Historiography
Inspired by the Encyclopedist Movement the first actual history of international law was published by R. Ward in 1795, An Enquiry into the Foundation and History of the Law of Nations in Europe from the Time of the Greeks and Romans to the Age of Grotius. Only a decade earlier D.H.L. von Ompteda's multi-volume Literatur des gesamten sowohl natürlichen als positiven Völkerrechts (1785) presented a historical introduction to the topic.
 The Peace Palace Library possesses a unique copy of Von Ompteda's book: diligently annotated by a 19th century student or scholar this copy is both of historical significance and an appalling example of how not to treat a library book. |
The end of the nineteenth century saw the publication of T.A. Walker's A History of the Law of Nations. Part 1. From the Earliest Times to the Peace of Westphalia, 1648 (1899). Part 2 was never published. Half a century later Arthur Nussbaum published A Concise History of the Law of Nations (1954, 2ed.), which is the most elegant overview in the discipline. 1945-present After the Second World War Germany made important contributions to the field of the history of international law with Ernst Reibstein's two volumes Völkerrecht. Eine Geschichte seiner Ideen in Lehre und Praxis. 1. Band Vom Ausgang der Antike bis zur
Aufklärung, 2. Band Die letzte zweihundert Jahre (1957 and 1963 respectively). W.G. Grewe's Die Epochen der Völkerrechtsgeschichte (1983), is the most extensive single volume history, recently translated into English and extended by Michael Byers. It is said to remain to a large extent a handbook echoing the Third Reich's
doctrines and to be influenced by that ideology as shown in the chosen periodization. J.H.W. Verzijl's International Law in Historical Perspective (12 vols) is an encyclopedic work and M. Lachs's The teacher in international law (1982) is a short and attractive book by the late President of the International Court of Justice.
Verzijl's preface to volume eight of his International Law in Historical Perspective captures his unique view of the immense project he had embarked upon several years earlier.
Martti Koskenniemi, a
2004 professor at the Hague Academy of International Law, wrote a highly provocative and interesting book on the doctrinal history of international law between the second half of the nineteenth century until the period of decolonization: The Gentle Civilizer of Nations (2002).
In a review published in the International Comparative Law Quarterly (vol. 51.3 [2002], pp. 746-51) Koskenniemi severely criticized the recent English translation of Grewe's Die Epochen der Völkerrechtsgeschichte.
More Dutch interest Prof. W.J.M. van Eysinga was the first professor in the Netherlands to hold a chair in International Law. His history of Dutch international law was published as part of the proceedings of the Royal Academy of Sciences in 1950. He specialized in the related topics treatises, rivers, and chemical weapons, but his main interest was always Grotius (e.g. Huigh de Groot, een schets). Van Eysinga became a Judge at the Permanent Court of International Justice in 1931 and was its principal agent during the Second World War. He resigned in 1945.
Koskenniemi's gentle motto to his latest book,The Gentle Civilizer of Nations.
back: Hugo Grotius