Ignacio de la Rasilla – författare

Histories of International Law in China: All Under Heaven? offers a groundbreaking exploration of China's engagement with international law over the past two centuries. Written by an interdisciplinary group of international law scholars and legal historians, it provides a longue durée perspective, revealing both enduring patterns and profound shifts in China's approach to the global legal order.Beginning with China's millennia-old Sino-centric worldview-rooted in the Confucian concept of Tianxia (All under Heaven)-the book traces China's evolving relationship with international law from its period of isolation to its forced entry into the Western legal system during the First Opium War (1839-1842). It examines the transformation of China's legal landscape through the fall of the Qing Dynasty (1911), the Republican era (1912-1949), and the establishment of the People's Republic of China (1949). The book explores China's relationship with international law from 1949-including through the Cultural Revolution-until the 'reform and opening-up' era and the end of the Cold War. Histories of International Law in China sheds light on often-overlooked historical episodes and key conceptual legacies shaping China's approach to the international legal order. A unique feature is its curated biographies, including multiple long-forgotten or invisible protagonists, such as pioneering women in the history and theory of international law and China. Engagingly written and meticulously researched, this volume offers invaluable insights for legal scholars and researchers interested in understanding China's historical and contemporary role in shaping and making international law.

This interdisciplinary exploration of the modern historiography of international law invites a diverse assessment of the indissoluble unity of the old and the new in the most global of all legal disciplines. The study of the history of international law does not only serve a better understanding of how international law has evolved to become what it is and what it is not. Its histories, which rethink the past in the present, also influence our perception of contemporary matters in international law and our understandings of how they may potentially unfold. This multi-perspectival enquiry into the dominant modes of international legal history and its fundamental debates may also help students of both international law and history to identify the historical approaches that best suit their international legal-historical perspectives and best address their historical and legal research questions.

The history of international adjudication is all too often presented as a triumphalist narrative of normative and institutional progress that casts aside its uncomfortable memories, its darker legacies and its historical failures. In this narrative, the bulk of 'trials' and 'errors' is left in the dark, confined to oblivion or left for erudition to recall as a curiosity. Written by an interdisciplinary group of lawyers, historians and social scientists, this volume relies on the rich and largely unexplored archive of institutional and legal experimentation since the late nineteenth century to shed new light on the history of international adjudication. It combines contextual accounts of failed, or aborted, as well as of 'successful' experiments to clarify our understanding of the past and present of international adjudication.

This interdisciplinary exploration of the modern historiography of international law invites a diverse assessment of the indissoluble unity of the old and the new in the most global of all legal disciplines. The study of the history of international law does not only serve a better understanding of how international law has evolved to become what it is and what it is not. Its histories, which rethink the past in the present, also influence our perception of contemporary matters in international law and our understandings of how they may potentially unfold. This multi-perspectival enquiry into the dominant modes of international legal history and its fundamental debates may also help students of both international law and history to identify the historical approaches that best suit their international legal-historical perspectives and best address their historical and legal research questions.

The history of international adjudication is all too often presented as a triumphalist narrative of normative and institutional progress that casts aside its uncomfortable memories, its darker legacies and its historical failures. In this narrative, the bulk of 'trials' and 'errors' is left in the dark, confined to oblivion or left for erudition to recall as a curiosity. Written by an interdisciplinary group of lawyers, historians and social scientists, this volume relies on the rich and largely unexplored archive of institutional and legal experimentation since the late nineteenth century to shed new light on the history of international adjudication. It combines contextual accounts of failed, or aborted, as well as of 'successful' experiments to clarify our understanding of the past and present of international adjudication.