Research
The Remonstrant Collection at the Allard Pierson contains an important set of working papers of the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), the author of Mare Liberum/The Free Sea (1609) and De Jure Belli ac Pacis//The Law of War and Peace (1625). In the late 1630s, Grotius personally arranged for a variety of handwritten and printed materials to be bound together as Mss. III C 2 through III C 6. The volumes form an impressive record of Grotius’ day-to-day activities as a lawyer, government servant, scholar and Remonstrant supporter. They also testify to an eventful life in a politically and religiously divided Europe. During the one month fellowship, Martine van Ittersum will examine the papers to correct document-level descriptions found in twentieth-century printed indexes. In addition, she will gather materials for a journal article on Grotius’ involvement in Anglo-Dutch disputes about the cloth trade in 1614-1616.
Fellow
Martine Julia van Ittersum (Ph.D., Harvard University, 2002) is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Dundee (UK). She has published widely on book history, Dutch history, and the history of Western imperialism and colonialism. She is the author of two voluminous monographs: Profit and Principle: Hugo Grotius, Natural Rights Theories and the Rise of Dutch Power in the East Indies, 1595-1615 (Brill, 2006) and The Working Papers of Hugo Grotius: Transmission, Dispersal, and Loss, 1604–1864 (Brill, 2024).