Dr. Peter Schröder

The historian Peter Schröder is currently Senior Lecturer in the History Department of University College London. His current project, "War and Peace in the 17th Century", is centered on the history of ideas concerning of international relations in the early modern period. He focuses here on three aspects: the development of modern political and state theory concepts, such as the balance of power, with which the competition between the powers organized through the state was conceptualized; the emergence of modern international law and the law of war, as well as the practical political organization of the relations between new national and international players, interest groups, and goal-setting.

With this project, Peter Schröder is following on from his earlier works on the history of political ideas and state law from Machiavelli to the Age of Enlightenment. His doctoral thesis was entitled "Natural Law and Absolutist State Law: A comparative study on Thomas Hobbes and Christian Thomasius". He will be in Munich from the beginning of April until the end of June 2010. At the LMU, he intends to exchange ideas with Prof. Dr. Friedrich Vollhardt from the Chair for Modern German Literature and with further members of the SFB 573 "Pluralisierung und Autorität in der Frühen Neuzeit".