i-HILT
i-HILT, Institute for the History of International Law @ Tilburg, is a group of researchers from the Department of Public Law and Governance at Tilburg Law School, the Netherlands.
Welcome at the i-HILT platform! i-HILT stands for the Institute of the History of International Law @ Tilburg within the Department of Public Law and Governance at Tilburg Law School.
i-HILT is a research group of legal historians who focus on the history of international law, specializing in public international law as well as international economic and commercial law. Here, ‘international law’ is used in the broadest sense. It refers to all forms of normativity that regulated relations between polities such as states, cities, and corporations, as well as among citizens and merchants throughout recorded history: from pre-classical Antiquity to the present, and from a broad range of civilizations.
i-HILT will run the ‘Bibliography of the History of International Law’ and the ‘Bibliography of the History of International Economic and Commercial Law’. These bibliographies can be downloaded from this website. They are regularly updated. This website also serves as a platform for news and announcements on i-HILT-events, such as our e-lectures, and our members' new publications.
Education | E-lectures
I-HILT members are responsible for teaching several legal history classes on the curriculum of Tilburg Law School, in both the Dutch- and Global Law programs, as well the bachelor Public Governance. Furthermore, we are involved in the bachelors Liberal Arts & Sciences and Global Management of Social Issues. I-HILT also organizes a series of lectures on the history of international law.
Read more about our E-Lectures
Research | Visitor Program
Members of i-HILT participate in the research program 'Global Law and Governance’ of the Department of Global Law and Governance at Tilburg Law School.
Events
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09:45 - 17:00
Workshop: Sovereignty and Commercial Cities (c. 1400- c. 1650) 14 december 2023
A one-day workshop will be organized in Tilburg in December 2023, which has the goal to bring together scholars working on urban history, legal history, and economic history of the later medieval and early modern period. The workshop focuses on the sovereignty of cities of trade.
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09:00 - 17:00
International Conference June 19-20, 2025 Leiden University Wijnhaven Campus, The Hague
Grotian law and modernity at the dawn of a new age 400 years of De jure belli ac pacis 1625-2025 - Call for papers
i-HILT@Tilburg News
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Call for papers: Arguing over Empire: Hugo Grotius, European Expansionism and Slavery
21st November 2023On the 7th of June 2024 the workshop: ‘Arguing over Empire: Hugo Grotius, European Expansionism and Slavery’ will be organized at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). This workshop is part of a series of conferences organized by the Grotiana Foundation preceding the celebration in 2025 of the 400th anniversary of Grotius’ opus magnum On the Law of War and Peace (De iure belli ac pacis) published in 1625.
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Prof. Randall Lesaffer reviews To the Uttermost Parts of the Earth. Legal Imagination and International Power
13th April 2023In the latest edition of The American Journal of International Law, Prof. Randall Lesaffer reviews Prof. Martti Koskenniemi’s work To the Uttermost Parts of the Earth. Legal Imagination and International Power, 1300-1870 (Cambridge University Press 2021)
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'Autonomy of cities in the past deserves renewed attention’
12th January 2023The legal capacity, legal personality, and autonomy of medieval and early modern cities merit new research – research that may also alter our view of cities today. That is what Professor of Legal History Dave De ruysscher will contend in his inaugural lecture on Friday, January 20, 2023.