Hugo Grotius

Hugo Grotius was a Dutch jurist, humanist and theologian whose De jure belli ac pacis (1625) became a founding text of international law. Imprisoned after the Dutch religious and political conflicts of 1618, he escaped in 1621 and spent most of his later life in Paris, eventually as Swedish ambassador. He argued that the law governing war and peace rests on natural law knowable by reason, binding across confessional divides rather than depending on any single religious authority.

Key ideas

• Natural law derives from human nature and reason, and he famously held it would retain some force even if one granted, impiously, that God did not exist.
• War can be just only for a just cause, such as defence, recovery of property or punishment, and must be conducted within limits.
• Sovereign states form a society governed by law, not only by force.
• The open sea cannot be owned by any nation and is free for navigation and trade.

Major works

• Mare liberum (The Free Sea, 1609)
• De jure belli ac pacis (On the Law of War and Peace, 1625)
• De veritate religionis Christianae (On the Truth of the Christian Religion, 1627)

In the conversation

• Discussion Al-Shaybani’s siyar and the scholastics reached civilian immunity separately Khalid Mahmood Awan · 5 replies