Théorie des traités de commerce entre les nations; par M. Bouchaud .......

A Paris, Chez la Veuve Duchesne, 1777. xvi, 538, [2, Approbation, verso blank] pp. Small 8vo. Contemporary marbled calf, spine richly gilt with raised bands, light damage to head and foot of spine, red edges, a nice copy. INED 686; Camus 213; Conlon 77:711; Kress B.13; Goldsmiths' 11572; not in Einaudi. Scarce first edition of this important work by Mathieu-Antoine Bouchaud, great-nephew of Gassendi and author of a substantial number of articles on jurisprudence and canonical law for the great Encyclopedie. The eighteenth century was a prime period for theoretical reflection on international relations and the legal formalization of the international order. Treaties of commerce consistently included provisions protecting commercial exchange from the effects of war, the accumulation of which became part of the law of nations. More particularly, such treaties can be seen as having been a means to define rules that would protect non-belligerents from the consequences of conflicts in which they were not involved. This chapter investigates commercial treaties by looking beyond their bilateral commitments to commercial exchange, instead seeing them as contributing to the accumulation of international jurisprudence on trade in wartime. It was from this perspective that in 1777 Mathieu-Antoine Bouchaud developed his Théorie des traités de commerce entre les nations to capture the attempts by legal theorists to find adequate instruments to manage the unruly practices of political negotiation and commercial exchange ("The Conditions of Trade in Wartime: Treaties of Commerce and Maritime Law in the Eighteenth Century" in: The Politics of Commercial Treaties in the Eighteenth Century (pp. 217-242) by Éric Schnakenbourg.) - Errata on verso of page xv.