Book Review: Law's History and History's Laws

Understanding international law requires an appreciation of its history, and both legal scholars and historians have developed a welcome appetite for critically rethinking the history of international law. In keeping with disciplinary developments (in history more than law), this is not the usual ‘transitional’ history which describes a linear progression toward an ever more perfect future, but the critical or unofficial history which is attentive to power, as well as to the production of historical knowledge as it tries to understand the past (Chakrabarty, 2000).