Revolution Principles, IUS Naturae and IUS Gentium in Early-Enlightenment Scotland: The Contribution of Sir Francis Grant, Lord Cullen (C. 1660–1726)

AbstractThis article offers a textual and historical reconstruction of Francis Bacon's thought on imperial and colonial warfare. Bacon holds that conquest, acquisition of peoples and territory through force, followed by subjugation, confers a legal right and title. Imperial expansion is justified both by arguments concerning the interstate balance of power and by arguments related to internal order and stability. On Bacon's view, a successful state must be expansionist, for two key reasons: first, as long as its rivals are expansionist, a state must keep up and even try to outpace them, and, second, a surplus population will foment civil war unless this “surcharge of people” is farmed out to colonies. These arguments for imperial state expansion are held to justify both internal and external colonization and empire. Paradoxically, Bacon holds that the internally colonized may be treated with greater severity, as suppressed rebels, than the externally colonized, who are more fitly a subject of the ius gentium. Bacon holds that toleration offers both an imperial stratagem and a comparative justification for why English and British imperial expansion is more desirable than Spanish imperial expansion. The article concludes with reflections about how one might understand the place of imperial and colonial projects in Bacon's thought, contending that these projects are central to an understanding of Bacon's political aims and thought more broadly.

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Francisco de Vitoria on the Right to Free Trade and Justice

Business Ethics Quarterly ◽

10.1017/beq.2021.2 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-17

Author(s):

Alejo José G. Sison ◽

Dulce M. Redín

Keyword(s):

Business Ethics ◽

Free Trade ◽

Natural Law ◽

Human Right ◽

Free Markets ◽

Law Of Peoples ◽

Private Initiative ◽

The Right ◽

Ius Gentium ◽

Francisco De Vitoria

In 1538–39 Francisco de Vitoria delivered two relections: De Indis and De iure belli. This article distills from these writings the topic of free trade as a “human right” in accordance with ius gentium or the “law of peoples.” The right to free trade is rooted in a more fundamental right to communication and association. The rights to travel, to dwell, and to migrate precede the right to trade, which is also closely connected to the rights to preach, to protect converts, and to constitute Christian princes. This has significant repercussions on the field of business ethics: the right to free trade is ultimately founded directly on natural law and indirectly on divine law; trade is not independent of ethics; and trade is presented as an opportunity to develop the virtues of justice and friendship, among other repercussions. Vitoria is portrayed as a defender of private initiative and free markets.

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