Commentary On The Law Of Prize And Booty De Jure Praedae Commentarius

"Commissioned in October 1604 by the United Dutch East India Company, Hugo Grotius's Commentary on the Law of Prize and Booty was intended to justify the Dutch capture in 1603 of a wealthy Portuguese merchantman, the Santa Catarina, in the Strait of Singapore. In a clever and intricate defense of international free trade, Grotius (1583-1645) introduced the notion of a man as a sovereign and free individual with a right to self-defense and, by extension, the right of a company of private merchants to establish a trade empire."--Jacket.

Intended for the professional academic and graduate student, this book is the first to utilize the methodology of a oeNew Streama legal scholarship in an extended critical a oeexegesisa of Hugo Grotiusa (TM) "De Indis" (c.1604-6). "De Indis" is predicated upon a two-fold discursive strategy: (i) investing a oeprivatea Trading Companies with a oepublica international legal personality, and (ii) collapsing the distinction between a oeprivatea and a oepublica warfare. Governing the operation of textual interpretation is "De Indis"a (TM) status as a republican treatise juridically legitimating an early modern Trans-National corporation (the VOC) that served as an agent of a a oeprimitivea system of global governance, the early Capitalist World-Economy. The application of New Stream scholarship reveals that the republican signature of "De Indis" consists of a discursive a oemicro-oscillationa between the a oethicka ontology of Late Scholasticism (a oeUtopiaa ) and the a oethina ontology of Civic Humanism (a oeApologya ) wholly appropriate to the governance requirements of the embryonic Modern World-System.