War, Trade and Neutrality: Europe and the Mediterranean in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, written by Antonella Alimento

Abstract

The history of international law cannot be equalled to a mere pedigree of doctrine. Law lives in practice. In a constant dialogue between doctrine and practice, economics, history and philosophy, War, Trade and Neutrality shows what interdisciplinary scholarship on international law has to offer. Concrete cases allow to conceptualise state behaviour and establish a “common normative understanding ” proper to recurrent configurations of power . Moreover, the work of our Italian colleagues has been made more easily accessible through translation. This volume offers a stimulating contribution to international scholarship, analysing foreign policy from an actors’ perspective, based on primary archival and printed sources. Second, it brings a unique view of the legal translation of international relations from the minor powers’ side, sometimes at the centre of politics as an object, but more often active as laboratories on the fringes of European Big Power politics.