“A Poor Imitation of Grotius and Pufendorf?” Biographical Uncertainties and the Laborious Genesis of Vattel’s Droit des gens

Ieva, Frédéric

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-23838-4_3

“A Poor Imitation of Grotius and Pufendorf?” Biographical Uncertainties and the Laborious Genesis of Vattel’s Droit des gens

Frédéric Ieva³

Chapter
First Online: 14 August 2019

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Abstract

This chapter consists of two parts. The first part analyses the biographical entries on Emer de Vattel in publications published in the second half of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century and traces the positive and negative judgements of Vattel’s work.

The second part of the chapter delves into the correspondence between Vattel and Jean Formey, in which the long and complex gestation of Vattel’s main work, the Droit des gens (1758), is recorded. Born from an original attempt to render more clearly and accessible Christian Wolff’s complex theory and to diffuse his ideas in France, the Droit des gens evolved into an entirely new and independent work from the Latin treatise by Wolff and found its way into the channels of European and American diplomacy and politics where it became a classic.

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Notes

1.
Among the many who have produced interesting reflections on the École Romande du droit naturel see at least Alfred Dufour, “Die Ecole romande du droit naturel – ihre deutschen Wurzeln”, Humanismus und Naturrecht in Brandenburg-Preußen, ed. Hans Thieme (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1979), 133–143; Elisabetta Fiocchi Malaspina, L’eterno ritorno del Droit des gens Emer de Vattel (sec. XVIII–XIX). L’impatto sulla cultura giuridica in prospettiva globale (Frankfurt: Max Planck Institute, 2017), 30 ff.
2.
On Fortunato de Felice I refer the reader to the research conducted by Stefano Ferrari, including “L’epistolario di Fortunato Bartolomeo De Felice e il transfert culturale italo-elvetico”, Le carte vive. Epistolari e carteggi nel Settecento, ed. Corrado Viola (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2011), 399–410; “À la recherche d’une place dans la République des Lettres: la correspondance de F.-B. De Felice avec quelques savants italiens”, Recherches sur Diderot et l’Encyclopédie 49 (2014), 89–105; Fortunato Bartolomeo De Felice (1723–1789): un intellettuale cosmopolita nell’Europa dei Lumi, ed. Stefano Ferrari (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2016); and “Il ‘Tartuffe’ e il ‘coquin’: i difficili rapporti intellettuali tra Elie Bertrand e Fortunato Bartolomeo De Felice”, Rivista Storica Italiana 129 (2017), 47–72.
3.
Robert Darnton, Il grande affare dei Lumi. Storia editoriale dell’Encyclopédie 1775–1800 (1979) (Italian translation, Milan: Sylvestre Bonnard, 1998), 39.
4.
Fiocchi Malaspina, L’eterno ritorno del Droit des gens, 34.
5.
La Gazette littéraire de Berlin, 1 February 1768, 35. On this periodical François Labbé, La Gazette littéraire de Berlin (1764–1792) (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2004), who underlined, on p. 104, that Vattel’s theses “étaient très en faveur à Berlin et à Potsdam”. But also in Italy Vattel’s work received acclaim, Romualdo de Sterlich, Lettere a G. Lami (1750–1768), ed. Umberto Russo and Luigi Cepparrone (Naples: Jovene, 1994), 541: “Ho dato una scorsa al sistema di Vattel sul Diritto delle Genti, e mi pare un libro buono perché a portata anche degl’ingegni mediocri”, even if immediately afterwards he said that he preferred Burlamaqui. On Sterlich’s papers, see Luigi Cepparrone, L’illuminismo europeo nell’epistolario di Romualdo De Sterlich (Bergamo: Bergamo University Press-Sestante, 2008).
6.
Journal Encyclopédique , Bouillon, de l’imprimerie du Journal, t. II, deuxième partie, 1 March 1768, 149.
7.
