The Roman Foundations of the Law of Nations

Alberico Gentili and the Justice of Empire

By: Benedict Kingsbury (Editor), Benjamin Straumann (Editor)

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Hardcover | 9 December 2010

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Hardcover
400 Pages

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24.1 x 16.6 x 3.0

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The Roman Foundations of the Law of Nations makes the important but surprisingly under-explored argument that modern international law was built on the foundations of Roman law and Roman imperial practice. A pivotal figure in this enterprise was the Italian Protestant Alberico Gentili (1552-1608), the great Oxford Roman law scholar and advocate, whose books and legal opinions on law, war, empire, embassies and maritime issues framed the emerging structure of inter-state relations in terms of legal rights and remedies drawn from Roman law and built on Roman and scholastic theories of just war and imperial justice.

The distinguished group of contributors examine the theory and practice of justice and law in Roman imperial wars and administration; Gentili's use of Roman materials; the influence on Gentili of Vitoria and Bodin and his impact on Grotius and Hobbes; and the ideas and influence of Gentili and other major thinkers from the 16th to the 18th centuries on issues such as preventive self-defence, punishment, piracy, Europe's political and mercantile relations with the Ottoman Empire, commerce and trade, European and colonial wars and peace settlements, reason of state, justice, and the relations between natural law and observed practice in providing a normative and operational basis for international relations and what became international law.

This book explores how both the theory and the practice of international politics was framed in ways that built on these Roman private law and public law foundations, including concepts of rights. This history of ideas has continuing importance as European ideas of international law and empire have become global, partly accepted and partly contested elsewhere in the world.

Industry Reviews

"[T]he contributions are of a uniformly high quality, and the entire project design is sound. Particularly praiseworthy is the integration of interdisciplinary voices into the discussion of early modern international affairs... The editors should be congratulated for bringing this effort to fruition, marking what may be anew turn in the scholarship of international legal history, one that properly emphasizes the intellectual, social, and cultural contexts of the subject."- American Journal of International Law
The editors are to be congratulated without reservation for their cardinal - and beautiful - accomplishment. * Andreas Wagner, European Journal of International Law, vol. 23 no. 3 *
Kingsbury and Straumann have made a dramatic bid to place Roman law at the foundation of international law. ... The reviewer has been hugely stimulated and challenged by this work, to begin to think out for himself just how important Roman law inspiration was for the practice of states in international law. ... I am sure that other readers willing to engage with the exacting and sometimes confusing scholarship of this book will be stretched to their own limits in trying to make sense of the history of international law. * Anthony Carty, Leiden Journal of International Law *

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