International law in the grip of nationalism, racism and capitalism

Martti Koskenniemi, a researcher of international law, has opened the eyes of many a colleague by revealing the isms that the field has been linked to during different periods of history.

Academy Professor Martti Koskenniemi is one of the world’s leading researchers in international law. He linked the history of ideas to the field in a pioneering way by analysing the relationship between international law and the histories of nationalism, racism and capitalism.

“Finding tools for assessing the impact of the legal system has been a key task,” the professor sums up.

The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870–1960 (Cambridge University Press, 2001) was a revolutionary book for research in this area. Koskenniemi’s publications have also reshaped teaching in the field.

“My books represent basic research, but of a critical kind. They may have provided methodological and critical inspiration to other authors and researchers,” Koskenniemi explains.
Monographs, however, are rarely granted a place among the most cited authors and works. But that is not what Koskenniemi strives for. Quite the contrary, in fact.

“I’ve never kept a record of the citations I’ve received. If someone showed me one, I’d laugh to his face,” says Koskenniemi. “A culture in which you compete for citations is totally alien to the network in which I work. In fact, people in the humanities and social sciences feel that quantification is one of the predicaments of the academic and research environments. I’ve understood, though, that citations are more natural in the hard sciences.”

“Being cited is encouraging and important to a point, but then you stop thinking about it. I, too, have been greatly influenced by my colleagues and, say, postgraduate students. I work in a large, global and interactive network, where informal activities are more important than citations,” he concludes.

Text: Elias Krohn, Virve Pohjanpalo
Translation: Tina Seidel