‎(CRUCE, E.P. OU EMERI DE LACROIX.)‎
‎Le nouveau Cynée. öu discours des occasions et moyens d'establir une paix générale et la liberté du commerce par tout le monde.‎

‎A Paris, Chez J. Villery, 1623 (Paris, EDHIS, 1976). (12), 226, (16) pp. 8vo. Imitation leather. Goldsmiths' 529. The work is very rare: Van den Dungen counts fewer than a dozen copies known worldwide. Reprint of this extremely rare and important work, published in a limited editon of 150 numbered copies and 30 copies not destined for the trade and since long out-of-print. Le Nouveau Cynée 'is, in essence, an early plea for the settlement of international disputes by means of arbitration. It is also a condemnation of war on rational rather than religious grounds. 'Mit seinem Nouveau Cynée begründete Emeric Crucé den modernen Pazifismus ... So war Crucé der erste, der ein wirklich universelles Friedenssystem verfasste' (almost 100 years before the Abbé de Saint-Pierre's Projet pour rendre la Paix perpetuelle en Europe) writes Ter Meulen in his famous work; his colleague Christian Lange confirms this in his equally well-known study where he calls Crucé 'le prémier internationaliste véritable'. More recently, Hinsley had written that Crucé's book was, 'in the records of modern history, the first proposal for an international organization that was also a proposal for maintaining peace'.'This little work, in short, is of major significance in the history of peace writings, particularly as regards the idea of international organization. There is thus little cause for surprise to find that the two most famous collections of peace literature that exist possess a copy of it. Neither should it cause surprise to learn that a further two copies ... are to be found in two equally famous collections, this time of economic literature (the Seligman Collection at Columbia and the Goldsmiths' Collection at London). For Crucé is not only considered an early advocate of international arbitration, but equally the founder of the free trade doctrine in France ... To facilitate and increase international commerce he proposes the introduction of one currency in Europe, and one system of weights and measures, and the joining together of seas and waterways. Crucé insisted that the economic interests of nations were in peace, rather than war, but this would only become the accepted dogma of political economy one hundred and fifty years later, when Adam Smith published the Wealth of Nations ... One of the reasons commonly suggested of the long obscurity which befell this book is precisely its striking originality. Contemporaries hardly took note of the book, as its thesis appeared too unconventional, and the author's proposal unrealistic and utopian ... His patience bore fruit, (however,) and he is now regarded as the 'véritable précurseur du libéralisme moderne, ... sans doute le premier écrivain qui ait entrevu le rapport intime entre le commerce et la paix'. This estimate indicates that the absence of Crucé's work in the major collections on the history of economic literature might constitute a serious gap' (Peter van den Dungen, The Hidden History of a Peace "Classic": Emeric Crucé's Le Nouveau Cynée, p. 27ff). ‎

Reference : 16707

‎‎