This book brings a new perspective to the subject of international investment law, by tracing the origins of foreign investor rights. It shows how a group of business leaders, bankers, and lawyers in the mid-twentieth century paved the way for our current system of foreign investment relations, and the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism. Nicolás Perrone's fascinating book explores the blueprint that had been made in the 1950s and 1960s for the setting up of a system of international investment protection. At a time when the reform of this system is being contemplated, this timely book calls our attention to the early thinking of a coalition of diverse leaders from business, law and finance, and to how arbitrators willingly carried out the ideas in the blueprint by building a legal superstructure through the interpretation of the investment treaties.