Peripheral Histories of International Law

Abstract

Peripheral international legal histories are considered a new subfield of the discipline's historiography, though there is no defined canon, chronology, or accepted set of theoretical questions or conflicts. Despite the absence of an established literature, this review argues that peripheral histories of international law challenge the linear narrative that a European international legal system was unquestioned and easily incorporated by the new non-European states that surged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This overview looks at several forms of approaching the literature that differ in methodology but share a (partial or complete) challenge to a coherent universal international law and a homogeneous forward-looking global project.