Book contents
- Concepts and Contexts of Vattel’s Political and Legal Thought
- Concepts and Contexts of Vattel’s Political and Legal Thought
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Concepts and Contexts of Vattel’s Political and Legal Thought
- Part I Historical and Intellectual Contexts
- Part II Concepts
- Part III Receptions
- 10 Vattel’s Reception in British America, 1761–1775
- 11 Tradition and Revolution
- 12 Vattel’s Law of Nations in Late Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century Greece and Italy
- 13 Reception of Vattel in Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century England and Scotland
- 14 Receptions of Vattel in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century International Law
- 15 Vattel’s Reception in International Relations
- Index
- References
10 - Vattel’s Reception in British America, 1761–1775
from Part III - Receptions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 June 2021
- Concepts and Contexts of Vattel’s Political and Legal Thought
- Concepts and Contexts of Vattel’s Political and Legal Thought
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Concepts and Contexts of Vattel’s Political and Legal Thought
- Part I Historical and Intellectual Contexts
- Part II Concepts
- Part III Receptions
- 10 Vattel’s Reception in British America, 1761–1775
- 11 Tradition and Revolution
- 12 Vattel’s Law of Nations in Late Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century Greece and Italy
- 13 Reception of Vattel in Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century England and Scotland
- 14 Receptions of Vattel in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century International Law
- 15 Vattel’s Reception in International Relations
- Index
- References
Summary
Vattel’s influence on the American Revolution is often mentioned but rarely discussed in detail. Most historians of the American Revolution do not consider him at all. Those who do, in a routine gesture ‘piously transmitted’,1 invoke one of the most memorable vignettes in the history of international law: Charles W. F. Dumas (1721–1796) sending three copies of Le droit des gens to Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) in 1775. In a 9 December 1775 letter, Franklin thanked Dumas and assured him that the copies ‘came to us in good season, when the circumstances of a rising state make it necessary frequently to consult the law of nations’ and the copy assigned to Congress ‘has been continually in the hands of the members of our congress, now sitting’.2 Franklin gave the other two copies to the Library Company of Philadelphia and Harvard College.
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- Information
- Concepts and Contexts of Vattel's Political and Legal Thought , pp. 203 - 219Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021