War, States, and International Order: Alberico Gentili and the Foundational Myth of the Laws of War (Cambridge Studies in International Relations)

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. "When the sixteenth century jurist Alberico Gentili was pulled back from the dead and celebrated with great fanfare amongst English and Italian international lawyers in the 1870s, not everyone was entirely on board with the festivities. Gustave Rolin-Jaequemyns, a prominent Belgian lawyer who had been at the forefront of the efforts to codify the laws of war and to professionalize the discipline of international law since the late 1860s, was skeptical. He expressed some strong reservations about the narrative his peers were weaving around the man who had once been a controversial character of his time, the Oxford-based Protestant who defended absolutist rule and Catholic Spain's interests in the midst of the Dutch Revolt. 'We doubt,' he cautioned, 'that it is rigorously accurate to represent the wise lawyer of the Spanish embassy as a sort of inspired apostle of peace"-- Provided by publisher Vergerio examines the legacy of Alberico Gentili's treatise on the laws of war to undermine conventional narratives about when, why, and how the legal right to wage war became restricted to sovereign states, providing new insights into the history of the laws of war and the sources of international order. Examining the legacy of Alberico Gentili, this book questions conventional narratives about how states monopolized the right to wage war