Ntina Tzouvala's first monograph, Capitalism as Civilisation: A History of International Law, is a brilliant and profound critical exposition of the so-called “standard of civilization” in the history of international law that will certainly make a major contribution to the literature for years to come. The last comprehensive study dedicated to the “standard of civilization” was written by Gerrit G. Gong over thirty-five years ago.Footnote ¹ Capitalism as Civilisation, however, takes a unique historical materialist approach to critique international law – the book could be situated within the Marxist tendencies that have emerged in the past decade within critical international legal scholarship and, in particular, Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL). With this book, Tzouvala attempts an impressive rereading of the history of international law revealing the constitutive and contradictory dynamics between international law, capitalism, and imperialism.

The main argument that runs throughout the book is that the “standard of civilization” should be approached as a historically contingent structure that emerged as a reflection of the inherent and “very real [material] contradictions” within the global capitalist system. It is a flexible “mode of legal argumentation” that oscillates between what she terms as the “logic of biology” (which emphasizes cultural/racial differences that prevent change), and “the logic of improvement” (which recognizes some possibility of transformation within the limits of capitalism). Imperial powers have inventively used these contradictions in various ways to legitimize imperial violence and exploitation, and entrench the capitalist mode of production around the world. Tzouvala traces the emergence of this standard to the nineteenth century, and moves to analyse the ways it was institutionalized during the interwar period of the League of Nations mandate system. She then goes on to do a close reading of the South West Africa cases, revealing the limitations of its uses for emancipatory struggles. Finally, Tzouvala shows the persistence of the standard of civilization with an examination of the “unwilling and unable” doctrine in the context of the occupation of Iraq.

Despite her modest claim that her book only attempts to analyze one link between one mode of international legal argument to “a very specific character of capitalism as a global and contradictory mode of production” (p. 42), Tzouvala has in fact written a multilayered intervention that illuminates the structural totality of the relationship between international law and capitalism.

Nonetheless, a few gaps in the book could have been addressed. For one, the overemphasis on textuality which, although being a part of Tzouvala's methodological intervention in Marxist debates, does not preclude an analysis of international law as “state practice”, which is not a clear-cut case of textual interpretation. Furthermore, it would have been helpful to demonstrate the ways in which newly independent states and socialist states attempt to overcome the structures in question, though not necessarily by appropriating the standard of civilization but rather by constructing new modes of argumentation. Tzouvala admits that such a comparative analysis, which takes into account other modes of argumentation, would be a fruitful endeavour, but does not bring it to bear in her analysis.

Finally, it is important to pose the question of whether the concept of “civilization” itself could be redeemable from an “intercivilizational” perspective. Tzouvala believes that international lawyers are doomed to remain trapped within the structural contradictions of this standard as long as they engage in it. Although I agree that the realm of law is not where the struggle for emancipation will be won, there might be more room to maneuver than is acknowledged.