History of International Law, 1550-1700 (International Law)

Introduction

Every epoch remakes the study of the history of international law in its own image. In the wake of a post–Cold War historic turn in international law, the traditional interdisciplinary pollination of the history of international law, which blends international relations theory and its historical discourse, legal history, and the history of ideas and political thought, has been further enhanced by a growing diversity of standpoints. It has broken new thematic paths for scholarly exploration and has benefited from a new set of historiographical methodologies. However, the core of the classical historiography of international law still predominantly revolves around a mythical foundational moment for the creation of a Eurocentric international legal narrative. The contours of this classical historiography can be, summarily, examined by reference to two major poles. There is, on one hand, the culmination of the medieval natural law tradition rooted in Christian doctrines and interwoven with Roman law and Stoic foundations throughout the Middle Ages. This orientation attained its climax with the seconda scholastica embodied by the Salamanca school—its aprioristic and universal character accounting for the embedment of religion and morals in international relations at the dawn of the modern era in the Age of Discovery. There is, on the other hand, the dismantling of the medieval Respublica Christiana order erected upon the pillars of the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire alongside the parallel long emergence of the modern state (as superiorem non recognoscentes) which gave rise to a Western state system of territorial limited sovereignty and an early modern type of the law of nations (or voluntary law). In the classical Eurocentric historiography, these two poles converge on the Peace of Westphalia, which is identified as the European geopolitical origin for a modern (or classical) law of nations circumscribed in its application to the rights and duties of states in their external relations, and thus one continually distancing itself—although far from ever entirely superseding it—on grounds of reasons of state from both the moral and religious elements embedded in the natural law tradition. The Peace of Westphalia allegedly marked the birth date, after a long advent, through the premodern era of a post-Imperial sovereignty-based ius publicum europaeum or ius gentium europaeum. In the late 19th century, as the ius publicum europaeum adopted its ultimate global dimension in the Age of Empire, the classical Western historiography began to be challenged for generating a Eurocentric and civilizationally superior state-centered distortion, which led to the displacement of other narratives. The postcolonial and non-state-centered historiographical challenges have grown stronger as different waves of decolonization and transformations in the structure of international society have unfolded throughout the 20th century. They still permeate the study of the history of international law during the period 1550–1700 in the global academia of the early 21st century.

General Overviews

Most of the existing general overviews provide an overwhelming focus on European developments between 1550 and 1700. General overviews are susceptible of classification according to the two-tiered broad-ideal typology of international legal history put forward by Martti Koskenniemi (see Koskenniemi 2011, cited under Non-European History). Within the category of “realist” narratives “that concentrate on State power and geopolitics and view international law’s past in terms of the succession of apologies for State behaviour” and periodize accordingly, the most paradigmatic example is Grewe 2000 which includes 1550–1700 as falling squarely under the Spanish age (until 1659), and partly under the French age. The realist stress on diplomacy and treaty relations is particularly forceful in Nussbaum 1954. While not renouncing the power-based geopolitical substratum that permeates these realist narratives, an intellectual turn of the screw to them is provided in Schmitt 2003, which focuses on the changing shifts of the “nomos” of the Earth. On the other hand, “idealist” or doctrinal histories that “focus on lawyers and philosophers and view the past through debates about legal principles or institutions” tend also to focus on the period 1550–1700, viewing it as the great historical caesura of the emergence of the modern state and its accompanying modern state system in Western Europe. The exact dating of the genesis of the early modern state, with candidates historiographically ranging from the 15th to the 16th century, or even back to the 13th century, has, in its turn, influenced the existing periodizations of the history of international law. These remain intermingled with a nationalistically and religiously tainted historiographical contest about the founding fathers of international law. This can be observed in the classification schemes that accompany a selected and highly scrutinized number of Classic Authors, beginning with Francisco de Vitoria for this period. Truyol y Serra 1995 provides a clear example of this evolving “idealist” history, which benefits from the author’s great familiarity with Spanish sources. Ward 2005 is a recent reprinting of a 1795 work that is generally regarded as one of the first surveys of the history of international law from the time of the Greeks and Romans to the age of Grotius. At the other extreme, with its modern theoretically informed approach, built around the dual notion of a liberal-welfarist law of nations, lies Jouannet 2012, which sets the modern origins of the discipline in the 18th century. In its turn, Laghmani 2004 is permeated by an anti-imperial ethos in its reexamination of the history of international law from the ius gentium imperial to a post-Westphalian ius publicum europaeum. A deeper bibliographical texture has been added to the field in Koskenniemi 2012, which provides a unique history of international law histories.

Grewe, Wilhelm G. The Epochs of International Law. Translated and revised by Michael Byers. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 2000.
DOI: 10.1515/9783110902907Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Representative of the epochal approach to international law and the division of the history of international law into stages of periodical development coincidental with the predominance of specific hegemonic powers. Monumental and greatly influential, this is a great starting point for students of the history of international law to cut their teeth on. Originally published in German in 1984.
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Jouannet, Emmanuelle. The Liberal-Welfarist Law of Nations: A History of International Law. Translated by Christopher Sutcliffe. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139093583Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A suggestive historically informed departure from traditional approaches that places the emergence of the international law of the Moderns in the 18th century. A modern inquiry into what the author portrays as the dual liberal-welfarist structural normative framework underlying international law, which extends up to present times.
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Koskenniemi, Martti. “A History of International Law Histories.” In The Handbook of the History of International Law. Edited by Bardo Fassbender and Anne Peters, 943–971. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
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The most updated and well-grounded bibliographical essay on the history of international law from the standpoint of post–Cold War historiographical developments. Simply a must reading.
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Laghmani, Slim. Histoire du droit des gens: Du jus gentium imperial au jus publicum europaeum. Paris: Pedone, 2004.
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An inquiry in the formative period of the history of international law, which is oriented to examine the interdependence that exists between shifts in international law and both the evolution of the relationships between actors and the evolving nature of those actors through history.
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Nussbaum, Arthur. A Concise History of the Law of Nations. 2d enlarged ed. New York: Macmillan, 1954.
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An example of the apologetic strand of international legal history that focuses on diplomacy and treaty relations. The Spanish translation (1949) contains long additions on the history of the Hispanic doctrine, which were written during the apogee of National Catholicism in Spain. Also available in German (1960).
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Schmitt, Carl. The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum. Translated and introduced by G. L. Ulmen. New York: Telos, 2003.
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Originally published in 1950 (2d ed. 1974) in German, and translated into English in 2003, Schmitt’s lucidly polemical work has regained new prominence thanks to extensive scholarly commentary in the post-9/11 literature of international law and international relations. Available annotated translations also exist in Spanish (edited by Monereo, 2002), Italian (edited by Volpi, 2003) and French (edited by Haggenmacher, 2008).
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Truyol y Serra, Antonio. Histoire du droit international public. Paris: Economica, 1995.
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Presents an accessible and informative universalist approach to the history of international law, influenced by the sociologist axiom ibi societas inter potestates, ibi ius gentium, and which transcends the Eurocentric framework of the Westphalian state-centered narrative. Although it was originally published in French, there is a Spanish edition (1998).
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Ward, Robert. An Enquiry into the Foundation and History of the Law of Nations in Europe, from the Time of the Greeks and Romans to the Age of Grotius. Clark, NJ: Lawbook Exchange, 2005.
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First published in 1795 (Dublin: P. Wogan, P. Byrne, W. Jones, and J. Rice), and recently digitalized and reprinted, this volume is included here as an homage to one of the first attempts to produce a general history of international law. It follows the encyclopedic spirit of the late 18th century in its retracing of the history of international law from the time of the Greeks and Romans to the age of Grotius.
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Bibliographical Resources

