Hugo Grotius
Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), Dutch political philosopher. He was active in Netherlands politics and arrested as a republican in 1618. Sentenced to life imprisonment, he escaped to France with the aid of his wife in 162(His important and influential book on international law, published in 1625, used the concepts of natural law and the Social Contract as a rational foundation for a legal system. He also wrote a history of the Netherlands.
