Description
Recently, the intellectual background of international law decision-makers has been studied in the ambitious To The Uttermost Parts of the Earth by Martti Koskenniemi. The impressive volume takes stock of the manifold manifestations of a moving subject that we call today ‘international law’, inspired by Michel Foucault’s method. This stimulating strand of scholarship ought to be complemented with a study of practice. Large-scale digitisation and text recognition enhances our access to the mountains of correspondence kept at Europe’s diplomatic archives. Within this group of sources, we should also take the writings and longer memoranda of civil servants, reformers and foreign policy actors seriously, as exemplified by Ed Jones Corredera’s recent study of Spanish Diplomatic Enlightenment .In 1757, Antoine Pecquet jr. (1700-1762), top civil servant (premier commis) at Louis XV’s Bureaux des affaires étrangères wrote a lengthy ‘sequel’ to the Esprit des Loix (1748) of the famous president à mortier Montesquieu. The latter became the point of reference of enlightened monarchy all along the century, together with Pufendorf (1632-1694) and Fénelon (1651-1715). Pecquet’s work on peace and war in two books (23 resp. 16 chapters) did not enjoy the same degree of philosophical acclamation. It lacks the mathematico-logical systematisation of Wolff (1679-1754) . Peace activists did not canonise it as Saint-Pierre’s Projet de paix perpétuelle. Just as the Prussian King Frederick the Great (1712-1786)’s philosophical texts, the French erudite Gaspard Réal de Curban (1682-1752)’s Science du Gouvernement and the Protestant diplomat Emer de Vattel’s classic Le droit des gens (1758) , Pecquet’s reflections are an attempt to generalise and classify human behaviour in the exercise of power in and between European polities (monarchies, republics, empires), as drawn from practice and observation, but always in a dialogue with what we would call today international law doctrine.
I propose to present Pecquet’s Maximes as a product of diplomatic knowledge in an age without formal diplomatic exam or training in international law, but with a clear impregnation of legal culture, as exemplified in the chapters titles of Book I (domestic government coupled with the sovereign’s inevitable interdependent interest) and Book II (ius ad bellum, ius in bello).
| Period | 21 Jun 2023 → 23 Jun 2023 |
|---|---|
| Event title | Seventh Biennial Conference of the European Society for Comparative Legal History |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Augsburg, Germany |
| Degree of Recognition | International |