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Authors: Philip Bobbitt
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the sentiments of a nationalist, Renaissance author like Shakespeare in exhorting his men. For Harry, yes; but not necessarily for England and St. George. Nor were these princes of
states
; rather they governed realms, each with a rudimentary administrative apparatus that was impermanent and fixed only to the person of the prince. As princes without nations and without states, they were in some ways well suited to give birth to what would become international law because they had legal relations with each other that required legal rules. Princes made contracts: the law of contracts for princes became the international law of treaties; princes made war and the international laws of war arose from the laws of torts and crimes among princes; the international law of territorial conquest and session arose from the laws of property and the inheritance of estates among princes.
On this distinctively medieval pattern is the present international law based. This accounts for many traits that persist in that law, as the law of the society of princes became the law of the society of states.
PRINCELY STATES
Medieval Christendom was not yet a society of politically distinct states. But at first in Italy, and then throughout the area, the complex horizontal structure of feudal society crystallized into a vertical pattern of territorial states, each with increasing authority inside defined geographic borders. 4
This change was begun by the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by the Ottoman Turks, when two events of profound consequence for the Italian cities occurred: first, the steep, high walls of Constantinople, hitherto thought to be impregnable, were battered into rubble by gigantic wrought-iron tubes that fired balls made of stone; second, a large population of talent, including a group of classical scholars, largely Greek, who were the inheritors of the premedieval tradition, were driven out of ancient Byzantium and forced to immigrate to the university towns of Italy. The only comparable injection of such talent into a thriving society might be the exodus of European refugees during the 1930s and the consequent quantum change in the quality of American universities and eventually American cultural life. *
The classical ideas of these scholars found an eager audience in Italy: parallels to the Greek city-states and the Roman city-republic appealed to the pride of the Italian city-realm. Moreover, an enormous cultural energy was released once Italian society, whose periodic eruptions of piety had never quite exhausted its love of power and pleasure, was shed of the sheer weight of hypocrisy that the medieval Church had steadily accumulated on its behalf. Finally, classical ideas—or rather Renaissance notions about such ideas—provided a rationalization of events, as the city-realm began to thrive on its independence and assertiveness, that seemed more in accord with reality than did medieval universality and the dual allegiance to the ecclesiastical and the feudal. Questions that could be answered onlyby reference to biblical and dogmatic texts increasingly seemed to lack the urgency of questions that could only be answered by reference to the world. The trajectories of artillery are, for example, a matter of physics, not of church doctrine. The “bombards” of the Turks presaged the change in government that would bring into being the new idea of the State.
But the huge cannon of Mehmed II that destroyed the fortress walls of Constantinople was difficult to transport and slow to arm. The French king, Charles VIII, however, financed the development of a cannon so light that it could be easily transported. 5 Cast bronze replaced wrought iron when it was discovered that the method used to found church bells could also create cannon. * The catalyst for constitutional change occurred when Charles VIII invaded the Italian peninsula in 1494 with a horse-drawn siege train of at least forty artillery pieces. Contemporaries
states
; rather they governed realms, each with a rudimentary administrative apparatus that was impermanent and fixed only to the person of the prince. As princes without nations and without states, they were in some ways well suited to give birth to what would become international law because they had legal relations with each other that required legal rules. Princes made contracts: the law of contracts for princes became the international law of treaties; princes made war and the international laws of war arose from the laws of torts and crimes among princes; the international law of territorial conquest and session arose from the laws of property and the inheritance of estates among princes.
On this distinctively medieval pattern is the present international law based. This accounts for many traits that persist in that law, as the law of the society of princes became the law of the society of states.
PRINCELY STATES
Medieval Christendom was not yet a society of politically distinct states. But at first in Italy, and then throughout the area, the complex horizontal structure of feudal society crystallized into a vertical pattern of territorial states, each with increasing authority inside defined geographic borders. 4
This change was begun by the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by the Ottoman Turks, when two events of profound consequence for the Italian cities occurred: first, the steep, high walls of Constantinople, hitherto thought to be impregnable, were battered into rubble by gigantic wrought-iron tubes that fired balls made of stone; second, a large population of talent, including a group of classical scholars, largely Greek, who were the inheritors of the premedieval tradition, were driven out of ancient Byzantium and forced to immigrate to the university towns of Italy. The only comparable injection of such talent into a thriving society might be the exodus of European refugees during the 1930s and the consequent quantum change in the quality of American universities and eventually American cultural life. *
The classical ideas of these scholars found an eager audience in Italy: parallels to the Greek city-states and the Roman city-republic appealed to the pride of the Italian city-realm. Moreover, an enormous cultural energy was released once Italian society, whose periodic eruptions of piety had never quite exhausted its love of power and pleasure, was shed of the sheer weight of hypocrisy that the medieval Church had steadily accumulated on its behalf. Finally, classical ideas—or rather Renaissance notions about such ideas—provided a rationalization of events, as the city-realm began to thrive on its independence and assertiveness, that seemed more in accord with reality than did medieval universality and the dual allegiance to the ecclesiastical and the feudal. Questions that could be answered onlyby reference to biblical and dogmatic texts increasingly seemed to lack the urgency of questions that could only be answered by reference to the world. The trajectories of artillery are, for example, a matter of physics, not of church doctrine. The “bombards” of the Turks presaged the change in government that would bring into being the new idea of the State.
But the huge cannon of Mehmed II that destroyed the fortress walls of Constantinople was difficult to transport and slow to arm. The French king, Charles VIII, however, financed the development of a cannon so light that it could be easily transported. 5 Cast bronze replaced wrought iron when it was discovered that the method used to found church bells could also create cannon. * The catalyst for constitutional change occurred when Charles VIII invaded the Italian peninsula in 1494 with a horse-drawn siege train of at least forty artillery pieces. Contemporaries
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