An Introduction to the History of the Principal Kingdoms and States of Europe

Editor’s Introduction

ix editor’s introduction In the early twentieth century when his main natural law works were reissued in the Carnegie Classics series, Samuel Pufendorf was known as a theorist of international law; toward the latter end of the century, when he became more familiar to the Anglo-American world, he was studied mainly as a moral and political theorist. However, in his own time in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Pufendorf was known and respected primarily as a historian. Though these roles may now seem distinct and the subject of different professional literatures , they intersected or coincided in that earlier period. Thus, contrary to interpretations that segment Pufendorf’s life and thought in either topical or temporal ways, or that seek to prioritize one or another function, his roles as international jurist, natural lawyer, and historian must be seen in active relation to one another. They are present at all stages of his career. Samuel Pufendorf was born in 1632, at the height of the Thirty Years’ War, to a Lutheran pastor in Lower Saxony whose family experienced firsthand some of the terrors of that formative period in European history . When he died in 1694, he was royal historian to both Sweden and Brandenburg, an ennobled international figure whose services were also desired in Vienna to record the history of the empire and its Turk1 . Pufendorf (1927a), (1927b), (1931a), (1931b), (1934a), (1934b). 2. Krieger (1965); Denzer (1972); Tuck (1981), (1987); Schneewind (1987), (1998); Haakonssen (1996). 3. Döring (1995), “Einleitung” to “Epistolae duae . . . ,” in Pufendorf (1995), p. 460; and Döring (1994), p. 214 (on the funeral sermons after Pufendorf’s death). 4. Krieger (1965), pp. 201–3, 209; Meinecke (1925), pp. 286–88. x editor’s introduction ish wars. His older brother, Esaias (1628–87), who often furthered his career and remained close despite eventual political differences, was an experienced and well-connected European diplomat; and Samuel himself held the posts of secretary to Hedwig Eleonora—widow of Charles Gustav, dowager queen of Sweden, and mother of Charles XI—and of privy councillor in Berlin. Throughout his career, he maintained close ties to members of the Swedish ruling class, whose sons he taught during his university periods at Heidelberg (1660–68) and Lund (1668–76). Indeed , as a historian who emphasized the importance of modern history, Pufendorf was throughout his life appropriately in the thick of things. Like Esaias before him, Samuel began his formal education in 1645 at the ducal school at Grimma, where his studies included the Greek and Latin classics, especially the ancient historians. This was also a personal passion that he indulged voraciously on the side and that would provide a basis for his broad historical and political understanding. He continued his study of classics, or philology, at the University of Leipzig (1650–58) where, an early biographer reports, his favorite subjects were “divine and natural law” and the associated study of “history, politics, and civil law.” Equally important at the time was his membership in the Collegium Anthologicum, an extracurricular academic society where he gave many lectures on historical topics, including church history and the Holy Roman Empire. In 1658 Samuel followed Esaias into Swedish service by becoming tutor to the household of Peter Julius Coyet, Sweden’s envoy to Denmark. The renewed war between these countries led to an eight months’ long imprisonment in Copenhagen , during which Pufendorf composed the Elements of Universal Jurisprudence (1660), his first and structurally most formal natural law 5. Döring (1996b), p. 92, note 57; letter to von Seilern (March 5, 1690), Pufendorf (1996), 175, p. 261, and p. 263, note 1; Hamburgische Bibliotheca. . . . Die zehnte Centuria , Art. 37, p. 128; and Moraw (1962), pp. 168–69, 172. 6. Adlemansthal [Dahlmann], “Vita, Fama, et Fata Literaria Pufendorfiana . . . ,” in Samuels Freyhrn. von Puffendorff kurtzer doch gründlicher Bericht von dem Zustande des H. R. Reichs teutscher Nation . . . (Leipzig: Gleditsch und Weidmann, 1710), 3, p. 650. 7. See Pufendorf (1995), pp. 21–86; Döring (1992b), pp. 165–68, 174; and Döring (1988). editor’s introduction xi work. Notably, that same experience also led to a lesser-known political tract, Gundaeus Baubator Danicus (1659), which explored the status and rights of ambassadors in the context of international law. The Elements was published in the Netherlands, where Pufendorf was secretary to Coyet while also studying at Leiden University and editing several...