Defining the Law of Nations: the École romande du droit naturel and the Lausanne Edition of Grotius’ De jure belli ac pacis (1751–1752)

Abstract

The single most important Swiss contribution to the law of nations in the eighteenth century is Emer de Vattel’s treatise Le Droit des Gens, ou Principes de la Loi Naturelle, appliqués à la Conduite & aux Affaires des Nations & des Souverains (1758).1 Unlike Jean Barbeyrac and JeanJacques Burlamaqui, whose reputation as outstanding natural law scholars is to a lesser or greater extent linked with their being teachers of natural law at the Protestant academies of Lausanne and Geneva, Vattel remained for most of his life an independent scholar and towards the end of his life became the chief advisor to the government of Saxony on foreign affairs. Had Frederick ii of Prussia been willing to keep his father’s promise to found an academy in Neuchâtel, Vattel might well have become a teacher of the law of nature and nations in his native principality, and thereby resumed the project of lecturing on natural law conceived by Louis Bourguet, who from 1731 to 1742 held the chair of philosophy and mathematics sponsored by the town of Neuchâtel and the guilds, and who also lectured on natural law.2 As a classic in the field, Vattel’s treatise is well known, and scholars are aware that his main reference was Christian Wolff, whose theory of the law of