Reassessessing Grotius on the Sea

Law Text Culture Volume 2 Article 9 1995 The freedom of histories : reassessessing Grotius on the sea G. Edmond University of Sydney Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/ltc Recommended Citation Edmond, G., The freedom of histories : reassessessing Grotius on the sea, Law Text Culture, 2, 1995, 179-217. Available at:https://ro.uow.edu.au/ltc/vol2/iss1/9 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: [email protected] The freedom of histories : reassessessing Grotius on the sea Abstract You might think it was obvious that Hugo Grotius was a man of his age. Yet the majority of historical accounts have failed to consider his work as the product of a life lived during a particular epoch. Instead historians have tended to particularise, through extraction and emphasis, various claims seemingly apparent in his work. In so doing they have created sanitised and deformed interpretations which fail to render substantive coherence to the whole of his work. The work has been described as the inauguration of a matured conceptualisation of international law and relations reflecting modem perceptions. Such analysis fails to adequately explain the coexistence, within the work, of both archaic and modem conceptions. Antiquated or accretious components have been glossed over or ignored. This has been the case for the majority of interpreters of Mare Liberum. With the infusion of new assumptions about historical methodology, texts are less likely to be conceived in vacuo. No longer can historians invoke a parthenogenetic explanation for knowledge claims. Rather the historian's role has shifted to include the consideration of more sociological and contextual influences in unravelling the history of ideas. These techniques involve an attempt to render historical texts as coherent and rational, but by the standards of argument and rationality available at the time of their construction, as understood by modem historians. This journal article is available in Law Text Culture: https://ro.uow.edu.au/ltc/vol2/iss1/9 Law/Text/Culture THE FREEDOM OF HISTORIES: REASSESSING GROTIUS ON THE SEA Gary Edmond INTRODUCTION OU might think it was obvious that Hugo Grotius was a man of his age. Yet the majority of historical accounts have failed to Y consider his work as the product ofa life lived during a particular epoch. Instead historians have tended to particularise, through extraction and emphasis, various claims seemingly apparent in his work. In so doing they have created sanitised and deformed interpretations which fail to render substantive coherence to the whole ofhis work. The work has been described as the inauguration of a matured conceptualisation of international law and relations reflecting modem perceptions. Such analysis fails to adequately explain the coexistence, within the work, of both archaic and modem conceptions. Antiquated or accretious components have been glossed over or ignored. This has been the case for the majority of interpreters of Mare Liberum. With the infusion of new assumptions about historical methodology, texts are less likely to be conceived in vacuo. No longer can historians invoke a parthenogenetic explanation for knowledge claims. Rather the historian's role has shifted to include the consideration of more sociological and contextual influences in unravelling the history of ideas. These techniques involve an attempt to render historical texts as coherent and rational, but by the standards of argument and rationality available at the time of their construction, as understood by modem historians. This paper is divided into several parts. The frrst sections provide a succinct introduction to Grotius, then briefly examine his social milieu and the existing Grotian historiography. There follows an analysis of, arguably, the most seminal work by Grotius - Mare Liberum. Mare Liberum is not retrospectively granted the status of a classic because of some inherent or essential characteristic. Rather its apparent greatness is understood as an ex 179 post facto interpretation in which Mare Liberum was captured and deployed in on going debates over some of the issues which Grotius sought to address. These issues and their attendant social and political meanings have not remained static over time. Mare Liberum is considered as a knowledge claim in early seventeenth century international relations and law. Its persuasive techniques and argumentative strategies are examined, notably in reference to others who challenged the very ideas Grotius and subsequent ages thought were so valuable and occasionally obvious. HUGO GROT.US Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) was born in Delft, to a distinguished Calvinist family. Hugo graduated from the University of