This book examines how trust relates to the main political concepts - sovereignty, reason of state, and natural law - of seventeenth-century discourse.

Peter Schröder is Senior Lecturer in Early Modem History at University College London. He has published widely on the history of political thought, including recent works on Hobbes, the Thirty Years War and international relations, and has also written for a number of journals including the History of Political Thought and German History.

Preface; Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. Alberico Gentili (1552-1608): new ways of posing the problem of war and interstate relations; 1.1 Confessional strife and the question of trustworthiness among European states; 1.2 A new concept of the enemy and war: trust among equals; 1.3 Pirates and other enemies hors la loi: the untrustworthy foes; 2. Plans for universal peace in Europe: the limits of a balance of power; 2.1 Sully (1559-1641) and the Grand Dessein; 2.2 Crucé (1590-1648) and the Nouveau Cynée; 3. Jus naturae et gentium: the limits of a juridical order; 3.1 Hugo Grotius (1583-1645); 3.2 Thomas Hobbes (1588-1673); 3.3 Samuel Pufendorf (1632-94); 4. The struggle for hegemony and the erosion of trust; 4.1 Leibniz (1646-1716) and his guerre des plumes against Louis XIV's claims to hegemony; 4.2 'Triomphe de la Foi: religion and interstate relations after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes; 4.3 The Abbé de Saint-Pierre's (1658-1743) project for peace and his challenge to early modern statecraft; 5. The doux commerce and interstate relations: trust and mistrust in the emerging economic discourse; Conclusion. The thing which was not; Bibliography.