Peter Borschberg

Book Launch August 2010

 

 

In February, 1603, Admiral Jakob van Heemskerk plundered a Portuguese merchantman, the Santa Catarina, traveling from Macao to Melaka. The sale of the cargo at a public auction made traders across Northern Europe aware of the riches to be reaped from Asian trade. However, the episode raised legal questions and the United Dutch East India Company (VOC) commissioned the young Hugo Grotius to defend Heemskerk’s actions. The result was a treatise on free trade in the East Indies, the war effort against the Portuguese and the Spanish in Asia, and on the legal and moral grounds for attacking and plundering Portuguese and Spanish mercantile shipping.

This book explores the Santa Catarina incident and Grotius’ treatise from various perspectives. It considers the background to the treatise and Grotius’ role in early VOC policies of alliance and plunder, the meaning of the treatise itself, and what Grotius actually knew about Southeast Asian polities and Portuguese institutions of trade when he wrote the treatise.

Grotius’ Commentary on the Law of Prize and Booty and its spin-off, The Free Sea, rank as two of the greatest works in the history of international and legal political thought and have contributed significantly to Grotius’ enduring reputation as one of the founders of modern international law. The present book will interest not only historians of Southeast Asia, but also specialists in international relations, political theory, maritime history and public law.

 

Published by

NUS Press and KITLV Press, 2010

ISBN: 978-9971-69-467-8

List price: approx. US$ 32/ S$ 42

“Hugo Grotius, the Portuguese and ‘Free Trade’ in the East Indies”

Date: 6/March/2010