James offers a comprehensive, interdisciplinary account of the origins and development of universal human rights from the earliest days to 1966, when the Covenants were added to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. His work has significance for debates about the universality of international human rights law in a culturally diverse world, and is a contribution to the defense of the universality of that body of law. The book challenges the view that the international human rights regime was a hegemonic imposition by the West, and is to that degree illegitimate today. The book demonstrates both the diverse origins of the regime, and the significant Western resistance to it. In each period the book examines, there was support for universal human rights from culturally diverse states, national and international NGOs, and activists.