Hugo Grotius

Hugo Grotius (of his name of origin Huig de Groot or Hugo de Groot , Delft, April 10th 1583 - Rostock, August 28th 1645) is a lawyer of the Plain Provinces (today Netherlands) which posed the foundations of the International law, based on the natural Right. It is located at the very first row of the thinkers of the legal science and the philosophy of the State.

Dutch lawyer protesting, it was to advise Compagnie Dutchwoman of the Eastern Indies. Inspired by Thomas Erastus, it forged a theory of the State and civil power of which it presented with meticulousness and much intellectual strength the internal and international articulations. Its most famous work is Of swears pacis and belli . It marks the birth of the public international law.

It was also Philosophe, Christian Apologiste , Dramaturge, and Poète. The feature dominating of this large humanistic was an oecumenical will of investigation which did not leave him any respite. It did not cease militating for an order authentically human and an opened Christendom, purified by a return to its sources

The Bookstore of the Palate of Peace to $the Hague guard the Collection Grotius , which has a great number of books of and on Hugo Grotius. The collection was based on a donation of Martinus Nijhoff of 55 editions of Of swears belli ac pacis libri very .

An annual series of Conférences on Grotius since 1999 held.

A tormented life

Born in 1583, Hugo de Groot is a child prodigy: at eleven years he studies at the university of Leyde; at thirteen years he undertakes the edition of the work of the Latin encyclopedist Martianus Capella with the assistance of his Master, Joseph Juste Scaliger (published in 1599, this edition, enriched by a comment, will remain a reference during several centuries). He carries out his first diplomatic mission in France in 1598. One year later, he is lawyer with $the Hague and writes a history of the rebellion of the Netherlands against the Spain ( Annales and historiae of rebus belgicis ). At the request of the Company Dutch of the Eastern Indies, eager to juridically establish its right of capture on the enemy ships, Grotius composes the Of swears praedae - right of catch - in 1606. Grotius takes a determining share with the conflict politico-monk opposing the partisans of the general states of the Netherlands to the partisans of Maurice de Nassau. Grotius supported Oldenbarnevelt and the General states of the Netherlands in their conflict with the Stathouder, Maurice de Nassau, Prince d' Orange, wire of Guillaume Ier of Orange-Nassau. It was stopped by Maurice, the August 29th 1618, at the same time as Johan van Oldenbarnevelt. Van Oldenbarnevelt was carried out, and Grotius was condemned to the imprisonment with life in the Château of Loevestein. In 1621, it escaped from the castle in a case of books, and flees with Paris where it will remain until in 1644 like resident of Sweden. It makes shipwreck with the return of a mission in Sweden and dies in Rostock on August 28th 1645.

With the Netherlands, it is especially known for its escape. The Rijksmuseum with Amsterdam and the museum Het Prinsenhof with Delft assert both the original case of pounds in their collections.

Grotius lived at the time of the Guerre Eighty Year old between the Spain and the Netherlands and of the Guerre Thirty Year old between the catholic and Protestant European nations; it is not surprising that it was deeply marked by the questions of conflicts between nations and the religions. It was itself Calviniste of moderate tendency and maintained many contacts with catholics, hoping for a reunification of the Christian churches. In 1625, it published its book swears belli ac pacis ( On the laws of the war and peace ) where it presented its theory of the Guerre right and claimed that all the nations are bound by the principles of the natural Right.

Contributions

On the right of the sea

In its book Mare Liberum ( Free Seas ) he formulated the new principle according to which the sea was an international territory and that all the Nation S were free to use for the maritime Commerce. Grotius, by proclaiming the “free Seas”, provides an ideological justification which was appropriate for the rupture by the different Dutchmen Monopole S commercial through their formidable naval power (and thus establishing their clean Monopole).

The England, which was in a fierce competition with the Dutchmen for the world domination, was opposed to this idea and proclaimed sovereignty on the seas surrounding the British Isles. The quarrel would have important economic implications later on. The Dutch Republic supported the free idea of Commerce (even if it imposed a special Monopole commercial on the Nutmeg and the cloves in the archipelago of Moluques). England adopted the law of navigation (1651), prohibiting all the goods from entering to England safe on English boats. The law consequently led to the First war anglo-Dutchwoman (1652 - 1654).

