On April 27, the Institute of Country and Region Studies at Peking University (ICRS-PKU) hosted a lecture, “Civilizational Theory and International Law,” which was delivered by Prof. David Lloyd Dusenbury, associate professor of Humanities at the University of Florida. The session was chaired by Chen Xiaohang, assistant professor at PKU Law School. Four discussants offered comments and participated in a discussion on international legal history, civilizational narratives, the Global South, and the postwar international order: Zhao Hong, professor at PKU Law School and former Chair of the WTO Appellate Body; Zhang Yongle, associate professor at PKU Law School and executive director of the research base of ICRS; Kong Yuan, associate research fellow at the Institute of European Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS); and Hu Ruikun, postdoctoral fellow in the Department of International Relations at Tsinghua University.

In his lecture, Dusenbury traced the relationship between “international law” and “civilization” in four parts. He began by returning to 1789, noting that the term “international law” was coined by the British philosopher Jeremy Bentham in An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation to replace the traditional Latin term “ius gentium.” From its inception, modern international law was closely tied to notions such as “civilized nations” and “perpetual peace.” This connection, however, was not neutral; it was bound up with early liberalism, Christian tradition, especially Protestant traditions, and a Eurocentric political imagination. The nineteenth-century idea of a “legal consciousness of the civilized world,” while driving the institutionalization of the international order, also tended to place non-liberal polities and non-European societies in the position of being judged and remade.

In the second part, Dusenbury turned to the post–Cold War era. He noted that late liberal international law, exemplified by Francis Fukuyama, extended the universalizing imagination of liberal democracy yet made comparatively little direct use of the language of “civilization.” By contrast, Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations stood in striking relief. Dusenbury argued that civilization has been viewed with such suspicion since the nineteenth century precisely because it has been used to draw hierarchies, to serve imperial expansion, and to mask colonial violence. The task, then, is not simply to rehabilitate the word “civilization” but to rethink it so as to free it from the burdens of ideologization and hierarchy.

In the third part, Dusenbury discussed the Treaty of Nerchinsk of 1689. He argued for a careful distinction between civilization in the plural and civilization in the singular: the former designates plural civilizational traditions, while the latter refers to a peaceful order jointly produced by different civilizations that preserves their differences. The Treaty of Nerchinsk, he proposed, was precisely the product of a tripartite interaction among Qing Dynasty, Russia, and a Europe mediated by Jesuit advisers, embodying the encounter, negotiation, and joint construction of multiple civilizational traditions in legal practice. For Dusenbury, this kind of “peace that preserves difference” comes far closer to the genuine meaning of “civilizational international law” than any program to remake states into a single liberal model.

In the fourth part, Dusenbury suggested that the system of permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, established after 1945, can also be reread through the lens of a “civilizational order.” Rather than interpreting the postwar settlement as a liberal program oriented toward a world government, it is more illuminating to emphasize how China, Russia, the US, the UK, France, and others, drawing on their distinct historical traditions and civilizational experiences, sought to build peace together from the ruins of war. If “civilization” is no longer understood as a single normative standard but as a framework that recognizes diverse histories and institutions, it can offer fresh intellectual resources for the present crisis of the international order.

During the discussant session, Zhao Hong observed that the term “civilization” has, from the outset, carried both aspiration and bias, easily dividing the world into the “civilized” and the “uncivilized.” She argued that the Chinese conception of civilization places greater emphasis on the unity of humankind, mutual interdependence, and a community of shared destiny, and must not retrace the path of Eurocentrism. Zhang Yongle held that the line Dusenbury draws from the Treaty of Nerchinsk to the United Nations is of considerable importance: The Treaty itself embodies the confluence of distinct Chinese, Russian, and European legal-political traditions and offers a case for understanding the interaction between China’s traditional tianxia (天下) order and modern international law, while the UN itself is a platform for inter-civilizational exchange. Kong Yuan emphasized Dusenbury’s distinction between a liberal international order and a civilizational international order, the latter resting on recognition of the legitimacy of plural polities and civilizational traditions. Speaking from the perspective of critical international legal theory and Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), Hu Ruikun cautioned that the concept of “civilization” risks being nationalized or essentialized and may also obscure the Global South’s place as a subject within the history of international law.

During the Q&A, participants, from a TWAIL perspective, discussed the colonial baggage of the concept of “civilization,” how the Global South might reconstitute its subjectivity, and whether AI and algorithmic governance might give rise to a new universalism. In reply, Dusenbury suggested that “civilization” might be productively reconceived as a process of “collective maturation”: each civilization has its own glories, traumas, memories, and historical responsibilities, and each must critically re-engage with its past and, on that basis, seek peace with others.