Papers by Martine van Ittersum
History of European Ideas , 2021
Politics, religion and legal argumentation were inextricably intertwined in the reception of John... more Politics, religion and legal argumentation were inextricably intertwined in the reception of John Selden’s Mare Clausum/The Closed Sea (1635). The work’s writing and printing history is closely tied to Stuart foreign policy, particularly James I’s and Charles I’s attempts to tax the Dutch herring fisheries. Mare Clausum’s immediate impact on European international relations has received little attention from historians so far. It is clear, however, that government authorities in London, The Hague and Venice expected an official reply from Hugo Grotius, author of Mare Liberum/The Free Sea (1609) and Swedish ambassador in Paris. Yet the latter declined to assist the Dutch authorities in this matter, blaming them for his imprisonment in 1618–1621 and his second banishment from Holland in 1632. The antipathy was mutual. The Dutch authorities abhorred Grotius’ pleas for religious tolerance and commissioned his Calvinist kinsman Dirk Graswinckel to respond to Selden instead. Graswinckel had already published Libertas Veneta/Venetian Liberty (1634), a learned defense of the Republic of Venice’s political interests. In ‘Vindiciae maris liberi’/Vindication of the Free Sea (written 1636–1637), he tried –but arguably failed – to reconcile Dutch claims to freedom of navigation, trade and fishing with Venetian claims to the Adriatic. It never appeared in print.
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War, Trade and the State: Anglo-Dutch Conflict, 1652-1689, 2020
Martine Julia van Ittersum, ‘Arguing over Empire: International Law and Anglo-Dutch Rivalry in th... more Martine Julia van Ittersum, ‘Arguing over Empire: International Law and Anglo-Dutch Rivalry in the Banda Islands, 1616-1667’, in: War, Trade and the State: Anglo-Dutch Conflict, 1652-1689, ed. David Ormrod and Gijs Rommelse (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2020) pp. 248-269.
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The Dutch and English East India Companies: Diplomacy, Trade and Violence in Early Modern Asia , 2018
Martine van Ittersum, 'Empire by Treaty? The role of written documents in European overseas expan... more Martine van Ittersum, 'Empire by Treaty? The role of written documents in European overseas expansion, 1500-1800' in: The Dutch and English East India Companies: Diplomacy, Trade and Violence in Early Modern Asia ed. Adam Clulow and Tristan Mostert (Amsterdam University Press, 2018) pp. 153-178
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Martine van Ittersum, 'Global constitutionalism in the early modern period: the role of empires, treaties and natural law’ in: Handbook on Global Constitutionalism, ed. Anthony F. Lang and Antje Wiener (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017) pp. 47-59., 2017
This chapter critiques the fetishism of treaties in modern international law. It explores the rel... more This chapter critiques the fetishism of treaties in modern international law. It explores the relationship between European expansion overseas, treaty making and natural law in the early modern period, focusing in particular on the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius (1583–1645). A steadfast supporter of the Dutch East India Company, he defended the ‘unequal treaties’ which the company concluded with Asian rulers in De Jure Belli ac Pacis/On the Law of War and Peace (1625). The history of treaty making is closely connected with that of Western imperialism and colonialism. It is no panacea for the protection of indigenous rights in the modern world.
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Martine J. van Ittersum, 'Hugo Grotius: The Making of a Founding Father of International Law’, in... more Martine J. van Ittersum, 'Hugo Grotius: The Making of a Founding Father of International Law’, in: The Oxford Handbook of the Theory of International Law, edited by Anne Orford and Florian Hoffmann (OUP, June 2016), ch. 4
ISBN: 9780198701958
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‘Confiscated Manuscripts And Books: What Happened to the Personal Library and Archive of Hugo Gro... more ‘Confiscated Manuscripts And Books: What Happened to the Personal Library and Archive of Hugo Grotius Following His Arrest on Charges of High Treason in August 1618?’ in: Lost Books: Reconstructing the Print World of Pre-Industrial Europe ed. Flavia Bruni and Andrew Pettegree (Brill Academic Publishers, 2016)
Mindful of his own mortality, Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) wrote to his younger brother in March 1643 that he was preparing a set of manuscripts – “for the writing of which God created me in the first place” – for publication by his heirs. Sixty years old at the time, the Dutch jurist and polymath already had a distinguished publishing record. His intellectual and literary interests ran the gamut from poetry and philology to law, politics, history and theology. The authoritative bibliography of his printed works, compiled by Jacob ter Meulen and P.J.J. Diermanse during the Second World War, lists over 1,330 different editions including reprints in later centuries. The corpus of Grotius’ writings has expanded even further in recent times. Early treatises like De Republica Emendanda (1600), Miletius (1611), and Tractatus de iure magistratuum circa sacra (1614), known to a small circle of Grotius’ relatives and friends during his own lifetime, were rediscovered and printed in the late twentieth century. The modern edition of Grotius’ correspondence, the Briefwisseling (1928-2001), includes many new finds as well. Indeed, ‘lost’ letters of Grotius continue to be discovered until this day. Approximately 10,000 folios of Grotius’ working papers are extant in public collections in, primarily, The Netherlands, Sweden and France.
