Grotius, Hugo (1583–1645)

In the range of his interests, if not always the content of his thought, Hugo Grotius (Hugo de Groot) was an exemplary product of the Renaissance in northern Europe. He was an accomplished poet, historian, and theologian. Moreover, toward the end of his life, when the Dutch Republic exiled him, he served as a diplomat on behalf of the Swedish government, albeit with fewer obvious successes in that particular field.

His present fame rests largely upon his reputation as a jurist. His writings include a systematic study of the laws of war and peace,De Jure Belli ac Pacis, and his powerful defense of the freedom of the seas,Mare Liberum. The latter was an excerpt, and the only part published during Grotius's lifetime, from a longer work on the law of prize,De Jure Praedae. In the nineteenth century, scholars referred to him as the “father of modern international law,” and twentiethcentury advocates of international organization have often claimed him as their inspiration.

Grotius's contribution to international jurisprudence entails an elaboration of the transition from the medieval belief in natural law to modern ideas about volitional or positive law. The importance of his work lies in his eclectic doctrine on the sources of the law of nations, which incorporated significant elements of volitional law into a wider framework that people still understood as a form of natural law.

Because his work coincided with dynastic rulers' increasingly successful efforts to assert their independence from the putatively universal authorities of Christendom—the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor—Grotius pointed the way to a new appreciation of the importance of state volition in international law. This proved especially well suited to a [Page 678]world in which the territorially sovereign state was the dominant actor. His doctrine also showed how international legal order could survive, albeit standing on fragile and limited foundations, in the anarchic climate of the European states system, characterized by the absence of any supranational central authority to declare and enforce its rules.

Although this interpretation of Grotius retains much of its popularity today, it does not command universal assent. Grotius's major achievement may be understood rather differently as an attempt to revitalize the idea of natural law by basing it on human nature rather than divine sanction, thus providing a stronger response to the Tacitist skepticism of “reason of state” that was popular in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

In addition, several commentators have highlighted Grotius's theory of appropriation in the state of nature, which anticipated key elements of the later Lockean theory of property. Like John Locke (1632–1704), Grotius can help us understand European colonizing activities rather than the pattern of international politics then developing within the European states system with which he is more commonly associated. The alternative perspectives on Grotius, however, do not undermine Grotius's crucial position in early modern intellectual history.