This book, part of Oxford's History and Theory of International Law series, aims to contribute to a better understanding of the complex evolution of international law from the perspective of the Americas – both North and South – in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was a critical period in terms of the emergence of the Americas: as the newly independent South or ‘Latin’ American states were seeking to consolidate their position in the contemporary international order, the United States was emerging as a major global power, finally overtaking Europe. Juan Pablo Scarfi draws attention to the departure of the Americas from the European-centred international legal order and the move towards an emerging Pan-Americanist perspective, one in which the contours of the new hegemony of the United States are firmly established, but in which South American states and their representatives are active participants. His focus is on the American Institute of International Law (AIIL), founded in 1912, as one of the principal vehicles of this move. Though the work of the Institute drew in a wide cast of characters from across the Americas, its two principal architects and founders were the international lawyers Alejandro Álvarez (1868–1960) from Chile and James Brown Scott (1866–1943) from the United States. Despite their differing positions on a number of questions, they agreed upon the importance of a ‘hemispheric’ approach to international law (pp. 32–3) and between them oversaw an impressive array of legislation, much of which came to guide future patterns of inter-American relations. Empirically rich and densely packed – the product of extensive primary research – the book is part history of international law, part history of Pan-American relations, and part biography of the different individuals involved in shaping the wider framework of US–Latin American relations across the twentieth century.

The book joins a growing number of titles on the diverse histories of international law, told in this case from the perspective of the Americas, but importantly also drawing extensively on the often neglected South or Latin American contribution, making it therefore a revisionist account. It is revisionist in the sense that Latin American ‘voices’ in International Law, or International Relations more generally, in the words of Arlene Tickner (‘Hearing Latin American Voices in International Relations Studies’, International Studies Perspectives, 4 (2003), pp. 325–50), were not much registered outside Latin American countries themselves. Therein lies one hint at the use of the word ‘hidden’ in the title. In this work, however, Latin American voices are not hidden, even if they are not always heeded. That of Álvarez, alongside those of other American jurists, resonates clearly, highlighting a distinctive emerging international system in which he identified specific ‘American problems and situations’ (p. 35). Indeed, Álvarez went so far as to claim that there existed a specifically American international law, distinct from the European tradition, in regard to matters related to sovereignty, dispute settlement and the principle of non-intervention. Though others distanced themselves from that claim, and the Pan-American moment subsided, Álvarez himself ‘remained obsessed’ with both the idea of an American international law and Pan-Americanism as a positive and progressive force (p. 171).

This is evidently soft revisionism, at least from an emerging Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) perspective, which looks for more radical contributions to challenge and unsettle the history of international law and its hegemonies. And therein lies a further reason for its hidden character. Precisely because it is soft revisionism, and ultimately supportive of US hegemony, it has arguably received less attention that it deserves. Álvarez sought the accommodation of Latin America's new republics into a world of states and accepted the persistence of hierarchy both within and between the Americas. In his bid to ‘Americanise’ the Monroe Doctrine, for example, Álvarez did not challenge the assumptions of the Platt Amendment (1901) effectively legitimising US tutelage over Cuba (p. 10). Indeed, he continued to regard the Monroe Doctrine in a positive and progressive light, believing it integral to the Pan-American project, even as others increasingly dissented from this view. One such dissenter was the Argentine lawyer Carlos Saavedra Lamas who, against the background of the Chaco War (1932–5), proposed a South American Anti-War treaty in an explicit departure from the Pan-American system (p. 138). As the critiques of Álvarez mounted, and alternative frameworks to guide inter-American relations emerged, it is perhaps unsurprising that his contribution was overshadowed.

Scarfi's book deals sympathetically with the contradictory views and opinions expressed by and about Álvarez and his peers and places them within their contemporary context. He has expertly excavated both the US and Latin American contributions to the building of multiple hemispheric networks that constituted the engines of new laws that would eventually work their way, via the AIIL, into the wider inter-American system as it emerged from the Second World War. As Scarfi rightly claims, studying these hemispheric legal networks gives us a much more sophisticated understanding of the history of international legal thought (p. 191). For those concerned with the Global South, it offers a unique illustration of how South and North American positions coalesced around a continental vision. The fact that both sides departed from that common vision, and the US continued to use its influence in the hemisphere to assert its hegemony, does not diminish the contribution of those Latin American scholars and publicists whose work continued to inform inter-American thinking and practices far beyond their time. Álvarez, who went on to become a judge at the International Court of Justice, is rightly remembered for his ‘pivotal’ contribution to the intellectual and political development of Pan-Americanism (p. 78).