The Law of Nations. Emer de Vattel

      Life of Vattel

      Emer¹ de Vattel’s Le droit des gens. Ou Principes de la loi naturelle, appliqués à la conduite & aux affaires des nations & des souverains (The Law of Nations, or Principles of the Law of Nature, Applied to the Conduct and Affairs of Nations and Sovereigns) (1758) was the most important book on the law of nations in the eighteenth century. It was in great measure thanks to this work that the practical and theoretical influence of natural jurisprudence was extended down through the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. Indeed, it was Vattel who was cited as a major source of contemporary wisdom on questions of international law in the American Revolution and even by opponents of revolution, such as Cardinal Consalvi, at the Congress of Vienna.

      Emer de Vattel was born at Couvet, in Neuchâtel, a principality ruled by the kings of Prussia, on April 25, 1714, as the youngest son of David Vattel and Marie de Montmollin.² His father, ennobled in 1727 by the king of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm I, was a Protestant clergyman and head of the local congregation of ministers; his mother was the daughter of the principality’s ambassador to the Prussian court. From 1728 to 1730 Vattel was enrolled as a student of the humanities at the University of Basel, where he seems to have attended courses on Samuel Pufendorf given by the Huguenot minister Pierre Roques. In 1733 he went to Geneva to pursue theological and metaphysical studies; one of his teachers was Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, and it was under Burlamaqui’s tutelage that Vattel first studied in detail the principles of natural law and the law of nations. Little is known of the following years, but in 1740 and 1741 Vattel wrote a series of essays, several of which appeared in Switzerland’s leading literary journal, the Neuchâtelbased Journal Helvétique.³ The same year also saw his lengthy defense of the philosophy of Leibniz against the accusation of atheism made by the Lausanne professor of philosophy and mathematics Jean-Pierre de Crousaz.⁴ Vattel’s Défense, which he dedicated to Friedrich II (“the Great”), earned him an invitation from the French ambassador in Berlin to come to the court of the prince whose subject he was by birth. However, he failed to obtain a diplomatic position and, pressed by financial difficulties, in 1743 he moved to Dresden, where he was promised employment by Count Brühl, first minister of Elector Friedrich August II of Saxony (who as August III was also the elective king of Poland). Vattel spent the next three years in Neuchâtel, writing essays and studying the works of the German philosopher Christian Wolff, while waiting for orders from Dresden. These essays, which included his Dissertation sur cette question: Si la loi naturelle peut porter la société à sa perfection, sans le secours des loix politiques (Dissertation on This Question: Can Natural Law Bring Society to Perfection Without the Assistance of Political Laws?) as well as the Essai sur le fondement du droit naturel, et sur le premier principe de l’obligation où se trouvent tous les hommes, d’en observer les loix (Essay on the Foundation of Natural Law and on the First Principle of the Obligation Men Find Themselves Under to Observe Laws), were published in 1746.⁵ In 1747, finally, after dedicating the second edition of the Pièces diverses to Brühl,⁶ he was granted a modest annual pension of 500 écus and sent as a permanent minister to Berne. The purpose of his mission remains unclear; some of his compatriots speculated that it was to negotiate the acquisition of Neuchâtel by the elector of Saxony,⁷ but it is more likely that he was to facilitate renegotiation of a loan of 700,000 Reichsthaler that Saxony had received from the city the year before. In fact, Vattel’s stay in Berne lasted no longer than a few weeks.

      For much of the next ten years Vattel remained in Neuchâtel. From here he sent a stream of letters to Brühl complaining of his ill health and dire financial circumstances. Nevertheless, this turned out to be the most productive period of his life. In 1757 he published a further collection of essays that included dialogues between Diogenes and Marcus Aurelius and between Henry IV of France and his adviser Sully.⁸ Also during this period he wrote his masterpiece, Droit des gens, which appeared in Neuchâtel at the end of 1757, though the title page says London 1758.⁹ The work quickly established Vattel as a major authority on natural jurisprudence.¹⁰