The chapter argues that post-1945 international human rights law cannot be understood without accounting for the interwar period and some core elements of human rights discourse which existed at the time. Whereas classical histories of human rights have focused on genealogy and teleology to spell out the advent of rights universalism, more recent work has anchored the origins of human rights in national political communities. Accounting for these new historiographies, this chapter distinguishes between nineteenth-century human rights discourse and post–Second World War international human rights law. Elements of the former and antecedents of the latter can be found in the interwar period, in particular in the legal regimes for the protection of refugees and minorities. Although it analyses the two regimes separately, it articulates their points of convergence and situates them in the context of rising nationalism and the advent of the individual as a subject of international law.

In this chapter, the authors frame the interwar period as instrumental for the institutionalisation of international dispute settlement, with respect to both the establishment of institutions and the development of new applicable law. The chapter focuses on the institutions, but equally emphasises the foundational principles which govern the field, with the principle of consent at the forefront; with all their characteristic features and limitations, such principles are conspicuous and remain valid today. The chapter gives context to the creation of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) and the subsequent establishment and the main features of the Permanent Court; last but not least, it pays homage to the mixed arbitral tribunals, with their impressive machinery and cases decided. The interwar period was undoubtedly a time of experimentation, but it would be naïve to believe that it has come to an end: experiments remain ongoing.

The interwar years are the shortest period covered in these volumes, and perhaps the most intense and eventful one. So many things happened in the short course of this quarter of a century that it would deserve an entire Cambridge History series of its own. Unlike other volumes, whose temporal boundaries are harder to establish, this one does not pose a problem. It is firmly locked between the iron parentheses of two devastating catastrophes, if such a pleonasm may be allowed.