[Frédéric Ostervald], “Abrégé de la vie de M. de Vattel”, ed. E. de Vattel, Le droit des gens (Neuchâtel: De l’imprimerie de la Société Typographique, 1777), XX. In reality the Abrége can be found between pp. 298–299, at the end of Chapter XVIII of the second book. In the 1773 edition the “Abrégé” can be found in the Roman pages of the second volume (I–VI). For a brief biographical outline of Ostervald, see Emer de Vattel-Jean Henri Samuel Formey, Correspondance autour des Droit des gens, ed. André Bandelier (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2012), 228.
8.
On Denina I permit myself to refer the reader to Frédéric Ieva, “Carlo Denina”, Il contributo italiano alla storia del pensiero, Appendix 8 of the Enciclopedia Italiana (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 2013), 313–317; see also Un piemontese in Europa. Carlo Denina (1731–1813), ed. Giuseppe Ricuperati and Elena Borgi (Bologna: il Mulino, 2015).
9.
Carlo Denina, La Prusse littéraire sous Frédéric II: ou Histoire abrégée de la plupart des auteurs, des académiciens, et des artistes qui sont nés ou qui sont vécu dans les états prussiens depuis 1740 jusqu’à 1786 (Berlin: Hartmann, 1790–1791), 3 vols. The anastatic edition produced in 1968 by Slatkine reprints of Geneva has been consulted.
10.
Denina, La Prusse littéraire sous Frédéric II, vol. III, 464.
11.
Emer de Vattel, Defense du système leibnitien contre les objections et les imputations de Mr de Crousaz (Leiden: Jean Luzac, 1741).
12.
For some biographical information on Count Brühl, see Vattel-Formey, Correspondance autour des Droit des gens, 16.
13.
L’equilibrio di potenza nell’età moderna. Dal Cinquecento al Congresso di Vienna, ed. Maurizio Bazzoli (Milan: Unicopli, 1998), 108. Other references to Vattel can be found in Maurizio Bazzoli, Il pensiero politico dell’assolutismo illuminato (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1986), 134–135. Some general observations on the ideas of Vattel can be read in Jonathan Wright, The Ambassadors: From Ancient Greece to the Nation State (London: Harper, 2006), 275–289; Dario Lazzarich, Stato moderno e diritto delle genti. Vattel tra politica e guerra (Benevento: Edizioni Labrys, 2012). On more specific aspects of Vattel’s doctrine see Reinhart Koselleck, Critica illuminista e crisi della società birghese (1959) (Italian translation, Bologna, il Mulino, 1994), 42–46; Dominic-M. Pedrazzini, “Les capitulations militaires dans les traités des anciens états confédérés au regard des théories d’Emer de Vattel (XVI^eme–XVIII^eme siècles)”, Forces armées et systèmes d’alliances, Colloque international d’histoire militaire et d’études de défense nationale, Montpellier 2–6 septembre 1981 (Paris: Les cahiers de la Fondation pour les études de défense nationale, 1983), 129–136; and Michel Senellart, “La qualification de l’ennemi chez Emer de Vattel”, Astérion 2 (2004), 31–51, which was consulted online from 4 April 2005. http://asterion.revues.org/82. Finally, see the observations of Marc Belissa who reflected on the “immage policée […] des pratiques de la guerre du milieu du XVIII^e siècle” constructed by Vattel, Marc Belissa, “Les civils dans le droit des gens et le droit de la guerre de Grotius à Rousseau”, Expériences de la guerre et pratiques de la paix. De l’Antiquité au XX^e siècle, Études réunies en l’honneur du professeur Jean-Pierre Bois, ed. Guy Saupin and Éric Schnakenbourg (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2013), 344–346.
14.
Denina, La Prusse littéraire sous Frédéric II, vol. III, 464.
15.
Ibid.
16.
Ibid.
17.
