“A Century of Anarchy” under discussion at the European Society of International Law

On October 22, Lauri Mälksoo (University Tartu) and Hendrik Simon discussed his book “A Century of Anarchy? War, Normativity, and the Birth of Modern Inter­national Order” (Oxford Uni­versity Press, 2024) at an event organized by the Interest Group on the History of Inter­national Law der European Society of International Law (ESIL).

The work, which has won the Jost-Delbrück-Price and the Helmuth-James-Moltke Price, is based on Simon's dissertation. It looks at the reasons why the modern rules against war were created and shows that these reasons go back to the 19th century. This is different from the idea that there was an “old” international legal order before 1920 and a “new” order after 1920.

At the beginning of the online event, Hendrik presented his book. Lauri Mälksoo then spoke about the development of justifications for war and the inter­national order from the early modern period to the present day. He focused in particular on the sources of inter­national law in the 19th century – the tension between natural law and legal positivism – as well as on differences between the European and German perspectives, which also play a central role in Simon's book.

In the following conversation, the two scholars talked about where to find different “special paths” in international law. Hendrik said that there was a German special path in the Wilhelmine era (1890–1918). Lauri Mälksoo said that there might have been a Russian one too. During the conversation, the question was also asked about whether, because the French Revolution was so important for the development of modern international law, there could also have been a french special path. The discussion ended with the realisation that revolutionary events were a key part of the development of modern international law. Then there was an open discussion with the audience.

You can read the book for free online. In the ninth episode of the PRIF talk podcast in August this year, we spoke to Hendrik Simon about his work and his analysis of war discourses and justifications for violence. You can listen to the episode on the PRIF blog and wherever podcasts are available.