Writing some years ago, in an early phase in the so-called turn to the history of international law, Martti Koskenniemi noted that ‘there has been virtually no attempt to study international law from the perspective of the sociology of the international system’ and that the ‘possibilities for a historical sociology of international law are, in fact, almost limitless’. Since then, the history of international law has become more inclusive in its narratives of the multiplicity of social contexts and the social actors that have been shaping international law as a historical social product and of the moulding effects of the latter on the global society following Clifford Geertz, for whom all law is ‘constructive of social realities rather than merely reflective of them’. In good proportion, this historiographical development mirrors the extent to which state-centrism has lost some of its traditional paradigmatic position in international legal scholarship as a result of the relative decline or demise of the sovereign state as the main actor – and, classically, also the sole legal subject – of the international legal order.