Emerich de Vattel (25 April 1714 – 28 December 1767) was a Swiss philosopher, diplomat, and legal expert whose theories laid the foundation of modern international law and political philosophy. He was born in Couvet in Neuchatel, Switzerland in 1714 and died in 1767 of edema. He was largely influenced in his philosophy by Gottfried Leibniz and Christian Wolff and strove to integrate their ideas into the legal and political system. He is most famous for his 1758 work Droit des gens; ou, Principes de la loi naturelle appliqués à la conduite et aux affaires des nations et des souverains (in English, The Law of Nations or the Principles of Natural Law Applied to the Conduct and to the Affairs of Nations and of Sovereigns). This work was his claim to fame and won him enough prestige to be appointed as a councilor to the court of King Augustus III of Saxony.
Vattel's masterpiece was largely influenced by a book titled Jus Gentium Methodo Scientifica Pertractum (The Law of Nations According to the Scientific Method) by Christian Wolff. Vattel's work began, in fact, by translating Wolff's text from Latin, and adding his own thoughts. Vattel's work was also heavily influenced by Gottfried Leibniz and Hugo Grotius. Focused largely on the rights and obligations of citizens and states, Vattel's work also had ramifications for Just War Theory as it outlined international diplomacy as we now know it.[1]
Vattel elucidated the "Golden Rule of Sovereigns":
One cannot complain when he is treated as he treats others.
Vattel’s Law of Nations was translated into English in 1760, based on the French original of 1758. A Dublin translation of 1787 does not include notes from the original nor posthumous notes added to the 1773 French edition. Several other English editions were based on the edition of 1760. However, an English edition from 1793 includes Vattel’s later thoughts, as did the London 1797 edition. The 1797 edition has a detailed table of contents and margin titles for subsections.[2]
Swiss editor Charles W.F. Dumas sent Benjamin Franklin three original French copies of de Vattel's Le droit des gens (The Law of Nations). Franklin presented one copy to the Library Company of Philadelphia. On December 9, 1775, Franklin thanked Dumas: [3]
“It came to us in good season, when the circumstances of a rising State make it necessary to frequently consult the Law of Nations.” Franklin
Franklin also said that this book by Vattel, "has been continually in the hands of the members of our Congress now sitting".[4]
Two notable copies of The Law of Nations owned by the New York Society Library have been associated with US President George Washington. One copy had been borrowed by Washington on 8 October 1789, along with a copy of Vol. 12 of the Commons Debates, containing transcripts from Great Britain's House of Commons. When the staff of the Washington museum at Mount Vernon heard about the overdue books, they were unable to locate them, but purchased a second copy of the de Vattel work for US$12,000. This identical copy was ceremoniously "returned" 221 years late on 20 May 2010. The library waived the unpaid late-fees.[5]
Vattel also published works other than his magnum opus. His last work was written in 1762 and concerned Wolff's natural law philosophy.[6]
Vattel was one of a number of 18th century European scholars who wrote on international law and were "well known in America" at the time, including Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, Cornelius van Bynkershoek, Hugo Grotius, Samuel von Pufendorf, Thomas Rutherforth, and Wolff. The Law of Nations has been described as "unrivaled among such treatises in its influence on the American founders".[7][8]
Vattel is also cited extensively in Lysander Spooner's The Unconstitutionality Of Slavery and appears to be a key Enlightenment thinker in Spooner's thought.
1. ^ Ignatieff, Michael (17 February 2002), "Barbarians at the Gates", The New York Times, retrieved 4 May 2011
2. ^ English Editions of The Law of Nations, Online Library of Liberty. Retrieved May 8, 2011.
3. ^ Emer de Vattel (1916), Charles Ghequiere Fenwick, ed., Le droit des gens [The Law of Nations], Carnegie Institution of Washington, p. xxx, retrieved 4 May 2011
4. ^ U.S. Steel Corp. v. Multistate Tax Comm'n., 434 U.S. 452, 462 (1977).
5. ^ "George Washington's 221-year overdue library book: A timeline", The Week, 21 May 2010, retrieved 3 May 2011
6. ^ Questions de droit naturel, et observations sur le Traité du droit de la nature de M. le baron de Wolf, A Berne : Chez la Societé typographique (1762) at Internet Archive
7. ^ U.S. Department of State: Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of State: America’s Founders were inspired by the ideas and values of early Swiss philosophers like Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui and Emer de Vattel, and the 1848 Swiss Constitution was influenced by our own U.S. Constitution. Swiss commitment to democracy is an example for nations and people everywhere who yearn for greater freedoms and human rights
8. ^ Ramsey, Michael D. (14 October 2005), "Law of Nations as a Constitutional Obligation" (MS Word document), International Human Rights Colloquium (Georgetown University Law Center), retrieved 4 May 2011
Primary
- Le droit des gens ou Principes de la loi naturelle appliqués à la conduite et aux affaires des nations et des souverains. Tome 1 / par M. de Vattel, Londres : 1758 via Gallica
- Le droit des gens ou Principes de la loi naturelle appliqués à la conduite et aux affaires des nations et des souverains. Tome 2 / par M. de Vattel, Londres : 1758 via Gallica
- The Law of Nations (full text)
- Le droit des gens, Emer de Vattel, Translation of 1758 edition, Ed. Charles Ghequiere Fenwick
- Law of Nations, 1883 Ed. Joseph Chitty, & Edward D. Ingraham
Secondary
- Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Vattel, Emeric de". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
- "Emer de Vattel" Biography and works at Online Library of Liberty
- Works by or about Emer de Vattel in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
Life of Vattel
Emer1 de Vattel’s Le droit des gens. Ou Principes de la loi naturelle, appliqués à la conduite & aux affaires des nations & des souverains (The Law of Nations, or Principles of the Law of Nature, Applied to the Conduct and Affairs of Nations and Sovereigns) (1758) was the most important book on the law of nations in the eighteenth century. It was in great measure thanks to this work that the practical and theoretical influence of natural jurisprudence was extended down through the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. Indeed, it was Vattel who was cited as a major source of contemporary wisdom on questions of international law in the American Revolution and even by opponents of revolution, such as Cardinal Consalvi, at the Congress of Vienna.
