To the Uttermost Parts of the Earth shows the vital role played by legal imagination in the formation of the international order during 1300–1870. It discusses how European statehood arose during early modernity as a locally specific combination of ideas about sovereign power and property rights, and how those ideas expanded to structure the formation of European empires and consolidate modern international relations. By connecting the development of legal thinking with the history of political thought and by showing the gradual rise of economic analysis into predominance, the author argues that legal ideas from different European legal systems – Spanish, French, English and German – have played a prominent role in the history of global power. This history has emerged in imaginative ways to combine public and private power, sovereignty and property. Author Martti Koskenniemi, Professor of International Law and Director of the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights, University of Helsinki, is a frequent collaborator with the IILJ.