History of the Historiography of Spanish Textbooks and Treatises on International Law of the 19th Century

Abstract

The bibliography of Spanish international law textbooks is a good indicator of the evolution of the historiography of international law. Spanish historiography, with its own special features, was a recipient of the great debates concerning naturalism v. positivism and universalism v. particularism that flourished in European and American historiography in the nineteenth century. This study is articulated on four principal axes. The first states how the writings of the philosophes continued to dominate the way in which the subject was conceived in mid-nineteenth century Spain. Secondly, it explores the popularization and democratization of international law through the work of Concepción Arenal and the heterodox thought of Rafael María de Labra. Thirdly, it examines the first textbooks of international law with their distinct natural law bias, but imbued with certain positivist elements. These textbooks trawled sixteenth century Spanish history, searching for the origins of international law and thus demonstrating the historical civilizing role of Spain, particularly in America. Fourthly, it considers the vision of institutionist, heterodox reformers and bourgeois liberals who proclaimed the universality of international law, not without some degree of ambivalence, and their defence of Spain as the object of civilization and also a civilizing subject. In conclusion, the article argues that the late development of textbooks was a consequence of the late institutionalization of the study of international law during the last decade of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, the legacy of the nineteenth century survives in the most progressive of contemporary polemics for a new international law.