International Relations in Political Thought Texts from the Ancient Greeks to the First World War

HUGO GROTIUS (1583–1645), Dutch humanist, theologian, and jurist. Grotius achieved fame first as a poet and later for his efforts to reconcile Protestant and Catholic Christianity. He is known to students of international relations for his defense of the principle of freedom of the seas and, even more, as the author of The Law of War and Peace (1625), which he wrote while living as an exile in France. Despite its baroque style and almost complete neglect of contemporary international practice, Grotius' famous work continues to be read as a statement of the view that the jurisdiction of morality extends even to war (the law of war, for Grotius, is natural, not positive, law). Although the habit of regarding Grotius as the founder of international law both ignores the contributions of his predecessors and reads back into his work ideas that belong to a later period, his writings contain, in embryo, a powerful theory of international justice.

From The Law of War and Peace

Prolegomena

1. The municipal law of Rome and of other states has been treated by many, who have undertaken to elucidate it by means of commentaries or to reduce it to a convenient digest. That body of law, however, which is concerned with the mutual relations among states or rulers of states, whether derived from nature, or established by divine ordinances, or having its origin in custom and tacit agreement, few have touched upon. Up to the present time no one has treated it in a comprehensive and systematic manner; yet the welfare of mankind demands that this task be accomplished.