The driving force of the dynamic development of world legal history in the past few centuries, with the dominance of the West, was clearly the demands of modernisation - transforming existing reality into what is seen as modern. The need for modernisation, determining the development of modern law, however, clashed with the need to preserve cultural identity rooted in national traditions. With selected examples of different legal institutions, countries and periods, the authors of the essays in the two volumes Modernisation, National Identity and Legal Instrumentalism: Studies in Comparative Legal History, vol. I: Private Law and Modernisation, National Identity and Legal Instrumentalism: Studies in Comparative Legal History, vol. II: Public Law seek to explain the nature of this problem.

Contributors are Judit Beke-Martos, Jiri Brnovjak, Marjorie Carvalho de Souza, Michal Galedek, Imre Kepessy, Ivan Kosnica, Simon Lavis, Maja Maciejewska-Szalas, Tadeusz Maciejewski, Thomas Mohr, Balazs Palvoelgyi, and Marek Stary.