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.

This book considers the background to the treatises, their content and significance, and what Grotius actually knew about Southeast Asian polities or Portuguese institutions of trade and diplomacy when he wrote them. --

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 author spent a great deal of time researching the life of Grotius leading up to this publication, which is one of only a few books written about Grotius in English.

Admiral Cornelis Matelieff de Jonge was a Director in the Rotterdam chamber of the Dutch East Indies Company (VOC) for three decades in the early 17th century. In May 1605 he set sail from the Dutch Republic with a fleet of 11 ships, and in the following year launched an unsuccessful attack on Portuguese Melaka. After visiting various locations in the region and signing landmark treaties with the rulers of Johor (1606) and Ternate (1607), he returned to the Netherlands in 1608. There he wrote a series of epistolary reports and memoranda that were carefully studied by leading policy makers in the Republic, among them the renowned jurist Hugo Grotius, and the politician and diplomat Johan van Oldenbarnevelt. Early VOC policy for south-eastern Asia drew heavily on Matelieff's submissions, and the materials reproduced in this volume provide candid insights into key elements of VOC strategy, trade, security and regional diplomacy, as well as Dutch relations with Spain and Portugal. Here translated into English for the first time, this collection of Matelieff's writings is an invaluable resource for students of business history, early colonial history, and the history of international law.

In 1604-1605 Hugo Grotius wrote De iure praedae, a commentary on the law of booty and prize and a first step towards the Law of War and Peace of twenty years later. Not published in his own times, rediscovered in 1864, and subsequently published, it has been over-interpreted and under-studied. The sixteen essays in this volume discuss De iure praedae, its intellectual sources, personal and political circumstances and over-all consequences, exploring how Grotius as a humanist, theologian, jurist and politician proceeded in this his first exercise in the theory of natural law and rights. The essays are written by an international and interdisciplinary team of specialists, based on papers delivered at a conference at NIAS in Wassenaar in 2005. Originally published as Volumes 26 (2005), 27 (2006) and 28 (2007) of Brill's journal Grotiana.