Books covering the period 1550–1700, and appended with bibliographies, have been written since at least the end of the 18th century (e.g., Ward 2005, cited under General Overviews) including great multivolume works in the 19th century, such as the eighteen volumes that F. Laurent published between 1850 and 1870. Uncountable articles on events and authors between 1550 and 1700 have also appeared, scattered in both general international law and law review journals. However, the fast-growing pace of the field is shown by the fact that some of the most insightful works have been written over the span of the latest quarter century. In the mid-1980s the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law pioneered the gathering of the systematic study of historical periods and regional perspectives. Meanwhile, the specialized Journal of the History of International Law, the first of its kind, had to wait until the turn of the millennium to see the light. Bibliographically annotated resources, such as Macalister-Smith and Schwietzke 1999, which had previously been almost nonexistent, emerged in the wake of this periodical. The post–Cold War “historic turn” in international law has led to a new generation of Textbooks and Handbooks, as well as specialized book collections, including, more recently, the Studies in the History of International Law series. Moreover, some continuously updated online library catalogues, such as, more representatively, the Peace Palace Library Research Guide, prove that the gradual incorporation of new technologies into historical research has not only increased but extended far beyond the traditional circles of elite university erudition the researchers’ accessibility to bibliographical resources on this often neglected area of international legal studies. Skouteris 2012 provides an introductory bibliography to the programmatic role of history and intellectual histories in “new approaches to international law,” which have consistently contributed to enriching the study of the history of international law with new challenging sensitivities and methodologies. A number of works have attempted to provide a series of rationales for the post–Cold War’s intradisciplinary surge of cultivation of the hitherto underdeveloped history of international law. Lesaffer 2007 brings to bear the perspective of the legal historian on this renewed relationship between international law and its history with ironical acumen. The thoughts of the author of the most groundbreaking post-1990s historical book-length work in the discipline are always worthwhile reflecting upon, and the reader should thus refer to Koskenniemi 2004.

Journal of the History of International Law. 1999–.
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Oriented to stimulate interest in the whys, the whats, and wheres of international legal developments, the journal’s pages provide an extensive coverage of scholarly debates regarding the years 1550–1770. A port of call for the field.
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Koskenniemi, Martti. “Why History of International Law Today?” Zeitschrift des Max-Planck-Instituts für europäische Rechtsgeschichte 4 (2004): 61–66.
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A must-read opuscule by the author who has been credited with spurring the post–Cold War historiographical turn in international law. Referring to a new sense of an increased political possibility connected with the end of the Cold War, the breakdown of the modernist frame of politics, and the rise of a postmodern outlook, it provides a plausible interpretation of the intellectual levers at play behind the cultivation of the history of international law since the 1990s.
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Lesaffer, R. C. H. “International Law and Its History: The Story of an Unrequited Love.” In Time, History and International Law. Edited by Matthew Craven, Malgosia Fitzmaurice, and Maria Vogiatzi, 27–41. Leiden, The Netherlands, and Boston: Martinus Nijhoff, 2007.
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A fresh and insightful examination of the relationship between legal historiography and international law with relevance to 1550–1700. Highlights the need to delve deeper into the neglected study of the multiplicity of sources of historical international legal practice, and the need to extend the research scope of the discipline beyond the spatial and temporal confines of a state-centered approach to international law.
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Macalister-Smith, Peter, and Joachim Schwietzke. “Literature and Documentary Sources Relating to the History of Public International Law: An Annotated Bibliographical Survey.” Journal of the History of International Law 1 (1999): 136–212.
DOI: 10.1163/15718059920956724Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An extremely rare bibliographical work. It reviews encyclopedias, monographs, treatises and other general studies as well as to treaty collections and other documentary sources. It pays bibliographical attention to the 16th and 17th centuries, and to works by/on Hugo Grotius. A required consulting source for doctoral students.
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Peace Palace Library Research Guide on the History of International Law.
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Despite its (still) nonperiodized coverage of the literature, this continually updated online research guide on the history of international law provides a useful research tool for those who want to stay aware of recent bibliographical developments in this fast-growing area of studies.
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Skouteris, Thomas. “New Approaches to International Law.” In Oxford Bibliographies: International Law. Edited by Anthony Carty. 2012.
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Provides a bibliographical selection of works that shows the interest shown by new approaches to international law to the history and intellectual histories of the discipline. While not every representative work could be listed, every work listed is representative and worth consulting.
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Studies in the History of International Law. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
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The latest ongoing exponent of the growing interest on the history of international law by the publishing world. This new series, edited by Randall Lesaffer, features book-length works on the history of international law in the broadest possible sense, without restrictions in terms of geography or chronology, and shows an enlightened awareness of the fact that some of today’s groundbreaking works may well become tomorrow’s classics.
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Wolfrum, Rüdiger, and Frauke Lachenmann, eds. Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law. New York: Oxford University Press.
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First published in 1981 (Amsterdam and New York: North Holland) under the auspices of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, under the direction of Rudolf Bernhardt. This now online resource inaugurated the modern treatment of the history of international law after the decolonization decades. Entries have been regularly updated, and new additions have been incorporated. Although most of entries in the category of “International Law, Regional Developments” have been replaced by new ones throughout the 2000s, the original ones (available in the printed version) are very much worth consulting.
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Textbooks and Handbooks

The history of international law in 1550–1700 is rarely given anything but the most cursory treatment in contemporary textbooks of public international law, which remain anchored to an evolutional lineage that highlights developments belonging to the post-1945 UN-based international legal system. The coverage of the history of international law from 1550 to 1700 is generally limited to an introductory summary-like reference to the work of Classic Authors. This generalist acritical overview is often accompanied by a celebratory reference to the Peace of Westphalia (see Westphalia and Diplomatic History) as the mythical birth date of the modern European system of sovereign states. However, in spite of its relegation to the footnotes and margins of most international law textbooks, the history of international law has split into three areas in the post–Cold War period. There is, firstly, a surge of specialized literature and monographs on the history of international law (including Non-European History). Some of this recent literature has expressly adopted the form of companion textbooks and handbooks on the history of international law. Gaurier 2005, Ziegler 2007 and, more recently, Focarelli 2012 are representative of, respectively, French, German, and Italian handbooks on the history of international law written since the early 2000s. One can also find under this category annotated student’s editions of the work of classic authors such as Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), including Neff 2012. Secondly, there is a trend toward a new generation of multiauthored textbooks of general international law in which the treatment of the history of international law is more extensive and acute than in traditional introductory treatments. Evans 2010 contains several chapters that help to provide students of international law with a more complex historical and theoretical introductory perspective on the discipline. The presence of history also permeates many of the contributions to a carefully crafted companion book, Crawford and Koskenniemi 2012. Thirdly, and featuring as the most recent and much welcomed development, there has been an emergence of specialized multiauthored handbooks. The great research scope of Fassbender and Peters 2012 is bound to make it preside for some time over this new specialized category of handbooks on the history of international law, which was initiated in Orakhelashvili 2011. This new array of specialized literature is common to several languages. It may be seen as both a prelude to and an indicator of a much greater treatment of the history of international law in the international legal curriculum in the years to come.

