Historiographical Foundations of Modern International Thought: Histories of the European States-System from Florence to Göttingen
2014; Routledge; Volume: 41; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/01916599.2014.948291
ISSN1873-541X
Autores Tópico(s)American Constitutional Law and Politics
ResumoSummaryThe foundations of modern international thought were constructed out of diverse idioms and disciplines. In his impressive book, Foundations of Modern International Thought, David Armitage focuses on the normative idioms of natural law and political philosophy from the Anglophone world, from Hobbes and Locke to Burke and Bentham. I focus on parallel developments in the empirically-oriented disciplines of history and historiography to trace the emergence of histories of the states-system in the Italian- and German-speaking worlds, from Bruni and Sarpi to Pufendorf and Heeren. Taking seriously Armitage's remark that 'the pivotal moments in the formation of modern international thought were often points of retrospective reconstruction', I argue that the historical disciplines supplied another significant intellectual context in which the modern world could be imagined as 'a world of states'.Keywords: International relationshistoriographystates-systemsbalance of powerRenaissance humanismLeonardo BruniSamuel PufendorfWilliam RobertsonArnold Heeren AcknowledgementsEarlier versions or parts of this paper were presented at the Australian National University's symposium on the History of Historiographies, the National University of Singapore's Symposium on David Armitage's Foundations of Modern International Thought, and the University of Queensland's History and Theory of International Relations Group and Centre for the History of European Discourses. Thank you especially to Ryan Walter, Knud Haakonssen, Andrew Phillips and Leigh Penman for their kind invitations, and to all the participants of the symposia. Thank you also to Emily Tannock for converting the paper to the journal's house style.Notes1 Duncan Bell, 'International Relations: The Dawn of a Historiographical Turn?', British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 3 (2001), 115–26.2 Brian C. Schmidt, The Political Discourse of Anarchy: A Disciplinary History of International Relations (New York, NY, 1998); Nicolas Guilhot, 'The Realist Gambit: Postwar American Political Science and the Birth of IR Theory', International Political Sociology, 2 (2008), 281–304.3 On the inter-war years, see Lucian M. Ashworth, Creating International Studies: Angell, Mitrany and the Liberal Tradition (Aldershot, 1999); Thinkers of the Twenty Years' Crisis: Interwar Idealism Reassessed, edited by David Long and Peter Wilson (Oxford, 1991). On the English School, see Tim Dunne, Inventing International Society: A History of the English School (London, 1998); Brunello Vigezzi, The British Committee on the Theory of International Politics (1954–1985): The Rediscovery of History, translated by Ian Harvey (Milan, 2005). On leading English School scholars, see Michele Chiaruzzi, Politica Potenza nell'Eta del Leviatano: La Teoria Internazionale di Martin Wight (Bologna, 2008); Ian Hall, The International Thought of Martin Wight (London, 2006).4 E. H. Carr, The Twenty Years' Crisis 1919–1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations (London, 1946), 1.5 Though the moral and political character of 'internationalism' was highly contentious; see the superb account by Glenda Sluga, Internationalism in the Age of Nationalism (Philadelphia, PA, 2013).6 David Armitage, Foundations of Modern International Thought (Cambridge, 2013), 13.7 Armitage, Foundations, 9.8 Armitage, Foundations, 8–9.9 Armitage, Foundations, 28.10 Armitage, Foundations, 12.11 J. G. A. Pocock, Political Thought and History: Essays on Theory and Method (Cambridge, 2009); J. G. A. Pocock, 'Historiography as a Form of Political Thought', History of European Ideas, 37 (2011), 1–6.12 In this regard my argument coincides with Koselleck, who has described this period of roughly 1750 to 1850 as the 'saddle' or threshold period; see Reinhart Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, translated by Keith Tribe (Cambridge, MA, 1985).13 Armitage, Foundations, 191–92.14 Armitage, Foundations, 215.15 My section titles are adaptations of the Parts dividing Armitage's Foundations.16 Armitage, Foundations, 50.17 Armitage, Foundations, 50.18 For or an analogous distinction between humanism and scholasticism, see Richard Tuck, The Rights of War and Peace: Political Thought and the International Order from Grotius to Kant (Oxford, 1999).19 