Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Chapter 1 Victorian visions of global order: an introduction
- Chapter 2 Free trade and global order: the rise and fall of a Victorian vision
- Chapter 3 The foundations of Victorian international law
- Chapter 4 Boundaries of Victorian international law
- Chapter 5 ‘A legislating empire’: Victorian political theorists, codes of law, and empire
- Chapter 6 The crisis of liberal imperialism
- Chapter 7 ‘Great’ versus ‘small’ nations: size and national greatness in Victorian political thought
- Chapter 8 The Victorian idea of a global state
- Chapter 9 Radicalism and the extra-European world: the case of Karl Marx
- Chapter 10 Radicalism, Gladstone, and the liberal critique of Disraelian ‘imperialism’
- Chapter 11 The ‘left’ and the critique of empire c. 1865–1900: three roots of humanitarian foreign policy
- Chapter 12 Consequentialist cosmopolitanism
- Index
- Ideas in Context
Chapter 3 - The foundations of Victorian international law
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Chapter 1 Victorian visions of global order: an introduction
- Chapter 2 Free trade and global order: the rise and fall of a Victorian vision
- Chapter 3 The foundations of Victorian international law
- Chapter 4 Boundaries of Victorian international law
- Chapter 5 ‘A legislating empire’: Victorian political theorists, codes of law, and empire
- Chapter 6 The crisis of liberal imperialism
- Chapter 7 ‘Great’ versus ‘small’ nations: size and national greatness in Victorian political thought
- Chapter 8 The Victorian idea of a global state
- Chapter 9 Radicalism and the extra-European world: the case of Karl Marx
- Chapter 10 Radicalism, Gladstone, and the liberal critique of Disraelian ‘imperialism’
- Chapter 11 The ‘left’ and the critique of empire c. 1865–1900: three roots of humanitarian foreign policy
- Chapter 12 Consequentialist cosmopolitanism
- Index
- Ideas in Context
Summary
INTRODUCTION
In textbooks on the history of international law, the nineteenth century is depicted as a period that saw the transformation of a Law of Nations applicable to a family of Christian and European peoples into a body of international law common to a society of civilised nations. This general development – in no small part due to the global influence of Britain – took place in the context of an uneven and gradual extension of the states system. Especially in continental versions of the history of international law, which are premised on a close relationship between political and intellectual power, the nineteenth century is therefore often delineated as ‘the British era’. Meanwhile, theoretical debates over international law are identified, in slightly teleological fashion, as moving from a ‘rationalist natural law and abstract character’ towards considerations of state practice: in short, from naturalism to positivism. While such a change of attitude is certainly detectable, this narrative simplifies a much more complex and variegated story. The literature on the intellectual history of nineteenth century Britain has tended to treat international, including international legal, questions only tangentially. Moreover, a recent and extremely valuable account of the rise of international law, which identified a ‘late-Victorian reformist sensibility written into international law’, lacks a specifically British perspective.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Victorian Visions of Global OrderEmpire and International Relations in Nineteenth-Century Political Thought, pp. 47 - 66Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007
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