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15 - Vattel’s Reception in International Relations

from Part III - Receptions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2021

By
Richard Devetak
Edited by
Peter Schröder
Peter Schröder
Affiliation:
University College London
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Summary

It should not be hard to make a case for Emer de Vattel’s significance to the study of international relations. His Le Droit des Gens [Law of Nations] (1758) was one of the most influential and popular treatises of international law and diplomacy published in the eighteenth century. It went through multiple editions and was translated into several languages. In addition to becoming something of a diplomat’s ‘bible’ in the nineteenth century, it also had an impact on the thinking of political leaders such as the American founders.1 One would think that this makes Vattel’s writings on the law of nations consequential to a discipline dedicated to understanding international matters of state. But that has not been the case. International Relations (IR) has developed into a highly theoretical discipline in which the history of ‘modern international thought’ has generally been marginal.

Type
Chapter
Information
Concepts and Contexts of Vattel's Political and Legal Thought , pp. 296 - 320
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

Further Reading

Bull, H., ‘Society and anarchy in international relations’, in Butterfield, H. and Wight, M. (eds.), Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics (London, 1966), 55–70.Google Scholar
Bull, H., The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (London, 1977).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butler, P., ‘Legitimacy in a states-system: Vattel’s Law of Nations’, in Donelan, M. (ed.), The Reason of States (London, 1978).Google Scholar
Cello, L., ‘The legitimacy of international interventions in Vattel’s The Law of Nations’, Global Intellectual History 2.2 (2017), 105–123.Google Scholar
Hunter, I., ‘Vattel’s Law of Nations: Diplomatic casuistry for the protestant nation’, Grotiana 31 (2010), 108–140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hurrell, A., ‘Vattel: Pluralism and its limits’, in Clarke, I. and Neumann, I. (eds.), Classical Theories of International Relations (London, 1996), 233–255.Google Scholar
Linklater, A., Men and Citizens in the Theory of International Relations (London, 1982).Google Scholar
Linklater, A. and Suganami, H., The English School of International Relations: A Contemporary Reassessment (Cambridge, 2006).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vollenhoven, C., The Three Stages in the Evolution of the Law of Nations (Dordrecht, 1919).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vollerthun, U., The Idea of International Society: Erasmus, Vitoria, Gentili, Grotius, ed. Richardson, J. L. (Oxford, 2017).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wight, M., Systems of States, ed. Bull, H. (Leicester, 1977).Google Scholar
Wight, M., International Theory: The Three Traditions, ed. Wight, G. and Porter, B. (Leicester, 1991).Google Scholar

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