Crawford, James, and Martti Koskenniemi, eds. The Cambridge Companion to International Law. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
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Several chapters engage both critically and dynamically with historical materials to examine fundamental elements of international law, including the legitimation of the rule of law (Chimni), the role of international law in diplomatic history (Simpson), and the history of ideas (Koskenniemi).
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Evans, Malcolm, ed. International Law. 3d ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
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Wide-ranging and original addition to the textbook category of international law for graduate study, of which the first part is devoted to the history and theory of international law. It features a very useful short history of international law (Neff), as well as reflections on the purpose of international law (Koskenniemi) and the analysis of different schools of international thought in historical context (Scobbie)
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Fassbender, Bardo, and Anne Peters. The Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
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Inspired by a Global History approach, this monumental multiauthored addition to the literature attempts to enhance a pluralist perspective on the history of international law. A milestone for the field that makes for a richly diverse and, overall, highly enjoyable reading. A must for any international law library.
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Focarelli, Carlo. Introduzione storica al diritto internazionale. Milan: Giuffrè, 2012.
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Monumental single-authored book that attempts a synthetic perspective of the whole of the history of international law, with special attention to less well-known aspects of ancient practices from Mesopotamia and the Near East. It does so without departing from the classical doctrinal perspective on the Eurocentric-Christian ascendancy of contemporary international Law.
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Gaurier, Dominique. Histoire du droit international: Auteurs, doctrines et développement de l’Antiquitié à l’aube de la période contemporaine. Rennes, France: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2005.
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Conceived as a pedagogic tool for the teaching of the history of international law. Its time coverage spans from the third millennium BC up to the end of the League of Nations, and extends geographically to include Ancient China and Islamic practices during the Middle Ages. It also includes a number of translations of little-known classic texts and authors.
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Neff, Stephen C., ed. Hugo Grotius on the Law of War and Peace: Student Edition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139031233Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A most useful pedagogic addition given the interdisciplinary appeal of Hugo Grotius to students of the history of international law, the history of political thought, the history of international relations, and the history of philosophy. Annotated.
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Orakhelashvili, Alexander. Research Handbook on the Theory and History of International Law. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2011.
DOI: 10.4337/9780857933089Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Pioneering research handbook. It aims to show the interdependence of theory and history of international law to engage the field in all its complexity against the background of proliferation of contemporary theoretical approaches in the field. Devotes a specific section to the history of international law, as well as specific chapters on the Middle Ages, the early modern period, and the classic law of nations.
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Ziegler, K. H. Volkerrechtsgeschichte: Ein Studienbuch. 2d ed. Munich: C. H. Beck, 2007.
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This referential German handbook of the history of international law follows an epochal organization and includes a wealth of bibliographical references to both primary and secondary sources.
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Westphalia and Diplomatic History

The central role of sovereignty in international law and international relations’ theory scholarship has made the Peace of Westphalia an attractive beacon for scholarship. International lawyers have, indeed, made much of Westphalia as a foundational myth for the discipline to explain its own genesis to itself. International lawyers have interpreted Westphalia as a momentous sort of postwar multilateral treatment for the international system; as the moment of transition from empire to autonomous, territorially delimited sovereign states in the European political order, which inaugurated a new ius public europaeum; as the stepping stone between theocracy and a secularist cuius regio eius religio informed by “reason of state”; as a converging point for the principle of equal sovereignty of European states in both their internal and external facets; as a crystallizing moment for an intellectual transition from a natural law–dominated worldview toward an increasing role for voluntary law, and toward the use of the language of law and legality in anchoring the balance of power in interstate relations; and, all in all, as the spark that lighted the fuse of the European sovereignty-based international society which would later spread through different colonization waves to the four corners of the earth. Understandably, the study of Westphalia as an epochal turning point has been the object of numerous works. Its long-standing relationship with the notion of state sovereignty has been more recently influenced by the linguistic turn, as shown in Beaulac 2004. A genealogy of the sovereign state is offered in Skinner 2010. The momentous character of Westphalia has been revisited as a background historical template by international lawyers in particular historical conjectures, as in Gross 1948, written during the apogee of the international push for international institution building after the Second World War. However, the treaties of Osnabruck and Munster belong within the history of international treaties. International treaty-making was gradually institutionalized in medieval and early modern Europe as gradually forming early modern states developed a web of “legal” external relations with one another. This web was, initially, composed peace treaties and treaties of commerce and alliance. Diplomatic relations has been a traditional object of study by historians and international relations experts, with legal historians and international lawyers extending their interest to other (international) legal sources as well. The discipline of international relations itself emerged from works on diplomatic history and the compilations of treaty collections since the first half of the 18th century, such as Dumont 1726–1739, and throughout the 19th century. Atkinson 2012 provides a good bibliographical introduction to the treatment of diplomatic history by the field of international relations. Calvo 1862 covers Latin-America since 1493 and shows that the diplomatic history extended well beyond the geographical contours of the European world already back in the mid-19th century. Grewe 1988–1995 covers the sources relating to the history of the law of nations in different volumes, which span several centuries. Lesaffer 2004 is the most detailed and recent analysis of peace treaties by legal historians in Europe. The volume also contributes to the demythologization of the claims historically associated with the Treaties of Westphalia.