[Benjamin Guérard], Vattel (Emmerich de), in Biographie universelle ancienne et moderne, vol. XLVII, Ts-Vat (Paris: Michaud, 1827). This was the edition begun in 1811 and completed in 1828, in a total of 52 volumes. On Benjamin Guérard, see N. De Wailly, “Notice sur Guérard”, Notice sur Daunou, ed. Benjamin Guérard (Paris: Dumoulin, 1855), 191–253. On the Marquis de Fortia-d’Urban, see Frédéric Reiffenberg, Notice sur le marquis de Fortia-Urbain (Brussels: Hayez, 1844).
18.
Edouard Béguelin, “En souvenir de Vattel (1714–1767)”, Recueil de travaux offert par la Faculté de Droit de l’Université de Neuchâtel à la Société Suisse de Juristes, à l’occasion de sa réunion à Neuchâtel, 15–17 Septembre 1929 (Neuchâtel: Université de Neuchâtel, 1929), 33–176, but the extract that has been consulted has a different pagination, p. 35, note 2, in which Béguelin wrote the wrong spelling, Emeric. Even the spelling of the surname oscillated between Vatel, Vattel and Wattel; the website https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/gnd118767399.html#adbcontent in which the entries of the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, published between 1875 and 1912 have been digitised, in the entry “Vattel” points out the variations of the spelling of the name and surname of the Swiss jurist. See also Charles Adolphe, “Vattel, Emerich von”, Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie 39 (1895), 511–512. Finally, even the date of his death changes: here, it is recorded as 20 December 1767, while Béguelin, on p. 33, asserts that Vattel died on 28 December 1767.
19.
Vattel was born in Couvet, but here, instead it is stated that he was born in Couret, also in the principality of Neuchâtel, but of course, it could also be a simple misprint.
20.
[Guérard], Vattel (Emmerich de), 582.
21.
Ibid.
22.
Ibid.
23.
Ibid.
24.
Ibid.
25.
[Guérard], Vattel (Emmerich de), 583.
26.
Ibid.
27.
For some biographical information on Quérard, see Olphar Hamst, A Martyr to Bibliography: A Notice of the Life and Works of Joseph-Marie Quérard, Bibliographer (London: John Russell Smih, 1867); Alfredo Serrai, “Joseph-Marie Quérard”, Il bibliotecario 2 (1997), 17–82.
28.
Joseph-Marie Quérard, La France littéraire (Paris: Firmin Didot frères, 1839), t. X, 67.
29.
A brief survey of the different editions of the Droit des gens can be seen in Lazzarich, Stato moderno e diritto delle genti, 31, who lists twenty French editions of the Droit des gens published between 1768 and 1863, ten English editions in the period between 1759 and 1834, eighteen in the United States from 1796 to 1872, six in Spain between 1820 and 1836, a German edition from 1760; for a partial correction of the information provided by Lazzarich, see Fiocchi Malaspina, L’eterno ritorno del Droit des gens, 261–272.
30.
See Antonio Trampus, “Il ruolo del traduttore nel tardo Illuminismo: Ludovico Antonio Loschi e la traduzione italiana del Droit des gens”, Il linguaggio del tardo Illuminismo, ed. Antonio Trampus (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Lettertura, 2009), 81–108 and from the same author, see also “La genesi e la circolazione della Scienza della Legislazione. Saggio bibliografico”, Rivista Storica Italiana 117 (2005), 309–357; “La traduzione toscana del Droit des gens di Emer de Vattel (circa 1780): contesti politici, transferts culturali e scelte traduttive”, Traduzione e Transferts nel XVIII secolo tra Francia, Italia e Germania, ed. Giulia Cantarutti and Stefano Ferrari (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2013), 153–174; and “Tra Corsica e Toscana: Emer de Vattel e i percorsi del costituzionalismo settecentesco”, Etudes Corses 78 (2014), 61–80.
31.
Emer de Vattel, Il diritto delle genti, ovvero Principii della legge naturale, applicati alla condotta e agli affari delle nazioni e de’ sovrani. Opera scritta nell’idioma francese dal sig. di Vattel e recata nell’italiano da Lodovico Antonio Loschi (Bologna, tip. de’ fratelli Masi, 1804–1805), 3 vols.
