Abstract
While Emer de Vattel is commonly known nowadays as an anglophile, it appears curious that in his main work, the Droit des gens of 1758, he severely criticised British policy concerning the borders of Acadia that helped trigger the Seven Years’ War. This article suggests that Vattel indeed was an admirer of the British constitution as well as a critic of the British ‘mercantile system’. When the first edition of Vattel’s Droit des gens was immediately republished in a French propaganda publication, this made perfect sense in view of the French foreign policy contexts of the time. Moreover, Vattel’s attitude towards Britain was not a strange combination of contrasting positions, but followed from his fundamental political thought. In fact, Vattel’s general position on luxury, moral philosophy and commercial sociability resembled that of other contemporaries who were equally concerned with the legacy of the Peace of Utrecht and the challenge to turn the balance of power into a durable system of peace and international trade.
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Notes
- 1.
The terminology fits with that introduced by Paul W. Schroeder, “Did the Vienna Settlement Rest on a Balance of Power?”, American Historical Review 97 (1992), 683–706; The Transformation of European Politics 1763–1848 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994). See also Richard Whatmore, Against War and Empire: Geneva, Britain and France in the Eighteenth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 103–118, 257–260 and his “Liberty, War and Empire: Overcoming the Rich State-Poor State Problem, 1789–1815”, Commerce and Perpetual Peace, ed. Béla Kapossy, Isaac Nakhimovsky and Richard Whatmore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 216–243.
- 2.
This argument is convincingly made by John Shovlin, “Selling American Empire on the Eve of the Seven Years’ War: The French Propaganda Campaign of 1755–1756”, Past & Present 206 (2010), 121–149, which I bizarrely overlooked during the early stages of the composition of this chapter, but which fits perfectly with the present argument.
- 3.
To compare Vattel with Saint-Pierre on this aspect, cf. Stapelbroek, “‘The Long Peace’: Commercial Treaties and the Principles of Global Trade at the Peace of Utrecht”, The 1713 Peace of Utrecht and Its Enduring Effects, ed. A.H.A. Soons (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming/2019).
- 4.
The introduction to Emer de Vattel, The Law of Nations, ed. Béla Kapossy and Richard Whatmore (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2008) contains a concise biography of Vattel. See also the introduction of this volume. The standard work on Vattel’s life and career remains Édouard Béguelin, “En souvenir de Vattel”, Recueil de travaux offert par la Faculté de Droit de l’Université de Neuchâtel à la Société Suisse des Juristes (Neuchâtel: Attinger, 1929), 35–176.
- 5.
See the contributions to Grotiana 31(1) (2010) edited by Béla Kapossy.
- 6.
On the usage of Vattel in the old Italian states and in relation to trade and war in the eighteenth century, see Koen Stapelbroek and Antonio Trampus, “Vattel’s Droit des gens und der Europäischen Handelsrepubliken im achtzehnten Jahrhundert”, Der moderne Staat und „le doux commerce“ – Staat, Ökonomie und internationales System im politischen Denken der Aufklärung, ed. Olaf Asbach (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2014), 181–204. On Swiss Vattelian anglophilia Whatmore, Against War and Empire, 103–118, 257–260; Richard Whatmore, “Neither Masters Nor Slaves’: Small States and Empire in the Long Eighteenth Century”, Lineages of Empire: The Historical Roots of British Imperial Thought, ed. D. Kelly (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 53–81.
- 7.
On the Vattel-Burke connection, see David Armitage, Foundations of Modern International Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 167–169. For a masterly sketch of the ‘Utrecht Enlightenment’, see J.G.A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, Vol. 1: The Enlightenments of Edward Gibbon, 1737–1764 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Vol. 2: Narratives of Civil Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Thomas Brooke Clarke’s related usage of Vattel is reconstructed in Isaac Nakhimovsky, “The ‘Ignominious Fall of the European Commonwealth’: Gentz, Hauterive, and the Armed Neutrality of 1800”, Trade and War : The Neutrality of Commerce in the Interstate System, ed. Koen Stapelbroek (Helsinki: COLLeGIUM: Studies Across Disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences, 2011), vol. 10, 212–228.
