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Lemnitzer, Jan Martin. Power, Law, and the End of Privateering. Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 254pp. $95
Jan Martin Lemnitzer has made a very important contribution to international history in this study of the 1856 Declaration of Paris and its immediate aftermath. Having begun his research as a graduate student at the University of Heidelberg, Lemnitzer completed it as a PhD thesis in the Department of International History at the London School of Economics in 2010. With a highly structured approach and a persuasively presented argument, Lemnitzer has made excellent use of primary-source materials from Austria, Britain, France, Germany, and the United States. He has brought to light much new and detailed material, which he complements with broad-gauged and valuable insight.
Most importantly, Lemnitzer places his story in the context of the complex balance required to create and maintain international law in matters of warfare. On the one hand, this is a balance between law and power; on the other, between great powers and smaller states. Lemnitzer demonstrates that the 1856 Declaration of Paris was the event that clearly established the manner in which modern international law is created. Likening it to a global opinion poll among national governments,...