Le savoir politique contre les préjugés : Antoine II Pecquet et son Esprit des Maximes Politiques (1757)

Antoine II Pecquet served as top civil servant at the French foreign office under Louis XV, succeeding his father Antoine I Peqcuet. In 1740, his career came to a complete halt when he was arrested and taken to the Château de Vincennes, after which he was placed under house confinement in the countryside by means of a lettre de cachet. In 1757 -the same year as Emer de Vattel’s classic Le Droit des gens-, his Esprit des Maximes Politiques pour servir de suite à l’Esprit des Loix du Président de Montesquieu appeared in Paris (with editions in Leiden and Amsterdam the next years). The work frequently refers to Montesquieu, but even more to Hugo Grotius, whose De Iure Belli ac Pacis Libri Tres was published 150 years before. Pecquet uses his experience in foreign policy advise to reject false causes of war, e.g. a difference of religion. His recourse to reason serves to oppose passion and prejudice, though he avoids anchoring it in the philosophical tradition. The natural law-underpinning of his work is essential to decode the language used to restrict the use of force and safeguard the European balance. Hence, Pecquet’s implicit and loose use of Grotius is one of the many faces of international law in the early age of Enlightenment.