been rare, though states have continued to pursue annexation of small territories. Scholars have debated the role of norms against conquest.[3][4]
Military history provides many examples of conquest: the Roman conquest of Britain, the Mauryan conquest of Afghanistan and of vast areas of the Indian subcontinent, the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire and various Muslim conquests, to mention just a few.
The Norman conquest of England led to the subjugation of the Kingdom of England to Norman control and brought William the Conqueror to the English throne in 1066. Conquest may link in some ways with colonialism. England, for example, experienced phases and areas of Anglo-Saxon, Viking, and Franco-Norman colonisation and conquest.
The ancient civilized peoples conducted wars on a large scale that were, in effect, conquests.[5] In Egypt the effects of invasion and conquest are to be seen in different racial types represented in paintings and sculptures.[6]
Improved agriculture production facilitated division of labour, including the formation of larger, professional militaries and improved military technology. With population growth and hierarchical political organization, war became more widespread and destructive.[7] The Aztecs and Incas, the African kingdoms of Dahomey and Benin, and the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, and Persia emerged as more militaristic than the less organized societies around them. Military adventures were on a larger scale, and effective conquest for the first time became feasible.
The Ottomans used a method of gradual, non-military conquest in which they established suzerainty over their neighbours and then displaced their ruling dynasties. This concept was first systematized by Halil İnalcık.[8] Conquests of this sort did not involve violent revolution but were a process of slow assimilation, established by bureaucratic means such as registers of population and resources as part of the feudal timar system.[9]
Scholars have debated the existence of a norm against conquest since 1945.[3][4] Conquest of large swaths of territory has been rare, but states have since 1945 continued to pursue annexation of small swaths of territory.[4]
The Russo-Ukrainian War can be considered a contemporary example of a war of conquest, taking into account that during the conflict there was, even if illegally in the eyes of international law, the Russian annexation of Crimea and parts of four southeast Ukrainian oblasts in 2014 and 2022, respectively.[10] On the Russian precedent, Tanisha Fazal writes,
Norms die slowly. Attempted land grabs as big and brazen as Russia's in 2022 are likely to remain rare, at least for now. But as aggressors go more or less unpunished, states may increasingly act on territorial claims in murky jurisdictions—those least likely to trigger a significant international response. These small-scale attacks may prove most damaging to the norm against territorial conquest. As violence ticks up, the larger web of rules and institutions that make up the international system could begin to come undone. Although far from inevitable, the norm's demise would leave the world in dangerous terrain.[11]
Military conquest is one of the most persistent causes of human migrations.[12] There is a significant influence of migration and conquest on political development and state formation. Conquest leading to migration has contributed to race mixture and cultural exchange. The latter points influence on conquest has been of far greater significance in the evolution of society. Conquest brings humans into contact, even though it is a hostile contact.
Looting by a victorious army during war has been a common practice throughout recorded history.[13] In the wake of the Napoleonic Wars and particularly after World War II, norms against wartime plunder became widely accepted.[13] In modern armed conflicts, looting is prohibited by international law, and constitutes a war crime.[14][15]
Generally, modern states are formed by either migration or conquest.[16] Migration allows for a slow-moving conquest by gradual migration patterns of a people into a new territory. Conquest is faster, since a territorial army occupying a territory takes over and moves civilization through force of arms. This total subjugation, by either migration or conquest frequently results in the conquerors having taken over the culture of their subjects.[17]
With subjugation, further class distinctions arise. The conquered people are enslaved; thus the widest possible social classes are produced: the enslaved and the free. The slaves are put to work to support the upper classes, who regard war as their chief business.[18] The state is in origin a product of war and exists primarily as an enforced peace between conquerors and conquered.[19] From slavery and from conquest, another result of war, sprang differentiation of classes and occupations termed the division of labour.[20] Through conquest, society became divided into a ruling militant class and a subject industrial class. The regulative function devolved upon the conquering soldiers and operations side to the serfs and slaves.
The right of countries to engage in self-defence against a war of aggression is enshrined in the Article 51 of the UN Charter.[21]Military occupation can be seen as a continued attack against the self-determination of the occupied country. Some argue the right to armed recapture of illegally occupied territories increases with the passage of time.[21]