Overcoming Eurocentrism? Global History and the Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law

Abstract : Last Spring, the Rechtskulturen programme, an initiative of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin at the Transregionale Studien Forum, invited me to participate in a symposium on the Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law2 - a robust book of 1250 pages. I was asked to `critically assess' the Handbook's `global history' approach, that is, to assess whether it was a successful step in `overcoming Eurocentrism' in the history of international law. The symposium turned out to be a wonderful event, a gathering of historians, anthropologists, political scientists, and lawyers, where I became very conscious of my own professional language but where I also experienced a willingness to transcend disciplinary boundaries and biases. The following remarks should be interpreted as a continuation of that discussion.