The 'freedom of the sea' and the 'modern cosmopolis' in Alberico Gentili's De iure belli

Grotiana

Volumn 30, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 88-106

  Panizza, Diego ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF PADOVA   (Italy)

^b Scientific Committee   (Italy)

Author keywords

Bellum iustum; Empire; Iurisdictio; Ius commune humanitatis; Ius communicationis; Libertas commercii; Mare; Occupatio vacuorum; Ratio humanitatis; Ratio status; Respublica magna; Usus communis

Indexed keywords

EID: 75149194041     PISSN: 01673831     EISSN: 18760759     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/016738309X12537002674321     Document Type: Article

References (31)

1. For a general account of Gentili's life and works, see D. Panizza, Alberico Gentili, giurista ideologo nell'Inghilterra elisabettiana (Padova: La Garangola, 1981)
2. For a critical overview of recent literature, see D. Quaglioni, Introduzione, in Alberico Gentili, Il Diritto di Guerra. De iure belli libri III, 1598, ed. by G. Marchetto and C. Zendri, Italian tr. by P. Nencini (Milano: Giuffrè, 2008)
3. Idem, Gentili and the Theological Tradition of War: the Critical Points of a Change of Paradigm, in Atti del Convegno, Dodicesima Giornata Gentiliana, Centro Internazionale Studi Gentiliani (Milano, Giuffrè, 2008), pp. 145-173
4. As regards methodology, these studies partake of a new mode of doing the history of international law. They partake of what has been called as the 'historiographical turn' in the field of international studies, in the wake of the broader 'hermeneutic turn', or 'contextualist revolution', inaugurated by the Cambridge School of intellectual historians (Peter Laslett, Quentin Skinner, John Pocock, John Dunn). In particular, for a valuable example of an intellectual history of international thought, see R. Tuck, The Rights of War and Peace. Political Thought and the International Order from Grotius to Kant (Oxford: University Press, 1999)
5. In general, on the new directions of international studies, see D. Armitage, 'The Fifty Years' Rift: Intellectual History and International Relations', Modern Intellectual History 1 (2004), 97-109
6. M. Koskenniemi, 'Why History of International Law Today?', Rechtsgeschichte 4 (2004), 61-66
7. G.R. Bandeira Galindo, 'Martti Koskenniemi and the Historiographical Turn in International Law', European Journal of International Law 16 (2005), 539-559
8. Albericus Gentili, Hispanicae advocationis libri duo (Hanoviae, Apud haeredes Guilielmi Antonii, 1613)
9. Another edition appeared at Frankfurt in 1613, and others in Amsterdam in 1661, 1664. A photographic reproduction of the 1661 text, with a translation, edited and introduced by Frank F. Abbott, was published in 1921 at New York in the 'Classics of International Law' Series. For the best synoptic analysis of this work, see K.R. Simmonds, 'Alberico Gentili at the Admiralty Bar, 1605-1608', Archiv des Völkerrechts 7 (1958/59), 3-25
10. More recently, the work has been principally studied under the optic of the European ius commune and late Renaissance methods of interpretation: see A. Wijffels, Alberico Gentili and Thomas Crompton. An Encounter between an Academic Jurist and a Legal Practitioner, Studia Forensia Historica 1 (Leiden: Jus Deco Publications, 1992)
11. Idem, Alberico Gentili e Thomas Crompton. Una sfida tra un professore e un avvocato, (Italian tr. of the previous) and Alberico Gentili e i Pirati, in Alberico Gentili Consiliatore, Atti del Convegno, Quinta Giornata Gentiliana (Centro Internazionale Studi Gentiliani), ed. by A. Wijffels (Milano, Giuffrè, 1999), respectively pp. 23-82, and pp. 85-130
12. For an original interpretation, which makes sense of the contradictory nature of Gentili's forensic responsa by considering them as characteristic expressions of maritime legal strategy in the new context of inter-imperial politics, see L. Benton, 'The Many Legalities of the Sea in Gentili's Hispanica advocatio', Paper presented at New York University School of Law, Symposium on A Just of Empire? Rome's Legal Legacy and the Justification of War and Empire in International Law, March 13-15, 2008
13. Again, on Gentili's views, both theoretical and forensic, as seen in a broader historical narrative, see Idem, A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400-1900 (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2010), Chap. 3, entitled 'Sovereignty at Sea. Jurisdiction, Piracy, and the Origins of Ocean Regionalism'
14. Albericus Gentili, De iure belli libri tres (Hanoviae: Excudebat Guilielmus Antonius, 1598)