Atkinson, David. “History of Diplomacy.” In Oxford Bibliographies: International Relations. Edited by David Armstrong. 2012.
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Especially useful bibliography (as far as the 1550–1700 period is concerned) for its treatment of Renaissance and early modern Europe—including Westphalia. Provides a flavor of the ongoing debates in the discipline, and also a reference to journals such as International History Review.
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Beaulac, Stephane. The Power of Language in the Making of International Law: The Word Sovereignty in Bodin and Vattel and the Myth of Westphalia. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2004.
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Influenced by the linguistic turn, Beaulac examines the reality-creating role of language in the uses of the word sovereignty and Westphalia, in particular as an etiological myth (that is, a myth for the origins of things) for European and later the world international society to explain its genesis to itself.
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Calvo, Carlos. Recueil complet des traités, conventions, capitulations, armistices et autres actes diplomatiques de tous les Etats de l’Amérique latine compris entre le golfe du Mexique et le Cap Horn depuis l’année 1493 jusq’à nos jours. Paris: A. Durand, 1862.
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A proof of how historiographical efforts in peripheral newly independent regions of the Americas in the mid-19th century were associated with the defense of the inclusion of those new regions as rightful members of a family of civilized nations comprising both Europe and Americas.
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Dumont, Jean, Jean Rousset de Missy, and Jean Barbeyrac. Corps universel diplomatique du droit des gens: Contenant un recueil des traitez d’alliance, de paix, de treve, de neutralité, de commerce, d’échange de neutralité, de commerce, d’échange, de protection & de Garantie, de toutes les conventions, transactions, pactes, concordats, & autres contrats, qui ont été faits en Europe, depuis le regne de l’empereur Charlemagne jusques à present. Amsterdam: Brunel, 1726–1739.
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Published in eight volumes by successive editors. This work passes by being the most comprehensive contemporary recollection on international treaties from Charlemagne to the early 18th century.
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Grewe, Wilhelm G., ed. Fontes Historiae Iuris Gentium. 3 vols. Quellen zur Geschichte des Völkerrechts. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1988–1995.
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Monumental coverage of documentary sources relating to the history of the law of nations spanning seven centuries. Edited by Grewe pursuant to the same “epochal” periodization used in his famous treatise. A useful gateway for documents—which appear in its original version accompanied by translations—from before 1648. Volume 1, 1380 v.Chr./B.C.–1493; Volume 2, 1493–1815, Volume 3, 1815–1945.
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Gross, Leo. “The Peace of Westphalia: 1648–1948.” American Journal of International Law 42 (1948): 20–41.
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Written on the tercentenary of the Peace of Westphalia as an event inviting a reexamination of the foundations of international law and international society amid the great process of international institution-building that followed the Second World War. A good proof of the recurrent use of Westphalia as a self-referential template for the discipline in different historical periods.
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Lesaffer, Randall, ed. Peace Treaties and International Law in European History: From the Late Middle Ages to World War One. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511494239Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An ambitious design for a detailed coverage of European peace practice. Offers an interdisciplinary inquiry into peace treaties from the late 15th century, with special attention to the influence of Roman and medieval notions in early modern period. The examination of the Peace of Westphalia dispels some of its mythical allure for the history of international law.
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Skinner, Quentin. “The Sovereign State: A Genealogy.” In Sovereignty in Fragments: The Past, Present and Future of a Contested Concept. Edited by Hent Kalmo and Quentin Skinner, 26–46. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511675928Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Highlighting how a slight linguistic slippage led to a momentous conceptual change, Skinner retraces the earlier widespread discussions about the state, statehood, and the powers of states to the end of the 16th century and the beginnings of the seventeenth within Anglophone legal and political theory.
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Classic Authors

In the classical historiography of international law, the Peace of Westphalia of 1648 and the publication of Hugo Grotius’s De iure belli ac pacis in 1625 have often, been respectively used as the realist and the intellectual referential points for the birth of international law as a separate legal discipline. The selected point for this particular great historical caesura in the Western tradition has affected the periodization of the history of international law and provided a diversity of classification schemes for a selected and highly scrutinized number of “classic authors.” The list of these authors extend from the Spanish school (see Spanish Classics) through Alberico Gentili (1552–1608) and Hugo Grotius (1583–1645). Although more peripherally, General Overviews also include writers such as Richard Zouche and Samuel Pudendorf, as well as highly influential “realist-sovereignty” authors such as Niccolo Machiavelli, Jean Bodin, and Thomas Hobbes. A relevant animating thread for the literature of this period is the debate among the founding fathers (or foreshadowers) of international law. Importantly, this historiographical debate about the origins of international law has been tainted nationalistically (in terms of national identity myths), religiously (by the struggle for influence between Catholic and Protestant), and methodologically (in the confrontation between positivist and natural law perspectives of international law) throughout the history of international law. The debate about the origins of international law and its classic authors, which continues up to the present day to include both postcolonial and postmodern perspectives, has greatly benefited from contextualist historiographies. Nys 2012, a work by the first historian of the new profession, makes for a classic starting point, as does another widely consulted work from the turn of the century, Pillet 1904. The collection of the Classics of International Law series, which was published over several decades and comprises nearly volumes, remains the referential bibliographical source of both the original editions of the classics (often in Latin) and translated editions. Kennedy 1986, which inaugurated the postmodernist examination of Vitoria, Suarez, Gentili, and Grotius, relies on this background in categorizing authors into primitive (up to 1648), traditional (1648–1900), and modern periods (1900–1980). Lesaffer 2002 revisits the Grotian tradition of international law to bring to bear the precursor role and the modernity of Francisco de Vitoria. Covell 2009 provides a readable introduction to the main authors from the perspective of political thought. Tuck 1999 stands out among the best literature, cutting much deeper in its contextualist examination of early modern political thought than the generally sketchy nature of most of the histories of the science of international law. Fisch 1984, meanwhile, left its mark in the contemporary study of international law and imperialism.

