This article relates the evolving relationship between republicanism and the problem of ‘empire’ to the changing social contexts within which republican political theory emerges in the early modern period. It is argued that the initial antagonism between republicanism and empire was a politically constituted dilemma that related to the specific configuration of economic and political power characteristic of pre-capitalist societies. With the development of capitalism in England in the early modern period, the problem of empire becomes partially resolved due to the way in which the separation of economic and political power under capitalism reconstitutes the nature of empire itself. This new social context — characterized by new social, economic and political relationships specific to an emerging capitalist context — laid the foundations for the resolution of the ‘republican dilemma’ of empire and the ideological establishment of the first ‘Republican Empire’ in 18th century America.
J.S. Richardson (1991) ‘Imperium Romanum: Empire and the Language of Power’, Journal of Roman Studies81: 1-9.
2.
Anthony Pagden ( 1994) Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France, c. 1500-1800. New Haven, CT : Yale University Press.
3.
Peter Brunt (1979) ‘Laus Imperii: Conceptions of Empire Prevalent in Cicero’s Day’ , in P. Garnsey and C. R. Whitaker (eds) Imperialism in the Ancient World, pp. 159-92. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
4.
Benedetto Fontana (1993) ‘Tacitus on Empire and Republic’, History of Political Thought14(1): 27-40. Indeed, in On Duties, Cicero goes so far as to characterize the Roman Republic as a ‘protectorate’ rather than an ‘empire’ of the world.
5.
Pagden (n. 2). Patrick J. Coby (1999) Machiavelli’s Romans . Lanham, MD: Lexington Press.
6.
David Armitage (2002) ‘Empire and Liberty’, in Martin van Gelderen and Quentin Skinner (eds) Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage, pp. 29-40. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
7.
Benedetto Fontana (2003) ‘Sallust and the Politics of Machiavelli’, History of Political Thought24(1): 86-108.
8.
Quentin Skinner traces the linguistic use of grandezza to the pre-humanist vernacular writers of the late medieval period and defines it in terms of the ‘grandeur and magnitude’ of the commune or city-state. Quentin Skinner ( 1990) ‘Machiavelli and the Pre-Humanist Origins of Republican Ideas’, in Gisela Bock , Maurizio Viroli and Quentin Skinner (eds) Machiavelli and Republicanism , pp. 121-42. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
9.
For an alternative interpretation of Machiavelli’s characterization of the republican dilemma, see Jonathan Scott (2004) Commonwealth Principles: Republican Writing during the English Revolution . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
10.
Armitage (n. 4), p. 31.
11.
Kent M. Brudney (1984) ‘Machiavelli on Social Class and Class Conflict’, Political Theory12(4): 507-19.
12.
Gisela Bock (1990) ‘Civil Discord in Machiavelli’s "Istoria Fiorentine", in Gisela Bock, Quentin Skinner and Maurizio Viroli (eds) Machiavelli and Republicanism pp. 181-202. Cambridge , Cambridge University Press. Skinner (n. 6). Fontana (n. 5). Bock argues that the link that Machiavelli identifies between social discord and state expansionism disappears in the pages of the Florentine Histories.
13.
For a recent discussion of this process, see Mikael Hörnqvist ( 2004 ) Machiavelli and Empire. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
14.
In her stimulating essay on Machiavelli’s discussion of social conflict in the Florentine Histories, Bock emphasizes the plurality of different forms of discord. Bock (n. 9), p. 201.
15.
Niccolo Machiavelli (1996) The Discourses on Livy , ed. Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov, p. 136. Chicago : University of Chicago Press.
16.
Ibid.
17.
Armitage (n. 4), p. 35.
18.
Steven Pincus (1998) ‘Neither Machiavellian Moment Nor Possessive Individualism: Commercial Society and the Defenders of the English Commonwealth’, American Historical Review103(3): 705-36.
19.
For the classical republicanism of Harrington, see J.G.A. Pocock ( 1970) ‘James Harrington and the Good Old Cause: A Study of the Ideological Context of his Writings’, Journal of British Studies10(1): 30-48.
20.
These interpretations of Harrington as classical republican contradict Macpherson’s classical characterization of him as a ‘possessive individualist’. C.B. Macpherson (1962) The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
21.
For Nedham as the originator of a ‘modern’ or ‘liberal’ form of republicanism, see Blair Worden (1994) ‘Marchamont Nedham and the Origins of English Republicanism’ , in David Wootton (ed.) Republicanism, Liberty and Commercial Society: 1649-1776, pp. 45-81. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press .
