The Cambridge History of Rights. Volume 3, The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries / edited by Andrew Fitzmaurice, Rachel Hammersley.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Fitzmaurice, Andrew, editor.

Hammersley, Rachel, editor.

Series:

The Cambridge History of Rights.

The Cambridge History of Rights

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Human rights--History--16th century--lat.

Human rights.

Human rights--History--17th century--lat.

World politics--16th century--lat.

World politics.

World politics--17th century--lat.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (744 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2026.

Summary:

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, contemporary authors explored the myriad ways in which the concept of rights could be understood but almost always arrived at the same conclusion: It was vital that rights should never be conflated with power. Through twenty-six expertly written essays, Volume III of The Cambridge History of Rights focuses on the language of rights, exploring its use in contexts as diverse as the English family, trading relations, and Asian powers. This was a period in which rights came to the forefront of political discourse, making it crucial to the longer history of rights reflected in this series. By foregrounding the idea of rights in action, the volume considers the relationship between the ways in which rights were articulated - by individuals, institutions, and states - and how they were enacted in practice. In doing so, it uncovers the complexities inherent in the development of the language of rights during this formative period.

Contents:

Cover

Half-title page

Series page

Title page

Copyright page

Contents

Contributors to Volume III

General Introduction

A Note on Translations

Introduction to Volume III

Positive Law and Abstract Rights

Eurocentrism

States and Empires

The State

1 Roman Law: The Science of Right

From Remedies to Rights in Western Legal Science

Rights without Remedies: The Case of Natural Obligations

Legal Rights and Legal Humanism

Objective and Subjective Ius

Perfect and Imperfect Rights

Coda

Further Reading

2 Natural Rights

Rights by Nature

Natural Rights and Limits to Secular Authority

Natural Law and Natural Rights in the Seventeenth Century

Commerce and Colonialism

Slavery and Subjection

Conclusion

3 Historic Rights in Sixteenth-Century France

Natural Rights

Regalian Rights

4 Common Law Rights

The Common Law

The Use of the Year Books

Common Law and Other Jurisdictions

Fortescue and St. German

Custom and Statute

Conclusion: Royal Power and Individual Rights

5 The Right of States to Self-Preservation

The Foundation and the Implications of the States' Right to Self-Defense: Gentili and Grotius

Self-Preservation and the Limits of Natural Law: Hobbes and Pufendorf

6 The Right of Natural Persons to Self-Preservation

Early Modern Weaponization of Self-Preservation

Thomas Hobbes and the Theory of a Right to Self-Preservation

7 Divine Right in Early Modern Political Thought

England and France: Divine Right Theory in Practice

Divine Right in England: Historiography and History

Divine Right in France: Historiography and History

8 The Right to Punish.

The Complex Phenomenon of Punishment

The Many Purposes of Punishment

The Origins and Location of the Right

Resistance as Punishment

War as Punishment

A Purely Artificial Right?

9 The Rights of War and Peace

The Normative Universal Line

The Political-Juridical Line

Beyond the Bipolar Framework

10 The Right of Navigation: Claiming and Challenging the Free Sea in Theory and Practice

The Seas between Commonality and Territoriality: Roman and Islamic Legal Frameworks

Colonial Competition and Claim-Making at Sea in the Sixteenth Century

Capturing Ships in the Open Seas: The Context of Mare Liberum

Debating the Right of Navigation: From Mare Tutum to Mare Clausum

Conclusion: Exercising Right on the Basis of Fact

11 The Right to Trade, 1500-1700

Trade over Sovereignty via Debilitas

Religious Rights to Trade

Trade in Money

In Praise of Mercantile Cities

Monopolies

Companies and States on Open and Closed Seas

The State as Moral Entity Fully Controls Trading Rights: Pufendorf

12 The Right to Property

Rights to Property Based upon the Relation between a Person and a Thing

Property as a Creation of Consent

13 Fair Trials in Law: Imagining the Rights of the Accused

A Lay Lawyer Pleads to Lay Judges

Lilburne's Language of Laws and Rights

Fair Trials in Law

Making "Fair Trials in Law" a Human Right

14 Freedom of Religion

Theological Principles

Confessionalization

The Political Context

Freedom of Religion in Action

15 The Right of Resistance

Medieval Corporatism and Resistance

Religion, Reformation, and Resistance

Resistance and Rokosz.

Resistance and Regicide

16 The Right to Political Participation and Representation

Machiavelli and the People's Political Participation

The Studia Humanitatis and Civic Participation in Northern Europe

Forms of Civic Participation

Representative Institutions

Representation and Parliament in England

Expanding the Franchise

Representation and Democracy

17 Rights and Power in Early Modern Feminism

Rights as Protections from Power

Rights as Powers

Acknowledgment

18 Gender and Rights

De Statu Hominum: Free Men and Unfree Women?

"Men," "Women," and "Hermaphrodites"

Gender in the Ius Naturale

Women and the Right to Rule

19 The Rights of Women

Women: A Differential Category

Challenges

Civic and Religious Life, and Speech Rights

Women and Property Rights

Law

Marriage, Sexuality, and Rights of the Body

Right to Work and Economic Participation

20 The Rights of the Insane

Terminologies, Typologies, and Definitions

Exculpation and the Deprivation of Rights

The Preservation of Rights and Status

Natural Rights and the Insane

21 The Rights of Asylum

Leaving Home: Persecution and Emigration in Times of Trouble

Political Ideas on Exile and Migration

Finding Refuge: The Reception of Persecuted Migrants

Conclusion: Emerging Rights of Asylum in Early Modern Europe

22 The Rights of Peoples in Spain and Its Empire

The Freedom of Immigration and the Duty to Settle

The Right to Belong and the Duties of Belonging

The Right to Land and the Duty to Occupy

The Right to be Heard and the Duty to Listen

Further Reading.

23 The Rights of People in the English Empire

Charters and Constitutions

Crown and Council

Europeans, Indigenous Peoples, and Africans

24 Rights in the Seventeenth-Century French Empire

Rights in Seventeenth-Century France

Rights as an Instrument of Empire

Rights as Instruments of Emancipation

Rights as an Instrument of Subjugation

Rights as an Instrument of Resistance

25 Rights, Authority, and Autonomy: The Dutch East India Company in Seventeenth-Century Southeast Asia

Sources of Authority and Institutional Development

Legal Instruments and Sources of Authority

Batavia and the Evolution of Justice

Extraterritoriality

The VOC, Grotius, and the Rights of Free Asian Rulers

The Americas, Natural Law, and Southeast Asia's Impact on Grotius

Grotius, Treaties, and the Sovereign Rulers of Southeast Asia

Trade, Rajas, and Republics

Treaties

The VOC Governs Asian Peoples

Patchworks of Sovereignty and Authority

Self-Administration of Asian Communities

Hard Borders and Hard Labor

Index.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Feb 2026).

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

1-108-94505-8

1-108-94581-3

1-108-93885-X

OCLC:

1574117881