Doing Justice to Others 13logical makeup may incline us in certain antisocial directions, there seems
to be no à priori reason that these tendencies cannot be overridden by ap-
propriate degrees of rational exertion.
Th e history of international law can be thought of as the story of these
two strategies at work throughout the course of the human past— and pres-
ent. Th e two strategies have been adopted in the order just given. First came
the device of extending the sense of the “in- group” outward from its tribal or
city- state origin, so as to encompass other groups that were culturally (and
commonly geo graph i cally) nearby. Only later was the more rationalistic or
intellectual path taken, of regarding foreign cultures as being in principle on
a moral or legal par with one’s own. International law, in short, began its life
in small settings, dealing with concrete and immediate problems, and then
began to feel its way toward truly universalistic ways of thinking. Th ere was
not— and still is not— a set script to follow or any straight path to a precon-
ceived goal. Instead, there was, certainly in early centuries, a kind of grop-
ing toward intersocietal order, and on a modest scale at that.
It would seem reasonable to search for the fi rst signs of international law
in areas marked by two key features: a relatively high degree of cultural ho-
mogeneity, coupled with po liti cal fragmentation. Th ese conditions prevailed
to a signifi cant extent in three regions of Eurasia: fi rst in Mesopotamia and
later in India and China (prior to its unifi cation into a single state). Later, we
have the important examples of the city- state cosmos of ancient Greece and
the relations of Rome with its Italian neighbors early in its glorious history.
We shall very briefl y survey each of these.Mesopotamia and the Middle East
To persons who believe foreign relations to be intrinsically confl ictual, an-
cient Mesopotamia off ers an instructive counterexample. Th e earliest civili-
zation to fl ourish there, in the fourth and third millennia bc, was Sumer,
which comprised an array of city- states without prominent natural bound-
aries separating them. Th is might appear to be a recipe for perpetual warfare,
but in fact the prevailing ethos was hegemonic. It was generally accepted that
one city would be regarded as the leading one, possessed of what was called
the “kingship.” Th is dominant role entailed the authority to arbitrate dis-
putes between other cities— but crucially, without a right to interfere in