Introduction

Peacemaking may be seen in either narrow or broad terms. In narrow terms, peacemaking consists of the settlement of the particular issue or issues over which the war in question has been fought. Peacemaking in the broader sense may be taken to refer to the full ‘normalisation’ of relations between the erstwhile enemy states. ‘Normalisation’ is not a legal term of art; it comprises a range of matters, from cultural ties and diplomatic links to tourism and trade. The present discussion will focus on commercial ties.

The relationship between the political and economic aspects of peacemaking, i.e. between peacemaking in the narrow and in the broad senses, has a certain intrinsic interest. But it also has a deeper significance: as a means of tracking or mirroring the changes that have taken place in the legal nature of war itself. This discussion will identify several historical phases. First there were the medieval and early modern periods, in which the medieval philosophy of just and unjust wars lay at the basis of legal thought about war and peace. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, war was thought of in different terms, as a form of civil litigation. A third phase is comprised by the nineteenth century (up to World War I), when war was seen as a tool for the pursuit of national interests, largely to be wielded at the will of the individual states.