15. The quotations are to be found in the Carnegie Endowment edition, a photographic reproduction of the edition of 1612, Introduction by Coleman Phillipson, English tr. by John C. Rolfe, 'Classics of International Law' Series (Oxford: University Press, 1933)
16. Vitoria, Relectio De Indis, Q. 3, A. 1
17. For a critical edition and English translation of the text, see Francisco de Vitoria, Political Writings, ed. by A. Pagden and J. Lawrance (Cambridge: University Press, 1991)
18. For a deeper, more extended analysis, see Idem, 'Dispossessing the Barbarian: the Language of Spanish Thomism and the Debate over the Property Rights of the American Indians', in The Languages of Political Theory in Early Modern Europe, ed. by A. Pagden (Cambridge: University Press, 1987), pp. 79-98
19. 'Honesty' means 'honestas', a notion that is used by Gentili in relationship with the notion of 'utility' or 'expediency', a relationship that he interprets according to a complex logic, which is of differentiation but not necessarily of opposition. In Gentili's vocabulary, 'honestas' means a distinct and pure kind of 'morality' which in principle may be part of 'natural justice', just as well as 'utility'. It is worth recalling that the dialectics between utile and honestum is a topical theme in Renaissance moral thinking (for a general overview, see Q. Skinner, Machiavelli (Oxford: University Press, 1992), pp. 50-55
20. P.N. Miller, Defining the Common Good (Cambridge: University Press, 1994), pp.153-160
21. De iure belli, I.19, p. 88
22. See De iure belli, pp. 88-89
23. Gentili's legalist definitions or his use of them, by dissociating the meaning of 'common' from 'property' appears to make a crucially innovative conceptual move in respect of the civil law tradition. The tradition used to stress that things such as the sea and the coastline 'are common with respect to use and ownership'. Arguably, such a move appears objectively linked to the great philosophical mutation from the Thomist vocabulary of 'common property' to a new and distinctly modern theory of property, notably such as that elaborated by Grotius. On the great historical mutation, see the illuminating analysis by James Tully in A Discourse on Property (Cambridge: University Press, 1980), pp. 62-79 (in particular, on the different meanings of 'common' in relation to 'property', pp. 69-70)
24. For a general reconstruction of the debate on the law of the sea in early-modern political thought, see Tuck, The Rights of War and Peace, pp. 90-94, 104-107, 110-117, 155-157 (in particular, on the origin and evolution of the civil law tradition, pp. 63-65)
25. For a general account, see especially Alfred P. Rubin, The Law of Piracy (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 1988)
26. Peter Pearle, The Pirate Wars (London: Methuen, 2003)
27. On the issue of 'international punishment', Gentili's position is fundamentally aligned with the scholastic orthodoxy as established by Innocent IV and opposed to the position of the Spanish theologians, who had argued that crimes against nature could not justify external intervention, basically because of lack of jurisdiction. Only Vitoria put forward a compromise view admitting the legitimacy of war in case of human sacrifice and cannibalism (for Vitoria's views, see Political Writings, 'On Dietary Laws, or Self-Restraint' 1.5, pp. 224-226
28. De Indis, Q. 3, A. 5, pp. 287-288)
29. It is interesting to mention the case of Richard Hakluyt, the great English memorialist and ideologue of the English colonial activities, who undertook a manuscript translation of Mare liberum as soon as it appeared. Hakluyt's initiative bears witness to the policies and attitudes that were dominant at the time of Queen Elizabeth, thus establishing an ideal continuity with the ideas of a great Elizabethan like Gentili. The manuscript work has been published recently for the first time: see Hugo Grotius, The Free Sea, Translated by Richard Hakluyt, with William Welwood's Critique and Grotius's Reply, ed. by D. Armitage (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund 2004)
30. M. Bourquin, 'Grotius est-il le père du droit des gens?', in Grandes figures et grandes oeuvres juridiques, Mémoires publiés par la Facultè de Droit de Genéve 6 (Geneva: Librairie de l'Université, 1948), pp. 77-95
31. The quotation is taken from P. Haggenmacher, Grotius and Gentili: A Reassessment of Thomas E. Holland's Inaugural Lecture, in Hugo Grotius and International Relations (Oxford: University Press, 1990), p. 133