The thematic expansion and methodological sophistication experienced by historical writing about international law has greatly enriched contemporary international legal scholarship. Up to a point it has also prompted the intellectual emancipation of international legal history, which until not long ago was considered to be ‘a singularly underprivileged field of studies’ as a semi-autonomous and relatively self-contained research area. This is not a minor intellectual development in itself and neither one without significance for the discipline as a whole to continue evolving, as Jürgen Habermas would put it, from ‘a flexible medium for shifting constellations of power’ towards ‘a crucible in which quasi-natural power relations could be dissolved.