From colonial to multilateral international law: A global capitalism and law investigation

This Foreword integrates international law, international relations, and global history scholarship to understand two global trends that are in tension with each other: (i) the shift from European colonial dominance to a law-based multilateralism, which enabled a more equal and inclusive international law, and (ii) global capitalism which, across time, has been a political and economic force that, left to its own devices, promotes exclusion and inequality. Alter builds an encompassing conception of global economic law to show the interplay of colonial law, private law, domestic law, and international law in enabling and constraining global capitalism across time. The investigation looks backwards so as to think forward. The larger goal of the endeavor is to imagine how an Asian law-based capitalism might continue past trends and recreate continuities despite a professed desire to be different. Just as capitalism once locked in colonial features despite the shift to multilateral international law, multilateralism and capitalism may be forces that sustain the very features of the Western Liberal International Order that China seeks to move beyond.