300 A Positive Century (1815–1914)
of the Eu ro pe an states and their off shoots in the Americas. Th e states of the
Middle East and Far East were second- class citizens. Much of the rest of the
world was not even that, but was reduced either to outright colonial status or
else to some form of “quasi- sovereignty,” in the terminology that became
common.
Th ere was certainly no denying, though, that international law had a far
higher profi le, in the generations preceding 1914, than it had ever had be-
fore. Th e major legal pro cesses of legislation, adjudication, and enforcement
were more advanced than ever before. Legislation proceeded largely in the
form of multilateral treaties. Th e culmination of this global sense of commu-
nity came with the two Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907. States even
began to go further and to combine into organizations for various defi ned and
limited purposes. Adjudication took the principal form of arbitrations and
also of mixed- claims commissions. Enforcement, more ominously, was a
matter of self- help—and, as such, a virtual monopoly of the major powers.
At the same time, signs of danger were not lacking. Important initiatives
in the legal fi eld sometimes failed to bear fruit. And developing countries
increasingly chafed at their unequal status. International lawyers, for the
most part— and not surprisingly— inclined to dwell on the positive side of
their achievements, with some justice. International law proved strong
enough even to survive the cataclysm of a Great War.
International Law Becomes a Profession
In the nineteenth century, international lawyers became increasingly con-
scious of themselves as constituting a transnational professional community—
a sort of juridical freemasonry. Th is was consistent with the increasing
stress, especially by positivists, on international law as a science. Modern
science, by its nature, involved free communication and exchange of knowl-
edge across national lines, together with the regular publication of doctrinal
writings and the sharing of information about new developments. On the
publication front, a major step was taken in 1869 with the founding of the
somewhat cumbersomely titled Revue Générale de Droit International et de
Législation Comparée. Its joint found ers were T. M. C. Asser (from the Neth-
erlands), Gustave Rolin- Jaequemyns (from Belgium), and John Westlake