ABSTRACT
There is, however, a general context of early modern European cultural life in which Grotius’s treatise is clearly relevant, namely, the use of comparative methods in ethnological thinking. The descriptions of foreign and often non-Christian peoples that circulated in Europe at the time of the discoveries, in the form of travel narratives, chronicles, and various other kinds of reports, had been shaped by the cultural inheritance and the social strategies of the original observers. There is one line of argument that could easily explain why Grotius expected approval from De Laet. The religious differences between De Laet and Grotius can in fact be followed with some continuity between 1617 and 1642. Despite sharing a willingness to place humanist learning at the service of a patriotic cause, one was a serious antiquarian, the other an apologist whose lack of rigor is perhaps comparable to that of his Jesuit contemporary Athanasius Kircher.
