Jennifer Pitts is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago.
Illuminat[es] the ways in which international law was an artifact of empire, a system for organizing the world so as to perpetuate Western dominance. -- G. John Ikenberry * Foreign Affairs * Boundaries of the International adds much nuance to existing literature, and challenges some of the past analytics through which the history of international legal thought has been written. A first-class book by a recognized leader in the field of history of international political and legal thought. -- Martti Koskenniemi, University of Helsinki An outstanding history of international law and its entanglement with empire from one of the leading historians of political thought in the world today. -- Andrew Fitzmaurice, University of Sydney In this masterful study, Jennifer Pitts examines universalist claims about the law of nations alongside rising European global power, uncovering a set of linked contradictions within eighteenth- and nineteenth-century political thought. A tour de force of interpretation and historical analysis, this subtle and persuasive book places the problem of empire at the very center of the history of international law-where it will now surely stay. -- Lauren Benton, Vanderbilt University