In the last years of the nineteenth century peace proposals were first stimulated by fear of the danger of war rather than in consequence of its outbreak. In this study of the nature and history of international relations Mr Hinsley presents his conclusions about the causes of war and the development of men's efforts to avoid it. In the first part he examines international theories from the end of the middle ages to the establishment of the League of Nations in their historical setting. This enables him to show how far modern peace proposals are merely copies or elaborations of earlier schemes. He believes there has been a marked reluctance to test these theories not only against the formidable criticisms of men like Rousseau, Kant and Bentham, but also against what we have learned about the nature of international relations and the history of the practice of states. This leads him to the second part of his study - an analysis of the origins of the modern states' system and of its evolution between the eighteenth century and the First World War.

New, specially commissioned essays providing an in-depth scholarly introduction to the great thinker of the European Enlightenment. Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) is one of the great names of the classical age of German literature. One of the last universalists, he wrote on aesthetics, literary history and theory, historiography, anthropology, psychology, education, and theology; translated and adapted poetry from ancient Greek, English, Italian, even from Persian and Arabic; collected folk songs from around the world; and pioneered a better understanding of non-European cultures.A student of Kant's, he became Goethe's mentor in Strasbourg, and was a mastermind of the Sturm und Drang and a luminary of classical Weimar. But the wide range of Herder's interests and writings, along with his unorthodox ways of seeing things, seems to have prevented him being fully appreciated for any of them. His image has also been clouded by association with political ideologies, the proponents of which ignored the message of Humanität in histexts. So although Herder is acknowledged by scholars to be one of the great thinkers of European Enlightenment, there is no up-to-date, comprehensive introduction to his works in English, a lacuna this book fills with seventeennew, specially commissioned essays. Contributors: Hans Adler, Wulf Koepke, Steven Martinson, Marion Heinz and Heinrich Clairmont, John Zammito, Jürgen Trabant, Stefan Greif, Ulrich Gaier, Karl Menges, Christoph Bultmann, Martin Keßler, Arnd Bohm, Gerhard Sauder, Robert E. Norton, Harro Müller-Michaels, Günter Arnold, Kurt Kloocke, and Ernest A. Menze. Hans Adler is Halls-Bascom Professor of Modern Literature Studies at the Universityof Wisconsin-Madison. Wulf Koepke is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of German, Texas A&M University and recipient of the Medal of the International J. G. Herder Society.

In 1840, conflict within the Ottoman Empire gave rise to a serious all-European crisis which led to a diplomatic rupture between France and other Great Powers. The crisis was given the name of the natural frontier which divided France from the rest of Europe: the Rhine. Although the Rhine Crisis did not lead to armed conflict, many states were deeply worried by the unfolding events and by the failure of the peace so carefully negotiated at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Combined with accumulated political, social, national and economic problems, there were fears of general social upheaval and perhaps even revolution. This book uses the Rhine Crisis to evaluate the stability of the European States System and the functionality of the Concert of Europe in this period. In doing so, Miroslav edivy offers an original and deeply-researched insight into the history of international relations in the pivotal years between 1815 and 1848."

Provides a new historical account of the rise and spread of the modern international system.

America's empire expanded dramatically following the Spanish-American War of 1898. The United States quickly annexed the Philippines and Puerto Rico, seized control over Cuba and the Panama Canal Zone, and extended political and financial power throughout Latin America. This age of empire, Benjamin Allen Coates argues, was also an age of international law. Justifying America's empire with the language of law and civilization, international lawyers-serving simultaneously as academics, leaders of the legal profession, corporate attorneys, and high-ranking government officials-became central to the conceptualization, conduct, and rationalization of US foreign policy. Just as international law shaped empire, so too did empire shape international law. Legalist Empire shows how the American Society of International Law was animated by the same notions of "civilization" that justified the expansion of empire overseas. Using the private papers and published writings of such figures as Elihu Root, John Bassett Moore, and James Brown Scott, Coates shows how the newly-created international law profession merged European influences with trends in American jurisprudence, while appealing to elite notions of order, reform, and American identity. By projecting an image of the United States as a unique force for law and civilization, legalists reconciled American exceptionalism, empire, and an international rule of law. Under their influence the nation became the world's leading advocate for the creation of an international court. Although the legalist vision of world peace through voluntary adjudication foundered in the interwar period, international lawyers-through their ideas and their presence in halls of power-continue to infuse vital debates about America's global role

The book provides a broad and interdisciplinary approach to the doctrine of self-defence in both domestic criminal and international law. In particular it focuses on the requirement of imminence, which deals with the question of when individuals or States may legitimately resort to defensive force against a serious danger or harm. Drawing from scholarship across law, history, politics and philosophy, this book explores the permissibility of employing preventive force under the law of individual and national self-defence. The book illustrates how the law of international self-defence, and in particular the requirement of imminence, has been subjected to controversy in parallel with its domestic counterpart. In both disciplines the debate over imminence is centred on similar concerns, issues and tensions despite the fact the arguments put forward are designed to address different scenarios. The book surveys the roots, role, rationale, and objectives of self-defence and questions whether the requirement of imminence should be removed from the traditional contours of the self-defence doctrine in national and international law.