War, States, and International Order
Alberico Gentili and the Foundational Myth of the Laws of War

Examining the legacy of Alberico Gentili, this book questions conventional narratives about how states monopolized the right to wage war.

Claire Vergerio (Author)

9781009098014, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 4 August 2022

320 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 2.2 cm, 0.61 kg

'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

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.

1. Context, reception, and the study of great thinkers in International Relations
Part I. Gentili's De iure Belli in its Original Context: 2. Alberico Gentili's De iure Belli: Between Bodin and the reason of state tradition
3. Grounding an absolutist approach to the laws of war
Part II. Gentili's De iure Belli and the Myth of 'Modern War': 4. Unearthing the 'true founder' of international law
5. Constructing the history of the 'modern' laws of war
6. Carl Schmitt and the entrenchment of the myth.

Subject Areas: International organisations & institutions [LBBU], International humanitarian law [LBBS], International relations [JPS], History of ideas [JFCX]