Martti Koskenniemi’s book is a masterpiece of historical imagination, and demonstrates his exceptional ability to rethink the history and theory of the law of nations by bringing together a broad range of methodological perspectives. It is a kind of ‘tunnel history’1¹ combined with a contextual analysis and biographical portraits that allow the legal imagination to be presented as something tied to the life and behaviour of specific individuals at a certain space and time, whose activities can nevertheless be carried out only within a medium-term intellectual and practical context and in a world that changes over the long term. The most important difference between this and other books on the history of the law of nations is thus the constant interplay between space and time: the chronological account gives way to a series of thrilling narratives that each have a different beginning and provide new perspectives that change the previous picture almost entirely. The reader is invited to move back and forth in a history whose main characteristics are contingency, ambivalence and unpredictability.2²

中文翻译：

---

历史想象：理性、革命、复兴第 6 章：1715-1804 年欧洲公法

Martti Koskenniemi 的书是历史想象力的杰作，展示了他通过汇集广泛的方法论观点重新思考历史和国际法理论的非凡能力。这是一种“隧道历史” ^{1 1}结合语境分析和传记肖像，让法律想象被呈现为与特定个人在特定空间和时间的生活和行为相关的东西，但他们的活动只能在中期的智力和实践中进行在一个长期变化的世界中。因此，这本书与其他有关国际法史的书籍最重要的区别在于空间和时间之间不断的相互作用：按时间顺序的叙述让位于一系列激动人心的叙述，每个叙述都有不同的开端，并提供了改变的新视角以前的照片几乎完全。读者被邀请在一段以偶然性、矛盾性和不可预测性为主要特征的历史中来回穿梭。 2²