32.
Terenzio Sacchi, Diritto delle genti di E. Vattel applicato allo stato attuale delle nazioni (Naples: Stabilimento tipografico di P. Androsio, 1854), 18. This edition is also cited by Francesco Mancuso, Diritto, Stato, sovranità. Il pensiero politico-giuridico di Emer de Vattel tra assolutismo e rivoluzione (Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 2002), 223n. For the general circulation of Vattel in Italy, see Antonio Trampus, “The Circulation of Vattel’s Droit des gens in Italy: The Doctrinal and Practical Model of Government”, War, Trade and Neutrality: Europe and the Mediterranean in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, ed. Antonella Alimento (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2011), 217–232.
33.
For example, from a rapid survey of the principal libraries of Turin it has emerged that in the Piedmontese capital there were eleven editions of the Droit des gens. The first edition (1758) is in the collection both of the library of the Academy of Sciences and the Norberto Bobbio library. The first of these, furthermore, owns two other 1777 editions and the United States edition of 1916. The National University library has two 1777 editions, one from 1778 and 1802. The Royal Library of Turin preserves the 1773 and 1802 editions. The libraries of the Academy of Agriculture and of the Risorgimento Museum instead have the 1774 edition. If the research is extended to the Piedmont region, one must point out at least the library of the Bishopric Seminary of Asti, which has a copy of the first edition and the Civic Library of Fossano that has the 1777 and 1802 editions. However, the three Italian editions of the Droit des gens do not appear to be preserved in any Turinese libraries.
34.
Gian Domenico Romagnosi, Assunto primo della scienza del diritto naturale, Fourth edition with new illustrative documents administered by the author (Prato: Tipografia Guasti, 1836), 20, both citations.
35.
Giovanni Carmignani, Scritti inediti (Lucca: Tipografia di Giuseppe Giusti, 1851), vol. III, 102 ff. For some biographical information on Carmignani, see Giovanna Canuti, Giovanni Carmignani e i suoi scritti di filosofia del diritto (Grottaferrata: Tipografia Italo-Orientale, 1924).
36.
Johann Gottlieb Buhle, Histoire de la philosophie moderne depuis la renaissance des lettres jusqu’à Kant (1806) (Paris: Fournier, 1816), vol. VI, 217. The objection to Vattel is the usual one: he did not put forward new ideas, but only provided a clearer and more intelligible approach to the ideas of Wolff.
37.
Carmignani, Scritti inediti, vol. III, 103.
38.
Carmignani, Scritti inediti, vol. III, 104.
39.
Carmignani, Scritti inediti, vol. III, 106.
40.
Carmignani, Scritti inediti, vol. III, 108.
41.
The first volume, also published in 1863, was edited by the Swiss expert in public law Frédéric Alexandre Marie Jeanneret.
42.
See James Bonhôte, Biographie neuchateloise (Locle: chez Eugéne Courvoisier, 1863), t. II; the biography of the father, David Vattel, is on 409–410, that of his son, Charles Adolphe, is on 415–416. The profile of Emer de Vattel occupies 410–415.
43.
Bonhôte, Biographie neuchâteloise, t. II, 411.
44.
[François Xaver de] Feller, Charles Weiss, [Claude Ignace] Busson, Biographie universelle ou dictionnaire historique (Paris: Gaumes frères, 1850), t. VIII, 277, the two citations.
45.
Bonhôte, Biographie neuchâteloise, t. II, 412.
46.
Ibid., 413. Bonhôte ends the entry dedicated to Emer with a biography in which he points to the French, German, Spanish editions and an Italian one (the second edition of 1804–1805 is cited).
47.
