Jurists specialising ininternational law andprivate international law use Ruritania and other fictional countries when describing a hypothetical case illustrating some legal point. Examples include:
For example,Briggs (2019) writes in a legal textbook:
″[t]he question whetherA obtained good title to a camera which he bought in Ruritania is governed by Ruritanian law, even if the camera had been delivered onhire purchase terms, or under aconditional sale toA’s seller in England.″[4]
In another legal textbook,Mortensen, Garnett & Keyes (2023) frequently use “Ruritania” as a placeholder-name when referring to a generic country in hypothetical scenarios in international law.[5]
"We do not need to have a security agreement with Indonesia so both of us will fight off the 'Ruritanians'. That's not what the relationship is about," he said. "It is all about working together on the threats that we have to deal with, which are different types of threats."[citation needed]
A British court, when contemplating a publication ban relating to a childhood sexual assault case, referred to the country of origin of the child as “Ruritania”, further explaining, "The boy was described in the judgment as having 'dual British and “Ruritanian” nationality'."[6]
The well-knowneconomistL. von Mises used “Ruritania” to discuss currency reform[7] and other issues in economics,[8]
M. Rothbard – a former student of von Mises – similarly used the fictional country in his own works.[a]
Polish politicianJanusz Korwin-Mikke often uses "Poronia" and "Rurytania" to compare Poland to some western or utopian country.[10]
BBC radio used “Ruritania” in 1956, as a euphemism for Egypt during theSuez Crisis for on-air discussions of the crisis, in order to circumvent the terms of an agreement with the British government that prevented broadcasting details of the events before they were discussed in parliament.[11]
Ruritania has also been used to describe the stereotypical development ofnationalism in 19th-centuryEastern Europe, byErnest Gellner inNations and Nationalism, in apastiche of thehistorical narratives ofnationalist movements among Poles, Czechs, Serbians, Romanians, etc. In this story, peasant Ruritanians living in the "Empire ofMegalomania" developed national consciousness through the elaboration of a Ruritanianhigh culture by a small group of intellectuals responding toindustrialization and labor migration.
Author and royal historianTheo Aronson, in his bookCrowns in Conflict (1986), used the term to describe the semi-romantic and even tribal-like conditions of theBalkan and Romanian cultures beforeWorld War I.Walter Lippmann used the word to describe the stereotype that characterized the vision ofinternational relations during and after the War.[12]
Vesna Goldsworthy ofKingston University, in her bookInventing Ruritania: The Imperialism of the Imagination (Yale University Press, 1998), addresses the question of the impact of the work of novelists and film-makers in shaping international perceptions of the Balkans in the framework of an anti-Western type of modernism which has received much criticism from other academics. Goldsworthy's theories consider stories and movies about Ruritania to be a form of "literary exploitation" or "narrative colonization" of the peoples of the Balkans.
While discussing how new revolutionary leadership consciously or unconsciously may inherit certain elements of the previous regime,Benedict Anderson, in his bookImagined Communities, mentions among other examples "Josip Broz's revival of Ruritanian pomp and ceremony."[13]
^"One method of the birth of a State may be illustrated as follows: In the hills of southern “Ruritania”, a bandit group manages to obtain physical control over the territory, and finally the bandit chieftain proclaims himself “King of the sovereign and independent government of South Ruritania”; and, if he and his men have the force to maintain this rule for a while, lo and behold! a new State has joined the “family of nations,” and the former bandit leaders have been transformed into the lawful nobility of the realm." —Rothbard (2009)[9]
^Manguel, Alberto; Guadalupi, Gianni (1987).The Dictionary of Imaginary Places. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. pp. 336–337.ISBN0156260549.
^Daly, Nicholas (2020).Ruritania: A Cultural History, from the Prisoner of Zenda to the Princess Diaries. Oxford University Press.ISBN978-0198836605.[page needed]
