Publication project
Co-edited with Dietmar Müller, Ned Richardson-Little and Stefan Troebst

The juridification of international relations in the form of a dynamically developing code of international law is often claimed to be a universal project of European modernity. The history of its development reveals, however, that the origins of a number of principles, regulatory fields, and regimes were highly influenced by regional factors; this is particularly true with regard to Eastern Europe. The handbook seeks to illuminate the formative influence that the region exerted on the emergence of modern international law and on international legal jurisprudence. To this end, it examines the origins of modern international law from an East-Central and Southeast European perspective and, at the same time, embeds this history in its transnational and global contexts.

This handbook draws on a recent body of research on the regional transformation of modern international law, one that is critical of the perception of international law as a universal legal canon that spans all time and space. Supported in recent years by case studies on, for example, Latin America, the British Empire, or East Asia, this body of research has convincingly shown that the presence of international legal orders worldwide is not the result of a global and, more or less, linear diffusion of norms and rights, but is instead the result of a complex, multipolar process of exchange and interpretation. Accordingly, this book is based on the premise that the development of international law has been influenced substantially by East, East-Central, and Southeast Europe in ways ranging from the internationalization of the Eastern Question to post-Yugoslavian state-building. With this in mind, the handbook brings together approaches in the disciplines of international law history, the history of international relations, and the fields of East and Southeast European history. In doing so, it demonstrates points of commonality found in certain current research approaches such as the New International History (a cultural history of all things political) and in Critical Legal Studies.

The handbook will be published with Routledge.