Less attention has been paid, however, to the destruction or disappearance of materials once part of Grotius’ personal library and archive. It is not a positive or uplifting story, of course. Nor are there reliable quantitative estimates of the losses involved. For that would assume that we have a detailed knowledge of the contents of Grotius’ personal library and archive at the time of his death or even before then, which we do not. This essay analyzes the ‘loss’ of printed and manuscript materials during Grotius’ own lifetime, particularly the confiscation proceedings initiated by the States General (i.e. the federal government of the Dutch Republic) in May 1619, following Grotius’ conviction for high treason.
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This article examines Anglo–Dutch rivalry in the Banda Islands in the period from 1609 to 1621, w... more This article examines Anglo–Dutch rivalry in the Banda Islands in the period from 1609 to 1621, with a particular focus on the process of claiming initiated by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and English East India Company (EIC). Historians have paid little attention to the precise legal justifications employed by these organisations, and how they affected the outcome of events. For both companies, treaties with Asian rulers and peoples were essential in staking out claims to trade and territory. Because so many different parties were involved, individual documents had to serve multiple purposes, both on the ground in the East Indies and at the negotiating tables back in Europe. Whenever a VOC or EIC official presented a treaty to a Bandanese leader, he had to recognise local power structures in the Spice Islands, but also needed to consider his European competitors in the area, his superiors in Batavia or Bantam, and the company directors back in Amsterdam or London. Consequently, the safest and most reliable course of action was to make as many arguments as possible, piling them on top of one another. The result was an inherently messy process of claiming, yet one that was also clearly intelligible to most parties involved, including Asian rulers and peoples. A constantly changing legal suite extended to freedom of trade and navigation, contracts and alliances with native peoples, just war, conquest, actual possession, and the (perceived) surrender of native sovereignty to European authorities.
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'The Working Methods of Hugo Grotius: Which Sources Did He Use and How Did He Use Them in His Ear... more 'The Working Methods of Hugo Grotius: Which Sources Did He Use and How Did He Use Them in His Early Writings on Natural Law Theory?' in: Reassessing Legal Humanism and its Claims: Petere Fontes? Ed. Paul J. du Plessis and John W. Cairns, Edinburgh Studies in Law vol. 15 (Edinburgh University Press, 2016) pp. 154-193
The circulation of knowledge in the early modern world has received much attention in recent years. It is a topic of much innovative research and vibrant discussion in a wide range of disciplines, ranging from book history and the history of science to the history of empire, global history and cultural history. Thanks to large online databases, such as Early Modern Letters On-Line (Oxford), Circulation of Knowledge (Huygens ING in The Hague) and Mapping the Republic of Letters (Stanford), we can now do network analysis of the Republic of Letters on a grand scale. Ann Blair and Tony Grafton have shown that the working methods of early modern scholars, particularly their strategies for dealing with ‘information overload’, were an essential ingredient in the construction of knowledge in early modern Europe. Arguably, this has important implications for the study of legal history, including ‘legal humanism’.