Emer de Vattel was born at Couvet, in Neuchâtel, a principality ruled by the kings of Prussia, on April 25, 1714, as the youngest son of David Vattel and Marie de Montmollin.2 His father, ennobled in 1727 by the king of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm I, was a Protestant clergyman and head of the local congregation of ministers; his mother was the daughter of the principality’s ambassador to the Prussian court. From 1728 to 1730 Vattel was enrolled as a student of the humanities at the University of Basel, where he seems to have attended courses on Samuel Pufendorf given by the Huguenot minister Pierre Roques. In 1733 he went to Geneva to pursue theological and metaphysical studies; one of his teachers was Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, and it was under Burlamaqui’s tutelage that Vattel first studied in detail the principles of natural law and the law of nations. Little is known of the following years, but in 1740 and 1741 Vattel wrote a series of essays, several of which appeared in Switzerland’s leading literary journal, the Neuchâtelbased Journal Helvétique.3 The same year also saw his lengthy defense of the philosophy of Leibniz against the accusation of atheism made by the Lausanne professor of philosophy and mathematics Jean-Pierre de Crousaz.4 Vattel’s Défense, which he dedicated to Friedrich II (“the Great”), earned him an invitation from the French ambassador in Berlin to come to the court of the prince whose subject he was by birth. However, he failed to obtain a diplomatic position and, pressed by financial difficulties, in 1743 he moved to Dresden, where he was promised employment by Count Brühl, first minister of Elector Friedrich August II of Saxony (who as August III was also the elective king of Poland). Vattel spent the next three years in Neuchâtel, writing essays and studying the works of the German philosopher Christian Wolff, while waiting for orders from Dresden. These essays, which included his Dissertation sur cette question: Si la loi naturelle peut porter la société à sa perfection, sans le secours des loix politiques (Dissertation on This Question: Can Natural Law Bring Society to Perfection Without the Assistance of Political Laws?) as well as the 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 (Essay on the Foundation of Natural Law and on the First Principle of the Obligation Men Find Themselves Under to Observe Laws), were published in 1746.5 In 1747, finally, after dedicating the second edition of the Pièces diverses to Brühl,6 he was granted a modest annual pension of 500 écus and sent as a permanent minister to Berne. The purpose of his mission remains unclear; some of his compatriots speculated that it was to negotiate the acquisition of Neuchâtel by the elector of Saxony,7 but it is more likely that he was to facilitate renegotiation of a loan of 700,000 Reichsthaler that Saxony had received from the city the year before. In fact, Vattel’s stay in Berne lasted no longer than a few weeks.
For much of the next ten years Vattel remained in Neuchâtel. From here he sent a stream of letters to Brühl complaining of his ill health and dire financial circumstances. Nevertheless, this turned out to be the most productive period of his life. In 1757 he published a further collection of essays that included dialogues between Diogenes and Marcus Aurelius and between Henry IV of France and his adviser Sully.8 Also during this period he wrote his masterpiece, Droit des gens, which appeared in Neuchâtel at the end of 1757, though the title page says London 1758.9 The work quickly established Vattel as a major authority on natural jurisprudence.10 It also changed his personal situation. In 1759 the elector of Saxony finally recalled Vattel to Dresden, appointed him to the Privy Council, and made him chief adviser to the government of Saxony on foreign affairs. During his stay at Dresden, Vattel published two further works, Mélanges de littérature, de morale, et de politique (1760, reprinted in 1765 as Amusemens de littérature, de morale, et de politique) and Questions de droit naturel et observations sur le traité du droit de nature par le Baron de Wolf (1764), a detailed critique of Wolff’s Ius gentium methodo scientifica pertractatum that Vattel had completed already in 1753. In 1764 he married Marie de Chêne, the daughter of a Huguenot noble family, with whom he had a son. Due to ill health, Vattel was unable to cope with his office and retired to his native Neuchâtel, where he died in December 1767 at the age of fifty-three.
Continued in comment section below.
Replies
Thank you for this information.
A most excellent post--many fully loaded T'anks--Sadly the progressives will insist our foundations are irrelevant and outdated. But as it is written "If the foundations are destroyed what can the righteous do?"Vattel not only influenced Dr. Franklin--but it seems influenced Jefferson as wellas suggested by John Eidsmoe in Christianity and the Constitution.
Thank you, I love it.
I see that Ted Cruz, who appeared to start his Washington career out on the right foot, has now shown himself to be a sleazy, agenda driven politician just like most of his colleagues in the Washington political nirvana. His attempts to sidestep the "natural born Citizen" requirement in the Constitution, ahead of time, by renouncing his Canadian Citizenship to be eligible to possibly run for President one day is pathetically obvious. Well, why not?, we've got one of that breed in the Oval Office right now. If American Citizen's, as a group, gave a damn about the Constitution we wouldn't be talking about this problem now because our elected "representatives" would have put a stop to the foolishness long ago! With all 3 branches of government complicit in sidestepping our Constitution there's not much to be done at the ballot box. Elect away, Citizens ... the political pool is rife with sharks looking to cruise in the lush feeding grounds your pond provides!
Two wrongs don't make a right. If he tries to run, it will be the demise of the Republican Party.. They would never allow us to forget.
Wouldn't it also legalize everything obama has done?