- 8.
Isaac Nakhimovsky, “Carl Schmitt’s Vattel and the Law of Nations Between Enlightenment and Revolution”, Grotiana 31 (2010), 141–164.
- 9.
For François Ivernois ambivalence, see Whatmore, “Liberty, War and Empire”.
- 10.
Koen Stapelbroek, “From Jealousy of Trade to the Neutrality of Finance: Isaac de Pinto’s ‘System’ of Luxury and Perpetual Peace”, Commerce and Perpetual Peace, ed. Béla Kapossy, Isaac Nakhimovsky and Richard Whatmore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 87–109.
- 11.
On anglophilia, anglophobia and propaganda in the Seven Years’ War, Edmond Dziembowski, Un nouveau patriotisme français, 1750–1770: la France face à la puissance anglaise à l’époque de la guerre de Sept Ans (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1998); Frances Acomb, Anglophobia in France, 1763–1789: An Essay in the History of Constitutionalism and Nationalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1950); David A. Bell, The Cult of the Nation in France: Inventing Nationalism, 1680–1800 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 78–98; David A. Bell, “Jumonville’s Death: War Propaganda and National Identity in Eighteenth-Century France”, The Age of Cultural Revolutions: Britain and France, 1750–1820, ed. Colin Jones and Dror Wahrman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 33–61; and Josephine Grieder, Anglomania in France. See also Keith Michael Baker, Inventing the French Revolution: Essays on French Political Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 167–199 on ‘public opinion as political invention’.
- 12.
See the chapter by Alimento in this volume.
- 13.
See, e.g., Vattel, Droit des gens, book I, par. 24; book II, par. 16; book III, par. 48.
- 14.
Next to a commentary on Leibniz and notes on Wolff (see Note 15 below) he published Emer de Vattel, Pièces diverses, avec quelques lettres de morale et d’amusemens (Paris: Briasson, 1746) republished as Le loisir philosophique ou Pièces diverses de philosophique, de morale et d’amusement (Dresden: Walther, 1747); Poliergie ou mélange de literature et de poësie (Amsterdam, 1757) republished in 1766; and Mélanges de littérature, de morale et de politique (Neufchatel, 1760) republished as Amusemens de literature, de morale et de politique (The Hague: Gosse, 1765).
- 15.
‘More specific’ than previous attempts to show the relationship between Vattel’s moral philosophy and his political economy in Isaac Nakhimovsky, “Vattel’s Theory of the International Order: Commerce and the Balance of Power in the Law of Nations”, History of European Ideas 33 (2007), 157–173; Koen Stapelbroek, “Universal Society, Commerce and the Rights of Neutral Trade: Martin Hübner, Emer de Vattel and Ferdinando Galiani”, COLLeGIUM: Studies Across Disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences 3 (2008), 63–89.
- 16.
Emer de Vattel, Questions de droit naturel et observations sur le traité du droit de la nature de M. le Baron de Wolf (Berne, 1762), 5.
- 17.
Vattel, Amusemens de literature, 84.
- 18.
Vattel, Le loisir philosophique, 144–179, esp. 169; The concepts of love and platonic love are highly similar to Ferdinando Galiani’s moral philosophy, see Koen Stapelbroek, Love, Self-Deceit and Money: Commerce and Morality in the Early Neapolitan Enlightenment (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 127–164.
- 19.
This is a recurring theme in the first five essays of Vattel Le loisir philosophique which approached the tension of obligation without submission, but instead derived from real human motives from different angles: natural law, moral philosophy, theology (against Manicheism) and love.
- 20.
The two first essays of Vattel, Loisir philosophique, “Essai sur le fondement du droit naturel & sur le prémier principe de l’obligation, où se trouvent tous les hommes, d’en observer les Ioix.”; “Dissertation sur cette Question si la Loi naturelle peut porter la Société à sa perfection, sans secours des Loix politiques” subtly make this argument.
