Samuel White (ed), The Laws of Yesterday's Wars: From Indigenous Australians to the American Civil War, Brill Nijhoff, Leiden NL and Boston USA, 2022, 222 pp.

The Laws of Yesterday's Wars is an intriguing and original contribution to the law of war. Its aim is best stated by the editor, which is to answer the question 'how international is international humanitarian law?' The premise which underlies the approach to answering this question is that conclusions can be drawn from comparison amongst many societies, which cannot be drawn from the detailed study of just one culture. White concludes that there have always been attempts to regulate the damage that may have been caused by war. Also, while modern international humanitarian law draws upon the earlier European Chivalric Code, there are echoes of deeper, more nuanced, bodies of law.