The Annals of the War in the Low Countries is one of Hugo Grotius' lesser-known works. Grotius expresses a contrarian view of the early revolt, which he presents not as a united battle for the true faith and the ancient liberties of the land but as a protracted and painful struggle, not only with the great power of Spain, but also with discord, selfishness and religious fanaticism among the Dutch. To convey this complex and controversial vision of the foundational years of the Dutch Republic, Grotius chose the worldview and the prose style of the Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus as his model. His commissioners, however – the States of Holland – did not publish the work when it was finished in 1612; it appeared in print posthumously in 1657. This is the first edition of Grotius' then-influential and well-known Annals of the Dutch Revolt since its initial publication. It presents a critical edition of the Latin text, a fresh modern English translation, and an introduction which covers all aspects of the work, from its conception to its modern reception, underlining the importance of reason of state for Grotius' thought in general.

The Working Papers of Hugo Grotius is the first full-length study of the handwritten documents initially used by the author of Mare Liberum (1609) and De Jure Belli ac Pacis (1625) in his day-to-day activities as a scholar, lawyer, and politician, but subsequently incorporated into his own or other archives. Martine van Ittersum reconstructs a process of transmission, dispersal, and loss that started during Grotius’ lifetime and ended with the papers’ auction in 1864. This is also a study of archival afterlives. Our understanding of Grotius’ life and work is shaped by the conscious decisions of previous generations to retain or discard documents, frequently for the sake of individual lives and careers, family honour and/or larger political and religious ends.

REPRINT OF THE RARE EVATS TRANSLATION The second English translation of Hugo Grotius' landmark work, De Jure Belli Ac Pacis (1625), translated by William Evats (c.1606/7-1677) and published in London in 1682. As William E. Butler points out in his introduction to this reprint: "The early English translations of the works of Hugo Grotius on the law of nations are not the product of legal scholars or legal scholarship. We are indebted primarily to theologians for their appearance, either because Grotius figured prominently in theological discourse at various periods after his death or because his legal writings were espoused by dons dedicated to the cause of peace who considered the Grotian contributions to the law of nations to be a constructive step in the direction of a more peaceful world community." --William E. Butler, X HUGO GROTIUS [1583-1645], a pre-eminent contributor to international legal doctrine, was an influential Dutch jurist, philosopher and theologian. His many important works include De Jure Belli ac Pacis [The Law of War and Peace] (1625), which is widely considered to be the first master treatise on international law, and Mare Liberum [The Freedom of the Seas] (1609), in which he argues against territorial sovereignty of the seas.