Lauren Benton is Nelson O. Tyrone, Jr. Professor of History and Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University.

International law burst on the scene as a new field in the late nineteenth century. Where did it come from? Rage for Order finds the origins of international law in empires-especially in the British Empire's sprawling efforts to refashion the imperial constitution and use it to order the world in the early part of that century. "Rage for Order is a book of exceptional range and insight. Its successes are numerous. At a time when questions of law and legalism are attracting more and more attention from historians of 19th-century Britain and its empire, but still tend to be considered within very specific contexts, its sweep and ambition are particularly welcome...Rage for Order is a book that deserves to have major implications both for international legal history, and for the history of modern imperialism."-Alex Middleton, Reviews in History"Rage for Order offers a fresh account of nineteenth-century global order that takes us beyond worn liberal and post-colonial narratives into a new and more adventurous terrain."-Jens Bartelson, Australian Historical Studies