From law to history: the politics of war and empire

The Internationalists argues that the outlawry of war in 1928 created the modern international order. This review essay critiques this single-cause account of world history. It shows how The Internationalists relies on statistics that obfuscate the character of war and on a juridical model of international politics that makes liberal empire invisible. I argue that war making by Asian and African peasants played more of a role in bringing about decolonisation than peacemaking by Western lawyers.