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Ambivalence, anxieties / Adaptations, advances: Conceptual History and International Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 September 2018

MARTIN CLARK Open the ORCID record for MARTIN CLARK [Opens in a new window]
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Abstract

Scholars of the history of international law have recently begun to wonder whether their work is predominantly about law or history. The questions we ask – about materials, contexts and movements – all raise intractable problems of historiography. Yet, few scholars have turned to historical theory to think through how we might go about addressing them.

This article works towards remedying that gap by exploring why and how we might engage with historiography more deeply.

Section 2 shows how the last three decades of the ‘turn to history’ can be usefully read as a move from ambivalence to anxiety. The major works of the 2000s thoroughly removed the pre-1990s ambivalence to history, offering brief considerations about method. Recent efforts building on those works have led to the present era of anxiety about both history and method, raising questions around materials, contexts and movements. But far from a negative state, this moment of anxiety is both appropriate and potentially creative: it prompts us to rethink our mode of engaging with historiography.

Section 3 explores how this engagement might proceed. It reconstructs the principles and debates within conceptual history around the anxieties of materials, contexts and movements. It then explores how these might be adapted to histories of international law, both generally and within one concrete project: a conceptual history of recognition in the writings of British jurists.

Section 4 concludes by considering the advances achieved by this kind of engagement, and reflects on new directions for international law and its histories.

Keywords

historiographyinterdisciplinary engagementsinternational legal historymethodReinhart Koselleck
Type
INTERNATIONAL LEGAL THEORY
Information
Leiden Journal of International Law , Volume 31 , Issue 4 , December 2018 , pp. 747 - 771
Copyright
© Foundation of the Leiden Journal of International Law 2018 

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Footnotes

*

PhD Candidate and Judge Rosalyn Higgins Scholar, Law Department, London School of Economics and Political Science; Research Fellow, Melbourne Law School [[email protected]]. This article grows out of themes explored in an MPhil thesis, ‘A Conceptual History of Recognition in International Law’ completed at MLS in January 2016. My deep thanks to Anne Orford, Kirsty Gover, Gerry Simpson, Antony Anghie and Janne Nijman for their comments and encouragement in that project. This more recent version benefited greatly from comments and encouragement by Gerry Simpson, Tom Poole, Ingo Venzke, the judges of the European Society of International Law 2017 Young Scholars Prize – Anne van Aaken, Jean D’Aspremont and Carlos Esposito – the participants at the 2017 ESIL Interest Group on the History of International Law meeting in Naples, and the anonymous reviewers and editors of the Leiden Journal of International Law.

References

1 See, e.g., Orford, A., ‘International Law and the Limits of History’, in Werner, W., Galan, A. and de Hoon, M. (eds.), The Law of International Lawyers: Reading Martti Koskenniemi (2017), 297CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Two recent symposia, among other works, nod in this direction: see Tomlins, C., ‘Foreword: “Law As…” II, History As Interface for the Interdisciplinary Study of Law’, (2014) 4 UC Irvine Law Review 1Google Scholar; Brophy, A.L. and Vogenauer, S., ‘Introducing the Future of Legal History: On Re-Launching the American Journal of Legal History’, (2016) 56 American Journal of Legal History 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 See, e.g., Koskenniemi, M., ‘Why History of International Law Today’, (2004) 4 Rechtsgeschichte 61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Craven, M., ‘Theorising the Turn to History in International Law’, in Orford, A. and Hoffmann, F. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Theory of International Law (2016), 23Google Scholar.

4 Kennedy, D., ‘Primitive Legal Scholarship’, (1986) 27 Harvard International Law Journal 1Google Scholar; Koskenniemi, M., The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870–1960 (2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Simpson, G., Great Powers and Outlaw States: Unequal Sovereigns in the International Legal Order (2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Anghie, A., Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law (2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Kennedy, supra note 4, at 11–13. See also Kennedy, D., ‘A New Stream of International Law Scholarship’, (1988) 7 Wisconsin International Law Journal 1, at 12ff (examining international law’s ‘history and historiography’ at a general, epochal level)Google Scholar.

