The Politics of Anti-Politics: Historiographies of International Law and the Paradox of Antiquity

Abstract

For a long time, an emphatic denial of the existence of international legal rules in the pre-modern world has been a common landmark in the historiographies of international law. This chapter argues that such invisibility, motivated in the fact that in antiquity politics and law were conflated, is in fact a political move. By rejecting the ancient precedents in a diachronic study of international law, most historiographers of the discipline have been able to focus on a positive Westphalian model in which legal equality is seen as incompatible with hegemony and imperialism. By introducing sound references to ancient sources, international legal historiography should denounce the false rhetoric of anti-political *objectivity* and unveil the real interests at stake that rest behind what we have been calling *international law*.