The History of International Relations During Antiquity and the Middle Ages

The history of international law is essentially a history of the law governing the members of the international community of states in their relations with one another. Inasmuch as the observance of well-established customs of the law of nations implies the existence of an international community of states based upon a general recognition of the fundamental principles of territorial sovereignty and legal equality of independent states, such a law (in the strict and full sense of this term) could not possibly have been developed prior to the rise of the modern European state system, at the close of the Middle Ages or during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries of our era. Nevertheless, we are by no means without evidence of the observance in intercommunity intercourse of certain rules and customs, even during antiquity and the Middle Ages, mainly with a religious sanction. This was especially the case in Greece, where there were developed rules and customs of intermunicipal law which, in many respects, bear a truly remarkable resemblance to our modern system of international jurisprudence.