The rights of war and peace. Book 1

2055 Pages·2005·9.295 MB·English

by  Grotius, Hugo;Tuck, Richard

the rights of war and peace
book i
natural law and
enlightenment classics
KnudHaakonssen
GeneralEditor

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natural law and
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i The Rights of i
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War and Peace
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i Hugo Grotius i
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i EditedandwithanIntroductionby i
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RichardTuck
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FromtheeditionbyJeanBarbeyrac
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i MajorLegalandPoliticalWorksofHugoGrotius i
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i liberty fund i
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Indianapolis
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ThisbookispublishedbyLibertyFund,Inc.,afoundationestablishedto
encouragestudyoftheidealofasocietyoffreeandresponsibleindividuals.
Thecuneiforminscriptionthatservesasourlogoandasthedesignmotif
forourendpapersistheearliest-knownwrittenappearanceoftheword
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Frontispiece:PortraitofHugodeGrootbyMichielvanMierevelt,1608;
oilonpanel;collectionofHistoricalMuseumRotterdam,onloanfrom
theVanderMandeleStichting.Reproducedbypermission.
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Grotius,Hugo,1583–1645.
[Dejurebelliacpacislibritres.English]
Therightsofwarandpeace/HugoGrotius;
editedandwithanintroductionbyRichardTuck.
p. cm.—(Naturallawandenlightenmentclassics)
“MajorlegalandpoliticalworksofHugoGrotius”—T.p.,v.1.
Includesbibliographicalreferences.
isbn0-86597-432-2(set:hard) isbn0-86597-436-5(set:soft)
isbn0-86597-433-0(v.1:hc) isbn0-86597-437-3(v.1:sc)
1. Internationallaw. 2. Naturallaw. 3. War(Internationallaw).
I. Tuck,Richard,1949– . II. Title. III. Series.
kz2093.a3j8813 2005
341.6—dc22 2004044217
liberty fund, inc.
8335AllisonPointeTrail,Suite300
Indianapolis,Indiana46250-1684
contents
volume 1
Introduction ix
ANoteontheText xxxv
Acknowledgments xxxix
the rights of war and peace, book i 1
volume 2
the rights of war and peace, book ii 389
volume 3
the rights of war and peace, book iii 1185
Appendix:ProlegomenatotheFirstEdition
ofDeJureBelliacPacis 1741
Bibliographyof PostclassicalWorksReferred
tobyGrotius 1763
Bibliographyof WorksReferredtoinJean
Barbeyrac’sNotes 1791
IndextoThisEdition 1815

introduction
InthefamousdedicationofhisDiscourseontheOriginofInequalityto
theRepublicofGeneva,Jean-JacquesRousseaudrewavividpictureof
his father sitting at his watchmaker’s bench. “I see him still, living by
the work of his hands, and feeding his soul on the sublimest truths.I
seetheworksof Tacitus,Plutarch,andGrotius,lyingbeforehiminthe
midstofthetoolsofhistrade.Athissidestandshisdearson,receiving,
alas with too little profit, the tender instruction of the best of fa-
thers....”Rousseau’sreminiscenceistestimonytotheauthoritywhich
Grotius’sDeIureBelliacPacishadcometopossessinthecenturysince
itwasfirstpublishedin1625;intheeyesof bothfatherandson,thebook
hadthesamestandingasthegreatworksofclassicalantiquity.Rousseau
wastodevotemuchofhislifetoacomplicatedandsubtlerepudiation
of Grotius, but he never lost his sense of the book’s importance, de-
scribing Grotius in Emile as “the master of all the savants”inpolitical
theory(thoughheaddedthat,nevertheless,he“isbutachild,and,what
isworse,adishonestchild,”andthat“truepoliticaltheoryisyettoap-
pear, and it is to be presumed that it never will”).1 The same sense of
Grotius’s importance, without any of Rousseau’sreservations,hadled
theElectorPalatinein1661toendowachairintheUniversityofHei-
delberg for the express purpose of providing a commentaryontheDe
IureBelliacPacis,afactwhichisnotedintheLifeprefacedtothisedition;
astheLifealsonotes,thebookwasissuedasafulleditionwithnotesby
1.Forthededication,seeTheSocialContractandDiscourses,trans.G.D.H.Cole,
reviseded.J.H.BrumfittandJohnC.Hall(Everyman1973),34;forEmile,seeRous-
seau,PoliticalWritings,ed.C.E.Vaughan(Oxford:OxfordUniversityPress,1915),
2:147.
ix
x introduction
various commentators,2 “by which means our Author, within 50 Years
afterhisDeath,obtainedanHonour,whichwasnotbestoweduponthe
AncientstillaftermanyAges.”Theideathatthebookrepresentedsome-
thingnewand importantforthemodernagewasrepeatedlyvoicedin
the“historiesofmorality,”whichbegantoappearinthelateseventeenth
century;Grotiuswasdescribedas“breakingtheice”afterthelongwinter
ofancientandmedievalethics.3Bytheendoftheseventeenthcentury
there had been twenty-six editions of the Latin text, and it had been
translatedintoDutch(1626,reissuedthreetimesinthecentury),English
(1654, reissued twice), and French(1687, reissuedonce).Itspopularity
scarcely slackened in the eighteenth century: there were twenty Latin
editions, six French, five German, two Dutch, two English, and one
Italian(andoneRussian,circulatedinmanuscript).4
However,formanyeighteenth-centuryreadersthedefinitiveversion
ofthebookhadappearedinLatinin1720,whenJeanBarbeyracissued
a newedition, followed by aFrenchtranslationin1724withelaborate
notes.5BarbeyracwasaleadingfigureintheFrenchProtestantdiaspora,
the network of scholars whose families had been driven out of France
following the revocation of the Edictof Nantesby LouisXIVin1685.
Heworkedtirelesslytoputhisownversionofmodernnaturallawbefore
theEuropeanpublic,andhiseditionsofGrotiusbuiltonthesuccessof
a similarly elaborateeditionwhichhehadproducedofSamuelPufen-
dorf’sDeIureNaturaeetGentiumin1706.Thenotestotheseeditions
2.Thiswastheeditionthatappearedin1691fromapressatFrankfurt-on-Oder,
withcommentarybyGronovius,Boecler,Henniges,Osiander,andZiegler,names
thatwillbecomefamiliarfromBarbeyrac’snotesinthisedition.
3.SeeBarbeyrac’sremarkinhisAnHistoricalandCriticalAccountoftheScience
of Morality, prefaced to his edition of Pufendorf, The Law of Natureand Nations
(London,1749),67.
4.ThisinformationisfromJ.terMeulenandP.J.J.Diermanse,Bibliographie
des´ecritsimprim´esdeGrotius(TheHague,1950).Foranexemplarymodernedition
of the Latin text, see B.J.A. De Kanter–van Hettinga Tromp’s 1939 edition,re-
printed with extensive additional material by R. Feenstra and C.E. Persenaire
(Aalen:ScientiaVerlag,1993).
5. Both the Barbeyrac Latin and French editions were from Amsterdam; the
FrenchversionwasdedicatedtoGeorgeIofEngland.