- 21.
Rejected in Vattel, Droit des gens, book I, par. 116.
- 22.
Vattel, Loisir philosophique, 22–27, 41–47.
- 23.
Vattel, Loisir philosophique, 73: “Dissertation sur cette question: Si la Loi naturelle peut porter la Société à sa perfection, sans le secours des Loix politiques”.
- 24.
Vattel, Amusemens de literature, 79.
- 25.
Vattel, Amusemens de literature, 30–32, 51–52, where Vattel criticised ‘certain Politiques’ which by that time was generally understood to refer to Melon and Voltaire particularly. The quote is from Jean-François Melon, A Political Essay Upon Commerce (Dublin, 1738), 194, 174.
- 26.
Melon, Political Essay, 177.
- 27.
[Saint-Lambert], Essay on Luxury , 1.
- 28.
Melon’s ideas on luxury are often placed in the same bracket as Mandeville’s, but this is crucially wrong. While the essence of Mandeville’s self-liking is the impossibility of distinguishing between needs and luxuries, Melon, perfectly following Colbert, sharply differentiated these kinds of goods, not so much as reflecting personal desires, but in the realm of foreign trade management. Trade in subsistence goods could relatively easily be established even between Britain and France. Once manufactured goods were involved it became more complicated. Still, this was no reason for not making manufactured goods an object of politics through the conclusion of an Anglo-French commercial treaty, Melon felt.
- 29.
Vattel, Amusemens de literature, 44.
- 30.
Vattel, Amusemens de literature, 44.
- 31.
Journal de Commerce (April and May 1759), 35–63, 137–169; cit. (April 1759), 141, 152–155. Indeed Vattel referred to Sully and Henry IV a few times also in his shorter works and echoed key criticism of Colbert’s economic policy.
- 32.
Vattel, Loisir philosophique, 38. Cf. those tempted by luxury and outward appearance bore a “resemblance to those unfortunate victims of love”. Isaac de Pinto, Essai sur le luxe (Amsterdam, 1762), 18. Cf. also Galiani on unrequited “Platonic love”, Stapelbroek, Love, Self-Deceit and Money, 143–152.
- 33.
Vattel, Loisir philosophique, 180–184. Vattel’s presentation echoed the usual way of expressing the luxury paradox: just like some erroneously thought that luxury was really a positive agency (which Vattel completely disagreed with), so Vattel himself believed most people were mistaken to overlook the positive effects of another allegedly depraved custom, that of the jeus; cf. Pinto’s letter to Diderot On Card-Playing discussed in Stapelbroek, “From Jealousy of Trade to the Neutrality of Finance: Isaac de Pinto’s ‘System’ of Luxury and Perpetual Peace”.
- 34.
Cf. also Vattel’s definition of luxury as excessive spending relative to rank and means, Vattel, Amusemens de literature, 31–32.
- 35.
Vattel, Amusemens de literature, 51; Pinto, Essai sur le luxe, 15: “when excessive luxury causes, that the arts are lucrative in the inverse ratio of their utility, the most necessary become the most neglected”.
- 36.
Vattel, Amusemens de literature, 52–53.
- 37.
Vattel, Amusemens de literature, 44, 41. Instead it was better to go about the challenge subtly and for the Prince to set an example that inspired imitation and thereby regulate the tastes and inspire patriotism (discussed on pages 41 and 45–47). The same was proposed by Saint-Lambert in his Encyclopédie article luxury.
- 38.
Koen Stapelbroek and Jani Marjanen, “Political Economy, Patriotism and the Rise of Societies”, The Rise of Economic Societies in the Eighteenth Century: Patriotic Reform in Europe and North America , ed. Koen Stapelbroek and Jani Marjanen (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 1–25. Vattel’s position on reform in many ways resembled the fairly mainstream views of Georg Ludwig Schmid’s as discussed by Istvan Hont, “Correcting Europe’s Political Economy: The Virtuous Eclecticism of Georg Ludwig Schmid”, History of European Ideas 33 (2007), 390–410.
