As Stephen Neff has pointed out, “No area of international law has been so little explored by scholars as the history of the subject. This is a remarkable state of affairs, probably without parallel in any other academic discipline (including other branches of law).” (quoted in Malcolm Evans (ed), International Law 3rd edn (2010) 3). Many of the classics of international law pay scant attention to the history of the subject. Even the relatively recent fourth edition of Brownlie's Principles of Public International Law, whilst making use of historical materials and the writings of publicists, devotes not a page to the international legal history, although the current edition at least makes a gesture towards it. Other introductory or general texts, such as Malcolm Shaw's International Law (6th edn), are better in this respect, supporting Neff's rider that, “although this intellectual scandal (as it well deserves to be called) is now being remedied, we are still only in the earliest stages of the serious study of international legal history.” In any event, the tin ear of much international law scholarship towards its own past, and the resulting assumptions and understandings, are very much what this deeply impressive volume takes aim at.
The History of International Law follows in the best traditions of the Oxford Handbook series which, in law and other social sciences, has attracted leading scholars to collaborate on a dazzling array of projects. Some seek to map a discipline, to give a sense of its scope, debates and diversity, others deliver a narrower, more programmatic vision of their subject matter, making a claim for a new approach. The present volume is in the latter mode. Fassbender and Peters seek not merely to compile and catalogue the state of the art but to make a series of arguments about international legal history, its methods and treatment to date, and how better to understand it. At the heart of this approach is a departure from the vision of international law as a “history of rules developed in the European state system since the 16th century which then spread to other continents and eventually the entire globe” (1). Especially objectionable to the editors is the commonly drawn inference that a world governed by enlightenment ideals leads inextricably and rationally to a “history of progress in the name of humanity” (2). Such Eurocentricity is wrong, say Fassbender and Peters, not only because it is incomplete but it also “ignore[s] the...