6 Kennedy, supra note 4, at 12.

7 Kennedy, D., ‘The Move to Institutions’, (1987) 8 Cardozo Law Review 841Google Scholar; Kennedy, D., ‘International Law and the Nineteenth Century: History of an Illusion’, (1997) Quinnipac Law Review 99Google Scholar.

8 Koskenniemi, supra note 4, at 6.

9 Ibid., 5–8.

10 Ibid., 7.

11 See Anghie, supra note 4, at 7–9. See also Anghie, A., ‘The Evolution of International Law: Colonial and Postcolonial Realities’, (2006) 27 Third World Quarterly 739CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Anghie, A., ‘Vattel and Colonialism: Some Preliminary Observations’, in Chetail, V and Haggenmacher, P. (eds.), Vattel’s International Law from a XXIst Century Perspective (2011), 237Google Scholar.

12 Anghie, supra note 4, at 9 note 14.

13 See, e.g., Chakrabarty, D., Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (2000)Google Scholar; Chatterjee, P., The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial History (1993)Google Scholar; Abu-Lughod, J.L., Before European Hegemony: The World System AD 1250–1350 (1991)Google Scholar.

14 Anghie, supra note 4, at 8.

15 Simpson, supra note 4, at 11.

16 See further Simpson’s reflections in Simpson, G., ‘Great Powers and Outlaw States Redux’, (2012) 43 Netherlands Yearbook of International Law 83Google Scholar.

17 Craven, M., ‘Introduction: International Law and Its Histories’, in Craven, M., Fitzmaurice, M. and Vogiatzi, M. (eds.), Time, History and International Law (2007), 1, at 12Google Scholar. See also Simpson, G., ‘Piracy and the Origins of Enmity’, in Craven, M., Fitzmaurice, M. and Vogiatzi, M. (eds.), Time, History and International Law (2007), 219Google Scholar.

18 Of the many works across these disciplines that could be included here, a basic list in approximate chronological order of subject might be: Bederman, D.J., International Law in Antiquity (2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kingsbury, B. and Straumann, B. (eds.), The Roman Foundations of the Law of Nations: Alberico Gentili and the Justice of Empire (2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Benton, L.A., Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History, 1400–1900 (2002)Google Scholar; Fitzmaurice, A., Sovereignty, Property and Empire, 1500–2000 (2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Teschke, B., The Myth of 1648: Class, Geopolitics, and the Making of Modern International Relations (2003)Google Scholar; Tuck, R., The Rights of War and Peace: Political Thought and the International Order from Grotius to Kant (1999)Google Scholar; Keene, E., Beyond the Anarchical Society Grotius, Colonialism and Order in World Politics (2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hunt, L., Inventing Human Rights: A History (2008)Google Scholar; Jouannet, E., The Liberal-Welfarist Law of Nations: A History of International Law (2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Benton, L.A. and Ford, L., Rage for Order: The British Empire and the Origins of International Law, 1800–1850 (2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lorca, A. Becker, Mestizo International Law: A Global Intellectual History 1842–1933 (2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Berman, N., Passion and Ambivalence: Colonialism, Nationalism, and International Law (2012)Google Scholar; Boyle, F.A., Foundations of World Order: The Legalist Approach to International Relations, 1898–1921 (1999)Google Scholar; Hull, I.V., A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law during the Great War (2014)Google Scholar; Rovira, M. Garcia-Salmones, The Project of Positivism in International Law (2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Özsu, U., Formalizing Displacement: International Law and Population Transfers (2015)Google Scholar; Nijman, J.E., The Concept of International Legal Personality: An Inquiry into the History and Theory of International Law (2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pedersen, S., The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire (2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Otomo, Y., Unconditional Life: The Postwar International Law Settlement (2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Miles, K., The Origins of International Investment Law: Empire, Environment, and the Safeguarding of Capital (2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Orford, A., International Authority and the Responsibility to Protect (2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pahuja, S., Decolonising International Law: Development, Economic Growth and the Politics of Universality (2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Moyn, S., The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (2012)Google Scholar. Longue durée monographs and thematic collections include, e.g., Kalmo, H. and Skinner, Q. (eds.), Sovereignty in Fragments: The Past, Present and Future of a Contested Concept (2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fassbender, B. and Peters, A. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law (2012)Google Scholar; Armitage, D., Civil Wars: A History in Ideas (2017)Google Scholar; Kadelbach, S., Kleinlein, T. and Roth-Isigkeit, D. (eds.), System, Order, and International Law: The Early History of International Legal Thought from Machiavelli to Hegel (2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Koskenniemi, M., Rech, W. and Fonseca, M. Jimenez (eds.), International Law and Empire: Historical Explorations (2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Chiam, M., et al., ‘The History, Anthropology and the Archive of International Law Project’, (2017) 5 London Review of International Law 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Ibid.