J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, NJ, 1975), vii–viii.20 Gary Ianziti, Writing History in Renaissance Italy: Leonardo Bruni and the Uses of the Past (Cambridge, MA, 2012), 6. Commissioned by the Medici Pope Leo X in 1520, Machiavelli's Florentine Histories was dedicated and presented to Pope Clement VII in May 1525; see Niccolò Machiavelli, Florentine Histories, translated by Laura F. Banfield and Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr (Princeton, NJ, 1988). For other useful studies of historiography in the Italian Renaissance, see Eric Cochrane, Historians and Historiography in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago, IL, 1981); Donald J. Wilcox, The Development of Florentine Humanist Historiography in the Fifteenth Century (Cambridge, MA, 1969).21 For major studies of improvisations in the Renaissance historical method, see Ianziti, Writing History in Renaissance Italy; Donald Kelley, Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship: Language, Law and History in the French Renaissance (New York, NY, 1970).22 Leonardo Bruni, History of the Florentine People, translated by James Hankins, 3 vols (Cambridge, MA, 2001), Vol I, Preface, 3.23 Bruni, History of the Florentine People, Vol I, Preface, 3.24 Bruni, History of the Florentine People, Vol II, book VI, section 3, 157; Vol II, book VII, section 47, 325.25 Bruni, History of the Florentine People, Vol II, book VII, section 49, 327.26 Ianziti, Writing History in Renaissance Italy, 115.27 Ianziti, Writing History in Renaissance Italy, 108, 116.28 Jacob Soll, Publishing The Prince: History, Reading and the Birth of Political Criticism (Ann Arbor, MI, 2005); Kinch Hoekstra, 'Thucydides and the Bellicose Beginnings of Modern Political Theory', in Thucydides and the Modern World: Reception, Reinterpretation and Influence from the Renaissance to the Present, edited by Katherine Harloe and Neville Morley (Cambridge, 2012), 25–54.29 Giorgio Spini, 'Historiography: The Art of History in the Italian Counter-Reformation', in The Late Italian Renaissance, edited by Eric Cochrane (London, 1970), 91–133 (114–18).30 Bouwsma remains the fullest English-language treatment of Sarpi in context; see William J. Bouwsma, Venice and the Defence of Republican Liberty: Renaissance Values in the Age of the Counter Reformation (Berkley, CA, 1968). For more recent treatments, see Filippo De Vivo, 'Historical Justifications of Venetian Power in the Adriatic', Journal of the History of Ideas, 64 (2003), 159–76; Filippo De Vivo, 'Paolo Sarpi and the Uses of Information in Seventeenth-Century Venice', Media History, 11 (2005), 37–51; Francis Oakley, 'Complexities of Context: Gerson, Bellarmine, Sarpi, Richter, and the Venetian Interdict of 1606–1607', Catholic Historical Review, 82 (1996), 369–96; Corrado Vivanti, Quattro Lezioni su Paolo Sarpi (Naples, 2005).31 Bouwsma, Venice and the Defence of Republican Liberty, 556.32 Vivanti, Quattro Lezioni su Paolo Sarpi, 115–16.33 David Wootton, Paolo Sarpi: Between Renaissance and Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1983).34 Paolo Sarpi, Advice Given to the Republick of Venice, translated by William Aglionby (London, 1693), 30.35 Sarpi, Republick of Venice, 13–14.36 Paolo Sarpi, The Free Schoole of Warre, translated by William Bedell (London, 1625), 7–8.37 Sarpi, Republick of Venice, 3.38 Soll, Publishing The Prince, 24.39 Machiavelli, Florentine Histories, 8.40 Martin Wight, Systems of States, edited by Hedley Bull (Leicester, 1977). De systematibus civitatum, along with De republica irregulari, published the following year in 1668, were later collected in Pufendorf's Dissertationes academicae selectiores of 1675. Wight misleadingly implies that the former essay was first published in the Dissertationes of 1675; see Wight, Systems of States, 21.41 Two other instances cited by Wight are worth mentioning. In 1687 Christian Thomasius distinguished a systema civitatum from a confederation defined as 'perpetua unio indefinitae gratiae causa [a lasting union made by agreement]'; and in 1806 Friedrich Gentz used Staatensystem in his Fragments upon the Balance of Power; see Wight, Systems of States, 21.42 Wight, Systems of States, 21.43 Peter Schröder, 'The Constitution of the Holy Roman Empire after 1648: Samuel Pufendorf's Assessment in his Monzambano', Historical Journal, 42 (1999), 961–83 (982).44 I use the recent reprint of Bohun's 1696 revised translation: Samuel Pufendorf, The Present State of Germany, translated by Edmund Bohun, edited by Michael J. Seidler (Indianapolis, IN, 2007). For a discussion of Pufendorf's historical writings