This chapter explains the background and objectives of the study. A general objective is to explore the history of international commercial arbitration and divide this history into three broad waves or periods: the Age of Aspirations, the Age of Institutionalization, and the Age of Autonomy. A more specific objective is to demonstrate that the history of international commercial arbitration has witnessed a kind of pendulum movement between broad periods of renewal and anxiety. Along the way, this book challenges key aspects of one of the most successful and enduring works about the modern evolution of international commercial arbitration, Dezalay and Garth’s Dealing in Virtue, by contesting these scholars’ argument that the opposition between “grand old men” and “young technocrats” was a key force in structuring the modern field of international commercial arbitration.