21 See further Painter, G.R., ‘A Letter from the Haudenosaunee Confederacy to King George V: Writing and Reading Jurisdictions in International Legal History’, (2017) 5 London Review of International Law 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Hohmann, J. and Joyce, D. (eds.), International Law’s Objects (forthcoming 2018)Google Scholar; Fakhri, M., Sugar and the Making of International Trade Law (2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Warren, C.N., Literature and the Law of Nations, 1580–1680 (2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Eslava, L., Local Space, Global Life: The Everyday Operation of International Law and Development (2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Otomo, supra note 18.

23 See especially Benton and Ford, supra note 18, at 20–1, which looks away from jurists and lawyers alone towards ‘middling’ colonial bureaucrats, rebels, merchants and imperial commissions as central actors in processes of (international) legal, as well as imperial change.

24 Martineau, A.-C., ‘Overcoming Eurocentrism? Global History and the Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law’, (2014) 25 EJIL 329, at 330, and see at 332ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Parfitt, R., ‘The Spectre of Sources’, (2014) 25 EJIL 297 (who also urges a radical rethinking of vocabulary)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Peters, A. and Fassbender, B., ‘Prospects and Limits of a Global History of International Law: A Brief Rejoinder’, (2014) 25 EJIL 337, at 339CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Ibid., 340–1.

27 Chimni, B.S., ‘The Past, Present and Future of International Law: A Critical Third World Approach’, (2007) 8 Melbourne Journal of International Law 499, 511–12Google Scholar. This latter strain is pursued in, e.g., Eslava, supra note 22.

28 Becker Lorca, supra note 18; Eslava, L., Fakhri, M. and Nesiah, V. (eds.), Bandung, Global History and International Law: Critical Pasts and Pending Futures (2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Scarfi, J.P., The Hidden History of International Law in the Americas: Empire and Legal Networks (2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Weststeijn, A., ‘Provincializing Grotius: International Law and Empire in a Seventeenth-Century Malay Mirror’, in Koskenniemi, M., Rech, W. and Fonseca, M. Jimenez (eds.), International Law and Empire: Historical Explorations (2017), 21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Most notably in Berman, N., ‘In the Wake of Empire’, (1998) 14 American University International Law Review 1521Google Scholar.

30 See Peevers, C., ‘Conducting International Authority: Hammarskjöld, the Great Powers and the Suez Crisis’, (2013) 1 London Review of International Law 131CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mowbray, J., ‘International Authority, the Responsibility to Protect and the Culture of the International Executive’, (2013) 1 London Review of International Law 148CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Orford, A., ‘On International Legal Method’, (2013) 1 London Review of International Law 166CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also an endorsement of Orford’s approach in Koskenniemi, M., ‘Histories of International Law: Significance and Problems for a Critical View’, (2013) 27 Temple International and Comparative Law Journal 215, at 226ffGoogle Scholar.

