Commentary on the Law of Prize and Booty - (Natural Law and Enlightenment Classics) by Hugo Grotius (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

This Liberty Fund edition of Commentary on the Law of Prize and Booty is based on the one prepared by Gwladys L. Williams and Walter H. Zeydel for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. It combines the original text and new material.

Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) was a lawyer and legal theorist, diplomat and political philosopher, ecumenical activist and theologian.

Martine Julia van Ittersum is a Lecturer in History at the University of Dundee.

Review Quotes

A big book still in print after four centuries, now edited and introduced (and in a translation by Gwladys Williams & Walter Zeydel of 1950) by Martine Julia van Ittersum (Dundee) is Hugo Grotius' Commentary on the Law of Prize and Booty (Liberty Fund), 8335 Allison Pointe Trail, Indianapolis, IN 46250. 2006, US $20.00 in hardcover and only US $12.00 for the 632-page paperback). Written to justify the capture by the Dutch of a Portuguese merchant ship in the Strait of Singapore, the book eventually entered the approved corpus of international mercantile law regarding the expanding empires of European commerce. Grotius' Latin manuscript was not transcribed and published until H. G. Hamaker brought it out in 1868 after it had been found among Grotius papers sold at auction in 1864. Now it appears with some newly discovered material in appendices.

-Bibliotheque d'Humanisme et Renaissance, LXIX: 3 (2007)