Contents

Textual history

Many translations, editions and reprints of Wheaton's Elements have appeared since its first publication. The third edition was published in Philadelphia in 1845. At the request of Wheaton's family, the sixth edition, with the last corrections of the author and a biographical notice, was published by William Beach Lawrence (Boston, 1855). Lawrence also published the seventh edition (1863). The eight edition was published, with new notes and a new biography, by Richard Henry Dana, Jr. (Boston, 1866). Dana's alleged use of Lawrence's notes from the previous editions resulted in a protracted legal controversy.

A French translation was published in Leipzig and Paris in 1848. At the instance of Anson Burlingame, U.S. minister to China, Wheaton's book was translated into Chinese and published at the expense of the imperial government (4 vols., Pekin, 1865). The translator was American Protestant missionary William Alexander Parsons Martin who was working in China at that time.

The book was also translated into Japanese and the language of each country of Asia.

The original edition bore the title Elements of International Law with a Sketch of the History of the Subject. Some subsequent editions omitted the "Sketch," which in 1845 became (in expanded form) part of Wheaton's History of the Law of Nations in Europe and America.

Influence

The translations had a large influence on the approval of modern international law in Asia. Wheaton's was the first book to introduce international law to East Asia in full scale.

In listing Henry Wheaton among "prominent jurists of the nineteenth century," Antony Anghie comments on the "several editions" of Elements of International Law and on the work as "widely respected and used at this time."

目錄

• 第一卷 釋公法之義，明其本源，題其大旨

　• 第一章 釋義明源

　• 第二章 論邦國自治、自主之權

• 第二卷 論諸國自然之權

　• 第一章 論其自護、自主之權

　• 第二章 論制定律法之權

　• 第三章 論諸國平行之權

　• 第四章 論各國掌物之權

• 第三卷 論諸國平時往來之權

　• 第一章 論通使之權

　• 第二章 論商議立約之權

• 第四卷 論交戰條規

　• 第一章 論戰始

　• 第二章 論敵國交戰之權

　• 第三章 論戰時局外之權

　• 第四章 論和約章程