Classics of International Law. 22 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1911–1950.
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A collection of the works of classic authors published from 1911 until 1950 under the auspices of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace and the general editorship of J. B. Scott. Some exceptions notwithstanding (for the 15th, 18th, and 19th centuries) it includes works by authors who were mostly active in the 16th and 17th centuries, such as Zouche, Ayala, Grotius, Rachel, Wolfgang, Vitoria, Gentili, Bynkershook, Woolf, and others.
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Covell, Charles. The Law of Nations in Political Thought: A Critical Survey from Vitoria to Hegel. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
DOI: 10.1057/9780230244450Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Oriented to provide a better grasp of the conceptual and normative foundations of the contemporary international legal system through a critical survey of the views concerning the law of nations in the major writings of representative political thinkers, including Vitoria, Suarez, Gentili, Grotius, Hobbes, Pufendorf, Wolff, and Hegel.
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Fisch, Jörg. Die europäische Expansion und das Völkerrecht. Stuttgart: Steiner, 1984
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Regarded as one of the most comprehensive histories of the role of international law in the European expansion from the 16th to the 20th century. Very influential in postcolonial readings of the history of international law.
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Kennedy, David. “Primitive Legal Scholarship.” Harvard International Law Journal 27.1 (1986): 1–98.
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Lengthy article providing an extensive footnote arsenal focusing on Vitoria, Suarez, Gentili, and Grotius. Highlighting how, unlike traditional scholars, primitive ones did not distinguish between legal and moral authority, national and international law, or the public and private capacities of sovereigns.
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Lesaffer, Randall. “The Grotian Tradition Revisited: Change and Continuity in the History of International Law.” British Yearbook of International Law 73 (2002): 103–139.
DOI: 10.1093/bybil/73.1.103Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A sobering framing perspective that relies on interdisciplinary materials from legal history and international relations and stops only short of striking Grotius name itself from what H. Lauterpacht had cherished in 1946 as the Grotian tradition of international law.
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Nys, Ernest. Les origines du droit international. New edition. Brussels: Nebu, 2012.
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Considered the first historian of the new profession, Nys contributed to the debate on the “origins of international law.” He dated the field back to early modern Europe, highlighting the crystallization of modern international law and the Peace of Westphalia (1648) as a symbol for the emergence of the ius publicum europaeum. Nys’s scholarship would also become influential for the renaissance of the Spanish classics of international law. Originally published in 1894.
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Pillet, Antoine. “Introduction.” In Les fondateurs du droit international: F. de Vitoria, A. Gentilis, F. Suarez, Grotius, Zouch, Pufendorf, Bynkershoek, Wolf, Wattel, de Martens; leurs oeuvres, leurs doctrines. Introduction by J. Barthélemy, H. Nézard, L. Rolland, et al. Paris: V. Giard & E. Brière, 1904.
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At the turn of the 20th century a number of French authors, some of whom would become classic authors in their own right, examined the work of the so-called founding fathers of international law in this widely used collective book. The time elapsed has only doubled the historiographical interest of the volume.
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Tuck, Richard. The Rights of War and Peace: Political Thought from Grotius to Kant. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
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Erudite and deeply enlightening contextualist work. Despite its subtitle it also covers earlier authors such as Alberico Gentili and Luis de Molina as a kind of summa of the whole literature that formed the humanist (or oratorical) and scholastic (theological) traditions on which the (later) 17th-century rights theorists drew. A must read.
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Spanish Classics

One of the defining characters of the years 1550–1700 is the culmination of the medieval natural law tradition rooted in the Christian Middle Ages but interwoven with Roman law and Stoic foundations. Epitomized by the seconda scholastica, or the Neo-Scholastics of the Renaissance renewed in contact with Humanism, its aprioristic and universal character accounted for the embedment of religion and morality in international relations at the dawn of the modern era. The main representatives of late Scholasticism are generally ascribed to the Salamanca school and have often been called the Spanish founders of international law. The main figures of the Spanish school were affiliated with religious orders such as the Dominicans (Vitoria, 1483–1546; De Soto, 1494–1560) and Jesuits (De Molina, 1535–1600; Suarez, 1548–1617). Some of them were jurists (Vazquez de Menchaca, 1512–1569). The ideas of the Spanish school have at times returned to the fore of international legal scholarship, from the late 19th century up to the present day, as many authors have drawn inspiration from the school or have posited their own methodological and aspirational concerns specifically in connection with the possibility of a universal international law based on the notion of the international community. These authors were also highly influential on the philosophers and jurists of the 17th and 18th century who relied heavily on their works for their conception of the ius naturale et gentium. The most bibliographical complete resource for the Spanish classics, with 37 (ongoing) volumes is Corpus Hispanorum de pace. If Ernest Nys gave one of the first modern Spanish Scholastical turns in international legal scholarship, in the interwar period James B. Scott’s scholarship did much to internationalize Spanish authors (see Scott 1934). However, the lion’s share of the interwar contribution to Catholic neo-naturalism is provided by the interwar courses given at the Hague Academy by Camilo Barcia Trelles (see Barcia Trelles 1927). A later engagement by post-Spanish Transition international lawyers with the Salamanca school is found in Mangas Martín 1993. A highly remarked postcolonial reading of Vitoria within the Third World critical tradition that has contributed volumes to a post-11/9 Vitorian turn in international law is Anghie 2004. A recent political economy perspective of the Spanish Scholastics is provided in Koskenniemi 2011. The insights offered in Boisard 1980 on the influence of Islamic international legal traditions on the late Spanish scholastica remains a field of open inquiry. The national myth-building role played by the seconda scholastica in the historical evolution of the Spanish tradition of international law has more recently been examined in connection to the early Francoist age in de la Rasilla 2012.

Anghie, Antony. Imperialism, Sovereignty and International Law. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004
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Important contributor to a post–Cold War renewal of scholarly interest in the Salamanca School thanks to his anti-imperial metanarrative grounded on a postcolonial Third World reading of the works of Francisco de Vitoria. Anghie’s controversial interpretations have greatly contributed to make Vitoria as hip as the iPad in international law today.
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Barcia Trelles, Camilo. “Francisco de Vitoria et l’école moderne du droit international.” Recueil des Cours de l’Academie Internationale de l’Haye 17 (1927): 109–342.
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Thanks to his courses focusing on Francisco de Vitoria (1927), Francisco Suarez (Recueil des Cours de l’Academie Internationale de l’Haye 43 [1933]: 385–553) and Fernando Vazquez de Menchaca (Recueil des Cours de l’Academie Internationale de l’Haye 67 [1939]: 429–534), Barcia Trelles has been credited with breaking the ground and paving the way for the recovery of the Spanish school of international law in a momentous period of natural law doctrines following the effort of institutionalization of the international society represented by the League of Nations.
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Boisard, Marcel. “On the Probable Influence of Islam on Western Public and International Law.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 11 (1980): 441.
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Suggest the impossibility that the Spanish school and Grotius did not inherit anything through acculturation from the Muslim civilization, with an Islamic Law of Nations dating back to al-Siyar in the 8th century. Highlighting earlier influences noted in the first codification of law in Europe, Las Siete Partidas de Alphonse X of Castille, it opened a line of research that is still much in need of exploration.
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Corpus Hispanorum de pace. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, 1963–.
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Since 1963, under the direction of Luciano Pereña, this is the most complete series of translations from Latin and commentaries of Spanish 16th- and early 17th-century debates on the New World, from Just War doctrines to their approaches to religious differences and the state of international relations. Includes both major figures (Vitoria, Las Casas, Suarez) and lesser-known authors (Peña, José de Acosta, Alonso de la Vera Cruz). Published by the Spanish Council of Scientific Research.
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de la Rasilla, Ignacio. “The Fascist Mimesis of Spanish International Law and its Vitorian Aftermath (1939–1953).” Journal of the History of International Law (2012).
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Focuses on the early Franco period and the role of Vitoria as national identity myth in Spanish international law. Highlights the lasting influence of archetypes born out of the universalization of Eurocentric historiographies and the pitfalls of their influence over national traditions of international law.
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Koskenniemi, Martti. “Empire and International Law: The Real Spanish Contribution.” University of Toronto Law Journal 61 (2011): 1–36.
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Erudite inquiry on the private law underpinnings that, for the informal empire-like universal ordering of international relations, were contained in the work of the Spanish Scholastics of the 16th century.
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Mangas Martín, Araceli, ed. La Escuela de Salamanca y el derecho internacional en América: Del pasado al futuro. Salamanca, Spain: Asociación Española de Profesores de Derecho Internacional, 1993.
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A work that emerged from a conference of the Spanish Association of Professors of International Law and International Relations; includes a number of traditional contributions on the Salamanca school and its influence on America by post-Spanish Transition international lawyers.
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Scott, James Brown. The Catholic Conception of International Law. Oxford: Clarendon, 1934.
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One of the most well-known programmatic manifestos by the founder of the American Society of International Law and secretary of the Carnegie Foundation, who become one of the major champions of the cause of Vitoria and Suarez in the interwar years.
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Alberico Gentili (1552–1608)

