Introduction: Towards A Global History Of International Law

With this Handbook, we, the editors and authors, tried to depart from what has been aptly described as the ‘well-worn paths’1 of how the history of international law has been written so far—that is, as a history of rules developed in the European state system since the 16th century which then were spread to other continents and eventually the entire globe.2 It has also been written as a progressive history that in the end would lead to a world governed by the ideals of the Enlightenment, and the American and French Revolutions.3 That history of progress in the...