Abstract
Where and how did the ideas of a jus gentium arise in the early modern epoch: on the battle-fields of continental Europe, or in the European encounter with the rest of the world? Tracing the concerns of leading jurists from the time of Charles V to that of the French Revolution, when Bentham coined the modern locution "international law", and the subsequent evolution of this concept into the Victorian age, through the Belle Époque, past the First World War and into the time of the League of Nations, the first lecture ends by considering the consequences of the Second World War for this tradition. What did the creation of the United Nations in 1945 mean for the standing of Europe as the fountainhead of international law, and what lessons does its history hold for us today?
