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(image generated with Artificial Intelligence) We are happy to present the ERC Consolidator Grant TREATYLAB ("The Labyrinth of Treaties, 1712-1763. International Law Behind the Scenes of Early Enlightenment Diplomacy, 1712-1763"). This project does not create a "lab" in the sense of a laboratory. Neither does it focus on treaties. We investigate the legal advisory work produced in the bureaux des affaires étrangères under Louis XV, using over a hundred thousands of folios attributed to top civil servant Nicolas-Louis Le Dran (1687-1774) . Le Dran’s lifetime is grosso modo that of Enlightened natural law, stretching from Hugo Grotius’ De iure belli ac pacis libri tres (1625) and Samuel von Pufendorf De iure naturae et gentium libri octo (1672) -both translated and annotated by Jean Barbeyrac- to Montesquieu’s De l’Esprit des Loix (1748), Adam Friedrich Glafey’s Vernunft- und Völckerrecht (1723), Cornelis van Bynkershoek’s Quaestionum Iuris Publici Libr...