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11 - Tradition and Revolution

Eighteenth-Century German and French Contexts and Vattel’s Law of Nations

from Part III - Receptions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2021

Peter Schröder
Affiliation:
University College London
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Summary

The present chapter focuses on the Law of Nations (1758) and its relation to the political tradition and to modern ideas of constitution and nation – taking Germany and France as objects of study. On the one hand, it takes up Vattel’s interpretation of the structure of the Holy Roman Empire and the threat posed by Frederick II to the society of nations; on the other, it focuses on elective affinities, examining the correspondence between certain of Vattel’s ideas and the new constitutional doctrines in revolutionary France. These are two strikingly different contexts. The first perhaps best represents the pinnacle of the early modern princely territorial state, albeit clothed in the ideas of the Enlightenment. By contrast, the second is nothing other than the dramatic destruction of the ancien régime – establishing a new constitution and idea of the nation.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

Further Reading

Hunter, I., ‘Vattel’s Law of Nations: Diplomatic casuistry for the protestant nation’, Grotiana 31 (2010), 108140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Onuf, N. G., ‘Civitas maxima: Wolff, Vattel and the fate of republicanism’, The American Journal of International Law 88.2 (1994), 208303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silvestrini, G., ‘Justice, war and inequality: The unjust aggressor and the enemy of the human race in Vattel’s theory of the law of nations’, Grotiana 31 (2010), 4468.Google Scholar
Zurbuchen, S., ‘Emer de Vattel on the society of nations and the political system of Europe’, in Kadelbach, S., Kleinlein, T. and Roth-Isigkeit, D. (eds.), System, Order, and International Law: The Early History of International Legal Thought from Machiavelli to Hegel (Oxford, 2017), 263282.Google Scholar

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