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The Reception of Vattel’s Law of Nations in the American Colonies: From James Otis and John Adams to the Declaration of Independence
American Journal of Legal History Pub Date : 2017-11-03 , DOI: 10.1093/ajlh/njx023
William Ossipow , Dominik Gerber

The treatise of the Swiss philosopher and jurist Emer de Vattel, The Law of Nations (1758), is well known in the United States and has attracted sustained scholarly atten- tion. Against the widespread assumption that the reception of The Law of Nations in America only started in 1775, this article establishes that Vattel's treatise was available on American soil already in 1762. This finding paves the way for inquiry into Vattel's intellectual authority in the revolutionary context from the early pamphleteers to the Declaration of Independence. Following a reception-based methodology that facilitates robust inferences from patterns of intertextuality, this study aims to make up for the gap in Vattel's historiography regarding the crucial period between 1762 and 1776. New England, and the Boston area in particular, turn out to be the hotbeds of Vattel's reception. A special emphasis is put on the central role of John Adams as a transmitter of Vattel's thought in the colonial discourse in spring 1776. In the great political docu- ments of this time, most of which were written by Adams or by patriots close to him, such as Richard Henry Lee, a recurrent argument, called the Vattel-Adams argument, was put forth, forging a claim on the loss of royal protection into a justification of se- cession. The present study demonstrates that this rationalization bears unmistakably Vattelian marks. Furthermore, considering Thomas Jefferson's mastery of intertextual practice, it is argued that the first, second, and fifth paragraphs of the Declaration can be robustly shown to contain both immediately Vattelian hypotext and Lockean hypo- text mediated by Vattel. Beyond its objective of uncovering a hitherto neglected aspect of the revolution's intellectual underpinnings, this study offers a new perspective on the intertextual complexity and density that characterize the political documents of the revolutionary era.

中文翻译:

美国殖民地对瓦特尔万国法的接受:从詹姆斯·奥蒂斯和约翰·亚当斯到独立宣言

瑞士哲学家和法学家埃默·德·瓦特尔 (Emer de Vattel) 的论文《万国法》(1758) 在美国广为人知,并引起了学术界的持续关注。与普遍假设美国的《万国法》仅在 1775 年才开始接受的假设相反,本文确定瓦特尔的论文早在 1762 年就已在美国土地上可用。这一发现为在革命背景下探究瓦特尔的知识权威铺平了道路《独立宣言》的早期小册子。本研究采用基于接收的方法,有助于从互文性模式中进行可靠的推论,旨在弥补瓦特尔关于 1762 年至 1776 年关键时期的历史编纂中的空白。新英格兰,尤其是波士顿地区,原来是瓦泰尔接待的温床。特别强调了约翰·亚当斯在 1776 年春季的殖民话语中作为瓦特尔思想传播者的核心作用。在这个时代的伟大政治文件中,其中大部分是由亚当斯或与他关系密切的爱国者撰写的,例如理查德·亨利·李(Richard Henry Lee),提出了一个反复出现的论点,称为瓦特尔-亚当斯论点,将失去王室保护的主张变成了分裂的正当理由。目前的研究表明,这种合理化带有明显的瓦特勒标志。此外,考虑到托马斯杰斐逊对互文实践的掌握,有人认为可以有力地证明宣言的第一、第二和第五段既包含直接的瓦特尔亚文本,也包含由瓦泰尔介导的洛克假文本。
更新日期:2017-11-03
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