[Georges] Avenel, “Vattel”, Biographie générale depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’à nos jours (Paris: Firmin Didot frères, t. XLV, 1866), 998–999. This encyclopaedic work in 46 volumes was published between 1853 and 1866, under the direction of Jean-Chretien Ferdinand Hoefer. The extensor Georges Avenel (1828–1876) was a scholar of the French Revolution and the author of a biography of Anacharsis Cloots, Anacharsis Cloots: l’orateur du genre humain (Paris: Librairie Internationale, 1865), vol. I, 17, 2 vols., in which the author refers to an episode in which, among other things, Cloots was studying the natural law of Vattel.
48.
The correct dates were 25 April 1714–1728 December 1767.
49.
Avenel, “Vattel”, Biographie générale, t. XLV, 999.
50.
Ibid.
51.
Even the anonymous writer of the entry “Vattel, Emmerich”, The Penny Cyclopedia of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, vol. XXVI, Ungulata-Wales (London: Charles Knight and Co., 1843), 154, while recognising the celebrity enjoyed by Vattel, did not refrain from making some critical observations of his best-known work: “the work has all that speciousness and superficiality which characterise the moralists of the ‘Encyclopedic’”. Vincent Chetail, “Vattel et la semantique du droit des gens: une tentative de reconstruction critique”, Vattel’s International Law in a XXI^st Century Perspective-Le droit international de Vattel vu du XXI^e siècle, ed. Vincent Chetail and Peter Haggenmacher (Leiden-Boston: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2011), 388n in which he states that he had consulted more than two hundred works, between 1759 and 1860, who for the most part are extremely critical of Vattel.
52.
Fiocchi Malaspina, L’eterno ritorno del Droit des gens, 7. Another favourable assessment of Vattel can be read in Antoine Pillet, Les fondateurs du droit international (Paris: Giard e Brière, 1904), 481–601. The author, an expert in the history of treaties in a Parisian university, stated that Vattel was an illustrious scholar and that his work was worthy of study because it had the merit of being making clearer the obscure doctrine of Wolff, thus providing a decisive contribution to “a répandre dans les sphères officielles et dans le public les principes du droit international”, 483. According to Haggenmacher (“Le modèle de Vattel et la discipline du droit international”, Vattel’s International Law, 6) in the end Kant recognised that for the moment Vattel’s treatise remained the best evidence of the as yet little explored science of the jus gentium.
53.
See Immanuel Kant, “Per la pace perpetua”, Scritti politici e di filosofia della storia e del diritto, Italian translation by Gioele Solari and Giovanni Vidari, posthumous edition by Norberto Bobbio, L. Firpo and V. Matthieu (Turin: UTET, 1956), 298 (quoted from the 1998 reprint) in which Vattel along with Grozio and Pufendorf, often cited in justification of aggressive wars, are only “Job’s comforters, all of them” and their code does not have “have not—nor can have—the slightest legal force”.
54.
Jean Pierre Chambrier, Baron of Holeyres negotiated the return of Neuchâtel to Prussian sovereignty; he was the Prussian plenipotentiary in Switzerland from 1805 to 1814 and later governor of the province of Neuchâtel from 1814 to his death in 1822. He took an interest in Vattel’s work, writing some commentaries to the Swiss jurist’s work: Est-il permis en certaines circonstances d’attenter à la vie du chef de l’état? Dialogue entre Jules César et Cicéron, par Emer de Vattel, extraits des Annexes du 3^e volume d’une nouvelle édition du Droit des Gens publié avec un commentaire et des notes de M. le Baron de Chambrier (Paris: Rey et Gravier, 1837).
55.
Cornelis van Vollenhoven, Les trois phases du droit des gens (La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff, 1919).
56.
Van Vollenhoven, Les trois phases du droit des gens, 28.
57.
Ibid., 30.
58.
Ibid., 30–31.
59.
Regarding Vattel, Vollenhoven, on 32, expressed himself as follows: “the man who, as a thinker and a worker, is not worthy of tying Grotius’s shoelaces”.
60.
