"Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law" is a thoughtful and eloquent but very esoteric book about the treatment of non-European peoples in international law. Readers should know that it's not a law book -- it doesn't analyze legal rules or unpack judicial opinions. It's not a history book, either -- the author, Antony Anghie, doesn't chronicle events and did no research in primary sources. Rather, his book is a meandering political and jurisprudential meditation on how the Euro-centric international legal system has been complicit in the subordination of non-Europeans. The text hops from Francisco Vitoria to the Berlin Conference to the League of Nations mandate system to the War on Terror, with little underlying continuity apart from the basic idea that international law has never been neutral.

Much of Anghie's thesis is true, but there are gaps in his argument and he uses history selectively. He writes, for example, as if international human rights law was invented by the Bretton Woods institutions to force capitalism on developing countries. He reaches this conclusion only by ignoring the origins of human rights law in the calamity of World War II. He also fails to mention that the most effective human rights instrument in the world -- the European Convention on Human Rights -- is binding only on European countries. To use another example, he cavalierly ignores a huge body of social science showing that institutions and governance matter to development. Instead, he writes as if underdevelopment is caused by a rigged international economic system -- but he doesn't discuss the economic reasoning behind this problematic conclusion.

Anghie will give aid and comfort to Third World nationalists who reject international scrutiny of human rights and believe that economic development must be state-directed. This nationalist discourse has been exploited by dictators from Castro to Mugabe and has brought untold ruin on the Third World. It cries out for unmasking by critical thinkers like like Anghie. Alas, he never takes up this job. Justifiably outraged by the hypocrisy and violence of the West, he is blind to the homegrown failures and grotesqueries of the developing world.

This wildly overpriced book is for law libraries only.