Hugo Grotius and Marriage’s Global Past: Conjugal Thinking in Early Modern Political Thought

While Grotius does not offer a new theory of marriage, nonetheless marriage seems to crop up in the most unlikely of places in The Rights of War and Peace. Marriage, as it arises out of natural law, becomes a model for thinking about topics vital to the early modern international: conduct in war, trade, sovereignty, and subordination of peoples; theorizing hierarchy and obligation of unequals; forging distinctions between the legal and the permissible; and exploring obligations of consent and promise. The topic of marriage is thus shown to be a valid resource in the global history of political thought.