A State right and a limited sovereignty

“A perfect body free people who united together to enjoy peacefully their rights and for their common utility” is the definition of the State according to Grotius. It bases its thesis on the existence of an initial contract by which the men gave up the state of nature. He affirms that the laws are in the State what the heart is with the human body. The State gathers a multitude of plain reasonable creatures for the things which they like; it has as a function to ensure the respect of the laws and to organize the courts charged to return what is due the abroads as with the private individuals of the country. The territory does not constitute an element of the State, but the fundamental contract which binds the individuals to the State prohibits the transfer of a province without the assent of the interested populations.

Right natural and voluntary right

The natural right is formed of principles of the right-hand side reason which make known to us that “an action is morally honest or deshonnête according to suitability or unsuitableness necessary that it has with the reasonable and sociable nature of the man”. the will of God is for him only one indirect demonstration in the normative production, this one emanating above all the human nature and of its sociable nature. The natural right is immutable, common to all the times and all the areas. It governs the control of the individuals and that of the States, the latter being bound by internal obligations, whose violation involves a right of resistance to oppression in favor of its subjects and by international obligations - those of the law of nations. The exercise of the sovereign rights of the State on the international plan includes/understands the right of war framed by standards which authorize only the right wars:

defensive wars intended to protect from an aggression the population and the inheritance of the State;
coercive wars to punish those which violate the right, provided that the violation is serious.

The natural right prescribes modes of Pacific regulation of the disagreements between States. The voluntary right comes from a will which can be sometimes divine, sometimes human. This right does not result from a will which would be higher than that of the States, but from their agreement, of their convergent will, resulting from the habit or formal conventions. The States are held to recognize the rule of the natural law on the voluntary right.

Theology

On the truth of the Christian Religion

Grotius wrote a book defending the Christianisme, called Of veritate religionis Christianae (published in 1632), which was translated of Latin into English, Arab, Persan and Chinese by Edward Pococke for being used for work missionary in the East, and remained published until the end of the 19th century. It was the first book protesting in the Christian Apologétique and it was divided into six books. Part of the text treated emergent questions of the historical conscience concerning the authenticity and the contents of the canonical Gospel S. Other sections of work were addressed to other religions, Judaïsme and Islam. What distinguished also this work in the history of apologetic was its precursory role in the anticipation of the problems expressed in the Déisme of the 18th century. In addition Grotius represents the first expert of apologetic legal or legal in the defense of the Christian belief.

On the redemption of the sins

Grotius also developed a particular point of view of the repurchase of the sins by Christ known as a theory of the " government moral". It emitted the theory according to which the direction of the sacrifice of died of Jesus is that the Father forgives all while maintaining his law right on the Univers. This idea, developed later on by Theologist S such as John Miley, became the point of view dominating in the Arminianisme and the Méthodisme.

Edward Gibbon and Thomas Carlyle exposed white lies in the book of Grotius, which was omitted Arab text by Pococke, although kept in the Latin version.

Works

Of republica emendanda (to improve the Dutch republic) - 1601
Parallelon rerumpublicarum (Comparison of constitutions) - 1602
Of iure praedae (On the right of capture), including Pond liberum (Free Seas) - 1604
Of antiquitate reipublicae Batavicae (history of the Dutch republic) - 1610
Ordinum pietas (the piety of the States) - 1613
Defensio fidei catholicae of satisfactione (Defense of the Christian faith) - 1617
Of iure belli ac pacis (On the laws of the war and peace) - 1625
Of veritate religionis Christianae (On the truth of the Christian religion) - 1627
Inleydinge early of Hollantsche rechtsgeleertheit (Introduction to the Dutch law) - 1631
Via AD pacem ecclesiasticam (the way towards religious peace) - 1642
Of imperio summarum potestatum circa crowned (On the capacity of the sovereigns concerning the religious affairs) - 1647
Of fato (On the destiny) - 1648
Yearly and historiae of rebus Belgicis (Yearly and history of the Netherlands) - 1657

See too

natural Right
International law
War Eighty Year old
History of the Netherlands
Synod of Dordrecht
War right
International water

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