Vacancies
(image generated with Artificial Intelligence)
TREATYLAB consists of a team of five fulltime collaborators, as well as a part-time Project Managing Officer and a project officer from our external partner for digitization.
PhD Candidates
Vacancies for the three PhD positions are available on the VUB's institutional website (PhD 1 - PhD 2 - PhD 3). According to Belgian law, PhD candidates are hired under a 12 month labour contract, which can be extended to 48 months. They are not subject to income tax, but do pay social security contributions. While they are employees of the university, they still remain enrolled as students. Enrolment is a conditio sine qua non for the validation of the labour contract. This status is not compatible with any other professional activity (e.g. attorney).
PhD 1: They Called it Peace ? The Use of Force and the Cycle of Truces, 1712-1763
(Giulio Cardinal Alberoni (1664-1752); image generated with Artificial Intelligence based on a portrait by Giovanni delle Piane)
During Le Dran's tenure, the European international system was marked by alliances, declarations of war, treaties of peace, mediation, arbitration and guarantees. Peace was thus not really "perpetual", as Saint-Pierre hoped. Yet, the impact of wars varied. The period between 1713/1714 (Peace of Utrecht/Peace of Rastatt/Peace of Baden, ending the War of the Spanish Succession) and 1733-1735 (War of the Polish Succession) saw a concerted effort by France and Britain to pacify pending claims, with a joint intervention in Italy against Spain in 1718-1720 as the most evident expression of their desire to maintain the order of the Peace of Utrecht, or -at least- to control the way in which it could be amended. Le Dran also wrote on conflicts whereby France was not a belligerent, but still had interests to defend. Inevitably, the presence of a declaration of war could impact the legal position of individuals travelling under a neutral pavillion, or aspiring to take up arms as privateers. Moreover, the rhythm of peace and war did not necessarily align between the world "Beyond the line", on the other side of the Atlantic, and within Europe.
Lauren Benton’s recent monograph on the perpetual cycle of conflict and power that rhythms interactions between polities across the globe (Benton 2024) aligns with the basic analysis of several diplomatic and military historians of Europe: contrary to the basic premises of many law of nations treatises, in the early modern period, conflict was the rule and peace the exception (Corvisier 1991; Burkhardt 1997; Dhondt 2020a). The latter had to be underpinned by agreements and concessions, which could be undone or redebated. In this sense, peace treaties were almost always temporary, contrary to solemn pledges of eternal peace and friendship (Lesaffer 1999; Malettke 2012, 110, 114) or to the notion of a collective security system (Malettke 2012, 35). In the period under consideration, thirty out of fifty years were marked by conflict in Europe (Villani 1997, vii).
Not all agreements were applied (Frehland-Wildeboer 2010), for instance when the web of treaties had become so inextricable that parties proposed to only execute “recent” treaties (Montgon 1748, VII, 321). Yet, this did not make all treaties obsolete, or ruled out a hierarchy in a “fluid space”. The latter notion has been developed by Lauren Benton for relations between European polities and their outsiders, but it can apply to the European interpolity system as well (Benton 2024, 146). It might go too far to state that “no treaty was inviolable” (Benton 2024, 146). For certain conventions, the price to be paid for a violation was the most considerable, and thus the eagerness to go to war the smallest (Dhondt 2016c). Bad agreements could also be preferred to “une bonne guerre” (Bély 1983, 434). War, “as an extreme form of a duel” (Bély 1999, 37), rarely brought decisive victory (Whitman 2012). The result of the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748), which ended in recognition of Prussian annexation of Silesia, but a return to the “status quo ante bellum” for the rest of Europe, is a classical illustration of this (Bois 2012, 373–86; Dauser 2020, 1009).
However, as Lauren Benton has masterfully demonstrated, we should not be guided by theoretical premises alone, but understand the past in its own terms. Self-defence (Somos 2019, 168), for instance, has been (and still is) used as shorthand for sovereignty, and thus the existence and equality of a political actor with regards to its counterparts. In this sense, “elastic” self-defence can be used as a “convenient exception” to escape legally worded criticism (Benton 2024, 112). Expectations with regards to a counterpart’s behaviour are encoded across time, in Le Dran’s memoranda: the regularity of behaviour and the consequences attached to it in the past, are elements of state practice and opinio iuris (Benton 2024, 13).
Historian Núria Sallés Vilaseca has recently demonstrated how multiple hypotheses and options in Spain’s diplomacy could have turned upside down the conventional narrative for the War of the Quadruple Alliance (Sallés Vilaseca 2024), which pitted Spain against a coalition of France, Britain and the Emperor, portraying it as an aggressor, whereas the peace agreement reached in 1720 allowed for the reintegration of Spain in Italy. Alliances (pledges to assist the other party in case of aggression, or to conquer or punish a third party together) were transactional in nature. Mutual accusations of violations of the law of nature or of nations (Benton 2024, 111) were part of a reciprocal exchange of territory and money on a market determined by both short- and long-term factors. This does not mean that the arena of interpolity relations was akin to a Hobbesian precarious state of nature. Contemporaries did use the language of the bellum iustum, of neutrality and alliances. However, in practice, they sought pragmatic solutions, in a world of sovereigns not subject to anyone else’s power. This process, which the German public law-scholar Johann Jacob Moser (1701-1785) called “Pragmatic European Law of Nations” (Moser 1732; Walker 1981, 60) could hardly conform to deductive thinking in doctrine (Wolff 2017).
