historical and political thought in the seventeenth - RePub - Erasmus ...

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Chapter 4. Times of success. Defending the fatherland
explains the factions that had seen to the destruction of the people in the late
Roman Republic by using, not entirely verbatim, the words of the Roman historian
Florus: ‘The cause of [this] evil was the same which caused all our evils,
namely excessive good fortune.’ 22
These points being said, in the case of the Dutch Republic Boxhorn takes a
more positive approach to the acquisition and possession of wealth. One more
example: in the Commentariolus Boxhorn ranks the VOC and WIC among the
‘chief bulwarks of this state, since through them immense wealth flows to this
Republic’. 23
To conclude: in Boxhorn’s view Dutch maritime activities were of great
importance for both the individual Dutchman and the Dutch Republic. The
VOC and WIC, but also the herring fishery all did their bit towards the great
economic prosperity the Dutch enjoyed, and through them, towards the military
prowess of the Dutch Republic. In what follows we will take a closer
look at the intellectual contribution Boxhorn made to the defence of Dutch
maritime interests.
2. The Apologia and the Magnus Intercursus
On April 15, 1636, king Charles I of England issued a proclamation that forbade
the ‘importing, buying, selling, or publishing any forraine edition of
Mare clausum’, the book that the English lawyer, historian, and politician
John Selden (1584-1654) had published December the year before with the
king’s special blessings. 24 The reason for this ban was that ‘some persons …
Troades Senecae interpretaretur”, in Poetae satyrici minores, De Corrupto Reipublicae statv. Marcus Zuerius
Boxhornius recensuit, & commentariis illustravit. Accedit ejusdem Oratio de Eversionibus Rerump. (Isaac
Commelinus; Leiden, 1633), p. 9. ‘Saepe luxuriae, et amori magna imperia succubuere.’
22 Idem, “De mutatione Reipub. et initiis Monarchiae Caesarum, sive C. Julius Caesar”, in idem,
Emblemata politica: accedunt dissertationes politicae de Romanorum Imperio et quaedamaliae (Johannes Janssonius;
Amsterdam, 1651), XIV.4, p. 315. ‘Causa mali, ut recte Florus lib. IV. cap. II. eadem, quae omnium,
nimia felicitas.’ Florus reads: ‘Causa tantae calamitatis eadem quae omnium, nimia felicitas.’ (‘The cause
of this great calamity was the same which caused all our calamities, namely, excessive good fortune.’) The
Latin text and English translation are taken from Florus, Epitome of Roman History. Translated by Edward
Seymour Forster (Harvard University Press; Cambridge/London, 1 st ed. 1929, 2005), II.13, pp. 268-69. For
a more elaborate discussion of Boxhorn’s view on the fall of the Roman Republic, see chapter 7.
23 Idem, Commentariolus, VIII.1, p. 110. ‘De Collegiis utriusque hujus Societatis opportunus sese
offert hic dicendi locus, partim quia inter hujus Imperii praecipua sunt munimenta, ut quibus immensae
opes in hanc Rempublicam derivantur, partim quia istae societates non unius hic ditionis propriae, sed
omnibus foederatis ditionibus sunt communes.’
24 Selden had written the original version of Mare Clausum in 1619, at the request of king James I
(1566-1625), who was in need of powerful arguments that could refute the Dutch stands, so forcefully
put forward by Hugo Grotius, that the seas were free for all to navigate and to fish and that therefore the
king of England could not assert that he possessed sovereign rights over the seas surrounding his territories.
However, after seeing the manuscript, the king did not order the work to be published because