Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses the importance and value of historicizing international law in general. It is concerned with specific rules and concepts in the international humanitarian law field. The book includes internal and external modes of theorizing, theories of evolution and how changes can be understood in the context of legal gaps and fault lines. It argues that the issue of law and emotions is basically a way to acknowledge the limits of analytical abstractions and rational choice models. The book sets out the difference between how legal historians approach general history compared to how general historians take account of legal history. It reconnects to the structure versus agency debate in acknowledging that while legal history as an academic discipline initially had a structural focus, general history was well into the 20th century more focused on individual actors.