Regius Professor of Civil Law at Oxford, this member of the legal humanist tradition coined the slogan of the transitional period between Christian Middle Ages and the more secularized modern international law between European states by ordering theologians to remain silent in foreign affairs, or silete theologi in munere alieno. Gentili’s works span through different subjects, including civil law, political theology, legal matters as well as the law of nations. Gentili’s main works for international law—De legationibus libri tres (1585) De jure belli libri tres (1598) and Hispanicae advocationis libri duo (1613)—can be read in a bilingual (Latin and English) edition in three volumes of the Classics of International Law series (cited under Classic Authors, see Gentili 1921 in this section). Kingsbury, et al. 2011 is a critical edition and translation of the remaining book, De armis Romanis libri duo (1599). Panizza 1981 is regarded as the best introduction to the life and deeds of Gentili. Gentili was recovered from oblivion in the late 19th century in the genealogy of the founding fathers of international law by Thomas E. Holland—an episode which is recounted in Haggenmacher 1990. In 2008, the fourth centenary of Gentili’s death led to a series of commemorations and related publications in Italian, with the epicenter of the celebration at the Centro Internazionale di Studi Gentiliani (founded in 1980). The proximity of the fourth anniversary of Gentili’s death is apparent in the appearance of updated collections such as Kingsbury and Straumann 2010, to which many notable historians and international lawyers contributed. A final reference should be made to Zouche 1911, the main work of Gentili’s successor as Regius Professor of Civil Law, Richard Zouche, who was one of the earliest systematic exponents of the ius inter gentes.

Centro Internazionale Studi Gentiliani.
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Founded in 1980 in San Ginesio, birthplace of Gentili. On the occasion of the celebration of the fourth centenary of Gentili’s death, a series of volumes gathering contributions to a series of international workshops were published in different volumes in Italian and published by Giuffré Editore.
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Gentili, Alberico. Hispanicae advocationis libri duo. Classics of International Law 9. New York: Oxford University Press, 1921.
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The Classics of International Law series includes original (in Latin) and English versions of the three classic international law works of Alberico Gentili: De legationibus libri tres (1585) De jure belli libri tres (Volume 16, 1933, first published in 1598) Hispanicae advocationis libri duo (Volume 12, 1924, first published in 1613). Following a truly commemorative pull, in the wake of the 4th anniversary of the Gentili’s death critical editions of De jure belli libri Tre have been published in Italian (ed. D. Quaglioni, 2008) and French (ed. Gaurier, 2011).
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Haggenmacher, Peter. “Grotius and Gentili: A Reassessment of Thomas E. Holland’s Inaugural Lecture.” In Hugo Grotius and International Relations. Edited by Hedley Bull, Benedict Kingsbury, and Adam Roberts, 133–176. Oxford: Clarendon, 1990.
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A both erudite and spirited reexamination of the lasting intellectual influence of the debate about the founding fathers of international law on the basis of Holland’s inaugural lecture on Albericus Gentilis at All Souls College in 1874.
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Kingsbury, Benedict, and Benjamin Straumann. The Roman Foundations of the Law of Nations: Alberico Gentili and the Justice of Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199599875.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Collection of fifteen works drawing from an array of interdisciplinary sources, and exploring the extent to which early modern thinking about the law of nations and imperialism was influenced by the Roman tradition of ius naturae and ius gentium, and by the historical record of Roman imperialism.
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Kingsbury, Benedict, Benjamin Straumann, David Lupher, eds. The Wars of the Romans: A Critical Edition and Translation of De armis Romanis. By Alberico Gentili. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
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The first English translation—accompanied by the original Latin text—and critical edition of this classic work, which was not included in the collection of Classics of International Law. Primary source for specialists to study Gentili’s natural law leaning back to Roman source—Just War theory and civilizational positive effects—at the dawn of the modern sovereign state and incipient theory of the raison d’état.
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Panizza, Diego. Alberico Gentili, giurista ideologo nell’Inghilterra Elisabettiana. Padova, Italy: D. P. Via Vergerio 33, 1981.
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Widely regarded as the best biography of Gentili, by one of the main Italian specialist in different facets of his work.
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Zouche, Richard. An Exposition of Fecial Law and Procedure, or of Law between Nations and Questions Concerning the Same. Translated by J. L. Brierly. Classics of International Law 1–2. Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1911.
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Originally Published in 1650, this work was considered by G. Scelle as the first textbook strictu sensu of public international law. Zouche, who is regarded as one of the early positivist writers on ius gentium, often relies on the use of precedents and case-method-based materials. Translated (Gaurier) into French in 2009.
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Hugo Grotius (1583–1645)

The author of more than fifty books spanning to numerous areas such as theology, philosophy, history, poetry and law, H. Grotius owes his fame as one of the fathers of international law to only two works directly concerned with international law: De jure praedae (On the law of prize and booty), which remained unpublished until it was discovered in 1864, although one of its chapters Mare liberum (On the freedom of the seas) had been published in 1609; and, most notably, De jure belli ac pacis (On the law of war and peace, 1625), flamboyantly depicted by Wight as a work “where profound and potent principles lurk behind in the shade of forgotten arguments, and obsolete examples lie like violets beneath gigantic overgrown rhododendroms” (p. 127). Traditionally considered a systematic foundational text of modern international law, De jure belli ac pacis has known, perhaps, more editions, has been translated to more languages, and has been cited in more scholarly commentary that any other classic work in the history of international law. Bull, et al. 1990 presents a mosaic of updated perspectives and views on Grotius as the author of one the cardinal works for the understanding of international relations in modern times, and not only in Europe. A token of the iconic household identification of international law and Grotius is that since 1999 the American Society of International Law has celebrated an Annual Grotius Lecture, and that a number periodicals have been taken Grotius’s own’s name. These have included the Grotian Society Papers (Madras, 1964; the Hague, 1968 and 1972), or Grotius Annuaire Internationale (The Hague, 1913–1948), and Transactions of the Grotius Society (London, 1916–1959). However, the most specialized periodical on Grotius’s works is Grotiana, which also includes the regular publication of bibliographies on Grotius’ works. The greatest catalogued bibliographical collection of works by Hugo Grotius, including translations, can be found in the Grotius Collection of the Peace Palace Library, while the classic entry point into his life and deeds is Butler 2007. The impact of Grotius on international law is shown by the coinage of the expression “Grotian tradition of international law” to which H. Lauterpacht, writing in the aftermath of the Second World War, contributed volumes (see Lauterpacht 1946). While numerous monographs and multiauthored works exist on the diverse facets of Grotius’s work for international law, Haggenmacher 1983 is among the most widely celebrated contributions to the study of the Just War doctrine. Onuma 1993 is a collection of essays on normative questions on peace, war, and justice, and it is revealing on the degree of Grotius’s acceptance in non-European settings. Likewise, Van Ittersum 2006 helps to contextualize Grotius’s writings in the context of the early-17th-century rise of Dutch maritime and colonial interests, whereas Wilson 2008 is a seminal attempt to apply the methodological insights of “New Stream” international legal scholarship in a critical “exegesis” of Hugo Grotius’s De Indis.

