International Law and Diplomacy

Abstract

Traditional historiography of international law is both state‐ and Eurocentric. It has reduced “the history of international law” to that of the law of the sovereign states system of Europe which allegedly emerged at the end of the Middle Ages and was exported over the globe through the double device of colonization and decolonization. In recent decades, a commencement has been made with expanding the narrative of the history of international law into a pluralist and global one, which includes developments in different regions of the world. Nevertheless, this turn is in its early stages and has yet failed to offer an alternative grand narrative. Moreover, it remains to be seen whether a global history of international law will drive European history prior to the mid‐nineteenth century completely from the center in any narrative which traces the origins of modern international law.This entry briefly covers the major developments in five fields of international law with which diplomacy directly related through history: treaty‐making, trade, dispute settlement, justification of war and peacemaking. While it indicates some major commonalities and differences between the historic regional systems of international law, the focus is on the development of the law of nations in late medieval (eleventh–fifteenth centuries) and early modern (sixteenth–eighteenth centuries) Europe, as well as on modern global international law (nineteenth–twenty‐first centuries).