This chapter examines the working methods of the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), particularly his use and referencing of sources. I first summarize the research already done by Peter Borschberg, Benjamin Straumann, Jan Waszink, and myself. I then address the question where we go next. Will a better understanding of Grotius’ working methods afford us new insights into his intellectual development, for example? Or should we sidestep the traditional ‘history of ideas’ model entirely? What are we trying to discover when we identify sources used or referenced in De Jure Belli ac Pacis, for example? Are we looking –somewhere, anywhere-- for the rise of ‘modern’ international law? Is our aim to establish how ‘the great minds’ influenced each other and, while doing so, ushered in ‘the modern world’? History of ideas as a conversation among dead white males, working towards ‘modernity’: are these valid assumptions on our part? The Cambridge School of Political Thought has already sought to move away from this narrow-minded and rather unhistorical framework, mainly by recasting the history of ideas as the history of political discourses and languages. I argue that the new emphasis on working methods and circulation of knowledge will allow us to move further down this path, and ask new, exciting and far more historically grounded questions about Grotius’ life and legacy.
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English Historical Review, 2012
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Papers by Martine van Ittersum
ISBN: 9780198701958
Mindful of his own mortality, Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) wrote to his younger brother in March 1643 that he was preparing a set of manuscripts – “for the writing of which God created me in the first place” – for publication by his heirs. Sixty years old at the time, the Dutch jurist and polymath already had a distinguished publishing record. His intellectual and literary interests ran the gamut from poetry and philology to law, politics, history and theology. The authoritative bibliography of his printed works, compiled by Jacob ter Meulen and P.J.J. Diermanse during the Second World War, lists over 1,330 different editions including reprints in later centuries. The corpus of Grotius’ writings has expanded even further in recent times. Early treatises like De Republica Emendanda (1600), Miletius (1611), and Tractatus de iure magistratuum circa sacra (1614), known to a small circle of Grotius’ relatives and friends during his own lifetime, were rediscovered and printed in the late twentieth century. The modern edition of Grotius’ correspondence, the Briefwisseling (1928-2001), includes many new finds as well. Indeed, ‘lost’ letters of Grotius continue to be discovered until this day. Approximately 10,000 folios of Grotius’ working papers are extant in public collections in, primarily, The Netherlands, Sweden and France.
Less attention has been paid, however, to the destruction or disappearance of materials once part of Grotius’ personal library and archive. It is not a positive or uplifting story, of course. Nor are there reliable quantitative estimates of the losses involved. For that would assume that we have a detailed knowledge of the contents of Grotius’ personal library and archive at the time of his death or even before then, which we do not. This essay analyzes the ‘loss’ of printed and manuscript materials during Grotius’ own lifetime, particularly the confiscation proceedings initiated by the States General (i.e. the federal government of the Dutch Republic) in May 1619, following Grotius’ conviction for high treason.
The circulation of knowledge in the early modern world has received much attention in recent years. It is a topic of much innovative research and vibrant discussion in a wide range of disciplines, ranging from book history and the history of science to the history of empire, global history and cultural history. Thanks to large online databases, such as Early Modern Letters On-Line (Oxford), Circulation of Knowledge (Huygens ING in The Hague) and Mapping the Republic of Letters (Stanford), we can now do network analysis of the Republic of Letters on a grand scale. Ann Blair and Tony Grafton have shown that the working methods of early modern scholars, particularly their strategies for dealing with ‘information overload’, were an essential ingredient in the construction of knowledge in early modern Europe. Arguably, this has important implications for the study of legal history, including ‘legal humanism’.
This chapter examines the working methods of the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), particularly his use and referencing of sources. I first summarize the research already done by Peter Borschberg, Benjamin Straumann, Jan Waszink, and myself. I then address the question where we go next. Will a better understanding of Grotius’ working methods afford us new insights into his intellectual development, for example? Or should we sidestep the traditional ‘history of ideas’ model entirely? What are we trying to discover when we identify sources used or referenced in De Jure Belli ac Pacis, for example? Are we looking –somewhere, anywhere-- for the rise of ‘modern’ international law? Is our aim to establish how ‘the great minds’ influenced each other and, while doing so, ushered in ‘the modern world’? History of ideas as a conversation among dead white males, working towards ‘modernity’: are these valid assumptions on our part? The Cambridge School of Political Thought has already sought to move away from this narrow-minded and rather unhistorical framework, mainly by recasting the history of ideas as the history of political discourses and languages. I argue that the new emphasis on working methods and circulation of knowledge will allow us to move further down this path, and ask new, exciting and far more historically grounded questions about Grotius’ life and legacy.