22.
See Vickie B. Sullivan (2004) Machiavelli, Hobbes and the Formation of a Liberal Republicanism in England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
23.
For a study on the distinctions between classical and modern republicanism, see Paul A. Rahe (1992) Republics Ancient and Modern: The Ancient Regime in Ancient Greece. Durham , NC: University of North Carolina Press.
24.
Armitage (n. 4) p. 39.
25.
J.G.A. Pocock ( 1975) The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition. Princeton : Princeton University Press.
26.
There is a growing literature in international relations that challenges the conventional belief that the ‘international’ possesses a logic of its own that is both independent of, and determinant of, domestic social relations within nation states and other political entities (like city-states in the case of Renaissance Italy). Due to the limits of space, however, I cannot engage in a discussion of the specific approaches. The argument presented here is dependent upon recent Marxist or historical materialist approaches to the history of international relations. For Marxist contributions to this literature, see Justin Rosenberg (1994) The Empire of Civil Society. London: Verso.
27.
Benno Teschke (2003) The Myth of 1648. London: Verso.
28.
Hannes Lacher (2006) Beyond Globalization: Capitalism, Territoriality and the International. London : Routledge.
29.
Benno Teschke and Christian Heine (2002 ) ‘The Dialectic of Globalization: A Critique of Social Constructivism’ in Mark Rupert and Hazel Smith (eds) Historical Materialism and Globalisation , pp. 165-87. London: Routledge .
30.
For constructivist perspectives, see J. Ruggie ( 1993) ‘Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations’, International Organization47(1): 139-74.
31.
Alexander Wendt (1999) Social Theory of International Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
32.
Friedrich Kratochwil (1989) Rules, Norms, Decisions . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
33.
For a constructivist study of the influence of republican norms on international relations see Nicholas Onuf (1998) The Republican Legacy and International Relations. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
34.
For Neo-Weberian historical sociological approaches, see Henryk Spruyt ( 1994) The Sovereign State and its Competitors. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
35.
Ellen Meiksins Wood (2003) Empire of Capital, p. 10. London: Verso.
36.
Perry A. nderson (1974) Lineages of the Absolutist State, p. 157. London: Verso .
37.
M.B. Becker (1960) ‘The Republican City-State in Florence: An Inquiry into its Origin and Survival, 1280-1434’ , Speculum35: 39-50.
38.
John Najemy (1979) ‘Guild Republicanism in Trecento Florence: The Successes and Ultimate Failure of Corporate Politics’ , American Historical Review84(1): 53-71, p. 58.
39.
In 1378, the textile weavers - the Ciompi - successfully staged an insurrection that expanded the base of the republic to incorporate lower class workers who were now able to organize into guilds. The expanded republic was ultimately retaken by the oligarchy in 1382, the leader of the Ciompi was executed - an event that Machiavelli alludes to in ch. 9 of The Prince - and the guild form of republicanism was abolished.
40.
Najemy (n. 22) p. 62.
41.
Frederick C. Lane (1966) ‘At the Roots of Republicanism’, American Historical Review71(2): 403-20, p. 410.
42.
Ibid. p. 411.
43.
Ibid.
44.
Due to the threat it posed to oligarchic rule, guild republicanism was abolished in the wake of the revolt of the Ciompi. By 1434, republican institutions had been informally subordinated to the clientelistic networks of the House of Medici.
45.
Giovanni Silvano ( 1990) ‘Florentine Republicanism in the Sixteenth-Century’ , in Gisela Bock, Quentin Skinner and Maurizio Viroli, (eds) Machiavelli and Republicanism, pp. 69-70. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
46.
Ibid.
47.
Rosenberg (n. 18) p. 64.
48.
The Commune’s power over the contado often assumed the form of pacts with the various ‘feudal’ lords who dominated the rural areas. Benefices and other forms of privilege were bestowed upon them that served to buttress their extra-economic power over rural producers. As a result, many scholars have referred to this as a condition of ‘dualism’ in which the power of the city over the countryside represented a decentralized network of power relations inimical to the development of a centralized state in the Weberian sense. See E. Fasano Guarini (1995) ‘Centre and Periphery’, Journal of Modern History67 (supplement: ‘The Origins of the State in Italy, 1300-1600’): S74-S96.
49.
