Articles de cette rubrique

• X.1 On offensive strength

  4 septembre 2018, par Stewart

  Offensive strength is determined by the law of nations, which is the political law of peoples considered in terms of their relationship among themselves.

• X.2 On war

  4 septembre 2018, par Stewart

  The life of states is like that of men. Men have a right to kill in the case of natural defense ; states have a right to wage war for their own preservation.
  In the case of natural defense, I have a right to kill because my life is mine, as the life of my attacker is his ; in the same way, a (…)

• X.3 On the right of conquest

  4 septembre 2018, par Stewart

  From the right of war derives the right of conquest, which is its consequence ; it ought then to follow its spirit.
  When a people is conquered, the conqueror’s right over it follows four kinds of laws : the law of nature, which makes everything tend to the preservation of species ; the law of (…)

• X.4 Some advantages of the conquered people

  4 septembre 2018, par Stewart

  Instead of deducing such fatal consequences from the right of conquest, political thinkers would have done better to evoke the advantages which that right can sometimes confer on the defeated people. They would have been more sensitive to them if our law of nations were exactly followed, and if (…)

• X.5 Gelon, king of Syracuse

  4 septembre 2018, par Stewart

  The finest peace treaty of which history has spoken is, I believe, the one that Gelon made with the Carthaginians. He insisted they abolish the custom of sacrificing their children. [1] How extraordinary ! After defeating three hundred thousand Carthaginians, he imposed a condition that was (…)

• X.6 Of a republic that conquers

  4 septembre 2018, par Stewart

  It is against the nature of the thing, in a federative constitution, for one confederate state to take land from another, as in our times we have seen among the Swiss. In mixed federative republics, where the association is among small republics and small monarchies, it is less exceptional.
  It (…)

• X.7 Continuation of the same subject

  4 septembre 2018, par Stewart

  There is yet another drawback to conquests made by democracies : their government is always abhorrent to subject states. It postures as monarchical, but in truth it is harsher than monarchical government, as the experience of all times and all countries has shown.
  Conquered peoples are in a (…)

• X.8 Continuation of the same subject

  4 septembre 2018, par Stewart

  Thus, when a republic holds some people in its dependency, it must seek to compensate for the disadvantages that arise from the nature of the thing by giving them a good political law and good civil laws.
  An Italian republic was keeping islanders in its obeisance, but its political and civil (…)

• X.9 Of a monarchy that conquers its neighbors

  4 septembre 2018, par Stewart

  If a monarchy can act long before aggrandizement has weakened it, it will become fearsome, and its strength will last as long as it is pressed by neighboring monarchies.
  It must therefore conquer only while it remains within the limits natural to its government. Prudence would have it halt as (…)

• X.10 Of a monarchy that conquers another monarchy

  4 septembre 2018, par Stewart

  Sometimes one monarchy conquers another. The smaller the conquered one, the better it will be contained by fortresses ; the larger it is, the better it will be preserved by colonies.