A Normative Approach to War: Peace, War, and Justice in Hugo Grotius

Hugo Grotius the great Dutch international lawyer and theorist, is often portrayed as a man who, in his most famous work De June Belli ac Pacis, indulged a passion for the abstract by constructing a theoretical model of international law and international society divorced from reality. In this pioneering book, the work of a team of distinguished Japanese academics, a very different interpretation is proposed and defended. Grotius had in mind not a bookish theory, but above all a practically oriented treatise which aimed at regulating and restraining war. By scrutinizing the text and its key concepts, the authors demonstrate that this was in fact the case and that Grotius was largely successful in his aims. In this powerful and illuminating set of essays the authors also take the opportunity afforded by their study of Grotius to reflect upon the Eurocentric bias of the historiography of international law, tacitly shared even by contemporary academics.

Onuma Yasuaki is at Tokyo University.

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