 To philosophers and the philosophically-minded, two of these stand out: De iure praedae commentarius (Commentary on the law of prize and booty, henceforth referred to as “DIP”) and De iure belli ac pacis (“DIB”). The former was almost lost. Placed in a trunk sometime during or after his life, the sole manuscript copy was uncovered when some of his descendants sold a collection of his papers in 1864 (for an account of these events, see Knight 1925: Chap. 5 and van Ittersum 2006). It was apparently commissioned by the V.O.C. around 1603. In it, Grotius was to defend the capture of a large Portuguese merchant ship by a V.O.C. fleet in the area around modern-day Singapore. The key legal and conceptual question was whether any private agent (such as the V.O.C.) could legitimately employ force against another private agent which was impeding its actions (see Tuck 1993: 170). But it also had an important propagandistic objective, which was to defame the Portuguese (and Spanish) while extolling the V.O.C. and Dutch (for more on the general historical context of the DIP, see van Ittersum 2002). Modern philosophical readers will find the “Prolegomena” of Chapter Two especially interesting, since that is where Grotius lays out his views on the nature and bases of rights. While Grotius chose not to publish this or most of the manuscript, he did see Chapter Twelve into press. Given the title Mare Liberum (On the freedom of the seas), it was both influential and controversial: among others, the Englishman John Selden published a critical reply.