See, for example, Van Vollenhoven, Les trois phases du droit des gens, 52: “In Vattel’s system, all is mere appearance” or on 55 “We are still building on the rotten floor of Vattel”.
61.
See Van Vollenhoven, Les trois phases du droit des gens, 58.
62.
Ibid., 67.
63.
Ibid., 93: “Avec la ligue des peuples, la guerre que détermine l’intérêt individuel est abolie. Si on la laissait subsister, le satan Vattel s’y glisserait aussitôt”.
64.
Béguelin, En souvenir de Vattel (1714–1767), Accompanied by an appendix of 24 documents.
65.
See the chapter by Koen Stapelbroek in this volume.
66.
Edmund Burke, “Speech on the Seizure and Confiscation of Private Property in St Eustatius”, 14 May 1781, in Parliamentary History (1806–1820), xxii (1781–1782), col. 231.
67.
Vattel-Formey, Correspondance autour des Droit des gens, n. 60, Letter from Vattel to Formey, 8 November 1755, 158.
68.
Furio Diaz, Filosofia e politica nel Settecento francese (Turin: Einaudi, 1962), 379. For some reflections on constitutionalism in Vattel’s work, see also Antonio Trampus, Storia del costituzionalismo italiano nell’età dei Lumi (Rome and Bari: Laterza, 2009), 35–39 and also Vattel dopo Vattel, 578 ff.
69.
Gabriella Silvestrini, Vattel, “Rousseau et la question de la ‘Justice’ de la guerre”, Vattel’s International Law, 101. From the same author Diritto naturale e volontà generale. Il contrattualismo repubblicano di Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Turin: Claudiana, 2010), 99 and 103.
70.
Alimento, Tra strategie editoriali e progettualità riformista, 536 ff.
71.
Bandelier, Introduction, to Vattel-Formey, Correspondance autour des Droit des gens, VII.
72.
Elisabetta Fiocchi Malaspina, “‘La boussole des souverains’: l’application du Droit des Gens de Vattel dans la diplomatie du XVIII^e siècle”, Thémis en diplomatie. Droit et arguments juridiques dans les relations internationales, ed. Nicolas Drocourt and Éric Schnakenbourg (Rennes: PUR, 2016), 91. Naturally, in the course of the twentieth century and the start of the twenty-first, there has been no lack of biographies of the Swiss jurist, but here, we are interested in the way he was considered in certain encyclopaedic works not published during the nineteenth century. In Haggenmacher, “Le modèle de Vattel et la discipline du droit international”, Vattel’s International Law, 5–8 refer to a series of eighteenth-century studies of Vattel. Among the recent biographies of Vattel, see at least the introduction to the edition of Emer de Vattel, The Law of Nations, ed. Béla Kapossy and Richard Whatmore (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2008), IX–XX, which contains some brief biographical outlines of Vattel. Béla Kapossy has also edited a monographic edition of Grotiana, 31 (2010). It is also worth indicating two biographical entries published online, one edited by François Moureau which has the benefit of citing various documents from French archives (see Dictionnaire des Journalistes [1600–1789]), which can be consulted at http://dictionnaire-journalistes.gazettes18e.fr/journaliste/798-emer-de-vattel, and the other from 2013 by Peter Haggenmacher in the Dictionnaire historique de la Suisse that can be consulted at http://www.hls-dhs-dss.chF15917.php.
73.
Trampus, Vattel dopo Vattel, 580.
74.
Initially Vattel lodged in a boarding house, but soon after he was hosted by Formey, see Vattel-Formey, Correspondance autour des Droit des gens, no. 2, Letter from Vattel to Guillaume de Merveilleux, [later than 17 May 1742], 7. For a biographical profile of Jean Formey, the son of a French Huguenot who moved to Berlin, where the author was born and died, see Vattel-Formey, Correspondance autour des Droit des gens, 227, XIII–XIV. From the same editor of the Vattel-Formey papers, André Bandelier, see also “De Berlin à Neufchâtel: la genèse du Droit des gens d’Emer de Vattel”, Schweizer im Berlin des 18. Jahrhunderts, ed. Martin Fontius and Helmut Holzhey (Berlin: Akademie Verlag 1996), 45–56.
