Hendrik Simon’s work is an instant classic – an outstanding work of international legal theory that overwhelms the reader with original thought. The anarchy comes into effect when there is no common authority and the Hobbesian romanticizing of anarchy as a state of nature of humankind perpetuated the idea as something stringent to humankind. The very purpose of Simon’s work is rooted in unpacking the myth of an idea, which hails the nineteenth century as the century of international anarchy. Aiming to refute the narrative embraced by the international law scholarship that the nineteenth century remained completely anarchic until the dawn of the League of Nations, the author mainly argues modern normative order governing the use of force in international relations did not simply emerge with a “big bang” after the First World War, as is generally assumed.

The usage of the term “International Anarchy” in the nineteenth century was coined by a German jurist Hans Wehberg with his strong conviction that the nineteenth-century states made no genuine attempts to eliminate the “anarchic rights” to legitimize the notion of waging war as a political tool. While addressing the nineteenth-century antithesis of the free right to wage war as a contrast to the progress of international legal thought in the twentieth century, Simon develops three arguments. First, he rejects the prevailing view that there was a “free right to go to war” in the “long nineteenth century”. Second, he questions the historical narrative of iberum ius ad bellum from a history of science perspective. This task unfolds how European political thought emanated within the chaos of the Napoleonic Wars, the failed revolution of 1848, and finally the unification of Germany in 1870, which baptized Clausewitz’s romance with war and constructed the subtle depiction of the nineteenth century as an anarchic epoch. The author carefully examines how Carl Schmitt, pro-Nazi German jurist, interpreted the notion of “Waging War”. While examining the dichotomy between the order and anarchy questioned in the nineteenth century, Simon argues that the just cause principle that pervaded the juridical thought of the European legal order never legitimized the complete freedom to wage wars. On the contrary, it set its own parameters for military actions and it was the Revolutionary Era that Europe faced, such as the French Revolution, which eventually gave birth to the popular notion of free right to war. The cardinal argument presented by Simon highlights the different receptions within the European intellectual community on this newly emerged challenge on the free right to wage war as he gives an in-depth analysis of Kant’s idea of pacifism and political means advocated by Clausewitz. On the whole, the Hendrik Simon’s work is a heavyweight contribution to the epistemological queries devoted to the theory of international law, with bewitching charm and clarity of thought. It would have been much better if Simon had looked at the non-European thoughts on the right to wage war, but this tiny pitfall should not be a reason to prevent someone from reading this classic.