A look at history

If early communities and family clans are, in a modernised way, also called ‘states’, then the beginnings of an inter-state law can be traced back far into the past, even to the beginnings of law itself. Even old epics such as the Iliad, the Nibelungenlied or the Mahabharata, are all reminiscent of ‘inter-state’ obligations that shift the law of the clan or family (which includes customs and the code of honour) to external relations. In some places the obligations are weakened in the process (since the time of the exile, slavery has been prohibited in Israel, although this does not apply to foreigners: Lev 25, 44–46). An authentic element of international law is added very early on, something that “all nations dispose of, even the prisoner-cannibalising Mohawk Indians: they send and receive envoys” (Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws I 3).