31 See Hunter, I., ‘Global Justice and Regional Metaphysics: On the Critical History of the Law of Nature and Nations’, in Dorsett, S. and Hunter, I. (eds.), Law and Politics in British Colonial Thought: Transpositions of Empire (2010), 11CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hunter, I., ‘The Figure of Man and the Territorialisation of Justice in “Enlightenment” Natural Law: Pufendorf and Vattel’, (2013) 23 Intellectual History Review 289CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Orford, A., ‘The Past as Law or History? The Relevance of Imperialism for Modern International Law’, in Toufayan, M., Tourme-Jouannet, E. and Fabri, H. Ruiz (eds.), Droit international et nouvelles approches sur le tiers-monde: entre repetition et renouveau (2013), 97Google Scholar; Orford, A., ‘On International Legal Method’, (2013) 1 London Review of International Law 166CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Orford, supra note 1.

32 That approach seeks to establish what an idea meant at a time and place to particular people, focusing on the meaning of terms at that point, and discouraging attempts to try ‘track’ changes in an idea over long spans of time. See especially Skinner, Q., ‘Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas’, (1969) 8 History and Theory 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For context, see, e.g., Bevir, M., ‘Mind and Method in the History of Ideas’, (1997) 36 History and Theory 167CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Palonen, K., Quentin Skinner: History, Politics, Rhetoric (2003)Google Scholar.

33 Nijman, supra note 18, at 7–27.

34 See Lesaffer, R., ‘International Law and Its History: The Story of an Unrequited Love’, in Craven, M., Fitzmaurice, M. and Vogiatzi, M. (eds.), Time, History and International Law (2007), 27, at 34Google Scholar.

35 Orford, ‘The Past as Law or History?’, supra note 31, at 98.

36 See Orford, supra note 30, at 171, 175.

37 See especially Orford, supra note 1.

38 Ibid.

39 This includes historical studies which explicitly address their historiographical commitments: see, e.g., Nijman, supra note 18; Becker Lorca, supra note 18; Skouteris, T., The Notion of Progress in International Law Discourse (2010) (using Jacques Derrida and Hayden White)Google Scholar. Theory papers considering historiography’s application to international law can also contain examples of brevity in dealing with historical theory directly: see, e.g., Allott, P., ‘International Law and the Idea of History’, (1999) 1 Journal of the History of International Law 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hueck, I.J., ‘The Discipline of the History of International Law: New Trends and Methods on the History of International Law’, (2001) 3 Journal of the History of International Law 194CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kemmerer, A., ‘The Turning Aside: On International Law and Its History’, in Miller, R.A. and Bratspies, R.M. (eds.), Progress in International Law (2008), 71Google Scholar; Galindo, G.R.B., ‘Force Field: On History and Theory of International Law’, (2012) 20 Rechtsgeschichte 86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Skouteris, T., ‘Engaging History in International Law’, in Beneyto, J.M. and Kennedy, D. (eds.), New Approaches to International Law: The European and the American Experiences (2012), 99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 By ‘refracted’ I mean they engage with other theoretical traditions tied closely to questions of historical method: in addition to Anghie/postcolonialism noted above is Marxist historical theory refracted in the work of Susan Marks and the early works of B.S. Chimni, to name but two: see, e.g., Marks, S., ‘False Contingency’, (2009) 62 Current Legal Problems 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chimni, B.S., International Law and World Order (1993), 245–56 (on historical phases of bourgeois international law)Google Scholar.

41 See, e.g., Westlake, J., International Law: An Introductory Lecture (1888), 14–15 (one early account of personal responsibility and civilizing missions)Google Scholar; Alston, P., ‘The Myopia of the Handmaidens: International Lawyers and Globalization’, (1997) 3 EJIL 435 (on the relations with power)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Orford, A., ‘Embodying Internationalism: The Making of International Lawyers’, (2001) 19 Australian Yearbook of International Law 1 (on office)Google Scholar; Charlesworth, H., ‘Saddam Hussein: My Part in His Downfall’, (2005) 23 Wisconsin International Law Journal 127 (using the language of anxiety)Google Scholar.