- 39.
Vattel, Droit des gens, book I, par. 109; Vattel, Amusemens de literature, 53–55.
- 40.
In the same way Galiani’s theory of love served to expel contract from his theory of sociability that underpinned his theory of value, money and his political economy, Stapelbroek, Love, Self-Deceit and Money.
- 41.
Michael Sonenscher, Sans-culottes: An Eighteenth-Century Emblem in the French Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), whose Cynic moralists move in the same territory, though in a very different direction.
- 42.
Vattel, Loisir philosophique, 47.
- 43.
Journal de Commerce (April 1759), 141–142.
- 44.
Vattel, Droit des gens, book I, par. 31, 34.
- 45.
See the section “Constituting Commercial Society” in Koen Stapelbroek, “From Jealousy of Trade to the Neutrality of Finance: Isaac de Pinto’s ‘System’ of Luxury and Perpetual Peace”, Commerce and Perpetual Peace.
- 46.
[Allan Ramsay], An Essay on the Constitution of England (London, 1766), 7.
- 47.
On the role of this conceptual vocabulary in Italian small states in the late eighteenth century Stapelbroek and Trampus, “Vattel’s Droit des gens und der Europäischen Handelsrepubliken im achtzehnten Jahrhundert”.
- 48.
Essay on the Constitution of England, vi.
- 49.
Essay on the Constitution of England, 3.
- 50.
Essay on the Constitution of England, xiii.
- 51.
Essay on the Constitution of England, xvii–xviii.
- 52.
Essay on the Constitution of England, 81–83.
- 53.
Istvan Hont, Jealousy of Trade: International Competition and the Nation-State in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 325–353; [Saint-Lambert], Essai sur le luxe, 13–20, 45–48.
- 54.
Vattel, Droit des gens, book I, par. 24 pretty much denied France (“une autre Nation, illustre par sa Valeur & par ses Victoires”) the possibility to enjoy the same kind of liberty as Britain without constitutional change.
- 55.
Vattel, Droit des gens, book II, par. 16.
- 56.
Vattel, Droit des gens, book III, par. 47.
- 57.
Vattel, Droit des gens, book I, par. 31, 34.
- 58.
Vattel, Droit des gens, “Preface”, corresponding to pages numbered ix e xvii in the 1758 edition; cf. Journal de Commerce (April 1759), 137–141 (May 1759), 45–60. The Journal de Commerce especially questioned (in the May issue, 38–39) Vattel’s basic assumption that underneath the division into separate states there was still a foundation of common general humanity that was effective in the political reasoning of states.
- 59.
Vattel, Droit des gens, book III, par. 46–49; quote from 48.
- 60.
Isaac de Pinto, An Essay on Circulation and Credit: In Four Parts; and a Letter on the Jealousy of Commerce (London, 1774), 228.
- 61.
Pinto, Jealousy of Commerce, 235.
- 62.
Vattel, Droit des gens, book I, par. 95; Essay on Circulation and Credit, 222. Pinto’s discussion of the Navigation Acts was included in a piece that was eliminated from the English translation, see Isaac de Pinto, Traité de la circulation et du crédit […] Par l’auteur de l’Essai sur le Luxe, & de la Lettre sur le Jeu des Cartes […] & suivie d’une Lettre sur la Jalousie du Commerce (Amsterdam, 1771), 7.
- 63.
Pinto, Jealousy of Commerce, 189; cf. Essay on Circulation and Credit, 107: there was a causal link through which “excessive luxury, by disordering the various springs” disbalanced “the fortunes of individuals” and inspired policies that both held back economic development and spurred unrestrained war-finance.
- 64.
Pinto, Jealousy of Commerce , 196.
- 65.
Richard Pares, Colonial Blockade and Neutral Rights (1739–1763) (Oxford, 1938); Tara Helfman, “Commerce on Trial: Neutral Rights and Private Warfare in the Seven Years’ War”, Trade and War : The Neutrality of Commerce in the Inter-State System, ed. Koen Stapelbroek (Helsinki: Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, 2011), 14–41.
