The savage republic : : De Indis of Hugo Grotius, republicanism, and Dutch hegemony within the early modern world system (c. 1600 -1619) / / by Eric Wilson.

• Author: Wilson, Eric Michael, 1961-
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden ;, Boston : : Martinus Nijhoff Publishers,, 2008.
• Year of Publication: 2008
• Language: English
• Series: Nijhoff eBook titles 2008
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (548 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

Intended for the professional academic and graduate student, this book is the first to utilize the methodology of “New Stream” legal scholarship in an extended critical “exegesis” of Hugo Grotius’ De Indis (c.1604-6). De Indis is predicated upon a two-fold discursive strategy: (i) investing “private” Trading Companies with “public” international legal personality, and (ii) collapsing the distinction between “private” and “public” warfare. Governing the operation of textual interpretation is De Indis ’ status as a republican treatise juridically legitimating an early modern Trans-National corporation (the VOC) that served as an agent of a “primitive” 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 “micro-oscillation” between the “thick” ontology of Late Scholasticism (“Utopia”) and the “thin” ontology of Civic Humanism (“Apology”) wholly appropriate to the governance requirements of the embryonic Modern World-System.

Table of Contents

Preliminary Material -- Introduction on Heterogeneity and the Origin(s) of De Indis of Hugo Grotius -- Chapter One. The Genealogy of Grotian Morals: the Grotian Heritage, Natural Law, and Hegemony -- Chapter Two. ‘The Force of Law’: Critical Legal Studies and Deconstruction -- Chapter Three. Arche-trace (I)/Imperium: Holland as Hegemon within the Early Modern World-System -- Chapter Four. Arche-Trace (II)/ Dominium: Divisible Sovereignty and the VOC as Corporate Sovereign -- Chapter Five. Trace (I)/Respublica: Apologia and Humanism -- Chapter Six. TRACE (II): Utopia and Late Scholasticism -- Chapter Seven. ‘Concerning the Indies’: Ius Naturale, Privateers, Pirates and Anti-Systemic Movements -- Chapter Eight. ‘Concerning the Indians’: Ius Naturale, Infidels, and Natives -- Conclusion the New Law of the Earth -- Index of Names or Persons -- Index of Subjects.