The Right to Trade, 1500–1700

Between 1500 and 1700, the right of groups and nations to trade were conceptualised and even enacted through a range of legal claims and practices. It is nevertheless possible and useful to make some generalisations about the rise and fall of the military, economic, political, religious and legal powers of various states and their conceptualisations of the right to trade. The primary texts bring out two salient distinctions, concerning the collective right to trade. Some commentators argued that the right to trade was limitable, while others considered it non-derogable. Another group of texts grounded the right to trade primarily in divine law, while others emphasised natural, international or municipal law.