Within the context of the history of international law, this book describes the origins of the West's colonial project and its attempts to civilize the extra-European world. In a wide-reaching account that stretches from the first half of the 16th century to the contemporary era, the author explains the ideologies employed to justify colonial conquest and legitimize the idea of Western countries' "superiority": initially Christian peoples' supremacy (16th century), then "civilized" peoples' (19th century), then "developed" peoples', and today democratic peoples' and their doctrine of rights. The author questions the alleged universalism of the Western conception of human rights and international law, underlining how the Muslim world makes similar universalist claims; he emphasizes the need for a relativistic vision and the importance of adopting an "inter-civilisation" standpoint to offset clash-of-civilisation hypotheses.

Gustavo Gozzi teaches Human Rights and the History of International Law at the University of Bologna (Ravenna campus).