Paul Keal's study of the position that indigenous peoples have occupied in international society is best read as a critical contribution to the work of the “English School” of international relations theory. Members of this school have long had an interest in relationships between European and non-European peoples, usually understanding them in terms of the expansion of the European society of sovereign states. Keal takes this as his starting point, but he criticizes it as “incomplete” because “it has excluded the story of peoples destroyed and dispossessed in the process of expansion” (p. 36). The purpose of his book is to broaden our understanding of the expansion of international society to include those stories, and so invite us to think more critically about the moral value of the society of states.

Keal's argument contains three distinct strands. First, he wants to incorporate historical, sociological, and anthropological studies of European expansion, such as the work of Anthony Pagden, into the English School's account of the development of modern international society. Second, he wants to explain how indigenous peoples were dispossessed of their rights and how those rights have, or have not, been restored and protected in international law. The third theme is an attempt to open up questions about whether or not the society of states supports a just order in human society as a whole. This reflects a long-standing English School interest in the relationship between order and justice, but Keal wants to expand the scope of the debate here by introducing ideas from communitarian political philosophy and recent work on international ethics.

These are important lines of inquiry, and on each of them considered individually, European Conquest and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples has much to recommend it to international relations theorists. Its most valuable contribution is on the rights of indigenous peoples. Keal provides a detailed study of the evolution of international law on this issue, and a thoughtful assessment of strategies for promoting these rights in the future. The analysis of European expansion is somewhat less original, as is also the case with the discussion of contemporary thinking about justice and political community. These are reviews of existing literature, albeit applied to the novel case of the rights of indigenous peoples, rather than new contributions based on independent historical research or moral argument. Moreover, while the coverage of the literature is generally good, there are a few weaknesses. Keal might have made more use of Roger Epp's analysis of diplomatic relations with indigenous peoples, while his treatment of Charles Alexandrowicz's work is disappointingly thin (pp. 110–11), especially in view of its relevance for the study of the international legal framework within which relations between Europeans and non-Europeans were carried on. Another weakness is that the distinction between pluralism and solidarism in international relations theory is not explored in any detail (p. 216), leaving Keal's analysis of the moral value of the society of states constrained by a rather blunt conceptual distinction between international and world order that would have benefited from a more thorough engagement with recent work in the English School tradition by Nicholas Wheeler, among others.

A further worry concerns the links between the various elements contained in the study. Keal recognizes, for example, that there are cases in contemporary international society wherein indigenous peoples have been subjugated by non-European rulers (p. 17). While he may be correct that this does not affect the moral case for promoting their rights, it does pose the question of whether the mistreatment of indigenous peoples is merely a subset of the way in which Europeans have abused non-Europeans in general, or whether it possesses its own logic. They are obviously related, but more should have been done to explain precisely how the categories of non-European and indigenous map on to each other. The link between the analysis of the treatment of indigenous peoples and the criticism of modern international society as morally backward is also suspect. Keal's point is that some states rest on morally questionable foundations because they have denied indigenous peoples' rights; since the purpose of international society is to preserve the states of which it is composed, the legitimacy of international society as a whole is therefore questionable.

There are a couple of problems with this line of argument. First, Keal's recipe for protecting the rights of indigenous peoples is that they should be treated as self-determining subjects of international law. This does not suggest that international society is morally backward; on the contrary, it implies that another round in the “expansion” of international society is required. The author himself suggests that international society may emerge as a moral agent that “can help redress the legacy of its historic expansion” (p. 223). The fault, then, does not lie in international society, but rather in the powerful states that have neglected to follow its principles in their relations with indigenous peoples. Second, Keal's argument effectively ignores a point made at length earlier in the book: International society is concerned not only with preserving the states of which it is composed but also with making sure that they live up to a certain standard of judicial, diplomatic, and social organization, which used to be called “civilization.” He touches on this when he asks whether his solution for protecting the rights of indigenous peoples is “anti-pluralist,” but does so too briefly in view of how significant a contradiction it represents within his thesis about the link between the Eurocentrism and the moral backwardness of the society of states. The problem here may be that his criticisms of English School theory are largely directed at earlier works on the expansion of international society; it might have been better to have taken more recent work on the pluralist–solidarist distinction as the book's jumping-off point. This would probably have blunted some of his sharper criticisms, but would have made his moral argument more compelling.