Prospects and limits of a global history of international law: A brief rejoinder

As we remarked in the Introduction to our Handbook, it is exciting but also risky to leave a well-worn path (at 2). It means meeting unforeseen obstacles. We were quite aware of the fact that if we wanted to shed light on historical developments in international law which so far had remained in darkness or obscurity, we had to be prepared to encounter the unexpected and not so readily understood - that is, accounts and narratives which call into question conventional wisdom and which, at least initially, pose additional problems rather than providing easy answers. We knew that new research on issues which had rarely been examined before would not be perfect or 'complete'. In other words, we expected, and in fact expressly invited, criticism of a work which tried to break new ground.