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IRAN’S CLAIM TO BAHRAIN 181
to international law principles.1 Cecil Hurst discusses various cases of
conquest based on unilateral annexation.2 And according to John
I Fischer Williams, the consent or the recognition of the dispossessed
State, although
in most cases settles the problem whether in the view of international law
there has been a valid transfer of dominion, this assent is not the only
condition of which it is necessary to take account.3
I
Conquest has been recognised by international law as a mode of
losing territory without ‘regard to the justice or injustice of a particular
acquisition’.4 There are cases, says Westlake, where States ceased to
exist, without their own consent, by conquest. He cites the annexation
of the former South African Republic by Great Britain as an example
of such cases. He further quotes the American Vice Chancellor James
as saying, as late as the past century, that
any government which de facto succeeds to any other government whether
by ... or conquest. . . succeeds ... to all rights ... of the displaced
power . . .5
Finally, according to Max Huber,
Possession, in international law, is the exercise of power in and from
a territory. The territory of a state is that of which it can take physical
possession. Whoever succeeds in obtaining this possession has sovereignty
(Herrschaft) over everything that is in the territory. When one state follows
after another on the same territory there is a change in the exercise of power.
The change may be the result of the concurrent wills of both the states con­
cerned, but nevertheless, the consent of the predecessor is unnecessary.6
The implication of this view is that conquest can operate as a ground
for loss of territory even without the conclusion of a treaty of cession
with, or obtaining the consent of, the conquered, or dispossessed,
State.7
1 Williams, Sir John Fischer, ‘Sovereignty, Seisin, and the League’, B.Y.l.L., 7
(1926), pp. 24-42. In an analysis of the legal conclusions of the ‘Wirscn’s Commis­
sion’ on the Turkish-Iraqi dispute over the ‘Mosul District’, the writer con­
cludes that there exists, in international law, no such principle as that stated by
the Commission.
3 Hurst, Sir Cecil, J. B., ‘State Succession in Matters of Tort’, B. Y.I.L., 5 (1924),
p. 172.
3 Williams, op. cit., p. 30. 4 Lindley, p. 161.
6 Westlake, J., ‘The Nature and Extent of the Title by Conquest’, Law Quarterly
Review, 17 (1901), pp. 392-401.
6 Huber, M., Die Staatensuccession (1898), quoted by Williams, op. cit., p. 30.
7 Conquest, although ‘a moral wrong’, is not illegal and it produces legal results.
Sec Williams, op. cit., p. 41. It is to be noted, however, that, at present, the legality
of conquest has been modified by the presence of the United Nations (formerly the
League of Nations). Therefore, conquest is not, today, a basis of acquiring or
losing territory. See Oppcnhcim, pp. 570-1.