In 1638 a small book of duc of Henri de Rohan, a posthumous work, De l’intérêt des princes et des Etats de la chrétienté, was published. In this book, a exemple of an “anatomy of princes and States”, Rohan analyse the position, forces, disposition of the French monarchy and of other States of Europe in the perspective of the interest. Rohan make, from this analyse, the political lesson for the France, Richelieu and Louis XIII.
The concept of “interest of the State” is the core of every analyses of duc dof Rohan. This concept, with negative and immoral nuance, begins to be employed, as remarque A. Hirschmann, like an antidote for the passion which ruin the human-being. At the same time, the interest is considered as the nature of human-being and the indispensable perspective for the comprehension of their actions.
Rohan, for the first time in the history of political ideas, uses systematically this concept intervened in the political sphere, by considering the interest as the essence of the politic. In the end of his analysis of the interest of state which stand against one another, Rohan arrive to an important conclusion, famous notion of the balance of power.