The Gentle Civilizer of Nations : The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870-1960 Hardback

International law was born from the impulse to 'civilize' late nineteenth-century attitudes towards race and society, argues Martti Koskenniemi in this extensive study of the rise and fall of modern international law.

In a work of wide-ranging intellectual scope, now available for the first time in paperback, Koskenniemi traces the emergence of a liberal sensibility relating to international matters in the late nineteenth century, and its subsequent decline after the Second World War.

He combines legal analysis, historical and political critique and semi-biographical studies of key figures (including Hans Kelsen, Hersch Lauterpacht, Carl Schmitt and Hans Morgenthau); he also considers the role of crucial institutions (the Institut de droit international, the League of Nations).

His discussion of legal and political realism at American law schools ends in a critique of post-1960 'instrumentalism'.

This book provides a unique reflection on the possibility of critical international law today.