In the preface of his Law of Nations, Emer de Vattel stated that ‘I was born in a country of which liberty is the soul, the treasure, and the fundamental law; and my birth qualifies me to be the friend of all nations’. At first sight, it seems evident that this country is Switzerland. Vattel’s statement perfectly dovetails with the eighteenth-century discourse that praised the country as a haven of peace and frugality and applauded the republican autonomy of the Swiss. In scholarly literature, Vattel is usually considered as a Swiss legal scholar. However, the question of which country Vattel considered as his native country is not trivial when we take a closer look – and it may offer us a key to a better understanding of important parts of his work.