The Law of Nations in German historia literaria and Encyclopaedias in the Eighteenth Century

If one is interested in the law of nations as an academic subject, one clearly has to focus on lectures and textbooks dedicated to the subject. But from a historical point of view, it is worthwhile also to analyse the more general knowledge of the law of nations – that provided to nonspecialists and especially to young academics before they started their specialist training. What did a beginning academic get to know about the law of nations? The propaedeutic lessons available provide interesting information regarding what the general academic public knew about the subject. In the German context during the eighteenth century, historia literaria (‘Geschichte der Gelehrsamkeit’, ‘history of learning’) was the most prominent genre of general instruction in any subject of academic relevance. Its prominence is shown by the large number of textbooks which appeared throughout the whole of the century and the significant number of courses which were offered at all universities, academies and even at high schools. For more than a century, historia literaria was considered extremely successful, keeping the same general aim and changing only in the form of its practical realization. An authoritative definition of the purpose of historia literaria is given in Christoph August Heumann’s Conspectus reipublicae literariae sive via ad historiam literariam, which appeared for the first time in 1718 and for the last time in a posthumous eighth edition in the 1790s. Heumann provides that definition in the first paragraph: ‘The history of learning is the history of letters [i.e. books] and authors, or the narration of the origin and progress of learning from the beginning up to our times’.1