75.
In letter no. 6 of 13 March 1744 to Formey, Vattel argued that he owed his success in Dresden to his essay on Leibniz, see Vattel-Formey, Correspondance autour des Droit des gens, 19–20.
76.
Vattel-Formey, Correspondance autour des Droit des gens, no. 5, Letter from Vattel to Formey, 23 September 1743, 17.
77.
Unfortunately, as Bandelier notes, these papers are incomplete because there are some gaps relating to 1745, 1752 and 1759–1762, see Bandelier, Introduction, xv.
78.
Vattel-Formey, Correspondance autour des Droit des gens, no. 11, Letter from Vattel to Formey, 30 March 1746, 34.
79.
Ibid., no. 21, Letter from Vattel to Formey, 24 February 1747, 58–59.
80.
Ibid., no. 23, Letter from Vattel to Formey, 27 March 1747, 67.
81.
Ibid.
82.
Ibid., no. 27, Instruction pour le Conseiller d’Ambassade de Vattel allant séjourner à Berne [Dresden, 22 April 1747], 74 ff.
83.
Samuel Formey, L’idée, les Règles & le Modèle de la Perfection en trois Sermons sur Matth. V. 48 (Berlin: Jean Jasperd, 1747).
84.
Emer de Vattel, Le loisir philosophique ou pièces diverses de philosophie, de moral et d’amusement (Dresden: George Conrad Walther, 1747), a work that Vattel had dedicated to Count Henry de Brühl, see Essai sur le fondement du Droit naturel, et sur le premier principe de l’obligation, où se trouvent tous les hommes, d’en observer les loix, 3–70 and Dissertation sur cette Question: Si la Loi naturelle peut porter la Société à sa perfection, sans le secours des Loix politiques, 71–94.
85.
Vattel-Formey, Correspondance autour des Droit des gens, no. 29, Letter from Vattel to Formey, 28 April 1747, 79.
86.
Ibid., 80.
87.
Ibid., no. 31, Letter from Vattel to Formey, 5 June 1747, 82.
88.
Ibid., no. 37, Letter from Vattel to Formey, 12 April 1749, 97–98.
89.
Vattel-Formey, Correspondance autour des Droit des gens, no. 39, Letter from Vattel to Formey, 27 June 1749, 104.
90.
Ibid., no. 40, Letter from Vattel to Formey, 10 October 1749, 109. A little further on Vattel restates that in this period he read a great deal and wrote little and was still waiting to read Wolff’s work.
91.
Ibid., no. 44, Letter from Vattel to Formey, 29 June 1750, 117.
92.
Ibid., XII.
93.
Ibid., no. 49, Letter from Vattel to Formey, 9 July 1751 129.
94.
Ibid., no. 50, Letter from Vattel to Formey, 8 October 1751, 131–132. Unfortunately, there is a gap in the papers from 9 October 1751 to 4 January 1753.
95.
Ibid., no. 50, Letter from Vattel to Formey, 8 October 1751, 131–132.
96.
Ibid., no. 54, Letter from Vattel to Formey, 25 March 1753, 144.
97.
Ibid., 145, the two citations. This work was only published several years later under the title Questions de Droit naturel, et observations sur le traité de M. le Baron de Wolff (Bern: Sociéte Typographique, 1762).
98.
Ibid., no. 57, Letter from Vattel to Formey, 10 June 1754, 152.
99.
Ibid., no. 65, Letter from Vattel to Formey, 17 February 1757, 179.
100.
Emer de Vattel, Le droit des gens ou Principes de la loi naturelle appliqués à la conduite et aux affaires des nations et des souverains (London: 1758), Preface, XV.
101.
See ibid., no. 60, Letter from Vattel to Formey, 8 November 1755, 157.
102.
