Hugo Grotius’s De societate publica cum infidelibus, Justifying overseas expansionism or religious toleration?

Abstract

This article provides an analysis of an unpublished manuscript of Hugo Grotius, entitled De societate publica cum infidelibus, ‘On public partnership with infidels’. In the text, Grotius examines the legal conditions under which Christians may enter into treaties and alliances with non-Christians. Grotius’s text has been interpreted by Peter Borschberg and Martine van Ittersum as a justification of the Dutch commercial and military policies in the East Indies. However, as this article shows, Grotius probably conceived of De societate as a more general treatise, which related not only to the East Indian context, but also to the domestic debate about the legal position of non-Christians in the Dutch Republic. The same arguments that served as a justification for overseas expansionism could thus serve as a justification for religious toleration in the domestic context.