42 See, e.g., the Allotian strain of this approach to history: Allott, P., Eutopia: New Philosophy and New Law for a Troubled World (2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 See, e.g., Koskenniemi, M., ‘International Law in the World of Ideas’, in Crawford, J. and Koskenniemi, M. (eds.), Cambridge Companion to International Law (2012), 47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 See instead Lesaffer, supra note 34. See also Kemmerer, A., ‘“We Do Not Need to Always Look to Westphalia …”: A Conversation with Martti Koskenniemi and Anne Orford’, (2015) 17 Journal of the History of International Law 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 Some of the arguments in this section are explored, albeit in an earlier, briefer form and with a different framing, in Clark, M., ‘A Conceptual History of Recognition in British International Legal Thought’, [2018] British Yearbook of International Law (forthcoming)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 See, e.g., Benton and Ford, supra note 18, ch 1.

47 Some examples, from the 1930s to today, include Dickinson, E.D., ‘Changing Concepts and the Doctrine of Incorporation’, (1932) 26 AJIL 239CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schmitt, C., The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum (2003)Google Scholar; Ku, C., ‘The Concept of Res Communis in International Law’, (1990) 12 History of European Ideas 459CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Carty, A., ‘Myths of International Legal Order: Past and Present’, (1997) 10 Cambridge Review of International Affairs 3 (using concepts of ‘myth’, ‘frontier’ and ‘territory’)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Benvenisti, E., ‘The Origins of the Concept of Belligerent Occupation’, (2008) 26 Law and History Review 621CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Schmitt’s Nomos is perhaps the clearest example, and Schmitt’s influence on Koselleck forms an important basis for Koselleck’s vision of politics (and history) as a field of combat between groups over and through ideas: see Olsen, N., ‘Carl Schmitt, Reinhart Koselleck and the Foundations of History and Politics’, (2011) 37 History of European Ideas 197CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48 Examples of the former include, e.g., Berman, supra note 29; Teitel, R.G., ‘Transitional Justice Genealogy’, (2003) 16 Harvard Human Rights Journal 69Google Scholar; Rasulov, A., ‘New Approaches to International Law: Images of a Genealogy’, in Beneyto, J.M. and Kennedy, D. (eds.), New Approaches to International Law: The European and the American Experiences (2012), 151CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the intellectual history turn to the international see, e.g., Armitage, D., ‘The International Turn in Intellectual History’, in McMahon, D.M. and Moyn, S. (eds.), Rethinking Modern European Intellectual History (2014), 232CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Indeed, Armitage himself provides strong examples of recent major conceptual histories grounded in law and the international: see, e.g., Armitage, supra note 18.

49 The major essay collections translated into English are Koselleck, R., Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time (1985)Google Scholar; Koselleck, R., The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts (2002)Google Scholar. On the development of conceptual history, see, e.g., Richter, M., ‘Conceptual History (Begriffsgeschichte) and Political Theory’, (1986) 14 Political Theory 604CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Richter, M, ‘Begriffsgeschichte and the History of Ideas’, (1987) 48 Journal of the History of Ideas 247CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The major, multi-volume ‘encyclopedia’ of conceptual histories is Brunner, O., Conze, W. and Koselleck, R. (eds.), Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon Zur Politisch-Sozialen Sprache in Deutschland (1972–97)Google Scholar. Two entries translated into English are: Knemeyer, F.L., ‘Polizei’, (1980) 9 Economy and Society 172CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Walther, R., ‘Economic Liberalism’, (1984) 13 Economy and Society 178CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Koselleck’s life and work see, e.g., Olsen, N., History in the Plural: An Introduction to the Work of Reinhart Koselleck (2012)Google Scholar; Richter, M., The History of Political and Social Concepts: A Critical Introduction (1995)Google Scholar.

