The Law of Nations (Natural Law Paper)

The great eighteenth-century theorist of international
law Emer de Vattel (1714–1767) was a key
figure in sustaining the practical and theoretical
influence of natural jurisprudence through the
Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. Coming toward
the end of the period when the discourse of natural
law was dominant in European political theory,
Vattel’s contribution is cited as a major source of
contemporary wisdom on questions of international
law in the American Revolution and even by opponents
of revolution, such as Cardinal Consalvi, at the
Congress of Vienna of 1815.

Vattel broadly accepted the early-modern natural
law theorists from Grotius onward but placed himself
in the tradition of Leibniz and Christian Wolff. This
becomes particularly clear in two valuable early essays
that have never before been translated and are
included in the present volume. On this philosophical
basis he established what the proper relationship
should be between natural law as it is applied to
individuals and natural law as it is applied to states.

The significance of The Law of Nations resides
in its distillation from natural law of an apt model for
international conduct of state affairs that carried
conviction in both the Old Regime and the new
political order of 1789–1815.

The Liberty Fund edition is based on the
anonymous English translation of 1797, which
includes Vattel’s notes for the second French edition
(posthumous, 1773).

Emer de Vattel (1714–1767)
was a Swiss philosopher and jurist in
the service of Saxony.

Béla Kapossy is Professeur Suppléant of History at the University of Lausanne.

Richard Whatmore is a Reader in Intellectual History at the University of Sussex.

Knud Haakonssen is Professor of Intellectual History at the University of Sussex, England.