- 66.
Bynkershoek’s distinction was reminiscent of James Harrington, The Commonwealth of Oceana, ed. J.G.A. Pocock (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 198 distinguishing between proper trade and mere carrying trade: “it is one thing to have the carriage of other men’s goods, and another for a man to bring his own unto the best market”. It was naturally second best to have to have recourse to the poor man’s commerce, Montesquieu’s “commerce d’économie”.
- 67.
Vattel, Droit des gens, book III, par. 111–112; Nakhimovsky, “Vattel’s Theory of the International Order”, 169–172.
- 68.
See, for instance, Albertus Ploos van Amstel, Verhandeling over het recht van commercie tusschen onzydige en oorlogvoerende volken (Amsterdam, 1760), 35–42. The debate is discussed in Koen Stapelbroek, “The Dutch Debate on Commercial Neutrality 1713–1830”, Trade and War: The Neutrality of Commerce in the Inter-State System, ed. Koen Stapelbroek, special issue of COLLeGIUM: Studies Across Disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences Published by the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies (Helsinki: Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, 2011), 114–142.
- 69.
Vattel, Droit des gens, book III, par. 110. Pinto condemned Dutch ‘patriotic’ investments into American and French funds out of political motives. See Stapelbroek, “The Dutch Debate on Commercial Neutrality 1713–1830”.
- 70.
Pinto, Essay on Circulation and Credit, 13.
- 71.
On Moreau, Dieter Gembicki, Histoire et politique à la fin de l’ancien régime: Jacob-Nicolas Moreau, 1717–1803 (Paris: Nizet, 1979); Edmond Dziembowski, “Les débuts d’un publiciste au service de la monarchie: L’activité littéraire de Jacob-Nicolas Moreau pendant la guerre”, Revue d’histoire diplomatique 109 (1995), 305–322; and the chapters on the ‘ideological arsenal’ of Moreau in Baker, Inventing the French Revolution, 59–85. See also Gabriel-François Coyer and Jacob-Nicolas Moreau, Écrits sur le patriottisme, l’esprit public et la propagande au milieu du XVIIIe siècle, ed. Edmond Dziembowski (La Rochelle: Rumeur des Âges, 1997).
- 72.
Jacob-Nicolas Moreau, Nouveau mémoire pour servir a l’histoire des Cacouacs (Amsterdam, 1757).
- 73.
An esquisse for the work was published first as, Jacob-Nicolas Moreau, Leçons de morale, de politique et de droit public, puisées dans l’histoire de notre monarchie. Ou Nouveau plan d’étude de l’histoire de France (Paris, 1773). The various volumes of the actual project appeared from 1777 in 21 volumes under the title Principes de morale, de politique et de droit public puisés dans l’histoire de notre monarchie, ou Discours sur l’histoire de France. Baker, Inventing the French Revolution, 31–85 suggests the post-Montesquieu range of ‘political representations of the past’ that existed by the late 1760s was the platform for Moreau’s semi-antiquarian project, through which he defended the monarchy until 1789 (page 84).
- 74.
In particular, Jacob-Nicolas Moreau, Les devoirs du prince reduits a un seul principe, ou discours sur la justice, dedie au roi (Paris, 1775).
- 75.
The Parallèle des ressources de la France et de la Grande-Bretagne, for which permission was obtained in August 1762, remained unpublished during the war. An act of ministerial bluff to influence the negotiation process, its principles may be compared with John Brown’s, Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times (London, 1757–1758), 2 vols. After the war the text appeared under the title Lettre sur la paix (Lyon, 1763) as a patriotic peptalk, promoting political virtue under the French monarchy. See Jacob-Nicolas Moreau, Mes Souvenirs, ed. C. Hermelin (Paris, 1898–1901), 2 vols., i: 129.
- 76.
Moreau, Lettre sur la paix, 12 takes Utrecht as the starting point of British supremacy, not any constitutional advantage or greater liberty.
- 77.
Moreau, Mes Souvenirs, i: 59.