Between the end and the beginning (Tischer 2012; Schnakenbourg 2018) of a cycle of violence, the “legal politics” (Benton 2019, 17) of the European balance, wherein anti-hegemonic discourse (or the aversion for universal monarchy (Gundling 1733, 22)) was a transformative vector in diplomacy (Dhondt 2015a, 12), allowed for multiple options. France’s position as key balancer in Europe under Cardinal Fleury (1726-1742), together with Britain, but also as sole mediator (Dhondt 2022a) or reluctant belligerent, can be explained as a prudent “juste milieu” (Malcor 2023, 47, 102). Conversely, when France was a belligerent, its attitude towards neutral powers equally needed legal buttressing (Schnakenbourg 2013) that went beyond “terror belli, decus pacis” (Bois 2012, 315). Given the cycle depicted above, the argumentative framework mobilized -distilled ex post by Le Dran and his team- offers new insights into a phenomenon that classical diplomatic history struggles to classify (Dhondt 2025b).
PhD 2: The Latin and Atlantic Bond ? Bourbon Law of Nations in Europe and America, 1712-1763
(King Philip V of Spain (1683-1746), image generated with Artificial Intelligence based on a portrait of the sovereign by Nicola Vaccari)
The War of the Spanish Succession (1701/1702-1713/1714 (Mignet 1835; Legrelle 1888; León Sanz 2003; Alvarez-Ossorio Alvariño, García García and León Sanz 2007; Seitschek 2018)) installed a junior branch of the House of Bourbon in Madrid (Vázquez Gestal 2013), at the head of a diminished composite monarchy, stretching from Peru and Mexico to the Philippines (Désos 2009; Olivas 2013; Hanotin and Picco 2018). Logically, projecting French opportunities to the other side of the Atlantic could be seen as an economic “American dream” (Hanotin 2018, 289–304; Lloret 2020, 136; Hanotin 2021), as illustrated by figures as Antoine Crozat (1655-1738) (Ménard 2019; Koskenniemi 2021, 520–26).
(image generated with Artificial Intelligence)
Administrative innovations imported from France and constitutional reform curtailing local privileges enhanced central powers (Lindsay 1997, 200; Bély 1999, 26–27; Albareda i Salvadó 2007). This created a potential maritime rival for Britain (Black 2015, 41; Rousset 1740), which managed to secure extensive trading privileges, including the monopoly for the supply of enslaved black persons to the Spanish Americas (Scelle 1906; Weindl 2008; Léon Sanz and Guasti 2017; Crespo Solana 2019). The aggressive policy of Philip V, Louis XIV’s grandson (Baudrillart 1890), has recently been framed as a “Spanish resurgence” in the Mediterranean (Storrs 2016; Albareda i Salvadó and Sallés Vilaseca 2021), since the installation of a third branch (Naples, 1734) and a fourth one (Parma, 1731/1748) brought Spain back to Italy (Hanotin 2022).
Studies of the management of the French and Spanish Atlantic empires abound (Reese 1988; Cardim et al. 2012; Kuethe and Andrien 2014; Pearce 2014; Shovlin 2021; Lloret 2024). However, linking up both theatres helps us to understand the argumentative structure of the new Bourbon power, which expressed itself both through the control of territory and commercial interdependence. Even when France went to war against Spain (1718-1720, War of the Quadruple Alliance (Bourgeois 1909; Sallés Vilaseca 2024)), domestic policies favoured French merchants over their Spanish counterparts (Dhondt 2017). In practice, Spanish sovereigns could use their control over territory, entailing fiscal competences and the attribution of jurisdictional competence, to exert leverage on France, Britain and the Dutch Republic, whose merchants could trade indirectly with the Spanish Americas (Dhondt 2022a; Montgon 1748, V, 474; VIII, 180).
After the decease of Philip V, his successor Ferdinand VI (1713-1759) made a turn to voluntary neutrality, blaming the difficulties of the first half of the century on France -pursuant to long-standing tensions (Hanotin 2018)- and turning instead to Britain and Portugal. The recent study of Edward Jones Corredera has emphasised the crucial role of Latin-America in Ferdinand VI’s minister Carvajal’s conception of a balance of power between France, Habsburg and Spain. In 1759, the advent of Ferdinand VI’s half-brother Charles III (1716-1788) coincides with a return to the Bourbon camp (Jones Corredera 2021, 182–89). The later part of Philip V’s reign, and the period of relative calm under Ferdinand VI saw the surge of a Spanish translation and adaptation of law of nations knowledge, as the treaty collection of José Antonio Abreu or the treatise on maritime law by Felix José de Abreu illustrate (J. A. Abreu y Bertodano 1740; F. J. de Abreu y Bertodano 1758; Iñurritegui Rodríguez 2021).