Leyden at the age of fifteen. Whilst such youth was not unusual at the time, Grotius was widely acknowledged as an intellectual prodigy. Despite being admitted to practice law when sixteen he remained preoccupied with his interests in the humanities. In 1603 he was appointed, b,efore other eminent scholars, official Historiographer of Holland. Grotius turned his attention to legal issues when approached by the Dutch East India Company tb provide an 0pinion concerning whether the Company was entitled to retain valuable cargo which one of its ships had taken from the Portuguese. At the time the Netherlands were at war with Spain, and the Portuguese were effectively under Spanish control. An opinion, or defence of the Company's actions was important because there was concern among the shareholders that it was morally reprehensible for Christians to wage wart or benefit from war by the sale of seized cargo. Grotius' response was a potent vindication of the Company's position. One Chapter of this defence was pUblished in 1609 as Mare Liberum (Freedom ofthe Seas).l Despite widespread acclaim for his academic prowess, Grotius' political career was often imprudent. His involvement in the Dutch diplomatic mission to England to negotiate fishing rights in 1613 was unsuccessful. Indeed, many ,of the ideas and arguments presented in Mare Liberum were employed again,5t the Dutch. Ofgreater concern was Grotins' involvement in internal political unrest over the doctrine of predestination and the structure of the Dutch Republic. Grotius favoured the more liberal Arminians (Remonstrants) against the Gomarist (counter-Remonstrants) who were supported by Prince Maurice of Orange. Prince Maurice eventually triumphed and in May 1619 Grotius was sentenced to life imprisonment. With the assistance of his wife Grotius escaped in March 1621. He fled to France where he completed De Jure Belli ac Pads (On the Law of War and Peace) in 1625 under the modest patronage ofLouis XIII to the backdrop of the Thirty Years' War. For a decade after the publication Grotius lived in Gennany and furtively 180 Law/Text/Culture in Holland where he failed to achieve repatriation after Maurice's death. He was appointed Swedish Ambalisador to Paris in 1634. Despite Gratius' authority as a jurist and scholar combined with his personal favour with the French King be was unable to maintain and develop satisfactory relations between the Swedish and the French. The French diplomat Cardinal Richelieu called for his replacement on several occasions. In 1644 Grotius was recalled by the Swedish. On his return he was treated favourably by Queen Christina but given no new office. In 1645 he left Sweden on board a ship which encountered a violent storm off the Pomeranian coast. Exhausted and ill Grotius was transported by cart to Rostock where he died on 29 August 1645. THE WORLD OF GROTIUS Rabb contended that early modem Europe was characterised by instability. This instability extended to most fields of human endeavour (Rabb 1975, Easlea, 1980). By the tum of the seventeenth century the Aristotelian cOIpus and commentaries remained entrenched within tile majority of European universities, though the Stagirite lacked the philosophical domination he had once exerted (Schmitt 1973, 1975, 1985). The discovery by Europeans of a more extensive corpus of the works of classical antiquity especially fuose of Plato, Plotinus, and new script<; from Aristotle added to the discovery of the New World in eroding the predomination of any singu~~ theoretical framework. The standardisation introduced through print allowed more critical exegetical exploration and comparison by multitudes of experts with effectively the same text (Eisenstein 1979). The competition between the nascent states in Europe encouraged developments in weaponry, navigation and the natural sciences (Hessen 1931, Bemal1969). Mare Liberum provides insight into the fonn of academic and political debates in early modern Europe. Even a narrow view of sixteenth and seventeenth century literature, natural philosophy and legal writings evidences, like any culture(s), a discursive matrix which loosely imposes limits and tacit commitments available for deployment as a means of legitimising and deriving knowledge in given disputes (Gadamer 1989, Dear 1991). Within the lexicon of primitivism, it was possible to carry on elaborate discussions about doctrine, and indeed about the foundations of the moralllegal order whose existence seems to have been presumed (Kennedy 1985: 10). The emergence of a more internationally oriented Europe composed of warring nation-states and crumbling archaic empires, simultaneously though not coincidentally, with the development of radical new discoveries

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