Rosenberg (n. 18), p. 74.
50.
For a discussion of republican disagreement with Machiavelli’s treatment of republicanism and empire, see Armitage (n. 4).
51.
Quentin Skinner (1978) The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
52.
For a discussion on republicanism, humanism and wealth, see vol. 1. Indeed, Janet Coleman presents the 15th-century civic humanists as ideologists of the mercantile oligarchy. Janet Coleman (2000) A History of Political Thought: from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance . Oxford: Blackwell.
53.
Mark Jurdjevic (2001) ‘Virtue, Commerce and the Enduring Florentine Republican Moment: Reintegrating Italy into the Atlantic Republican Debate’, Journal of the History of Ideas63(4): 721-43, p. 728.
54.
For more on Machiavelli and class conflict in Florence, see Brudney (n. 9), Bock (n. 9).
55.
Skinner (n. 6). Maurizio Viroli (1990) ‘Machiavelli and the Republican Idea of Politics’ in Gisela Bock, Maurizio Viroli and Quentin Skinner (eds) Machiavelli and Republicanism, pp. 143-72. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
56.
The irony here, of course, is that Venice was wholly dependent upon commerce for its very existence. Jennifer Tolbert Roberts (1994) Athens on Trial: The Anti-Democratic Tradition in Western Political Thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press. For an earlier discussion on the popularity of the Venetian republic in early modern England, with its particular influence on the republicanism of John Milton, see Z.S. Fink (1940) ‘Venice and English Political Thought in the Seventeenth Century’ , Modern Philology38(2): 155-72.
57.
David Armitage (1995) ‘John Milton: Poet Against Empire’, in David Armitage , Armand Himy and Quentin Skinner (eds) Milton and Republicanism , pp. 206-25. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Scott rejects Armitage’s characterization of Milton’s anti-imperialism, stating that Milton did not have a problem with imperialism per se, but rather it was the conduct of imperialism that he opposed - the pursuit of an empire of power rather than an empire of justice. As such, Milton’s conception of empire is a form of ‘empire of the self’. See Scott (n. 7).
58.
Pincus (n. 15), p. 720.
59.
See Pocock (n. 17). For Marxist critiques of the bourgeois paradigm in the English context, see Ellen Meiksins Wood and Neal Wood (1997) A Trumpet of Sedition: English Political Thought and Agrarian Capitalism, 1509-1688. New York: New York University Press.
60.
Ellen Meiksins Wood (1991) The Pristine Culture of Capitalism: An Essay on Ancien Regimes and Modern States . London: Verso.
61.
Steven J. Ross (1990) ‘The Transformation of Republican Ideology’, Journal of the Early Republic10(3): 323-30.
62.
Robert Brenner ( 1985) ‘The Agrarian Roots of European Capitalism’ , in C. H. E. Philpin and T. H. Aston (eds) Agrarian Class Structures and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe, pp. 213-325. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
63.
Ellen Meiksins Wood(2002) The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View. London: Verso.
64.
For an insightful discussion on the specificities of English lordship, the role of the common law and the emergence of agrarian capitalism, see George C. Comninel ( 2000) ‘English Feudalism and the Origins of Capitalism’ , Journal of Peasant Studies27(4): 1-53.
65.
On the differences between the centralization of the English state and the parcellization of sovereignty in France, see Perry Anderson (1974) Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism. London: Verso. Anderson (n. 20).
66.
Robert Brenner ( 2003) Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change and Political Conflict in England, 1550-1653, p. 651. London : Verso.
67.
For more on this, see Brenner (n. 47).
68.
Occasionally, however, like in the 1928 Parliament, the Crown alienated its merchant allies due to its heavy-handedness in attempting to increase its own power vis-à-vis Parliament.
69.
Ellen Meiksins Wood (1996) ‘Capitalism, Merchants and Bourgeois Revolution: Some Reflections on the Brenner Debate and its Sequel’ , International Review of Social History41: 220.
70.
Brenner (n. 47).
71.
Christopher Hill (1968) Reformation to Industrial Revolution. Pantheon Books.
72.
David Armitage (1992) ‘The Cromwellian Protectorate and the Languages of Empire’, Historical Journal35(3): 531-55, p. 535.
73.
David Hancock (2000) ‘"A World of Business Will Do": William Freeman and the Foundations of England’s Commercial Empire, 1645-1707’, William and Mary Quarterly57(1): 3-34, p. 4.