- 78.
Shovlin, “Selling American Empire”, 145–147; Dziembowski, “Les débuts d’un publiciste”, 309–311, who also noted the opportunity seen by the French envoy to the Hague Bonnac to print the Observateur in the Dutch Republic to work Dutch public opinion.
- 79.
Gembicki, Histoire et politique, 68.
- 80.
Jacob-Nicolas Moreau, L’Observateur Hollandois (Paris [The Hague], 1755–1756), letter 5, 42–43.
- 81.
Moreau, L’Observateur Hollandois, letter 4 and 5 passim, the paraphrases above come from letter 4, 21 and 42 and letter 5, 24–25.
- 82.
Dziembowski, “Les débuts d’un publiciste”, 315 highlights the contrast between French monarchical patriotism and British party political spirit as the key idea of Moreau’s other, less successful, journal of the period, the Moniteur François.
- 83.
Gembicki, Histoire et politique, 67, criticises Furio Diaz, Filosofia e Politica nel Settecento francese (Turin: Einaudi, 1962), 137–139, 143–145 whose predominantly international political interpretation of Moreau failed to recognise this dimension. Also Dziembowski, “Les débuts d’un publiciste”, 309.
- 84.
Moreau, L’Observateur Hollandois, letter 1, 20 and passim.
- 85.
Moreau, L’Observateur Hollandois, letter 42 on Britian’s inclination to political regression, and letter 4 on the subversion of the balance of power driven by politicised mechanisms of individual greed.
- 86.
Stapelbroek, “The Long Peace”, reconstructs this ‘incompleteness’ as a missed opportunity, recognised by a range of figures from Saint-Pierre to the diplomat Mesnager, to reorganise global trade (notably Spanish the South-America trade, but also the East Indies).
- 87.
Jean-Ignace De La Ville, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de notre tems, contenants des réflections politiques sur la guerre présente, par L’Observateur Hollandois, redigez et augmentez par M.D.V. (Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1758), i: 4. There has been confusion among bibliographic scholars about the identity of ‘M.D.V.’. Querard and Barbier have imagined Vattel as the editor of the series; Shovlin, “Selling American Empire”, 136.
- 88.
Vattel, Droit des gens, book I, par. 24.
- 89.
See the manuscript in Ets Haim—Livraria Montezinos Amsterdam, BEH 48A19 (nr. 6), cc. 13–18. Pinto supported Anglo-French integration before and territorial ‘conciliation’ at Fontainebleau, with a view to a more secure durable peace and in the same diplomatic practice played with ideas of partially merging chartered companies, primarily the Dutch and English—a plan developed with Thomas Hope. See also John Shovlin, “Securing Asian Trade: Treaty Negotiations Between the French and English East India Companies, 1753–1755”, The Politics of Commercial Treaties in the Eighteenth Century: Balance of Power , Balance of Trade, ed. Antonella Alimento and Koen Stapelbroek (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2017), 267–293.
- 90.
Vattel, Droit des gens, book II, par. 308.
- 91.
Vattel, Droit des gens, book II, par. 92. The chapter was entitled: “Des effets du Domaine entre les Nations”, which in English became more direct and prescriptive: “The Limits of Territories Ought to Be Carefully Settled”.
- 92.
Jacob-Nicolas Moreau, Mémoire contenant le précis des faits pour servir de réponse aux Observations envoyées par les ministres d’Angleterre dans les cours de l’Europe (Paris, 1756) translated into English A Memorial Containing a Summary View of Facts, with Their Authorities: In Answer to the Observations Sent by the English Ministry to the Courts of Europe (1757), was an expression of the diplomatic warfare between teams of commissioners. The French commissioners de La Ville, Silhouette and de La Galissonière, who came from the same circles that Moreau moved in, in 1755 had issued a set of Mémoires des commissaires du Roi et de ceux de Sa Majesté Britannique sur les possessions et les droits respectifs des deux Couronnes en Amérique, avec les actes publics et pièces justificatives.
- 93.
