The first impression that might strike a general reader glancing at Koskenniemi's laborious work To the Uttermost Parts of the Earth: Legal Imagination and International Power 1300–1870 is to call it a book narrating the dubious history of international law. Yet, such an impression is refuted by reading the whole work in depth, albeit in its vastness. As the overarching objectives of Koskenniemi's work are rooted in seeking out how legal imaginations pervaded Europe in the past and their connectivity with the use of power, Koskenniemi describes his book as a work devoted to the study of the history of the legal imagination.
The book opens with two chapters that establish its overall framework. The first chapter unleashes how Christianity played an indispensable role in the early development of statehood in medieval Europe under French monarchs. A special emphasis is given to a discussion on the reconciliation between jurisdiction and property rights, and Koskenniemi specifies the contribution made by French-Italian jurists from medieval universities such as Paris and Bologna to the early development of the legal profession. The next chapter titled “The Political Theology of Ius Gentium” unfolds the rise of Spanish legal imagination during its heyday as a global empire.
The legal imagination that Koskenniemi presents is avowedly an account rooted in its intrinsic political and institutional foundations. In this context, the onus is on the historian's hand to understand the political conflicts to grasp the legal development. Koskenniemi has borrowed Levi-Strauss’ phrase “bricolage” to examine how legal writers produced their legal imagination based on the domestic legal training they acquired, which ultimately paved the path for a diverse scholarship in international law. In his mammoth task of tracing the legal imagination from Spanish, French, English, and German perspectives, Koskenniemi denotes how each narrative appeared to take a different outlook as those approaches were embedded in domestic discourses and practices.
It is not an exaggeration to state that Koskenniemi is known as a pivotal legal historian and his previous works are undoubtedly regarded as canonical texts in the study of the history of international law from a critical point of view that challenges a pervasive Eurocentrism. However, the content of this work might induce a vigilant reader to view Koskenniemi himself as Eurocentric. The legal imagination that he presents is confined to past European powers and excludes the legal imagination of the Ottomans, Indian principalities, and China. Koskenniemi also remains silent about the twisted position of the Russian empire and its bent towards embracing Western legal imagination, which detached Russia's links with the Orient, and the lack of references to scholars from the Global South, especially from Asia, who worked on deconstructing international legal history, such as R.P. Annand. This silence is a blow that mars this book as a universal account of international legal thought.
Nevertheless, these conspicuous shortcomings will not completely diminish the work's impact because of the fervent questions Koskenniemi raises. In particular, his focal point leaves us to conduct future research on the influence of individuals on the creation of substantial legal discourses. All in all, this heavyweight contribution made by Marti Koskenniemi is a compelling work of scholarship.
Competing interests
The author declares none.
