The Law of Nations in Britain during the French Revolution
Edmund Burke and James Mackintosh
Abstract
This paper examines how the French Revolution transformed British understandings of the law of nations through the lens of counter-revolutionary thought. Focusing on Edmund Burke’s Letters on a Regicide Peace and James Mackintosh’s A Discourse on the Law of Nature and Nations (1799), it analyses how both authors reinterpreted international order in response to revolutionary France. Drawing on the frameworks of David Armitage and Edward Keene, and contrasting their arguments with Blackstone’s Vattelian conception of sovereign and equal states, the paper argues that Burke and Mackintosh departed from the “Vattelian moment.” Rather than grounding international order in sovereignty or universal natural law, they emphasized historical practice, prudence, and a shared moral order among states.