E.g. Jean Jacques Burlamaqui, Principes du droit de la nature et des gens (1768), vii: 253; Joseph-Mathias Gérard de Rayneval, De la liberté des mers (Paris, 1811), ii: 112 and his earlier Institutions du droit de la nature et des gens (Paris, 1803), lxv–lxvi: 132–133.
- 94.
Shovlin, “Selling American Empire”, 128, who refers to Dale Miquelon, “Envisioning the French Empire: Utrecht, 1711–1713”, French Historical Studies 24 (2001), 653–677.
- 95.
Moreau, L’Observateur Hollandois, letter 4, 21.
- 96.
Shovlin, “Selling American Empire”, 124–125, 130–132.
- 97.
Ibid., 125–132. Cf. Antonella Alimento, “Competition, True Patriotism and Colonial Interest: Forbonnais’ Vision of Neutrality and Trade”, Trade and War : The Neutrality of Commerce in the Inter-State System, ed. Koen Stapelbroek (Helsinki: Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, 2011), 61–94 for how the Gournay vision of French commercial empire was transformed by Forbonnais.
- 98.
Georges-Marie Butel-Dumont’s, Histoire et commerce des colonies anglaises dans l’Amérique septentrionale (Paris, 1755).
- 99.
Shovlin, “Selling American Empire”, 130.
- 100.
Ibid., 124–125, 148.
- 101.
Ibid., 144, where Pierre Louis de Saintard is mentioned, a staunch supporter of the most radical variation on French commercial Atlanticism that included a French Navigation Act.
- 102.
Alimento, “Competition, True Patriotism and Colonial Interest” focuses on this possibility of competition among a number of neutral powers as carriers of French goods, which lay between the extremes of establishing a French navigation act and the default position of restoring the Dutch as the privileged agents to trade in French goods.
- 103.
Koen Stapelbroek, “Economic Reform and Neutrality in Dutch Political Pamphlets, 1741–1779”, Pamphlets and Politics in the Dutch Republic, ed. Femke Deen, David Onnekink and Michel Reinders (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 196–200.
- 104.
Martin Hübner [Jean-Henri Maubert de Gouvest], Le politique danois, ou, l’ambition des Anglais démasquée par leurs pirateries (Copenhagen [Paris], 1756). Gembicki, Histoire et politique, 202 notes that Moreau was the censor who approved this work for publication; Shovlin, “Selling American Empire”, 136 who lists Hübner as the author.
- 105.
For context, see Isaac Nakhimovsky, “The Peaceful Prince and the Future of Europe: Frederick and Voltaire’s Anti-Machiavel of 1740”, Commerce and Perpetual Peace, ed. Béla Kapossy, Isaac Nakhimovsky and Richard Whatmore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 44–77.
- 106.
Voltaire, Histoire de la guerre de 1741 (Amsterdam, 1755), 28: “Chaque peuple répara ses pertes pendant les vingt années qui suivirent la paix d’Utrecht (…) L’Angletterre augmenta son commerce, & par la cession que lui fit la France de Terre-Neuve & de l’Acadie, & par le traité de l’Affiento qui la mit en possession de la traite des Negres”. For comparison with Pinto and Stapelbroek, “From Jealousy of Trade to the Neutrality of Finance: Isaac de Pinto’s ‘System’ of Luxury and Perpetual Peace”; Stapelbroek, “The Long Peace”.
- 107.
Michael Sonenscher, Before the Deluge: Public Debt, Inequality , and the Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 108–120. See also Baker, Inventing the French Revolution, 178–179 on the rejection of Montesquieu’s take on the English constitution by Forbonnais.
- 108.
See Sonenscher, Before the Deluge, 182. A major expression was Vivant de Mezagues, Bilan général et raisonné de l’Angleterre, depuis 1600 jusqu’à la fin de 1761 (Paris, 1762), which triggered a response by Isaac de Pinto in the form of his Traité.
- 109.
