SUMMARYThis article examines Anglo–Dutch rivalry in the Banda Islands in the period from 1609 to 1621, with a particular focus on the process of claiming initiated by the Dutch East India Company and English East India Company. Historians have paid little attention to the precise legal justifications employed by these organisations, and how they affected the outcome of events. For both companies, treaties with Asian rulers and peoples were essential in staking out claims to trade and territory. Because so many (...) different parties were involved, individual documents had to serve multiple purposes, both on the ground in the East Indies and at the negotiating tables back in Europe. Whenever a VOC or EIC official presented a treaty to a Bandanese leader, he had to recognise local power structures in the Spice Islands, but also needed to consider his European competitors in the area, his superiors in Batavia or Bantam, and the company directors back in Amsterdam or London. Consequently, the safest and most reliable course of action was to make as many arguments as possible, piling them on top of one another. The result was an inherently messy process of claiming, yet one that was also clearly intelligible to most parties involved, including Asian rulers and peoples. A constantly changing legal suite extended to freedom of trade and navigation, contracts and alliances with native peoples, just war, conquest, actual possession, and the surrender of native sovereignty to European authorities. (shrink)

This article examines Grotius’ lifelong support for Dutch expansion overseas. As noted in other publications of mine, Grotius cooperated closely with the directors of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the years 1604–1615. Right up to his arrest for high treason in August 1618, he contributed towards Dutch government discussions about the establishment of a West India Company (WIC). Three years of imprisonment at Loevestein Castle and, following his escape, long years of exile could not weaken his dedication to (...) the cause. His relatives in Holland, in particular his brother Willem de Groot and his brother-in-law Nicolaas van Reigersberch, kept him up-to-date on the fortunes of the VOC and WIC. His expertise on maritime affairs was in high demand. For example, Cardinal Richelieu invited him in November 1626 to become actively involved in the establishment of a French East India Company. As itinerant ideologue of empire, Grotius sought to further his own career and those of his nearest family members, without damaging the interests of the United Provinces. Through Willem de Groot and Nicolaas van Reigersberch, he provided informal advice on Dutch imperial policy to the VOC directors and government officials in The Hague. He was rewarded with the appointment of his brother and his second son, Pieter de Groot, as VOC lawyers (ordinaris advocaten) in 1639 and 1644, respectively. They served as his proxies in diplomatic disputes involving the VOC, the States General and the Portuguese ambassador in autumn 1644, when Pieter and Willem de Groot wrote a defense of VOC claims to the cinnamon-producing areas of Ceylon (modern-day Sri Lanka), liberally citing De Jure Belli ac Pacis. Grotius’ vision of empire hardly changed in the course of 40 years. In his view, the Dutch had gone to the Indies as merchants, not conquerors, and should regulate themselves according to natural law and the law of nations. Thus he contributed to the creation of two political orders, one for Europe and one for the Indies. European diplomatic relations counted for little beyond the Line. VOC and WIC officials could act as judges and executioners in their own cause, without reference to indigenous rulers, other colonial powers, or even the political authorities back home. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Politics, religion and legal argumentation were inextricably intertwined in the reception of John Selden’s Mare Clausum/The Closed Sea (1635). The work’s writing and printing history is closely tied to Stuart foreign policy, particularly James I’s and Charles I’s attempts to tax the Dutch herring fisheries. Mare Clausum’s immediate impact on European international relations has received little attention from historians so far. It is clear, however, that government authorities in London, The Hague and Venice expected an official reply from Hugo (...) Grotius, author of Mare Liberum/the Free Sea (1609) and Swedish ambassador in Paris. Yet the latter declined to assist the Dutch authorities in this matter, blaming them for his imprisonment in 1618–1621 and his second banishment from Holland in 1632. The antipathy was mutual. The Dutch authorities abhorred Grotius’ pleas for religious tolerance and commissioned his Calvinist kinsman Dirk Graswinckel to respond to Selden instead. Graswinckel had already published Libertas Veneta/venetian Liberty (1634), a learned defense of the Republic of Venice’s political interests. In ‘Vindiciae maris liberi’/vindication of the Free Sea (written 1636–1637), he tried –but arguably failed – to reconcile Dutch claims to freedom of navigation, trade and fishing with Venetian claims to the Adriatic. It never appeared in print. (shrink)

This article reconstructs the printing history of Hugo Grotius's Mare liberum . It examines the political circumstances which prompted the pamphlet's publication, but then seemed to conspire against it, and relates these to Grotius's revision of chapter 12 of Ms. BPL 917 in Leiden University Library, the one surviving copy of De iure praedae . While preparing chapter 12 for the press, he made a serious effort to tone down its bellicose rhetoric, erasing, for example, all references to the Spanish (...) claims to the Americas. His aim was to placate the French envoy Pierre Jeannin and his own political patron Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, the driving forces behind the negotiations for the Twelve Years' Truce . In the context of these negotiations, Grotius was at pains to downplay his radical rights theories. The subjective right of punishment only received a mention in the conclusion of Mare liberum, for example. Yet a discarded outline for the pamphlet's preface shows that the argument of De iure praedae remained uppermost in his mind, witness the outline's denunciation of the 'poisonings, perfidy and crimes of the Portuguese'. Both De iure praedae and Mare liberum had been commissioned by the Dutch East India Company for the express purpose of influencing political developments in its favour. Yet neither treatise had the impact originally intended by Grotius and the VOC directors. Ironically, these occasional writings became classics of international law instead. (shrink)

