Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
  • Cited by 85
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
December 2014
Print publication year:
2015
Online ISBN:
9781139015424

Book description

The development of international law is conventionally understood as a history in which the main characters (states and international lawyers) and events (wars and peace conferences) are European. Arnulf Becker Lorca demonstrates how non-Western states and lawyers appropriated nineteenth-century classical thinking in order to defend new and better rules governing non-Western states' international relations. By internalizing the standard of civilization, for example, they argued for the abrogation of unequal treaties. These appropriations contributed to the globalization of international law. With the rise of modern legal thinking and a stronger international community governed by law, peripheral lawyers seized the opportunity and used the new discourse and institutions such as the League of Nations to dissolve the standard of civilization and codify non-intervention and self-determination. These stories suggest that the history of our contemporary international legal order is not purely European; instead they suggest a history of a mestizo international law.

Awards

Winner, 2016 European Society for International Law Book Prize

Reviews

'A global history of international law on a grand scale.'

Source: Jus Gentium: Journal of International Legal History

'… the book succeeds in its goal of unveiling an underdeveloped narrative in the history of international law. Lorca's core/periphery framework remains salient today, as Western countries continue to justifiably or unjustifiably intervene in peripheral states.'

Source: The Yale Journal of International Law

'… the book offers a wealth of knowledge, and a deep critique and reframing of our understanding of the system of international law, a perspective that should interest most of us involved in theorizing the international system.'

Pierre-Alexandre Cardinal Source: Revue québécoise de droit international

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
×

Contents

Metrics

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Book summary page views

Total views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.