ABSTRACT
Many international lawyers have regarded and many would regard international law as peculiar to relatively modern times. For them, a history of international law comprises tracing the genesis of the present or contemporary system of international law and studying its development. Many of the writers, in particular, those who profess to have written a general history of international law, have cast only a cursory glance at pre-mediaeval State practice. One historian who was early to recognise that a general history of international law might embrace the whole of human history, nevertheless limited his own study to the post-Middle Ages as being the period in which modern civilisation arose. Both the systems and the models approach to the history of international law have much in common. They both favour a selective use of historical material and distinguish clearly between the history of doctrine and of State practice.