while he was the historiographer royal of Sweden (1677–1688) and Brandenburg (1688–1694), see Pärtel Piirimäe, 'Politics and History: An Unholy Alliance? Samuel Pufendorf as Official Historiographer', in Rund um die Meere des Norderns: Festschrift für Hain Rebas, edited by Michael Engelbrecht, Ulrike Hanssen-Decker, and Daniel Höffker (Heyde, 2008), 237–52.45 Michael J. Seidler, 'Natural Law and History: Pufendorf's Philosophical Historiography', in History and Disciplines: The Reclassification of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe, edited by Donald Kelley (Rochester, NY, 1997), 203–22; Schröder, 'The Constitution of the Holy Roman Empire after 1648'.46 Pufendorf, Present State of Germany, 176. Pufendorf borrows the distinction between 'regular' and 'irregular' bodies from Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Harmondsworth, 1968), chapter 22. For an extended theoretical treatment of the topic, see Samuel Pufendorf, On the Law of Nature and Nations, translated by Charles H. Oldfather and William A. Oldfather (Oxford, 1934), book VII, chapter 5, sections 12–22.47 Pufendorf, Present State of Germany, 175.48 Pufendorf, Present State of Germany, 175. For accuracy and convenience, here and elsewhere, I have adjusted the early English translations of Pufendorf's texts in line with the alternative renderings suggested by Michael J. Seidler.49 Pufendorf, Present State of Germany, 178, 201–02.50 Hobbes, Leviathan, chapter 22.51 Originally published as Einleitung zu der Historie der vornehmsten Reiche und Staaten von Europa, it was translated into English by Jodocrus Crull in 1695. I use Seidler's new edition: Samuel Pufendorf, An Introduction to the History of the Principal Kingdoms and States of Europe, translated by Jodocrus Crull, edited by Michael J. Seidler (Indianapolis, IN, 2013).52 Pufendorf, History of the Principal Kingdoms, 7–8.53 Pufendorf, Present State of Germany, 219–20.54 See Samuel Pufendorf, On the Duty of Man and Citizen according to Natural Law, translated by Michael Silverthorne, edited by James Tully (Cambridge, 1991), book II, chapters 1, 9, 11, 16; Pufendorf, Law of Nature and Nations, book II, chapter 2; book VII, chapter 1; book VIII, chapter 5.55 Richard Devetak, '"Fear of Universal Monarchy": Balance of Power as an Ordering Practice of Liberty', in Liberal World Orders, edited by Tim Dunne and Trine Flockhart (Oxford, 2013), 121–38.56 Maurice Keens-Soper, 'The Practice of a States-System', in The Reason of States: A Study in International Political Theory, edited by Michael Donelan (London, 1978), 25–44 (27–30). For valuable expositions of Europe's identity as a states-system, see Wight, System of States, chapter 1; Denys Hay, Europe: The Emergence of an Idea (New York, NY, 1957); H. D. Schmidt, 'The Establishment of "Europe" as a Political Expression', Historical Journal, 9 (1966), 172–78.57 Robertson repeatedly uses the locution 'present state of Europe'; see William Robertson, History of the Reign of Charles the Fifth, with an Account of the Emperor's Life after his Abdication by William H. Prescott (London, 1869).58 J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion. Volume Two: Narratives of Civil Government (Cambridge, 1999–), 20.59 J. G. A. Pocock, 'Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment, Revolution and Counter-Revolution: A Eurosceptical Enquiry', History of Political Thought, 20 (1999), 125–39 (128).60 Robertson, History of the Reign of Charles the Fifth, 1–85. The essay's three sections are entitled, respectively: 'View of the Progress of Society in Europe with Respect to Interior Government, Laws, and Manners'; 'View of the Progress of Society in Europe with Respect to the Command of the National Force Requisite in Foreign Operations'; and 'View of the Political Constitution of the Principal States in Europe at the Commencement of the Sixteenth Century'. The third section is in fact another example of the 'state of Europe' genre discussed above.61 Robertson, History of the Reign of Charles the Fifth, 39.62 Robertson, History of the Reign of Charles the Fifth, 39.63 Robertson, History of the Reign of Charles the Fifth, 39–40, 503–04.64 Robertson, History of the Reign of Charles the Fifth, 40. For useful guides to Robertson's History of the Reign of Charles the Fifth, see Karen O'Brien, Narratives of Enlightenment: Cosmopolitan History from Voltaire to Gibbon (Cambridge, 1997), chapter 5; Nicholas Phillipson, 'Providence and Progress: An Introduction to the Historical Thought of William Robertson', in William Robertson and the Expansion of the Empire, edited by Stewart J. Brown (Cambridge, 1997), 55–73. Armitage has also written on Robertson, albeit on the Scotsman's History of America, published in 1777; see David Armitage, 'The New World and British Historical Thought: From Richard Hakluyt to William Robertson', in America in European Consciousness, 1493–1750, edited by Karen Ordahl Kupperman (Chapel Hill, NC, 1995), 52–75.65 Robertson, History of the Reign of Charles the Fifth, 50.66 Robertson, History of the Reign of Charles the Fifth, 50.67 Robertson, History of the Reign of Charles the Fifth, 503.68 Robertson, History of the Reign of Charles the Fifth, 504. Interestingly, Robertson found there were no grounds for the widespread contemporary assumption that Charles V had ambitions of 'establishing a universal monarchy in Europe'; see Robertson, History of the Reign of Charles the Fifth, 498.69 I use the English translation published in 1834. Arthur Heeren, A Manual of the Political System of Europe and its Colonies, from its Formation at the Close of the Fifteenth Century, to its Reestablishment upon the Fall of Napoleon, translator unknown (Freeport, ME, 1971), xiii.70 Heeren, A Manual of the Political System of Europe, xiv.71 Heeren, A Manual of the Political System of Europe, 5. In fact, this sentence and opening paragraph were added to the second edition of 1811. I have modified the translation.72 Heeren, A Manual of the Political System of Europe, 8–9.73 Heeren, A Manual of the Political System of Europe, vii.74 There was nothing particularly novel about this periodisation; a general consensus had emerged in the eighteenth century that 1500 marked the threshold of a new epoch. Indeed, one of Heeren's predecessors at Göttingen, Johann Christoph Gatterer, nominated 1492 and the discovery of the Americas as the advent of 'die neue Zeit'; see Koselleck, Futures Past, 243.75 Heeren, A Manual of the Political System of Europe, 11.76 Heeren, A Manual of the Political System of Europe, 6.77 Heeren, A Manual of the Political System of Europe, 6–7.78 Heeren, A Manual of the Political System of Europe, 7.79 Heeren, A Manual of the Political System of Europe, viii, vii. This, of course, would become an influential definition of 'international society' in the twentieth century, as elaborated by English School thinkers such as Wight and Bull.80 Koselleck, Futures Past, 254–55.81 Martii Koskenniemi notes that the Göttingen jurists Gottfried Achenwall and Johan Stephan Pütter embodied 'an Enlightenment spirit […] very close […] to Vattel's'; see Martii Koskenniemi, 'The Advantage of Treaties: International Law in the Enlightenment', Edinburgh Law Review, 13 (1999), 27–67 (54–55).82 Pocock, 'Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment', 128.83 Heeren, A Manual of the Political System of Europe, 90–103.84 Heeren, A Manual of the Political System of Europe, 91, 102.85 Heeren, A Manual of the Political System of Europe, 100–03.86 Heeren, A Manual of the Political System of Europe, 322.87 Heeren, A Manual of the Political System of Europe, 390. For discussions of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century British discourses on the threat of 'universal monarchy' destroying the 'liberties of Europe', see Steven Pincus, 'The English Debate over Universal Monarchy', in Union for Empire: Political Thought and the British Union of 1707, edited by John Robertson (Cambridge, 1995), 37–62; John Robertson, 'Empire and Union: Two Concepts of the Early Modern European Political Order', in Union for Empire, edited by J. Robertson, 3–36; Devetak, '"Fear of Universal Monarchy"'.88 Heeren, A Manual of the Political System of Europe, 443, 445.89 Murray Forsyth, 'The Old European States-System: Gentz versus Hauterive', Historical Journal, 23 (1980), 521–38 (525).90 Edward Keene, Beyond the Anarchical Society: Grotius, Colonialism and Order in World Politics (Cambridge, 2002), 16.91 Pocock, Barbarism and Religion: Volume Two, 9.92 Koskenniemi, 'The Advantage of Treaties'.93 Richard Devetak, 'Law of Nations as Reason of State: Diplomacy and the Balance of Power in Vattel's Law of Nations', Pargenon, 28 (2011), 105–28.94 Armitage, Foundations, 206. See also Martti Koskenniemi, 'Into Positivism: Georg Friedrich von Martens (1756–1821) and Modern International Law', Constellations, 15 (2008), 189–207. 'So great was Vattel's impact on positive conceptions of [state] independence', says Armitage, 'that we might call the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries a "Vattelian moment"'; see Armitage, Foundations, 224.95 Armitage, Foundations, 13.96 Armitage, Foundations, 12.
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