The Last Waltz of the Law of Nations

Abstract This book is a translation of Rayneval’s 1803 classic Insitutions du droit de la nature and des gens. Having been translated into Spanish shortly after its appearance, les Institutions was the reference point for international law for much of the French- and Spanish-speaking world during the nineteenth century. As a result, arguably, les Institutions is the single most important text of international law to appear between the 1814 Congress of Vienna and the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. This book, the first ever English translation of Rayneval’s The Institutions of Natural Law and the Law of Nations, provides the English-language world with the last text conceived of, and written, during the era of bilateral European Law of Nations before the waltz into the Concert of Europe and the growth of multilateral diplomacy, with its end point in today’s United Nations.