Présentation de l'éditeur
This book explores the history of the international order in the eighteenth and nineteenth century through a new study of Emer de Vattel’s Droit des gens (1758). Drawing on unpublished sources from European archives and libraries, the book offers an in-depth account of the reception of Vattel’s chief work. Vattel’s focus on the myth of good government became a strong argument for republicanism, the survival of small states, drafting constitutions and reform projects and fighting everyday battles for freedom in different geographical, linguistic and social contexts. The book complicates the picture of Vattel’s enduring success and usefulness, showing too how the work was published and translated to criticize and denounce the dangerousness of these ideas. In doing so, it opens up new avenues of research beyond histories of international law, political and economic thought.
Sommaire
Introduction: The Invention of Good Government for the Law of Nations
Vattel’s Droit des gens. A Transnational Bestseller from the Age of Enlightenment
The Good Government: The Constituting and Constituted Nation
The First Reception: Sicily, Corsica and the Mediterranean Islands
The Great Crisis of the Sixties and the Political Reforms Between Piedmont and Tuscany
