202 Reason and Its Rivals (ca. 1550– 1815)agree to grant to one another’s nationals the right to settle and trade in their
respective territories. Crucially, these treaties also typically provided that
the nationals of each state resident in the other’s territory be guaranteed to
be treated on a par with nationals of the host country in regard to such mat-
ters as access to courts and liability to taxation. Resident merchants were
commonly guaranteed a right of freedom of worship, too, in cases where the
treaty parties were of diff erent established faiths. In this way, the treaties of
amity and commerce became forerunners of later international conventions
on human rights.
A second important common feature of the network of treaties of amity
and commerce was the standardization of practice concerning reprisals. Be-
ginning in about the middle of the seventeenth century, states began to in-
clude in their treaties of amity and commerce provisions expressly limiting
the right of the governments to grant letters of marque and reprisal to their
nationals. Generally, the requirement was that such letters would not be is-
sued unless there had previously been a formal request by one ruler to the
other for a remedy, followed by a clear failure to provide justice. Th e Nether-
lands played the leading role in this trend. An early agreement to this eff ect
was found in the truce of 1609 between Spain and the Netherlands (during
the War of Dutch In de pen dence). A similar provision appeared in the fi nal
peace treaty of 1648 between the two countries.
Other countries soon followed this lead. In 1654, En gland and the Neth-
erlands agreed, in the peace treaty that brought the fi rst Anglo- Dutch War
to a conclusion, that letters of marque and reprisal could be issued only aft er
a three- month period following a failure to do justice. A treaty of amity
and commerce between France and the Netherlands in 1662 provided that
letters of marque and reprisal could be issued only aft er the occurrence of a
“manifest denial of justice.” By the early eigh teenth century, it was matter-
of- factly stated that this limitation on the issuing of letters of marque and
reprisal was “accepted usage” among the Eu ro pe an states.
A third important common feature of these treaties was that they formed
the basis of the law of neutrality— a subject that just-war doctrine had dis-
dained. Th e most important element here was an agreement that “free ships
make free goods,” which came into play whenever one of the states was at war
while the other one was at peace. Th e earlier general rule, as laid down in the
medieval Consolato del Mare, had been that the state at war was entitled to
capture property belonging to enemy nationals even if it was being carried