Hugo Grotius And Mare Liberum

The contribution of Hugo Grotius in the modern international law can be traced back to1609when Mare Liberum was published anonymously. Mare Liberum, less than one hundred pages pamphlet, advocates its core ideas truthfully via the name----free ocean. As other new ideas often encountered the main trend repudiation, Mare Liberum was also faced challenges. The idea of free ocean bombed the governments and academies dramatically especially in the early17th century when the countries struggled for the sea hegemony.The essay, initiated with the review of historical background of Mare Liberum and macro perspective to analyze the profits producing from conquering the sea world since the Europe stepping into the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery. This research then combined with the events inducing Grotius to put the words on papers and tried to picture the true history. Besides, this essay provides the reasons from the aspects of ever-changing events as for why this pamphlet resulted in controversies.The essay, then, focuses on chronological reviewed of three critics’views on Mare Liberum. Namely, William Welwod who wrote An Abridgement of All Sea-Lawes to argue for England owning the rights to fish herring in the North Sea, Seraphim de Freitas who wrote De iusto imperio Lusitanorum Asiatico to provide reasons for the Spanish hegemony abroad and John Selden who wrote Mare Clausum to advocate the hardly limited ocean sovereignty of England and Scotland with a pedantic attitude.The essay makes a u-turn to the history----the Life of Hugo Grotius. It cross-checks the timeline of the foresaid three critics’ writings and Grotius’life, considers the characteristics of Hugo Grotius and then analyses his attitudes toward these critics via writing back to William Welwod, noticing the Seraphim de Freitas to ignoring the John Selden. Eventually the essay does a simple explanation of Grotius’deficiencies in Mare Liberum and ends up in the development of "free ocean".