ABSTRACT
The unsuspecting reader of David Ogg’s classic account of the history of seventeenth-century Europe would come across an arresting passage. He was writing about what was quite unique to the century: the first serious attempt in an age in which Europe was almost constantly at war to mitigate its worst horrors. Some contemporary writers, like the French politician Sully, had advocated a pan-European union of Christian powers committed to a general peace. Others were more practical in their thinking and, of these, none was more important than Grotius.