The possible Stoic origins of the natural rights and natural law theories of the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) has been a subject of scholarly debate in recent years. Yet discussions about Grotian sociability tend to focus exclusively on the meaning of appetitus societatis in De Jure Praedae (written in 1604–1608) and De Jure Belli ac Pacis (1625), with little reference to the historical context. Insufficient consideration has been given to the intended audience(s) of these works, Grotius’ purpose in writing (...) them, and the possible correlation between his overarching argument and his working methods. This article examines Grotius’ use and abuse of Seneca's philosophical works in De Jure Praedae, commissioned by the directors of the Dutch East India Company (or VOC) in autumn 1604. The brutal murder of Sebald de Weert on the island of Ceylon (modern-day Sri Lanka) in June 1603 is analyzed from a Stoic perspective in Chapter 15 of De Jure Praedae. Following his refusal to hand over Portuguese prisoners, De Weert and his crew were butchered on the beach of Batticaloa by Wilama Dharma Suriya, the ruler of the island's interior. Grotius blamed the victim. VOC commanders in monsoon Asia should suppress any residual loyalty which they might feel towards Christendom. It was imperative to conclude alliances with native rulers against the Iberian colonial powers, regardless of the rulers’ (lack of) faith or their horrific treatment of prisoners. As Grotius noted in Chapter 8 of De Jure Praedae, Seneca distinguished between “two kinds of commonwealth, the world state and the city state.” Spanish and Portuguese violations of the natural law – freedom of trade and navigation in particular – deserved condign punishment for the sake of both the fellowship of mankind and, naturally, the VOC and Dutch Republic. In assessing the uses of Stoicism in De Jure Praedae, much can be learned from the physical characteristics of Ms. BPL 917 in Leiden University Library, its sole surviving manuscript copy. Seneca's philosophical works are not cited at all in the original text of Ms. BPL 917, which Grotius copied out in 1604–1605. Instead, quotations from De Ira, De Clementia and De Beneficiis appear in the top and bottom margins of folio-pages or on inserted sheets of paper, which can be dated to 1607–1608. These quotations serve to flesh out an existing argument about the VOC's just war(s) in the East Indies. A case in point is the heavily rewritten Chapter 2. Grotius added quotations from De Clementia at the same time as he reformulated two natural laws on f. 8–9, a folio sheet inserted in or after January 1607. This was no coincidence. Revenging the past misdeeds of the Portuguese, which Grotius had described in great detail in Chapter 11, could no longer be considered the main or only priority of the VOC. Instead, Grotius contended on f. 8–9 that “evil deeds must be corrected” so as to achieve, in Seneca's words, “universal security.” Acting as a kind of global police force, the VOC should punish transgressors of the natural law on account of “that world community” envisioned by the Stoics. The practical consequences were felt during the Twelve Years Truce (1609–1621). Despite a cessation of arms in Europe, the VOC continued to engage in hostilities in the East Indies. The author of De Jure Praedae supported the Company on this. Like Cicero before him, he had successfully harnessed the Stoa to the cause of empire. (shrink)

Following the manuscript's discovery in 1864, scholars have widely assumed that De Jure Praedae (Commentary on the Law of Prize and Booty) was written by the Dutch lawyer Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) in the period 1604–1606. Yet the conventional dating fails to consider the materiality of Ms. BPL 917 in Leiden University Library. By analyzing paper supplies, this article throws new light on the date and manner of the manuscript's composition. The watermarks in the paper, the quire divisions and foliation are (...) considered in combination with relevant textual evidence, such as manuscript references to historical events and any allusions to Ms. BPL 917 in Grotius’ letters and other archival sources. This approach has yielded unforeseen results. Yes, Grotius wrote out the original text in 1604/05, as a fair copy of a previously existing work. Yet he did not stop there. Entire folio-pages were crossed out in Ms. BPL 917 and new ones inserted in the following sequence: - in, or shortly before, January 1607, Grotius deleted f. 63v and 67r and inserted f. 64–66 - between January 1607 and Nov–Dec. 1608, he deleted f. 7v, 19r, 38v, and 43r-v and inserted f. 8–9, 18, and 39–42 - in November–December 1608, he deleted f. 119r–122r and inserted f. 117–118. These revisions were a direct response to the challenges faced by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in this period. Its growing empire in Southeast Asia was under threat from the peace and truce negotiations between the States General and Philip III of Spain and Portugal. Grotius’ revisions of Ms. BPL 917, along with chapter twelve's appearance as Mare Liberum in April 1609, justified the continuation of Dutch empire-building in the East Indies, the Twelve Years’ Truce (1609–1621) notwithstanding. Grotius’ rights and contract theories made it perfectly acceptable to conclude a peace or truce in (Western) Europe, yet persist in colonial warfare beyond the Line (i.e. the Tropic of Cancer). In this respect – the (implicit) differentiation between ‘the West and the rest’ in international relations – Grotius’ legacy is still with us today. (shrink)