ABSTRACT
This book has offered a counter-legal history of international law and abolition by focusing on the figure of the recaptive. This historical narrative is important for its own sake, but one of the book’s central claims is that the figure of the recaptive is relevant to discussions about the construction and representation of victims in international criminal law today. 1 On the basis of this claim I have proposed in this book that the recaptive should form part of the history of international criminal law, where international criminal legal history, as a reflection of current concerns, extends beyond the scope of international criminal law in a strict sense. The purpose of this chapter is to explore this claim further, that is to ‘read’ the construction of the recaptive alongside the victim in international criminal law today. In so doing, it returns to some of the broader questions about the politics and purposes of international criminal legal history that I discussed in Chapter 1.
