Overview

Who has the right to wage war? The answer to this question constitutes one of the most fundamental organizing principles of any international order. Under contemporary international humanitarian law, this right is essentially restricted to sovereign states. It has been conventionally assumed that this arrangement derives from the ideas of the late-sixteenth century jurist Alberico Gentili. Claire Vergerio argues that this story is a myth, invented in the late 1800s by a group of prominent international lawyers who crafted what would become the contemporary laws of war. These lawyers reinterpreted Gentili's writings on war after centuries of marginal interest, and this revival was deeply intertwined with a project of making the modern sovereign state the sole subject of international law. By uncovering the genesis and diffusion of this narrative, Vergerio calls for a profound reassessment of when and with what consequences war became the exclusive prerogative of sovereign states.

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9781009098014

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Reviews

'Claire Vergerio's book is a tour de force. She reveals the deep history of a myth upon which so much of the field of international relations is born, and from it our understandings of sovereignty, war, and the leap to the modern world. By exposing the readings and cult of Alberico Gentili as the source of this vision, she clears the way to explore different orders for our times, alternatives with their own narratives.' Jeremy I. Adelman, Princeton University 'Claire Vergerio has written a superb account of the ideas and reception of the important jurist Alberico Gentli. Spanning centuries, her acute analysis traces the development of his thought, and the impact it had on a variety of debates and discourses about the morality and laws of war, from the early modern era to the twentieth century. Theoretically innovative and historically rich, War, States and International Order is an impressive work of scholarship.' Duncan Bell, University of Cambridge

Author Information

Claire Vergerio is Assistant Professor of International Relations in the Institute of Political Science, Leiden University, the Netherlands.

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