Abstract

This review considers what role scholarship on the early modern law of nations (ius gentium) plays in the history of international political thought, which over the last decade has expanded far beyond its basis in Atlantic empires and European intellectual history. Recent works offer two main reasons why the law of nations and early modern jurists can still critique and destabilize assumptions about the international arena. First, these thinkers occupied a far more diverse discourse than later practitioners of ‘international law’ would have allowed, recognizing no easy distinction between international and constitutional theory. The division between the inside and outside of states, ontologically necessary for the idea of international theory, was not assumed by many ius gentium authors. Second, much of the early modern law of nations took place in the context of Central European politics, particularly the late Holy Roman Empire, where the ius gentium was a means to navigate law within and amongst semi-autonomous imperial polities. This setting has continued to produce especially energetic theorists of global order from early modern Europe well into the twentieth century. Studying these thinkers still helps illuminate how the domestic and international division first emerged.