Redescriptions (Aug 2023)
Book Review: 'To the Uttermost Parts of the Earth: Legal Imagination and International Power, 1300–1870' by Martti Koskenniemi, Cambridge University Press, 2021, 1125 pages. ISBN: 978-0521-76859-7 (hardback), ISBN: 978-0521-74534-5 (paperback)
Abstract
In his book, To the Uttermost Parts of the Earth, Martti Koskenniemi offers a history, from the 14th to the 19th century, of what he calls the ‘legal imagination,’ namely, the creative efforts of intellectuals, politicians, and lawyers to understand, legitimize, and oversee the rise of international power. How international law grew in response to the rise of a world economic and political order is something studied by histories of the discipline. Koskenniemi’s account looks differently at its intellectual contours to explore not just the impact of legal practice and diplomacy on its consolidation, but also the numerous transfers made between international law and other social and human sciences.
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