Bull, Hedley, Benedict Kingsbury, and Adam Roberts, eds. Hugo Grotius and International Relations. Oxford: Clarendon, 1990.
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Presents a rich mosaic of updated perspectives and views on Grotius from the standpoint of international law and relations. A sophisticated engagement with modern trends of thought that anticipates many of the themes that would flesh out international law during the following two decades.
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Butler, Charles. The Life of Hugo Grotius: With Brief Minutes of the Civil, Ecclesiastical and Literary History of the Netherlands. New abridged ed. Teddington, UK: Echo Library, 2007.
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Widely considered the classic work on the peripatetic and adventurous life of H. Grotius, first published in 1826 (London: Murray).
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Grotiana. 1980–.
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Covers many facets of Grotius, with special issues on his most famous works. It continues the biennial publication of an earlier series with the name of Grotiana, which terminated in 1947. The journal includes regular bibliographical updatings of Grotian studies.
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Grotius Collection. Peace Palace Library, The Hague.
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A very useful research tool. The Peace Palace Library in The Hague holds one of the greatest collections in the world of the works of Hugo Grotius, along with a series of annotated bibliographies of secondary literature.
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Haggenmacher, Peter. Grotius et la doctrine de la guerre juste. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1983.
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Awarded the Prix Paul Guggenheim in 1981, this work stands as one of the most authoritative works on Grotius. It stresses that Grotius’s works were the culmination of a long tradition which resulted in the seconda scholastica, and it demythologizes Grotius’s great “systematic” contribution to a modern system of international law.
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Lauterpacht, Hersch. “The Grotian Tradition in International Law.” British Year Book of International Law 23 (1946): 1–53.
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Contributed to a reinterpreted post–World War 2 Grotian tradition equated with a moderate society of states, which accepts the existence of legally binding rules, provides a new role for individuals, and is inspired by natural solidarity. A locus classicus among Anglo-American international lawyers and international relations’ theorists between the paradigms of the realist and the cosmopolitan traditions.
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Onuma Yasuaki, ed. A Normative Approach to War: Peace, War and Justice in Hugo Grotius. Oxford: Clarendon, 1993.
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English edition (translated from Japanese) of the critical engagement of a number of Japanese scholars with Grotius’s De iure belli ac pacis. Oriented to examine current issues of international law within their philosophical, political, historical, and multicultural context for an approach to international law that could avoid both the pitfalls of positivism and the use of international law as a handmaiden for imperial agendas of powerful states.
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van Ittersum, Martine Julia. Profit and Principle: Hugo Grotius, Natural Rights Theories and the Rise of Dutch Power in the East Indies, 1595–1605. Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History 139. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2006.
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Contextualist history that relies on a great array of sources to show the close connection between the doctrines of the freedom of the seas and Dutch maritime and colonial interests in the 17th century. An account of the juridical, political, and diplomatic activities of Grotius in the service of the Dutch East India Company serves to contextualize Grotius’ contributions to international law.
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Wilson, Eric. The Savage Republic: De Indis of Hugo Grotius, Republicanism, and Dutch Hegemony within the Early Modern World System (c. 1600–1619). Leiden, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijjhoff, 2008.
DOI: 10.1163/ej.9789004167889.i-534Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Proving that the application of critical legal studies (CLS) and deconstruction to classic works, to paraphrase what the Spanish poet Gabriel Celaya once wrote about poetry itself, is “a weapon loaded with future.”
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Thematic Histories of International Law Doctrines

There is a growing number of thematic histories of international legal doctrines and institutions, and some (albeit not all) of them cover the period 1550–1700. Moyn 2010 provides a bibliographical introduction to different trends of thought regarding the emergence of the notion of human rights, and Neff 2005 is a highly readable and insightful treatment of war and the law of nations from Antiquity on. The law of the sea, which led to a famous “war of books” in the early 17th century as Dutch and Portuguese’s colonial interests clashed in East Indies, has been examined in numerous works, including Anand 1982. Redslob 1923 provides a classical historical perspective, based on the retracement of the historical evolution of four great principles of international law. The greatest compendium of international practice and developments is the multivolume Verzijl 1968–1998. The centrality of the justification of the colonial project by Western powers is a constant of postcolonial theory, as seen in Gozzi 2010. World order becomes a central thread for the historical exploration of international law in a recent monumental work, Johnston 2008. The notion of events becomes a lens through which to cast a critical look at the discipline’s attachment to events of momentous importance, including Westphalia, in Johns, et al. 2011.

Anand, R. P. The Origin and Development of the Law of the Sea. The Hague and Boston: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982.
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Devotes particular attention to the historical evolution of the law of the sea in the Pacific region. This serve as a background for a historically informed perspective on a myriad of thorny legal and policy issues involving the regulation of the law of the sea.
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Gozzi, Gustavo. Diritti e civiltà: Storia e filosofia del diritto internazionale. Bologna, Italy: Il Mulino, 2010.
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Stresses the centrality of the colonial project in the development of international law, and reconstructs the ideological justification from the 16th century up to present age’s centrality of human rights and democracy. Presents a comparison between Western perspectives and the universalistic underpinnings of the Muslim world and claims in favor of a relativistic and an intercivilizational approach.
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Johns, Fleur, Richard Joyce, and Pahuja Sundhya, eds. Events: The Force of International Law. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2011.
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Casts a post-foundationalist critical eye over some of the familiar historical events for the discipline, including Westphalia. An intellectually refreshing exponent of new historiographical approaches.
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Johnston, M. Douglas. The Historical Foundations of World Order: The Tower and the Arena. Leiden, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 2008.
DOI: 10.1163/ej.9789004161672.i-877Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The latest monumental opus (to date), nearing 1,000 pages. It casts a systemic functionally based world-order approach to bear between the “tower” (idealist, or utopianists) and “arena” (realists or skeptics) perspectives from Antiquity to the present. It makes for an idiosyncratic history of international law/world order across time and different civilizations.
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Moyn, Samuel. “Bibliographical Essay.” In The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History. By Samuel Moyn, 311–321. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.
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Brief bibliographical essay that provides a selective coverage of literature on human rights since Antiquity. The 1550–1770 period is examined from the perspective of human rights in four schools. Makes for a good entry point into a vast literature.
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Neff, Stephen C. War and the Law of Nations: A General History. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511494253Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Divided in four historical eras—from misty origins up to 1600–1600, to 1815–1914/1918, and up to the present days—this volume explores what war has meant to European lawyers through the course of history, and what lawyers have made of war. A major undertaking that reads well.
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Redslob, Robert. Histoire des grandes príncipes du droit des gens depuis l’antiquité jusqu’a la veille de la grande guerre. Paris: Rousseau Editeurs, 1923.
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Projects a natural law perspective grounded on the notion of human solidarity in its retracement throughout the ages—the ancient world, the Middle Ages, the dynastic wars of 1648–1789 and, through specific chapters, all through the 19th century up the First World War—of the principle of the binding force of conventions (pacta sunt servanda), the freedom of the state, the equality of states, and the principle of solidarity. Digitized and freely available online.
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Verzijl, J. H. W. International Law in Historical Perspective. 12 vols. Leiden, The Netherlands: A. W. Sijthoff, 1968–1998.
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Monumental, twelve-volume series, published over a period of thirty years. Concentrates on doctrinal developments in historical perspective, arranged by subject matter (e.g., international persons, state territory, stateless domain, nationality and juridical facts and sources of international rights and obligations, state succession, interstate disputes and their settlement, the laws of war, the laws of neutrality, and the laws of maritime prize).
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Non-European History