PhD 3: Doctrine and Practice: Early Enlightenment Doctrine and Practical Legal Writing, 1712-1763
(Hugo Grotius' De iure belli ac pacis libri tres, in Dutch translation [1705], image generated with Artificial Intelligence)
While PhD 1 and 2 focus on the recipes devised and employed by Le Dran, PhD 3 will compare his creations with the available sources of inspiration. Although literature on the law of nations blossomed between 1712 and 1763 (Mattéi 2006), French (or British, (Armitage and de la Rasilla 2024, 297)) authors -Montesquieu excepted- rarely appear in the major overviews (Koskenniemi 2006a, 106–22; Lesaffer 2011; Wijffels 2011). This might seem odd, in view of France’s political and economic weight in the early modern world. Were doctrinal concepts “hermetic, pervasive and ambient” (Goldie 2018, 3) within a closed intellectual circle, or did they enter the realm of practical foreign policy ? Koskenniemi’s position that “it is neither useful nor practical to work with international law in abstraction from descriptive theories about the character of social life among States and normative views about the principles of justice which should govern international conduct” (Koskenniemi 2006b, 1) ought to apply to practitioners of foreign policy as well.
The work of Montesquieu’s little-known contemporary Gaspard Réal de Curban (Réal de Curban 1764) is very close to diplomatic events of his own lifetime (Dhondt 2015c; Cattelan and Dhondt 2025a). Likewise, Emer de Vattel (Béguelin 1929; Jouannet 1998; Vattel 2008; Chetail and Haggenmacher 2011; Tourme Jouannet 2021) (1714-1767) constructed his work on the adaptation of Wolff’s Ius Gentium Methodo Scientifica Pertractatum, but also on the insertion of a militant Calvinist view of early modern international relations. More natural law-inspired characteristics are revealed in the treatise of Le Dran’s rival internal, premier commis Antoine II Pecquet (ousted in 1740) on Montesquieu’s Esprit des Loix, published in 1757 (Dhondt 2025a; Pecquet 1757).
(internal notes on the North of the Holy Roman Empire, imaged generated with Artificial Intelligence)
Le Dran’s unpublished work can be placed alongside these syntheses of theory and practice, as well as the flourishing German scholarship on the law of nature and nations (Glafey 1723; Gundling 1736a; Moser 1750; Réal de Curban 1764, vol. 8; von Ompteda 1785; Malepeyre 1829, 254–58; Klüber 1861; Schmidt 2007). Contrary to Grotius, Réal, Vattel or Rayneval (de Rayneval 2019; Koskenniemi 2021, 480–86), he does not posit natural law-principles or prolegomena. However, the marginalia of his memoranda and treatises do refer to structured scholarly treatises as sedes materiae. Several lines of analysis present themselves. First, the confessional divide, which often explains the preponderance of the study of the law of nations among Protestants (Vadi 2020), coupled with the exile of 1685, when Louis XIV revoked the Toleration Edict of Nantes (Ghermani 2023). Its impact on the practice of the law of nations, however, remains highly debatable. On the one hand, the idea that the Peace of Westphalia would have filtered out confessional differences within Christianity is hard to sustain on the political level (Thompson 2011; Frey and Frey 2019). On the other hand, the King of France frequently signed treaties of peace, alliance, commerce or protection (Vattel 1758, I, 78–80; Haug and Weber 2016) with Lutheran or Calvinist entities. If Christianity appeared to be divided between Catholics and Protestants (Mühling 2018), the conflicts within the Catholic world regarding the powers of the Holy See or the Constitution Unigenitus were likely a more significant diplomatic issue (Greaves 1957; Malcor 2023). Enlightened tendencies existed within Protestantism just as Catholicism (Gángó and Haakonssen 2023, XII).
Secondly, regarding the universal character of the law of nations, treaties concluded with ‘infidels’ or heretics could, from a theological point of view, also be seen as binding, based on the natural law-principle pacta sunt servanda (Poumarède 2009, 625–26; Becanus 2019; de Wilde 2022). If the Ottoman Empire was still seen as a threat in the late seventeenth century, relations of coexistence and interdependence also imposed a more cooperative practice and discourse (Poumarède 2009), leading to the integration of the erstwhile cause to unite Christian monarchs in pacification schemes (Dhondt 2021; 2020b). Thirdly, the use of private law analogies, which is central to the work of Hugo Grotius (e.g. Astorri 2021), is also a central theme for the normative foundations of international law itself (Perreau-Saussine 2011; Lauterpacht 1927). To what extent does private law-reasoning appear in the advice given to diplomats, if we take into account the intertwined lexical and grammatical history of sovereignty and property (Koskenniemi 2017) ?
The big data aspect of this project will prove to be especially useful for this dissertation, as concepts will be linked to their appearances in the digitized works elsewhere (e.g. through Europeana). As has been established in the field of literature studies, a “small corpus of well-known or canonized works” tends to dominate the general image of a field that is vaster in its sources and thus potentially far more diverse in the answers to standard questions, or that might generate further interrogations beyond the ordinary state of the art (Montoya 2020, 196). Broadening the perimeter of published authors is only a first step (Kadelbach, Kleinlein, and Roth-Isigkeit 2017; Koskenniemi 2021, passim).