ISBN: 9780198701958
Mindful of his own mortality, Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) wrote to his younger brother in March 1643 that he was preparing a set of manuscripts – “for the writing of which God created me in the first place” – for publication by his heirs. Sixty years old at the time, the Dutch jurist and polymath already had a distinguished publishing record. His intellectual and literary interests ran the gamut from poetry and philology to law, politics, history and theology. The authoritative bibliography of his printed works, compiled by Jacob ter Meulen and P.J.J. Diermanse during the Second World War, lists over 1,330 different editions including reprints in later centuries. The corpus of Grotius’ writings has expanded even further in recent times. Early treatises like De Republica Emendanda (1600), Miletius (1611), and Tractatus de iure magistratuum circa sacra (1614), known to a small circle of Grotius’ relatives and friends during his own lifetime, were rediscovered and printed in the late twentieth century. The modern edition of Grotius’ correspondence, the Briefwisseling (1928-2001), includes many new finds as well. Indeed, ‘lost’ letters of Grotius continue to be discovered until this day. Approximately 10,000 folios of Grotius’ working papers are extant in public collections in, primarily, The Netherlands, Sweden and France.
Less attention has been paid, however, to the destruction or disappearance of materials once part of Grotius’ personal library and archive. It is not a positive or uplifting story, of course. Nor are there reliable quantitative estimates of the losses involved. For that would assume that we have a detailed knowledge of the contents of Grotius’ personal library and archive at the time of his death or even before then, which we do not. This essay analyzes the ‘loss’ of printed and manuscript materials during Grotius’ own lifetime, particularly the confiscation proceedings initiated by the States General (i.e. the federal government of the Dutch Republic) in May 1619, following Grotius’ conviction for high treason.
The circulation of knowledge in the early modern world has received much attention in recent years. It is a topic of much innovative research and vibrant discussion in a wide range of disciplines, ranging from book history and the history of science to the history of empire, global history and cultural history. Thanks to large online databases, such as Early Modern Letters On-Line (Oxford), Circulation of Knowledge (Huygens ING in The Hague) and Mapping the Republic of Letters (Stanford), we can now do network analysis of the Republic of Letters on a grand scale. Ann Blair and Tony Grafton have shown that the working methods of early modern scholars, particularly their strategies for dealing with ‘information overload’, were an essential ingredient in the construction of knowledge in early modern Europe. Arguably, this has important implications for the study of legal history, including ‘legal humanism’.
This chapter examines the working methods of the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), particularly his use and referencing of sources. I first summarize the research already done by Peter Borschberg, Benjamin Straumann, Jan Waszink, and myself. I then address the question where we go next. Will a better understanding of Grotius’ working methods afford us new insights into his intellectual development, for example? Or should we sidestep the traditional ‘history of ideas’ model entirely? What are we trying to discover when we identify sources used or referenced in De Jure Belli ac Pacis, for example? Are we looking –somewhere, anywhere-- for the rise of ‘modern’ international law? Is our aim to establish how ‘the great minds’ influenced each other and, while doing so, ushered in ‘the modern world’? History of ideas as a conversation among dead white males, working towards ‘modernity’: are these valid assumptions on our part? The Cambridge School of Political Thought has already sought to move away from this narrow-minded and rather unhistorical framework, mainly by recasting the history of ideas as the history of political discourses and languages. I argue that the new emphasis on working methods and circulation of knowledge will allow us to move further down this path, and ask new, exciting and far more historically grounded questions about Grotius’ life and legacy.
https://doi.org/10.1086/697814
field required adjustments of “normal” historiographical methodologies
and epistemologies. The workshop participants agreed that global history focuses in particular on connections across large spaces or long timespans, or both. Yet reconstructing these webs of connections should not obscure global inequalities. In the case of empires, many of the exchanges across space and time have been ordered in a hierarchical fashion—metropoles profiting from peripheral spaces, for example
—and imposed by certain groups of people on others, resulting in, for example, the enslavement or extermination of indigenous peoples. As historians, we should also ask ourselves what we do about peoples or areas that were or remain unconnected, local, and remote. Where does globalization end?