Finally, I briefly consider some broader implications of the perspective developed here for an understanding of interpolity law in the early modern world.
Small-scale military actions and the lure of plunder fit within broader patterns of conflict and interpolity relations, and in this sense Roman aggression against neighboring polities was singular in its success over a long period but not unusual in its modalities.
Interpolity raiding, surrender, and extreme violence encompassed and paralleled Roman approaches.
The uneven advance of imperial influence through raiding, tentative jurisdictional acts, and pledged alliances made the empire an interpolity formation.
It remains puzzling that we still have few labels for such interpolity formations, including little scholarly attention to the vernacular jurisprudence of the many small wars that made up the bulk of Spanish-Indian violent encounters.
Finally, the compatibility of truces with raiding emerges as a key feature of interpolity relations along unstable frontiers of conquest.
This perspective informs a broader objective, the possibility of uncovering interpolity law before the rise of international law.
Should conquest feature in this composite image of interpolity law?
If we take seriously the centrality of truces to the progress of campaigns of conquest, we might elevate peace-making over invasion as a critical component of interpolity relations and, paradoxically, of the early modern law of war.
(8.) The search for influence of Asian interpolity norms and practice, including laws of war, on European writings about the law of nations makes up one strand-largely repudiated by subsequent writers--of the work of C.H.
(25.) On the sale and purchase of protection more generally, see L auren Benton & Adam Clulow, Empires and Protection: Making Interpolity Law in the Early Modern World, 12 J.