Book contents
- The Cambridge History of International Law
- The Cambridge History of International Law
- Frontispiece
- The Cambridge History of International Law
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Plates
- Contributors
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Part I International Law in Renaissance Europe (1492–1660)
- 1 The Law of Nations in Renaissance Europe
- 2 Territory and Jurisdiction in Renaissance Europe
- 3 Beyond the Free Sea
- 4 War and the Use of Force in Renaissance Europe
- 5 Warfare on Land in Renaissance Europe
- 6 The Law of Maritime Warfare during the Transition between Medieval and Early Modern Europe
- 7 Peacemaking in Renaissance Europe
- 8 Trade and Navigation in Renaissance Europe
- 9 Diplomacy in Renaissance Europe
- 10 Dispute Settlement in Renaissance Europe
- 11 The Ottoman Encounter and the Law of Nations in the Renaissance
- Part II International Law in Old Regime Europe (1660–1775)
- Index
- Plate Section (PDF Only)
- References
1 - The Law of Nations in Renaissance Europe
from Part I - International Law in Renaissance Europe (1492–1660)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 April 2025
General editor
Book contents
- The Cambridge History of International Law
- The Cambridge History of International Law
- Frontispiece
- The Cambridge History of International Law
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Plates
- Contributors
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Part I International Law in Renaissance Europe (1492–1660)
- 1 The Law of Nations in Renaissance Europe
- 2 Territory and Jurisdiction in Renaissance Europe
- 3 Beyond the Free Sea
- 4 War and the Use of Force in Renaissance Europe
- 5 Warfare on Land in Renaissance Europe
- 6 The Law of Maritime Warfare during the Transition between Medieval and Early Modern Europe
- 7 Peacemaking in Renaissance Europe
- 8 Trade and Navigation in Renaissance Europe
- 9 Diplomacy in Renaissance Europe
- 10 Dispute Settlement in Renaissance Europe
- 11 The Ottoman Encounter and the Law of Nations in the Renaissance
- Part II International Law in Old Regime Europe (1660–1775)
- Index
- Plate Section (PDF Only)
- References
Summary
The sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries marked a deep crisis of the international political and legal order of Europe, caused by the Reformation, the emergence of some strong composite monarchies and the discovery of the New World. The chapter maps how the law of nations began to emerge as a new paradigm for the governance of Europe under whose wings rulers, diplomats and scholars attempted to advance claims to an exclusive jurisdiction over international relations by sovereign princes and republics. As such, the ‘law of nations’ functioned as a lever, an argument for power in a period of great clashes between centralising governments, opposing confessions, and regional and local elites, rather than representing a reality. The ultimate success by governments in several important states at the end of the Renaissance was facilitated to a great extent by the patrimonial and transactional nature of the states that allowed to include old, autonomous powers in the machinery of state.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of International Law , pp. 3 - 57Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025
References
Further Reading
Bunge, Kirstin, Spindler, Anselm and Wagner, Andreas (eds.), Die Normativiät des Rechts bei Francisco de Vitoria/The Normativity of Law According to Francisco de Vitoria (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog 2011).Google Scholar
Fedele, Dante, Naissance de la diplomatie moderne (XIIIe–XVIIe siècles). L’ambassadeur au croisement du droit, de l’éthique et de la politique (Baden: Nomos 2017).Google Scholar
Fisch, Jörg, Die europäische Expansion und das Völkerrecht. Die Auseindandersetzungen um den Status der überseeischen Gebiete vom 15. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart (Stuttgart: Steiner 1984).Google Scholar
Fitzmaurice, Andrew, Sovereignty, Property and Empire 1500–2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2014).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gaurier, Dominique, Histoire du droit international. De l’Antiquité à la création de l’ONU (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes 2014).Google Scholar
Grewe, Wilhelm G., The Epochs of International Law (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter 2000).Google Scholar
Haggenmacher, Peter, Grotius et la doctrine de la guerre juste (Paris: Presses universitaires de France 1983).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kadelbach, Stefan, Kleinlein, Thomas and Roth-Isigkeit, David (eds.), System, Order, and International Law. The Early History of International Legal Thought from Machiavelli to Hegel (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2017).Google Scholar
Kingsbury, Benedict, and Straumann, Benjamin (eds.), The Roman Foundations of the Law of Nations. Alberico Gentili and the Justice of Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2010).Google Scholar
Koskenniemi, Martti, ‘Imagining the rule of law: rereading the Grotian tradition’, European Journal of International Law, 30 (2019) 17 –52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koskenniemi, Martti, To the Uttermost Parts of the Earth. Legal Imagination and International Power, 1300–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2021).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lazzarini, Isabella, Communication and Conflict. Italian Diplomacy in the Early Renaissance, 1350–1520 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2015).Google Scholar
Lesaffer, Randall, ‘Charles V, monarchia universalis and the law of nations (1515–1530)’, Legal History Review, 71 (2003) 79–124.Google Scholar
Lesaffer, Randall, ‘Roman law and the intellectual history of international law’ in Orford, Anne and Hoffmann, Florian (eds.), Oxford Handbook of the Theory of International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2016) 38–58.Google Scholar
Lesaffer, Randall, and Nijman, Janne E. (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Hugo Grotius (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2021).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karr, Longfield, Susan, , Jus gentium in Humanist Jurisprudence. On Justice and Right (Leiden and Boston: Brill 2022).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Muldoon, James, The Americas in the Spanish World Order. The Justification for Conquest in the Seventeenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 1994).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Muldoon, James, Empire and Order. The Concept of Empire, 800–1800 (Basingstoke and London: Macmillan 1999).Google Scholar
Neff, Stephen C., Justice among Nations. A History of International Law (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press 2014).Google Scholar
Pagden, Anthony, Lords of All the World. Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France c. 1500–c. 1800 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press 1995).Google Scholar
Pennington, Kenneth, The Prince and the Law 1200–1600. Sovereignty and Rights in the Western Legal Tradition (Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford: University of California Press 1993).Google Scholar
Phillips, Andrew, and Sharman, J. C., Outsourcing Empire. How Company-States Made the Modern World (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2020).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steiger, Heinhard, ‘From the international law of Christianity to the international law of the world citizen’, Journal of the History of International Law, 3 (2001) 180–94.Google Scholar
Straumann, Benjamin, Roman Law in the State of Nature. The Classical Foundations of Hugo Grotius’ Natural Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2015).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stumpf, Christoph A., The Grotian Theology of International Law. Hugo Grotius and the Moral Foundations of International Relations (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 2006).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tierney, Brian, Liberty and Law. The Idea of Permissive Natural Law, 1100–1800 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press 2014).Google Scholar
Tuck, Richard, The Rights of War and Peace. International Thought and the International Order from Grotius to Kant (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1999).Google Scholar
Vadi, Valentina, War and Peace. Alberico Gentili and the Early Modern Law of Nations (Leiden and Boston: Brill/Nijhoff 2020).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wijffels, Alain, ‘Early-modern scholarship in international law’ in Orakhelashvili, Alexander (ed.), Research Handbook of the Theory and History of International Law (2nd edn, Cheltenham and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar 2020).Google Scholar