See Lettres d’Élie Luzac à Jean Henry Samuel Formey: regard sur les coulisses de la librairie hollandaise du XVIII^e siècle, ed. Hans Bots and Jans Schillings (Paris: Champion, 2001).
103.
See ibid., CXXXI, Letter from Luzac to Formey, 12 January 1756, 281.
104.
Ibid., CXXXVII, Letter from Luzac to Formey, 17 May 1756, 290, the two citations.
105.
Ibid., 291.
106.
Ibid., CXLV, Letter from Luzac to Formey, [December 1756?], 300.
107.
Vattel-Formey, Correspondance autour des Droit des gens, no. 65, Letter from Vattel to Formey, 17 February 1757, 179.
108.
Lettres d’Élie Luzac à Jean Henry Samuel Formey, CLV, Letter from Luzac to Formey, 6 September 1757, 314.
109.
See ibid., p. XII; no. 67, Letter from Vattel to Formey, 11 April 1757, 185; no. 68, Letter from Vattel to Formey, 26 May 1757, 186; no. 69, Letter from Vattel to Formey, 20 August 1757, 188.
110.
See ibid., no. 71, Letter from Vattel to Formey, 17 December 1757, 192.
111.
Naturally, there is no lack of other works. Note for example the one published in the Journal de Commerce, April 1759, 137–169 and May 1759, 35–63, on which see the observations in the chapter by Koen Stapelbroek in this volume.
112.
Luzac alludes here to a letter to Formey, Lettres d’Élie Luzac à Jean Henry Samuel Formey, CLIX, Letter from Luzac to Formey, 20 May 1758, 323.
113.
For example, he was already cited in Martin Hübner, De la saisie des bâtiments neutres ou du droit qu’ont les nations belligérantes d’arrêter les navires des peuples amis (The Hague: n.p., 1759)
114.
See Haggenmacher, Le modèle de Vattel et la discipline du droit international, 4.
115.
Fiocchi Malaspina, “‘La boussole des souverains’”, 88.
116.
See Antonio Trampus, “Dalla libertà religiosa allo Stato nazione: Utrecht e le origini del sistema internazionale di Emer di Vattel”, I trattati di Utrecht una pace di dimensione europea, ed. Frédéric Ieva (Rome: Viella, 2016), 101–113; Antonio Padoa Schioppa, Storia del diritto in Europa. Dal Medioevo all’età contemporanea (Bologna: il Mulino, 2007), 351; and Réflexions sur l’impact, le rayonnement et l’actualité de Le droit des gens, ou Principes de la loi naturelle appliqués à la conduite et aux affaires des nations et des souverains d’Emer de Vattel. Actes du colloque organisé le 21 juin 2008 à Neuchâtel, ed. Yves Sandoz (Brussels: Bruylant, 2010).
117.
Edouard Jouannet, “Les dualismes du Droit des gens”, Vattel’s International Law, 133–150. By the same scholar see Emer de Vattel et l’émergence du droit international classique (Paris: Pedone, 1998).
118.
Jouannet, Les dualismes du Droit des gens, 135.
119.
Ibid., 146–149.
120.
Vattel, Droit des gens vol. I, Preface, XVI.
121.
Ibid., book I, Chap. XXI. In some ways, Wolfgang Reinhard seems to have understood Vattel’s dual nature, defining him as “A Wolffian and a classic of the modern law of nations”, Wolfgang Reinhard, Storia del potere politico in Europa (Italian translation, Bologna: il Mulino, 2001), 459.

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Frédéric Ieva

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Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Koen Stapelbroek
Ca’ Foscari University Venice, Italy
Antonio Trampus

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Ieva, F. (2019). “A Poor Imitation of Grotius and Pufendorf?” Biographical Uncertainties and the Laborious Genesis of Vattel’s Droit des gens. In: Stapelbroek, K., Trampus, A. (eds) The Legacy of Vattel's Droit des gens. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23838-4_3

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