Allying with Unbelievers: Hugo Grotius’s Letters to East-Indian Rulers

The article examines a series of letters written by Hugo Grotius to East-Indian rulers on behalf of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Drafts of these letters have been preserved at the Dutch National Archives. In his letters, Grotius developed several new ideas about alliances with non-Christians, which would later be included in his writings on natural law and the law of nations. He addressed the non-Christian rulers of the East Indies as sovereigns. He argued that the Dutch had a right to protect their non-Christian allies, even against other Christians, such as the Spaniards and Portuguese. Crucially, Grotius developed a justification for the VOC’s monopoly on the spice trade, which he defended as a just compensation for the expenses it had incurred in ‘liberating’ its East-Indian allies from Iberian ‘tyranny’. He thereby provided a legal framework for the VOC’s ‘informal empire’ in the East Indies.