Jacques Accarias de Sérionne, La richesse de l’Angleterre, contenant les causes de la naissance et des progres de l’industrie, du commerce et de la marine la Grande-Bretagne (Vienna, 1771). The Journal de Commerce (February 1761), 19–20, for instance criticised a circulating manuscript—perhaps William Wallace’s, Characteristics of the Present Political State of Great Britain , 1758—that explained British wealth through William III’s financial revolution and argued that British artificial wealth was disconnected from nature and would inevitably collapse.
- 110.
Istvan Hont, “The ‘Rich Country-Poor Country’ Debate Revisited: The Irish Origins and French Reception of the Hume Paradox”, David Hume’s Political Economy, ed. Carl Wennerlind and Margaret Schabas (London: Routledge, 2008), 243–323.
- 111.
Vattel, Droit des gens, book III, par. 48; cf. Pinto, Traité de la circulation, 241 who had a sarcastic dig at Frederick (having been visited personally by him in 1755) describing him as the ‘grand Prince’ who had been able to keep the territory that he had “si glorieusement conquise”.
- 112.
It was this edition that was actually reviewed by the Journal de Commerce and that was feared by Vattel himself to provide a disfigured version of the text, see the chapter by Alimento in this volume.
- 113.
Emer 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 (Lyon [Venice], 1781), 3 vols. For Lodovico Antonio Loschi, see Antonio Trampus, “La genesi e la circolazione della Scienza della Legislazione”, Rivista Storica Italiana 117 (2005), 318–319.
- 114.
Lettre d’un anonime à monsieur J.J. Rousseau [sur le contrat social] (Leiden, 1765); Seconde lettre d’un anonime à J.J. Rousseau (Paris: Desaint & Saillant [Leiden: Elie Luzac], 1766). Jacob Nicolas Moreau, De pligten der overheden […] Uit het Fransch vertaald. Zynde by deeze vertaaling gevoegd eene voor-reden, en eenige aantekeningen van Mr. Elias Luzac, Advt. (Leiden, 1779).
- 115.
Gembicki, Histoire et politique, 194, 321.
- 116.
Luzac joined the chorus of those who called the English rights discourses chimerical under the pseudonym of Reinier Vryaart, Openhartige brieven, om te dienen tot opheldering en regte kennis van de vaderlandsche historie (Leiden, 1781–1784), vol. 5, 120–121.
- 117.
See Stapelbroek and Trampus, “Vattel’s Droit des gens und der Europäischen Handelsrepubliken im achtzehnten Jahrhundert”; Koen Stapelbroek and Antonio Trampus, “Commercial Reform Against the Tide: Reapproaching the Eighteenth-Century Decline of the Republics of Venice and the United Provinces”, History of European Ideas 36 (2010), 192–202. See also Franco Venturi, Settecento riformatore, IV: La caduta dell’Antico Regime (1776–1789) (Turin: Einaudi, 1984), ii: 504–614. The quotation is from Carlo Antonio Pilati, Voyages en différens pays de l’Europe, en 1774, 1775, & 1776 (The Hague: Plaat, 1777), i: 184.
- 118.
Fondazione Querini Stampalia Venezia, Classe IV. Codice CCXCV (manuscript number 675). Ruzzini’s account may be read in conjunction with supplementary reports by Alvise V Antonio Mocenigo from Paris (Classe IV. Codice CCCXXXV (manuscript number 921) and Alvise II Giovanni Mocenigo from Madrid (Classe IV. Codice CCLVII (manuscript number 673) to partially reconstruct the Venetian understanding of the Peace of Utrecht. This outlook onto Utrecht fed into how some Venetians understood the Seven Years’ War (which was at times very close to Moreau’s perspective), see Fondazione Querini Stampalia Venezia, Classe IV. Codice CCXLV (manuscript number 499).
- 119.
See my forthcoming article on “Trade Treaties and the ‘Constitution’ of the Commercial State Around the Congress of Vienna”.
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Stapelbroek, K. (2019). The Foundations of Vattel’s “System” of Politics and the Context of the Seven Years’ War: Moral Philosophy, Luxury and the Constitutional Commercial State. 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_5
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