The non-Western-centered historiography of international law has been enlarged by a series of adversarial postcolonial narratives in the aftermath of different decolonization periods. However, there is still a scholarly consensus on the shortage and marginality of non-European histories of international law, and on the discipline’s failure to account for the plurality of international legal histories. The postcolonial historical genre in international law has, generally, been associated with the need to address the legacy of Eurocentrism and epistemic colonialism in the conformation of non-European stories, and to decenter the relationship between the West and its “Other.” Western narratives are revisited due to the alleged “distortion” their European magnifying glass creates, to the detriment of non-Western experiences of international law. Reference to non-Western views in connection to the period 1550–1700 can be found in other parts of this bibliography (see Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law, cited under Bibliographical Resources). The gravitational centrality of 1550–1770 in the Westphalian-centered historical model of international law makes it seminal to the discipline’s modern state-based Eurocentrism. Against this background, Fadel 2011 invites the reader to revisit the relationship between Islamic international law and the Eurocentric narrative of the international legal order in its formative period. Koskenniemi 2011 is a recent captivating critical historiographical review that explores the possibility of writing the history of international law beyond Eurocentrism. In Becker 2012, the dialogue between Western and non-Western approaches to the history of international law itself is made central to the writing about that history in the examination of the different historiographical aftermaths of a number of decolonization periods. In the wake of the post–World War II decolonization process, a number of authors pioneered the encounter-based treatment of the role of non-Europeans in international law between the 16th and the 18th centuries, as seen in Alexandrowicz 1967. Anand 2004 has been particularly influential in postcolonial Indian approaches to the history of international law, as does Elias 1972 regarding the African history of international law. Kolb 2010 is an effort to dust off a mid-1970s pioneering study by Wolfgang Preiser on public international law in ancient extra-European cultures, which remains, nonetheless, firmly attached to a Eurocentric view of the formation of the contemporary interstate system. The conceptualization of a trans-civilizational perspective on international law owes much to the contributions in Onuma 2010.

Alexandrowicz, C. H. An Introduction to the Law of Nations in the East Indies (16th, 17th and 18th centuries). Oxford: Clarendon, 1967.
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Celebrated as a pioneering work on the role of non-Europeans in international law. Examines, through an exhaustive historical survey, the significance of the diplomatic and treaty relations entertained by Western-based East Indies companies and East Indies rulers. An avant-la-lettre classic in this area.
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Anand, R. P. Studies in International Law and History: An Asian Perspective. Leiden, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 2004.
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Highly influential figure for the development of a postcolonial Indian perspective of international law along the lines of a New International Economic Order. India and international law were also made the object of a periphery series of the Leiden Journal of International Law in 2010.
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Becker Lorca, Arnulf. “Eurocentrism in the History of International Law.” In The Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law. Edited by Bardo Fassbender and Anne Peters, 1034–1057. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
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Offers a bird’s-eye view on how the adversarial dialogue between Western and non-Western approaches to the history of international might, in itself, have been central to the writing about the history of international law in the aftermath of different decolonization periods. It makes for an interesting take on the politics of the historiography of international law.
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Elias, T. O. Africa and the Development of International Law. Leiden, The Netherlands: A. W. Sijthoff, 1972.
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Highlighting the “silent contribution” of Africa to the doctrinal development of international law against European claim to universality. This revisionist contribution propounds the existence of a universal body of principles of African customary law that are not too different from their European counterparts, suggesting that they emerged from fact of African peoples belonging to kingdoms and political units equivalent to Western states.
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Fadel, Mohammad. “International Law, Regional Developments: Islam.” In Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law. Edited by Rüdiger Wolfrum and Frauke Lachenmann. 2011.
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Provides an overview of historical doctrines of a religiously derived Islamic international law (al-Siyar), covering the laws of war and peace and the peculiarities of historical international legal practices within the Muslim world (Dar al-Islam) and the non-Muslim world (Dar al-Harb). Devotes attention to the practices of the Ottoman Empire since the 16th century, and highlights the great quantity of still unexplored ancient legal materials.
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Kolb, Robert. Esquisse d’un droit international public des anciennes cultures extra-europeennes: Amérique precolombienne, Iles polynésiennes, Afrique noire, Sous-continent indien, Chine et régions limitrophes. Paris: Editions Pédone, 2010.
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Half translation from German of a pioneering study by W. Preiser (Frühe völkerrechtliche Ordmungen der aussereuropäischen Welt, 1976), and half new research. Highlights the existence of two histories of international law. The first is focused on ius publicum europaeum and its spreading throughout the world through colonization. The second addresses jus inter potestates, or law among powers, in accordance with the Latin adage: ubi societas inter potestates, ibi ius gentium. Provides a useful bibliography divided by regions.
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Koskenniemi, Martti. “Histories of International law: Dealing with Eurocentrism.” Zeitschrift Max-Planck-Instituts für europäische Rechtsgeschichte 19 (2011): 152–176.
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Erudite and lucidly captivating critical historiographical review. Highlights the profoundly Eurocentric character of the two broad ideal-types (realist and idealist) of international legal history. Encourages further exploration about alternative intellectual paths to epistemic colonialism in the study of the history of international law.
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Onuma Yasuaki. A Transcivilizational Perspective on International Law. Pocketbooks of The Hague Academy of International Law. Leiden, The Netherlands, and Boston: Martinus Nijhoff, 2010.
DOI: 10.1163/9789004249967Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Disputes the retrospective projection of a European origins perspective onto the past that equates international society with the historical European international society. The author is widely known for his divulgation of a trans-civilizational perspective on international law.
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