Commentary on the Law of Prize and Booty. Hugo Grotius

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      Footnotes identified by arabic numerals have a threefold function in Williams’s translation: (1) to indicate gaps in the manuscript that may cause doubt regarding the original text, (2) to clear up questions that may arise from Grotius’s own correction of the manuscript, and (3) to comment on Grotius’s use of sources. Since Grotius’s quotations often are loose paraphrases of the originals, Williams translated these quotations on the basis of the manuscript text, not the text quoted. Any unavoidable departure from this rule is marked with a numbered footnote. If Grotius’s deviation from his source was “too striking to pass without comment,” Williams inserted a numbered footnote there as well.³ Page numbers listed in the footnotes of the Carnegie edition have been replaced with page numbers from the Liberty Fund edition. Oddly enough, Williams referred to the page numbers, instead of the folio numbers, of the collotype reproduction of the manuscript, which she consulted for her translation. This has been left unchanged.

      Footnotes that start with lowercase letters (a, b, c, etc.) denote Grotius’s references to his alleged sources, both in the running text of the manuscript and in the marginalia. Unlike the Carnegie edition, where they appear in the left and right margins, these references are placed at the bottom of the page in the current edition. Square brackets signal Zeydel’s extensions or corrections of Grotius’s references to other authors. Lettered footnotes are also used for Grotius’s cross-references to other parts of the manuscript. Many of these cross-references are of a general nature: they relate not so much to a particular article or conclusion cited by Grotius as to the argument that follows or precedes the passage indicated in his marginal annotation. Although his cross-references do not rely on the manuscript’s folio numbering, the relevant page numbers of the English translation, as identified by Zeydel, are added for the benefit of the reader.

      Walter H. Zeydel undertook the difficult task of verifying Grotius’s direct and indirect references to other authors. The editions consulted by Zeydel used in checking Grotius’s quotations are specified after each entry in the Index of Authors Cited. Where no edition is mentioned, the work in question was not available in the United States at the time that Walter Zeydel compiled his index. The titles of the more familiar works are given in English; others retain their Latin form.

      Four modest changes have been made in the author and subject indexes as compared with the Carnegie edition. Zeydel indicated in his author index whether a particular work had been mentioned more than once on a particular page, using Latin terms like “bis,” “ter,” etc. The present publication omits these notations because changes in pagination make them no longer accurate. Zeydel put multiple works by one author in alphabetical order on the basis of the first letter of the first noun of the (Latin) book titles. This order has been adjusted to conform with the standard letter-by-letter alphabetization of the indexes in the Natural Law and Enlightenment Classics series. In addition, the author and subject indexes have been silently corrected to reflect the most recent historical scholarship, and, where possible, floruit or birth and death dates have been provided for important authors and historical figures. The material from the introduction and from appendixes I and II has been integrated into both indexes: existing entries have been amplified for this purpose, and new ones have been created when necessary. All of the original page references given in the Carnegie indexes have been preserved and translated into the corresponding page numbers for the Liberty Fund edition. However, the reader should be aware that the Carnegie references are sometimes more oblique than what the modern reader might expect.

      The present publication improves upon the Carnegie edition of De Jure Praedae in various ways. It comprises two sets of appendixes of important archival and printed documents, all in English translation, which place De Jure Praedae in its historical context. The most up-to-date studies of Grotius’s natural rights and natural law theories are listed as suggestions for further reading. There is a detailed bibliography for the new introduction and appendixes I and II. Since the present volume does not reproduce the introduction and note on the text of the Carnegie edition, footnotes and index entries that refer to these matters have been omitted as well.

      Appendix I reproduces eight documents that Grotius himself wished to affix to De Jure Praedae. It contains a wide variety of texts, which range from the verdict of the Amsterdam Admiralty Court, declaring the Santa Catarina good prize, to an intercepted letter of the Bishop of Malacca, urging Philip II of Spain and Portugal to take drastic action against Dutch interlopers in Asia Portuguesa. Grotius considered these documents conclusive evidence of (a) a systematic Portuguese campaign to oust Dutch merchants from the East Indies, (b) the Santa Catarina’s capture in a just war, and (c) its rightful possession by the United Dutch East India Company, or VOC. The present text is partly based on a new transcription of the original sources.

      Appendix II is a mixture of archival and printed documents, some of which were discovered only a few years ago in the Dutch national archives in The Hague. Documents I–IV consist of an intercepted Portuguese letter, addressed to Admiral André Furtado de Mendonça; Jacob van Heemskerck’s correspondence with the directors of the United Amsterdam Company; and the minutes of his council of naval officers. These sources reveal the motives behind Van Heemskerck’s privateering campaign in Malayan waters, give a detailed description of his capture of the Santa Catarina, and outline his ambitious plans for Dutch trade in Southeast Asia. Van Heemskerck urged his employers, for example, to establish a rendezvous near the Strait of Singapore and oust the Portuguese from the lucrative trade between the Indian subcontinent and the Far East. Two letters by Jan ten Grootenhuys (documents V and VI) prove that the VOC commissioned De Jure Praedae and provided Grotius with important information about the early Dutch voyages to the East Indies and his country’s official war policy, which endorsed indiscriminate attacks on Iberian shipping by private merchants. Document VIII is a brief selection from Grotius’s letter to George Lingelsheim in November 1606, announcing the completion of De Jure Praedae. Documents VII and IX testify to Grotius’s close collaboration with the VOC directors, both before and after he finished De Jure Praedae. He petitioned the Estates General in the spring of 1606, demanding that it alleviate the VOC’s heavy financial burdens, caused by the war against the Portuguese, and wrote to the company’s indigenous allies the following winter, offering military support in exchange for a monopoly of the spice trade. Finally, document X is the famous request for the publication of Mare Liberum, which Grotius received from the Zeeland VOC directors in November 1608.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      I would like to thank Knud Haakonssen for his invitation to contribute this volume to the series Natural Law and Enlightenment Classics and for his invaluable advice and support at every stage of the editorial process. David Armitage encouraged me to make my doctoral research on De Jure Praedae available to a wider audience. He assisted my editorial efforts in various ways and put his own edition of Mare Liberum at my disposal even before it appeared in print. My greatest debt is to Peter Borschberg, who has generously shared with me his extensive knowledge of Asian history in the early modern era. His erudition and unfailing good humor were indispensable to me in my work on the translation and annotation of the source materials in appendixes I and II. Fernando Arenas and Paulo Pinto helped me identify Portuguese terms and names. Wil Dijk enlightened me about the coins and measures that were common in Southeast Asia in the seventeenth century. International scholarly collaboration is clearly a sine qua non for the study of any aspect—be it military, political, socioeconomic, or cultural—of the long and fascinating history of the Dutch East India Company. I am very grateful for the assistance that I have received from so many wonderful colleagues around the globe.

COMMENTARY ON THE LAW OF PRIZE AND BOOTY

      CONTENTS

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