Jean Yves de Saint-Prest.

As I’ve said before the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries saw several massive projects to transcribe and publish the contents of royal archives started. It’s quite amazing how many there actually are are. I’ve written already about the imperial historiographer Jean Dumont’s Corps Universel de Droit des Gens, about the need for more historical work to be done on the drive to compile peace treaties that he was part of, and my joy at finding these works made available to scholars over the internet. So I thought today I’d post a link to the text of another compilation, this time the Histoire des Traités de Paix put together by Jean Yves de Saint-Prest (1640-1721) and published after his death in 1725.  What I find particularly fascinating about comparing these works is not the texts of treaties they contain – after all, these tend to be pretty much the same, at least from Dumont onwards. It’s their different rationales for justifying why a study of treaties is important. 

In this respect, Saint-Prest is one of my favourites. His cynical suggestions that ‘one fools men with treaties as one fools children with nuts’ or that they were simply ‘spiders’ webs that are unable to catch flies’ are balanced with the idea that despite their faults, without peace treaties there would be an almost ‘universal upheaval’ between the states of the world; that as a soldier defends his patrie with a sword, so does the diplomat with his pen. There’s something that I particularly like about this passage from the introduction that extends this idea: ‘…que les transactions qu’on nomme Traitées de Paix, etc faites et ratifiées solonellement par les puissances assemblée, établies sur une infinité de précautions, jurées, après des dis cussions sans nombre, sur les Saints Evangiles, au nom de la trés Sainte Trinité, aux yeux de tous les peoples de l’univers, ne soient un necessité si indispensable, que sans elles on verroit bien-tôt un bouleversement universel dans les Etats. Toutes ces circonstances rendent l’étude des Traités de Paix la plus belle etude du monde et la plus nécessaire par rapport au bien public. Ceux qui s’y appliquent par leur plume qu’un habile Général par son épée. De meme que ceux-ci repoussent les violanes d’un ennemi qui attaque à force ouverte, les premiers repoussent les sophisms et les subtilités des perjures, mettent au jour leur mauvaise foi, et renversent leurs chicanes et leurs equivoques.’ (p.I.)

Of course, such sentiments praising the capacity of diplomacy to ‘counter the sophisms and subtleties of the dishonest, uncover their bad faith, and counter their chicanes and equivocations’ are not surprising, considering that Saint-Prest was the director of both the archival dépot of French foreign affairs and the  French diplomatic academy, both newly set up by Secretary of State, the Marquis de Torcy in 1710. What I like about this passage, though, is that it suggests studying peace treaties is not only useful, but also honourable and useful. This is something that is easy to forget. Looking at peace treaties retrospectively, it's much easier to see the equivocations, chicanes and deceptions that lead to the failures of particular agreements than it is the good intentions that led to other.

The Bilbiothèque Nationale in Paris has made Saint-Prest’s editions of treaties available through Gallica. Read/ download it here. Or, if you prefer, there is also a version scanned by the Boston Library of a copy once owned by the American statesman John Adams.