In an article written in the second volume of the American Journal of International Law in 1908, Lassa Oppenheim was to reflect upon the various tasks that he believed needed to be undertaken in the development of the ‘science of interna- tional law’, 1 foremost amongst which was the ‘exposition of existing recognized rules of international law’. 2 He was to maintain, however, that in order to satisfac- torily fulfil that task, scholars necessarily had to have ‘a knowledge of the history of the rules concerned’. 3 But on this score there was much to be done:.
