Hugo Grotius’s Commentary on the Law of Prize and Booty, completed in 1606, profoundly challenges the traditional conceptual dichotomy between private piracy and public warfare. Grotius’s treatise convincingly blurs comfortable distinctions between piracy, privateering, and warfare.
The historical event giving rise to the Commentary was an act of piracy. In 1602, the Dutch sea-captain Jakob van Heemskerck was commissioned by the United Amsterdam Company to command eight of their ships and engage in peaceful trade with the natives of the East Indies. Unlike privateers of the time, Heemskerck received no letters of marque from the Dutch Admiralty Board authorising raids on and seizures of foreign shipping, and he was forbidden by the Directors of the Company from …show more content…
In 1604, the Company commissioned the up-and-coming 21-year-old lawyer Hugo Grotius to write a
1
legal defence of Heemskerck’s actions, which became a massive treatise of natural law in the form of the Commentary.1
Grotius’s philosophical defence of Heemskerck’s piracy radically departed from previous accounts of pirates and piracy. Alberico Gentili, for example, was concerned to distinguish between public war and private piracy. According to Gentili, the authority of the state justified the use of privateering as an instrument of war.2 Gentili’s theory would therefore prevent Heemskerck’s actions from classification as legitimate public warfare.
The historical event giving rise to the Commentary was an act of piracy. In 1602, the Dutch sea-captain Jakob van Heemskerck was commissioned by the United Amsterdam Company to command eight of their ships and engage in peaceful trade with the natives of the East Indies. Unlike privateers of the time, Heemskerck received no letters of marque from the Dutch Admiralty Board authorising raids on and seizures of foreign shipping, and he was forbidden by the Directors of the Company from …show more content…
In 1604, the Company commissioned the up-and-coming 21-year-old lawyer Hugo Grotius to write a
1
legal defence of Heemskerck’s actions, which became a massive treatise of natural law in the form of the Commentary.1
Grotius’s philosophical defence of Heemskerck’s piracy radically departed from previous accounts of pirates and piracy. Alberico Gentili, for example, was concerned to distinguish between public war and private piracy. According to Gentili, the authority of the state justified the use of privateering as an instrument of war.2 Gentili’s theory would therefore prevent Heemskerck’s actions from classification as legitimate public warfare.