This chapter turns to the analysis of the practice of justifying force in the ‘semi-peripheries’, i.e., in non-‘European’ States. The purpose is to see whether legal arguments were also developed and whether they differed from the ones brought forth to justify bellicose endeavours in the ‘centre’. It focuses on four case studies: the European intervention during the Greek War of Independence (1827); the French expedition in Lebanon and Syria (1860); the western intervention during the Boxer Revolt in China (1901); the Monroe doctrine and the Roosevelt corollary with special attention to their application in Nicaragua in the early twentieth century (1909–1912). It argues that, although these interventions rarely gave rise to full-blown wars, the justifications brought forward did not substantially differ from the ones used in the ‘centre’. States, in fact, carefully developed legal arguments and evidenced how their actions were meant to redress a previous offence.

This chapter is the third and last one dedicated to the analysis of 19th State practice. It turns to precedents of justifying force in the ‘peripheries’, i.e., non-‘European’ spaces. Four case studies are more particularly analysed: building from the work of Inge Van Hulle, it looks at British colonial expansion in Western Africa; at the Anglo-Zulu War (1879); at the French Tonkin expeditions in the 1870s and 1880s; and at the United States’ annexation of Hawaii (1893–1898). It shows that even though the status of ‘peripheral’ entities in the international legal system was debated, intervening States once more took care to develop legal arguments to justify their colonial and expansionist adventures. In so doing it completes the picture of the practice of justifying force in the nineteenth century.