50 M. Koskenniemi, ‘A History of International Law Histories’, in Fassbender and Peters, supra note 18, 943, at 968–9.

51 Craven, M., ‘Theorising the Turn to History in International Law’, in Orford, A. and Hoffmann, F. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Theory of International Law (2016), 21Google Scholar.

52 See Hippler, T. and Vec, M., ‘Peace as a Polemic Concept: Writing the History of Peace in Nineteenth Century Europe’, in Hippler, T. and Vec, M. (eds.), Paradoxes of Peace in Nineteenth Century Europe (2015), 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hunter, I., ‘About the Dialectical Historiography of International Law’, (2016) 1 Global Intellectual History 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar. While Hunter does not explicitly cite Koselleck here, his earlier works were strongly influenced by Koselleck as well as Schmitt: see Hunter, I., Rival Enlightenments: Civil and Metaphysical Philosophy in Early Modern Europe (2006), 11–12Google Scholar.

53 Grimm, D., Sovereignty: The Origin and Future of a Political and Legal Concept (2015) (discussing Koselleck briefly at 104)Google Scholar.

54 D’Aspremont, J. and Singh, S. (eds.), Fundamental Concepts for International Law: Construction of a Discipline (forthcoming 2018)Google Scholar.

55 On sources see Koselleck, R., ‘Introduction and Prefaces to the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe’, (translated by Richter, M.) (2011) 6(1) Contributions to the History of Concepts 1, at 22–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56 Ibid., at 22. See also Koselleck, R., ‘Begriffsgeschichte and Social History’, (1982) 11 Economy and Society 409, at 415CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 On this point, illustrated with reference to French, British and German understandings of voting rights since the French Revolution, see Koselleck, R., ‘Linguistic Change and the History of Events’, (1989) 61 Journal of Modern History 649, at 657–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 See, e.g., Burke, M.J. and Richter, M. (eds.), Why Concepts Matter: Translating Social and Political Thought (2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59 See, e.g., den Boer, P., ‘Towards a Comparative History of Concepts: Civilisation and “Beschaving”’, (2007) 3 Contributions to the History of Concepts 207CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60 Müller, J.W., ‘On Conceptual History’, in McMahon, D.M. and Moyn, S. (eds.), Rethinking Modern European Intellectual History (2014), 74, at 74 (and noting that this pragmatism is reflected in the ‘somewhat paradoxical’ lack of any ‘real theory’ of Koselleck’s approach itself)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61 Koselleck, ‘Begriffsgeschichte and Social History’, supra note 56, at 419.

62 Koselleck, supra note 55, at 21.

63 Ibid.

64 Ibid.

65 Ibid., at 28.

66 Ibid., at 29.

67 See, e.g., Lianeri, A., ‘A Regime of Untranslatables: Temporalities of Translation and Conceptual History’, (2014) 53 History and Theory 473CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Moyn, S. and Sartori, A. (eds.), Global Intellectual History (2014)Google Scholar; Schulz-Forberg, H., ‘The Spatial and Temporal Layers of Global History A Reflection on Global Conceptual History through Expanding Reinhart Koselleck’s Zeitschichten into Global Spaces’, (2013) 38(3) Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung 40Google Scholar.

68 See further Steinmetz, W., Freeden, M. and Sebastián, J. Fernández (eds.), Conceptual History in the European Space (2017)Google Scholar.

69 Koselleck, R., ‘A Response to Comments on the Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe’, in Lehmann, H. and Richter, M. (eds.), The Meaning of Historical Terms and Concepts: New Studies on Begriffsgeschichte (1996), 59, at 64Google Scholar. See also Palti, E.J., ‘Reinhart Koselleck: His Concept of the Concept and Neo-Kantianism’, (2011) 6(2) Contributions to the History of Concepts 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

70 Müller, supra note 60, at 84.

71 Koselleck, supra note 69, at 68.

72 Koselleck, supra note 55, at 32.

73 Ibid.

74 See Rayner, J., ‘On Begriffsgeschichte Again’, (1990) 18 Political Theory 305, at 306CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

75 On which see Koselleck, The Practice of Conceptual History, supra note 49, Chs. 7 (‘Concepts of Historical Time and Social History’) and 10 (‘The Eighteenth Century as the Beginning of Modernity’).

