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George Bancroft (1800–1891) was an influential statesman, historian and educator. He was one of the first Americans to attend the University of Göttingen as a young man in order to master multiple academic disciplines and educational techniques that the young United States needed. At Göttingen, Bancroft became fascinated by German constitutional theory and history, their connection to politics and human geography, and the forerunners of German legal science. After his return to the United States, Bancroft translated into English books by Arnold Heeren, his former professor. Bancroft also set up a school and adopted German teaching methods at Round Hill in Northampton, Massachusetts, employed German scholars, and intensely engaged Göttingen academics and other Americans who looked to Germany for pedagogic and constitutional inspiration. A close reading of Bancroft’s translations and correspondence suggests that this was not a one-way exchange. Bancroft was instrumental not only in importing German texts and practices into the United States, but also formulated American notions of progress, abolitionism and state-systems that in turn shaped the so-called Göttingen School.
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Abstract
Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) is frequently called the father of modern international law. In addition to the 1625 De iure belli ac pacis, regarded as the first secular and systematic international law compendium, his 1609 Mare liberum has been described as the founding statement of capitalism, liberalism, imperialism, and a few -isms besides. In 1635 John Selden (1584–1654) published Mare clausum, partly a response to Grotius, and a landmark text in its own right. In Mare clausum, first drafted in part in 1616, Selden argued that mathematics, astronomy, geophysics, and other sciences have made everything measurable, therefore nothing remains necessarily common property by its nature, and positive law potentially extends to the whole world, whether known or yet to be discovered. European empires need international law to regulate or at least frame disputes over resources which, pace Grotius, are neither unlimited nor infinitely renewable. Despite their ostensible diametric disagreement, Selden’s template for imperial exceptionalism, subsequently adopted by other powers, was based in part on Grotius’s free trade argument which, especially in its De iure belli ac pacis reiteration and contrary to prevailing interpretations, posited new individual and corporate rights that were subservient to a strong state sovereignty, which was entitled to use municipal law to abrogate divine, natural, and international law at will. Starting from a reinterpreted relationship between De iure praedae, Mare liberum, De iure belli ac pacis, and Mare liberum, this paper aims to position the Grotius-Selden controversy in the longue durée context of genealogies and entangled self-perceptions of liberalism and imperialism.
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This research note announces and briefly describes a new five-year project to prepare a census bibliography of the first ten editions of Grotus’s De iure belli ac pacis ( ibp ). The resulting book will be published in 2025, the 400th anniversary of ibp’s first appearance. The project is sponsored by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and hosted by the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg.
In:
Grotiana
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Abstract
This article shows that the conspicuous and consistent idiosyncrasy of Grotius's Biblical interpretation is an important part of his revolutionary effort to secularize natural law. In De iure praedae and related works, Grotius systematically deployed a range of exegetical techniques in order to demonstrate that the Bible, like all texts, is open to multiple interpretations and susceptible to hijacking by rival agendas. This strategy aimed to render the Bible inadmissible as evidence in legal disputes and political legitimacy claims. The consistent instrumentality of Grotius's use of the Bible in IPC cannot be dismissed as mere legalistic opportunism or described as an atheistic move. Rather, Grotius's exegetical strategy was motivated by pacifism and a desire to protect religion from politicization. The article positions this secularization strategy in the intellectual environment of the Leiden Circle, and shows how competing Catholic, Calvinist, and Mennonite political readings of the same key biblical passages during the Dutch-Iberian conflict provided the immediate occasion for writing IPC. In order to construct a natural law theory that was independent from, and therefore acceptable to, all religious sides, it was necessary to ensure that the Bible have no final word in law or politics, lest its invocation link disagreements to belief and thereby render them impossible to resolve.
In:
Grotiana
Author:
This book shows how a group of early-seventeenth-century writers excluded theologically grounded argument from a wide range of disciplines, from the natural sciences to international relations. Somos uses richly contextualised portraits of Scaliger, Heinsius, Cunaeus and Grotius to develop a new model of secularisation as a contingent, cumulative, and incomplete process, with some unintended consequences. Facing severe conflict, the Leiden Circle realised that rival claims that staked their truth-content and validity on religious belief were ultimately irreconcilable. Gradually they removed such claims from acceptable discourse, contributing to the comprehensive secularisation that defines modernity. If blindness to religious claims has become definitive of modern politics, Somos concludes, recollecting its historical complexity and contingency is essential for overcoming some of its failures.
Author:
This book shows how a group of early-seventeenth-century writers excluded theologically grounded argument from a wide range of disciplines, from the natural sciences to international relations. Somos uses richly contextualised portraits of Scaliger, Heinsius, Cunaeus and Grotius to develop a new model of secularisation as a contingent, cumulative, and incomplete process, with some unintended consequences. Facing severe conflict, the Leiden Circle realised that rival claims that staked their truth-content and validity on religious belief were ultimately irreconcilable. Gradually they removed such claims from acceptable discourse, contributing to the comprehensive secularisation that defines modernity. If blindness to religious claims has become definitive of modern politics, Somos concludes, recollecting its historical complexity and contingency is essential for overcoming some of its failures.