Apathy, aphasia and athambia: teaching Jamestown and parodying the history of international law

In 2019 the Journal of the History of International Law published an article on the 1622 Jamestown Massacre. The piece claims that English atrocities in colonising North America are justifiable as a reasonable response to Native American violence. This article fell short of every standard of academic publishing, in particular three grounds on which the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) advise withdrawal of a publication – major errors, manipulation of data, and unethical research. We, along with many others, raised our concerns at the time, through both academic blogging and letters to the editors. In response, the publishers organised a conference to address this and related issues, and published a special edition. In this chapter we want to reflect upon this incident and what it has taught us about our approach to teaching international law, particularly its history.