Now we can read in English Emmanuelle Jouannet's Le droit international libéral-providence: une histoire du droit international (2011), with which she revealed the welfarist purposes always present in international law since its genesis in the eighteenth century. In her words, “[i]nternational law has classically been held up as liberal law ensuring the co-existence of states and co-operation among them; but in fact from the outset it has also been welfarist law” (p. 1, emphasis added). The “welfare” here does not purport to the wellbeing of individuals or of individual states, but to that of the international community as a whole. It “looks to tip the socio-economic balance of international society, to succour peoples, to ensure their well-being and to stave off poverty, misery and ignorance” (p. 4). In the three parts of the book, the author examines successively the modern law of nations (in the eighteenth century), classical international law (in the nineteenth and the twentieth century until 1945), and contemporary international law (after 1945).

Having shown the break of the modern law of nations from the medieval concept of world legal order (Chapter 1), the author explains its liberal purposes (Chapters 2 to 4) and welfarist purposes (Chapter 5). The idea of co-operation among states and even that of assistance to states were already present in the modern law of nations (Chapter 6), even if not free from the tension between the two types of purpose (Chapter 7).

The period of classical international law is epitomized as “[t]he triumph of the liberal purpose of international law” (the title of Chapter 10), but the welfarist aspect remained (Chapter 11). While there have been good reasons for the liberalist turn of discourses in international law in the nineteenth century (Chapters 12 to 13), it should be also noted that concerns over social and economic inequalities gave birth to a new welfarist purpose for international law (Chapter 15). It was also in this period that concerns for human rights emerged (Chapter 16). In brief, despite the prevalence of positivism, “Vattelian dualism [coexistence of liberalism and welfarism] … continue[d] up until the Second World War” and “the discourse of international law remained deeply attached to justice” (Chapter 9, p. 114).

Having qualified the second period in this fashion, there is no difficulty in claiming that “there is still not a complete break of contemporary [international] law with the classical and modern model” and that “this dual purpose [liberal and welfarist] also explains in part its constant perturbations” (Chapter 17, at p. 199). In addition to the value of state sovereignty, international law has acquired a dimension of liberal democracy, making it more permeable with that of welfarism (Chapters 18 to 21). Even economic liberalism does “coexist … with a welfarist dimension that corresponds in part to Keynesian economic objectives” (Chapter 22, p. 256) and “[t]he difficulties raised by the welfarist purpose of contemporary international law must not mask the positive aspects and the success stories of this law, nor challenge the necessity of fight against poverty, illness and the suffering of the millions of individuals who make up the world population” (Chapter 23, p. 274). Finally, on the question of development in the Third World, “[t]he new international right of development must lead to the post-colonial reconstruction of the world” (Chapter 24, p. 300).

The limited space here should still allow two critical comments, required by this thought-provoking reading. The first is how relevant the pre-classical and classical discourses of international law were. Another reviewer considered it “unfortunate that the book does not discuss the relationship between the purpose of international law and its efficacy throughout the ages”.Footnote ¹ Disregard of the practice of international law allows selective use of discourses, artificially creating continuity between the past and present. Instead of Vattel, if we take remarks from Samuel Cocceji, a professor of Viadrina University and later Grand Chancellor of the Kingdom of Prussia, our impression of the eighteenth-century conception of international law should be quite different. According to Cocceji, a war is similar to litigation, where “the determination of the justness of cause is suspended until God, as arbitrator of war, determines who has won the litigation by giving him the ultimate victory”.Footnote ² This one may be closer to the practice in Europe in the eighteenth century.

The second point is about the anti-Eurocentrism arguments the author makes in support of the universality of human rights. She talks of “a typically Western arrogance in the way that Westerners themselves sometimes criticize human rights and any humanitarian intervention for their necessarily imperialistic or ethnocentric character, for their criticism presupposes that those human rights are only ever a translation of the West and are imposed by the West alone” (p. 246). It is certainly true that human rights are not limited to Western civilization and it is Eurocentric to claim so. However, there are a variety of ways to conceive human rights, and one of the controversies was whether economic and social rights should be weighed as much as liberal and political rights. It is embarrassing to see the author placing the human rights’ value only in the context of the liberal purposes of international law. Following the discourses ardently claimed by some non-European governments, she could have also seen it as part of welfarist international law.

Whether these critical comments hold valid will be judged through an enjoyable reading of this book, skilfully written by one of the leading historiographers of international law.