Imagining the Grotian Europe: Hugo Grotius’s Vision of Europe and Ideas of European Integration

Abstract

The paper offers a comprehensive study of Hugo Grotius’s vision for the new co­existential paradigm in Europe and ideas of European integration through the prism of political philosophy and international relations. The paper proceeds with the construction of a theoretical framework from various ideas of the thinker and de­fines it as the Grotian theory of European integration. Based on the complex analy­sis of the Grotian concept of a community of sovereign nations and with an inter­pretive approach, the paper studies the visions of European unity in early modern and modern times. Grotius’s recommendation of “general congresses of Christian powers” had a constructive role in the configuration of the emerging European sys­tem of sovereign nation-states and for the new patterns of co-existential consensus. Hence, Grotius’s idealistic and holistic approach towards nations and society of na­tions is viewed within the framework of the theories of structural constructivism and intergovernmentalism of European integration.