76 See, e.g., the wide range of periods explored in the essays in Ihalainen, P., Ilie, C. and Palonen, K. (eds.), Parliaments and Parliamentarism: A Comparative History of a European Concept (2016)Google Scholar.

77 See further Motzkin, G., ‘On the Notion of Historical (Dis)Continuity: Koselleck’s Construction of the Sattelzeit’, (2005) 1(2) Contributions to the History of Concepts 145CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

78 See Palonen, K., ‘An Application of Conceptual History to Itself: From Method to Theory in Reinhart Koselleck’s Begriffsgeschichte’, (1997) 1 Redescriptions 39, at 41–2 and 65Google Scholar.

79 These distillations can be seen in, e.g., Richter, M., ‘Appreciating a Contemporary Classic: The Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe and Future Scholarship’, (1997) 1 Finnish Yearbook of Political Thought 25, at 28–30Google Scholar; den Boer, P., ‘The Historiography of German Begriffsgeschichte and the Dutch Project of Conceptual History’, in Hampsher-Monk, I., Tilmans, K. and van Vree, F. (eds.), History of Concepts: Comparative Perspectives (1998), 13, at 15Google Scholar.

80 As applied to global intellectual history, see further C.L. Hill, ‘Conceptual Universalization in the Transnational Nineteenth Century’, in Moyn and Sartori (eds), supra note 67, at 134.

81 Koselleck, supra note 55, at 3.

82 See, e.g., Peevers, C., The Politics of Justifying Force: The Suez Crisis, the Iraq War, and International Law (2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

83 See, e.g.,Nouwen, S.M.H., ‘“As You Set out for Ithaka”: Practical, Epistemological, Ethical and Existential Questions about Socio-Legal Empirical Research in Conflict’, (2014) 27 LJIL 227CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

84 See further Roberts, A., Is International Law International? (2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

85 This section recapitulates and reflects on the methodological choices and the arguments made in detail in Clark, supra note 45.

86 See Koskenniemi, M., ‘Vitoria and Us: Thoughts on Critical Histories of International Law’, (2014) 22 Rechtsgeschichte 119, 121–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

87 To use Sara Ahmed’s phrase: S. Ahmed, ‘Useful’ (Paper presented at ‘Conceptual Itineraries: The Roots and Routes of the Political’, SOAS, University of London, 10 June 2017), available at www.feministkilljoys.com/2017/07/07/useful/: ‘And when I write of [dead white men] in this project I do so because what I am following leads to who, to who has been deemed to come up with something. I do not write to them.’

88 See especially Palonen, K., ‘The Politics of Conceptual History’, (2005) 1(1) Contributions to the History of Concepts 37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

89 Carty, A., ‘Visions of the Past of International Society: Law, History or Politics?’, (2006) 69 Modern Law Review 644, at 656CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

90 This is a long-term concern for the field, with useful examples ranging from Pollock, F., ‘The History of Comparative Jurisprudence’, (1903) 5 Journal of the Society of Comparative Legislation 74Google Scholar, to Schwarzenberger, G., ‘Historical Models of International Law: Towards a Comparative History of International Law’, (1972) 25 Current Legal Problems 219CrossRefGoogle Scholar; to Tomlins, C., ‘After Critical Legal History: Scope, Scale, Structure’, (2012) 8(1) Annual Review of Law and Social Science 31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; to Duve, T. (ed.), Entanglements in Legal History: Conceptual Approaches (2014)Google Scholar.

91 See, e.g., Lustig, D., ‘Governance Histories of International Law’, in Dubber, M.D. and Tomlins, C. (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Legal History (forthcoming 2018)Google Scholar.

92 See G. Simpson, ‘After Method: International Law and the Problem of History’ (on file with the author).