Book contents
- The Cambridge History of International Law
- The Cambridge History of International Law
- Frontispiece
- The Cambridge History of International Law
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Plates
- Tables
- Contributors
- Preface
- 1 Scope, Scale and Humility in the History of International Law
- Part I The Historiography of International Law
- 2 A Thousand Flowers Blooming, or the Desert of the Real?
- 3 Political Thought and the Historiography of International Law
- 4 The Turn to the History of International Law in the Field of International Relations
- 5 Economic History and International Law
- Part II The Historiography of International Law
- Index
- Plate Section (PDF Only)
- References
2 - A Thousand Flowers Blooming, or the Desert of the Real?
International Law and Its Many Problems of History
from Part I - The Historiography of International Law
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 December 2024
Book contents
- The Cambridge History of International Law
- The Cambridge History of International Law
- Frontispiece
- The Cambridge History of International Law
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Plates
- Tables
- Contributors
- Preface
- 1 Scope, Scale and Humility in the History of International Law
- Part I The Historiography of International Law
- 2 A Thousand Flowers Blooming, or the Desert of the Real?
- 3 Political Thought and the Historiography of International Law
- 4 The Turn to the History of International Law in the Field of International Relations
- 5 Economic History and International Law
- Part II The Historiography of International Law
- Index
- Plate Section (PDF Only)
- References
Summary
This chapter narrates a history of the history of international law as a species of European historical jurisprudence born of the nineteenth century. It connects this historical jurisprudence with a wider atmosphere of historicism and its intellectual antecedents and descendents, including (but not limited to) so-called ‘progress narratives’. It argues that the history of international law in this specific sense largely vanished after the Second World War, and the history of international law underwent two distinct rebirths: as part of the anti-colonial legal arguments repudiating the colonial structures and presuppositions of international legal thought, and as part of a critique of a renewed historicism and civilisational progressivism between 1989 and the present. But the second revival of the history of international law coincided with emergent histories of empire, international history, histories of international political thought and global history. The result is an exploding field of scholarship with objects and subjects of many kinds connected to the international and the global and their laws, institutions and practices.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of International Law , pp. 49 - 106Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024
References
Further Reading
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