Commercial reform against the tide: Reapproaching the eighteenth-century decline of the republics of Venice and the United Provinces
The emergence of ‘civilized monarchies’, reformed European territorial states that had turned commercial, created major challenges to the old trade republics of Venice and the United Provinces. Would they perish and cease to exist, which seemed a logical corollary to the recent history of their decline, or might they be reconstituted and integrated into a new interstate system? Rather than to approach this question from the perspective of the history of political thought, which offers a range of rival outlooks on this issue, the present article treats the issue more from the inside and thus connects theories about decline to their concrete manifestations and experiences; from the spheres of diplomatic tensions over unpaid debts, publishing networks and the oscillation of consular and maritime law reform between Venice and the Dutch Republic.
Le diplomate vénitien entre les XVIe et XVIIIe siècles : statut, rôles et fonctions
Le but de cet article est de presenter la figure du diplomate venitien, ses caracteristiques et ses fonctions, pour comprendre dans quelle mesure et pourquoi ces ambassadeurs sont devenus un modele pour les Etats europeens. Le modele theorique de la diplomatie venitienne aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siecles est compare avec son fonctionnement pratique dans le cadre de la politique de neutralite et du declin economique de la Republique. La description du cas de Venise offre des preuves pour une relecture du role du diplomate face a la rapidite des changements sociaux et economiques et a la distance – typique de la culture politique et juridique venitienne – entre la theorie juridique et la loi vivante.
Are There Any Natural Rights
I SHALL advance the thesis that if there are any moral rights at all, it follows that there is at least one natural right, the equal right of all men to be free. By saying that there is this right, I mean that in the absence of certain special conditions which are consistent with the right being an equal right, any adult human being capable of choice (i) has the right to forbearance on the part of all others from the use of coercion or restraint against him save to hinder coercion or restraint and (2) is at liberty to do (i.e., is under no obligation to abstain from) any action which is not one coercing or restraining or designed to injure other persons.2 I have two reasons for describing the equal right of all men to be free as a natural right; both of them were always emphasized by the classical theorists of natural rights. (i) This right is one which all men have if they are capable of choice; they have it qua men and not only if they are members of some society or stand in some special relation to each other. (2) This right is not created or conferred by men's voluntary action;