Perpetual Peace

A short essay, published in 1795 soon after Prussia made peace with revolutionary France, and written in the form of a draft peace treaty. The title comes from a Dutch innkeeper's sign that showed a graveyard. Six preliminary articles set out what states must stop doing: making treaties with secret reservations for future war, acquiring other states as property, keeping standing armies, running up debts for war, interfering by force in other states' constitutions, and using methods such as assassination that make later trust impossible. Three definitive articles then state the conditions of lasting peace: every state's constitution should be republican, so that citizens must consent to war; the law of nations should rest on a federation of free states; and cosmopolitan right should be limited to universal hospitality, the right of a visitor not to be treated as an enemy. A supplement argues that nature itself pushes humanity towards peace, and appendices insist that politics must give way to morality.

It is the founding text of liberal internationalism, and stands behind the League of Nations, the democratic peace thesis and modern ideas of cosmopolitan rights.