74.
Paul Rahe ( 2004) ‘The Classical Republicanism of John Milton’ , History of Political Thought25(2): 243-75, p. 249.
75.
Pocock (n. 17). Pincus (n. 15), p. 717. Others, however, have insisted on his sympathies with commercial activity and articulated a conception of virtue that was compatible with interest. See Alan Cromartie ( 1998) ‘Harringtonian Virtue: Harrington, Machiavelli and the Method of the Moment’, Historical Journal41(4): 987-1009.
76.
Pincus (n.15).
77.
The case of Harrington is too complicated to be adequately addressed in the context of this article. On the one hand, Harrington did propose of republic for preservation based upon a balance of landed property; and he did seem to privilege agrarian life to that of urban, commercial society. On the other hand, he established the Rota club which was engaged in numerous scientific inquiries geared towards the ‘improvement’ of the English economy.
78.
Benjamin Worsley, in his defence of the Navigation Act of 1651, argued that England’s overseas commercial empire must be predicated upon the competitiveness of English manufactures - a competitiveness based upon the cheapness of productive inputs, in particular, labour. This contrasts with Dutch competitiveness based on superior techniques in navigation and ship building. Benjamin Worsley (1651) The Advocate: Or A Narrative of the state and condition of things between the English and Dutch Nation, in relation to Trade, and the consequences depending thereupon, to either commonwealth; as it was presented in August 1651. London: Thomason Tract Collection.
79.
Brenner (n. 47), p. 563.
80.
David McNally ( 1988) Political Economy and the Emergence of Capitalism , pp. 22-3. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
81.
Henry C. Clark (1998) ‘Commerce, the Virtues and the Public Sphere in Early Seventeenth-Century France’, French Historical Studies 21(3): 415-440, p. 440. For more on the contrast between English mercantilism and French mercantilism, see McNally (n. 61).
82.
McNally (n. 61).
83.
On the persistence and late transformation of classical republicanism in France, see Keith Michael Baker (2001) ‘The Transformation of Classical Republicanism in Eighteenth Century France’ , Journal of Modern History73: 32-53.
84.
Andrew Jainchill (2003) ‘The Constitution of the Year III and the Persistence of Classical Republicanism’ , French Historical Studies26(3): 399-435.
85.
On the eclipse of republican principles by the commercial realities of 18th-century England as typified by the work of Adam Smith, see Donald Winch ( 2002) ‘Commercial Realities, Republican Principles’ , in Martin Van Gelderen and Quentin Skinner (eds) Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage, pp. 293-310. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
86.
J.A.W. Gunn ( 1969) Politics and the Public Interest in Seventeenth Century England, pp. 212-13. London : Routledge & Kegan Paul.
87.
Roberts (n. 39).
88.
For Nedham as the first English republican, see Worden (n. 15).
89.
J.A.W. Gunn (1968) ‘"Interest Will Not Lie": A Seventeenth-Century Political Maxim’, Journal of the History of Ideas29(4): 551-64, p. 555.
90.
Sylvanus Taylor (1648) Considerations Concerningthe Common Fields , p. 3. London: Thomason Tracts.
Samuel Fortrey (1954) ‘Englands Interest and Improvement: Consisting in the Increase of the Store and Trade of this Kingdom’, in J. R. McCulloch (ed.) Early English Tracts on Commerce, p. 230. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
94.
John Locke ( 1993) ‘Question: Is Each Man’s Private Interest the Foundation of the Law of Nature? Answer: No’, in David Wootton (ed) Political Writings of John Locke, p. 181. New York : Mentor .
95.
John Locke ( 1993) ‘Draft of a Representation Containing a Scheme of Methods for the Employment of the Poor’, ibid. p. 447.
96.
This is the conclusion of Alan Houston Craig in his study of the influence of Algernon Sidney’s republicanism on American radicalism. Alan Craig Houston ( 1991) Algernon Sidney and the Republican Heritage in England and America. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
97.
After all, William Petty, the first political economist of England, was a member of both the Hartlib circle (which was committed to agrarian improvement) and Harrington’s Rota Club.
98.
Blair Worden (1974) The Rump Parliament, 1648-1653 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brenner (n. 47).
99.
Blair Worden (1994) ‘Republicanism and the Restoration, 1660-1683’, in Wootton (ed) Republicanism, Liberty and Commercial Society , 1649- 1776, pp. 139-93. Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press.
