Abstract
The place of Vattel in both the narratives of international society and in the doctrinal histories of international law appears relatively clear and uncontested. For the theorists of international society, such as Martin Wight, Hedley Bull and John Vincent, Vattel stands full square in the pluralist camp. He upholds the idea that there can indeed exist an international society of states — ‘the great society established by nature between all nations’, as Vattel calls it. But it can only be a limited and pluralist society constructed around the goal of coexistence and embodying an ethic of difference. It is a society different in kind from that which exists within domestic society and is based on what Vattel calls the ‘natural liberty of states’ or what Andrew Linklater has labelled ‘state libertarianism’.1 It provides a structure of coexistence, built on the mutual recognition of states as independent and legally equal members of society, on the unavoidable reliance of self-preservation and self-help, and on freedom to promote their own ends subject to minimal constraints. Its dominant values are, to quote Vattel once more, ‘the maintenance of order and the preservation of liberty’. Similarly, for Terry Nardin the concept of a society of states that emerged for the first time in the eighteenth century can be understood in terms of a ‘practical’ and opposed to a ‘purposive association’ — ‘an association of independent and diverse political communities, each devoted to its own ends and its own conception of the good’.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Andrew Linklater, Men and Citizens in the Theory of International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1982), chapter 5 ‘Vattel’s Society of States’, p. 86.
Terry Nardin, Law, Morality, and the Relations between States (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), p. 9 and, for his discussion of Vattel and eighteenth-century international society, pp. 60–8.
See Bull, The Anarchical Society (London: Macmillan, 1977), p. 322.
David Kennedy, ‘Primitive Legal Scholarship’, Harvard International Law Journal, 27, 1 (Winter 1986).
Percy Corbett, Law and Society in the Relations of States (Yale: Yale University Press, 1951), p. 29.
J. L. Brierly, The Law of Nations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 6th edn, 1963), p. 40.
C. van Vollenhoven, The Three Stages in the Evolution of the Law of Nations (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1919), p. 31.
For a strong statement of the continued relevance of Vattel, see Peter F. Butler, ‘Legitimacy in a States-System: Vattel’s Law of Nations’, in Michael Donelan (ed.), Reason of States (London: Allen and Unwin, 1978).
Emerich de Vattel, The Law of Nations, trans. Joseph Chitty (London: Stevens and Sons, 1834), p. lvi. [All subsequent references are to this edition.]
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan ed. John Plamenatz (Glasgow: Collins/Fount, 1983), pp. 144–5.
Consequently the incentive which individuals have to leave the state of nature is lacking in the case of independent commonwealths.’ Richard H. Cox, Locke on War and Peace (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), p. 137.
For background on the development of ideas of natural law and natural rights, see Richard Tuck, Natural Law Theories. Their Origin and Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).
For a critical assessment of this strategy of reconciliation, see Martti Koskenniemi, From Apology to Utopia. The Structure of International Legal Argument (Helsinki: Finnish Lawyers’ Publishing Company, 1989), p. 94.
(See, for example, Murray Forsyth, ‘The Tradition of International Law’, in Terry Nardin and David R. Mapel (eds), Traditions of International Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 35.)
See, for example, D. H. L. von Ompteda, Literatur des gesammten sowohl natürlichen als positiven Völkerrechts (Regensburg, 1785).
For an opposing contemporary position, whose title was to resonate so strongly in the nineteenth-century peace movement, see J. G. Justi, Die Chimäre des Gleichgewichts von Europa (1758).
William Edward Hall, A Treatise on International Law, 8th edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), p. 81.
John Rawls, ‘The Law of Peoples’, in Stephen Shute and Susan Hurley (eds), On Human Rights (New York: Basic Books, 1993), p. 51.
Peter Remec, The Position of the Individual in International Law according to Grotius and Vattel (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960), pp. 231–2.
For a discussion see C. H. Alexandrowicz, An Introduction to the History of the Law of Nations in the East Indies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 151–3.
See Richard Tuck, ‘The “modern” theory of natural law’, in Anthony Pagden (ed.), The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
See, in particular, Paul W. Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics 1763–1848 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994).
See F. H. Hinsley: Power and the Pursuit of Peace. Theory and Practice in the History of Relations Between States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, paperback edn, 1980), chapter 8; and Nationalism and the International System, pp. 69–71.
See Martin Ceadel, The Origins of War Prevention: The British Peace Movement and International Relations, 1730–1854 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, forthcoming 1995).
These are reprinted in Patrick Riley (ed.), Leibniz. Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, paperback edn, 1992), pp. 176–84.
See Francis Stephen Ruddy, International Law in the Enlightenment. The Background to Emmerich de Vattel’s ‘Le Droit des Gens’ (New York: Oceana, 1975), chapter IV.
J. J. Rousseau, ‘Abstract of the Abbé de Saint-Pierre’s Project for Perpetual Peace’ (probably written between 1756 and 1758 and published in 1761), reprinted in Stanley Hoffmann and David P. Fidler (eds), Rousseau and International Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 54.
Details of translations, editions and citations of Vattel’s work are given in Arthur Nussbaum, A Concise History of the Law of Nations, revised edition (New York: Macmillan, 1962), pp. 161–4;
and A. de Lapradelle’s introduction to Le Droit des Gens (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution, 1916), pp. xxvii–xxxiii.
Gerhard van Glahn, Law Among Nations, 4th edn (New York: Macmillan, 1981), p. 50.
Robert Ward, An Enquiry into the Foundations and History of the Law of Nations in Europe (London: J. Butterworth, 1795), volume II, p. 626.
Adam Watson, The Evolution of International Society (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 212–13.
Hedley Bull, Justice in International Relations. The 1983–84 Hagey Lectures (Waterloo, Canada: University of Waterloo, 1984), p. 11.
Hersch Lauterpacht, The Function of Law in the International Community (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933), p. 7.
Esther Brimmer, ‘Emer de Vattel’s Le Droit des Gens’, Oxford, unpublished M. Phil. thesis, 1985, p. 65.
Marti Koskenniemi, ‘Theory: Implications for the Practioner’, in Philip Allott et al. Theory and International Law: An Introduction (London, 1991), p. 28.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1996 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hurrell, A. (1996). Vattel: Pluralism and Its Limits. In: Clark, I., Neumann, I.B. (eds) Classical Theories of International Relations. St Antony’s Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27509-0_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27509-0_11
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-74646-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-27509-0
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)