After 385 years, Grotius’ masterpiece has finally come to The Hague, the “Legal Capital of the World”. The famous first edition of the book, ‘De iure belli ac pacis’ (The Law of War and Peace) by Hugo Grotius, that was published in 1625, was shown for the first time on Monday, to lovers of the lawyer from Delft.

Grotius wrote this book in 1625 during his exile in Paris. The Peace Palace Library in The Hague bought it at an auction in Germany at the end of last year. In this work, based on natural law, he investigated and explained his theory of “just war” (when war is justified, what are the causes of war and what are the rules of war). It is widely regarded as the “Foundation of Modern International Law”. The book was finished in great haste to be in time for the Frankfurt Bookfair. As a result there had not been enough time to correct all pages and page numbering. This print also lacks indices and a table of contents. For specialists it will be most interesting to compare this print with later corrected versions.

The only other known copy of this print is in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. “France has Voltaire, Britain has Locke, we have Grotius” said Henk Nellen, a biographer of Hugo Grotius, who described the book as an “historic sensation”, adding that the acquisition of this book by the Peace Palace Library, will stimulate further research on Grotius and the study of modern international law.