Artigo Revisado por pares

The Confessional State in International Politics: Tudor England, Religion, and the Eclipse of Dynasticism

2014; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 25; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09592296.2014.936194

ISSN

1557-301X

Autores

Benjamin de Carvalho,

Tópico(s)

Scottish History and National Identity

Resumo

AbstractWhilst religion and collective identity have become issues of central concern to international relations scholars, dynastic concerns and national interests still dominate their analyses of early modern international politics. This analysis contributes to the constructivist emphasis on collective identity to foreign policy by examining Tudor England in light of the concept of confessionalisation. Based on the recent historiography of Tudor England, this analysis demonstrates the importance of religion in defining not only the collective identity of international actors, but also their foreign policies, choice of alliances, and, more generally, their international outlook. Through such a lens, it seeks to draw analyses of the confessional state away from their focus on domestic state formation to the “external” dimension of confessionalisation and its importance for international politics. AcknowledgementsI wish to thank the following for their helpful comments in the drafting of this article: Morten Skumsrud Andersen, Jens Bartelson, Kristin M. Haugevik, Charles A. Jones, Halvard Leira, Iver B. Neumann, Andrea Paras, Ole Jacob Sending, and William C. Wohlforth, as well as the Editor and three anonymous reviewers. All faults remain my own.Notes1. For an overview, see Benjamin de Carvalho, Halvard Leira and John M. Hobson. “The Big Bangs of IR: The Myths that Your Teachers Still Tell You about 1648 and 1919,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 39/3 (2011), 735–58; Benjamin de Carvalho, “Den westfalske fetisj i internasjonal politikk. Om den suverene stat og statssystemets opprinnelse” Internasjonal Politikk, 63/1 (2005), 7–34.2. For instance, Luca Mavelli, “Security and Securitization in International Relations” European Journal of International Relations, 18/1 (2011), 177–99; Peter H. Wilson, “Dynasty, Constitution, and Confession: The Role of Religion in the Thirty Years War,” International History Review, 30/3 (2008), 473–514.3. See especially Daniel H. Nexon, The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton, NJ, 2009); Daniel Philpott, “The Religious Roots of Modern International Relations” World Politics, 52/2 (2000), 206–45.4. Notably Rodney Bruce Hall, National Collective Identity: Social Constructs and International System (New York, 1999); Christian Reus-Smit, The Moral Purpose of the State: Culture, Social Identity and Institutional Rationality in International Relations (Princeton, NJ, 1999). Reus-Smit does not highlight the importance of the reformation(s), jumping instead from the Italian Renaissance to the seventeenth century Absolutist state.5. I do not offer a problematisation of logics of action here, as the theoretical purchase of the article lies elsewhere. A good discussion can nevertheless be found in Ole Jacob Sending, “Constitution, Choice and Change: Problems with the ‘Logic of Appropriateness’ and its use in Constructivist Theory” European Journal of International Relations, 8/4 (2002), 443–70.6. See Glenn Richardson and Susan Doran, “Introduction—Tudor Monarchs and Their Neighbours,” in Susan Doran and Glenn Richardson, eds., Tudor England and Its Neighbours (London, 2005). Cf. Montagu Burrows, The History of the Foreign Policy of Great Britain (London, 1895); J.R. Seeley, The Growth of British Policy, 2 volumes (Cambridge, 1895); A.F. Pollard, Henry VIII (London, 1902).7. See R.B. Wernham, Before the Armada: The Growth of English Foreign Policy 1485–1588 (London, 1966).8. Quoted in Rory McEntegart, Henry VIII, the League of Schmalkalden and the English Reformation (London, 2002), 1.9. See especially Nexon, Struggle for Power. Then Daniel M. Green, “Canon Law, Dynasticism, and the Origins of International Law: Sources of Order in the Sixteenth Century” Paper for the Sixth Pan–European Conference on International Relations SGIR-ECPR, Turin, Italy (12–15 September 2007).10. See Henry Kamen, Empire: How Spain Became a World Power, 1492–1763. (New York, 2003).11. Diana Saco, “Gendering Sovereignty: Marriage and International Relations in Elizabethan Times,” European Journal of International Relations, 3/3 (1997), 293.12. B. Teschke, “Theorizing the Westphalian System of States: International Relations from Absolutism to Capitalism” European Journal of International Relations, 8/1 (2002), 6–7.13. Nexon, Struggle for Power, 93. Nexon recognises that confessionalisation impeded to some extent the options available to rulers, but grants it little importance in defining interests and relations.14. Peter H. Wilson, “Dynasty, Constitution, and Confession: The Role of Religion in the Thirty Years War,” International History Review, 30/3 (2008), 497, 50, 512.15. See G. Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy (Boston, 1955), 140.16. See Simon L. Adams, The Protestant Cause: Religious Alliance with the West European Calvinist Communities as a Political Issue in England, 1585–1630. (DPhil dissertation, Oxford, 1973).17. Gerhard Müller, “Alliance and Confession: The Theological-Historical Development and Ecclesiastical-Political Significance of Reformation Confessions” Sixteenth Century Journal, 8/4 (1977) makes the case for confessional alliances as early as the 1524.18. The importance of confessionalisation for international relations is central to the work of Rodney Bruce Hall, who labels the early modern European system as the “Augsburg system.” His characteristically broad sweeps, however, encounter several problems when faced with more historically oriented inquiries, most notably that one logic of action cannot be imposed on a given time, especially not to the period in question, which is best characterised as a period of fragmentation and at best an uneasy transition from Christendom to a state system. See Hall, National Collective Identity.19. For instance, Reus-Smit, Moral Purpose; Hall, National Collective Identity.20. See Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York, 1948); Stephen Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca, NY, 1987); Arthur A. Stein, Why Nations Cooperate: Circumstance and Choice in International Relations (Ithaca, NY, 1990); Glenn Snyder, Alliance Politics (Ithaca, NY, 2007).21. See Walt, Origins of Alliances.22. For instance John Baylis, “The Anglo–American Relationship and Alliance Theory,” International Relations, 8/4 (1985), 379.23. Notably David A. Lake, “Anarchy, Hierarchy, and the Variety of International Relations,” International Organization, 50/1 (1996), 1–33; G. John Ikenberry, “Power and Liberal Order: America’s Postwar World Order in Transition,” International Relations of the Asia–Pacific, 5 (2005), 133–52.24. Kristin M. Haugevik, How Relationships Become Special: Inter-state Friendship and Diplomacy after the Second World War [PhD dissertation, Oslo, 2014], 30.25. Ibid., 31.26. For instance, Peter J. Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York 1996); Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge, 1999). Cf. Mlada Bukovansky, “The Altered State and the State of Nature—the French Revolution and International Politics,” Review of International Studies, 25/2 (1999), 197–216; Xavier Guillaume “Foreign Policy and the Politics of Alterity: A Dialogical Understanding of International Relations,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 31/1 (2002), 1–26.27. Peter J. Katzenstein, “Introduction: Alternative Perspectives on National Security” in idem., National Security.28. Michael N. Barnett, “Identity and Alliances in the Middle East,” in Katzenstein, National Security, 401–03.29. Ibid., 410.30. Ibid., 446.31. For instance, B. Teschke, The Myth of 1648: Class, Geopolitics and the Making of Modern International Relations (London, 2003).32. See Reus-Smit, Moral Purpose.33. An example is Hall, National Collective Identity.34. See Daniel Philpott, Revolutions in Sovereignty: How Ideas Shaped Modern International Relations. (Princeton, NJ, 2001), 97 on Protestantism, 120 on England.35. See Nexon, Struggle for Power. Nexon acknowledges the importance of confessional identity, but less as driver of state policy than as non-state identity within the Holy Roman Empire that came to undercut dynastic imperial practices.36. This builds on the work of Karl W Deutsch, Sidney A. Burrell, Robert A. Kann, Maurice Lee Jr., Martin Lichterman, Raymond E. Lindgren, Francis L. Loewenheim and Richard W. Van Wagenen, Political Community and the North Atlantic Area: International Organization in the Light of Historical Experience (Princeton, NJ, 1957). Also Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett, eds., Security Communities (Cambridge, 1998); Vincent Pouliot, International Security in Practice: The Politics of NATO–Russia Diplomacy (Cambridge, 2010).37. The concept of the confessional state is by no means new to IR. To the extent that it figures in IR literature, however, it is more in terms of the impact that confessionalisation had on state formation and the consolidation of a form of (proto)nationalism than in terms of how it had an effect on the foreign policies of states. For an overview, see Morten Skumsrud Andersen, “Legitimacy in State-Building: A Review of the IR Literature” International Political Sociology 6/2 (2012), 205–219.38. As such, this argument dovetails with Heather Rae, State Identities and the Homogenization of Peoples (Cambridge, 2002). For a similar argument, see Benjamin de Carvalho and Andrea Paras “Sovereignty and Solidarity: Moral Obligation, Confessional England, and the Huguenots,” International History Review, (2014): DOI:10.1080/07075332.2013.879912.39. Consider Hall’s argument: “In the nationalist era, statesmen were no longer speaking with the voice of a prince, a house, an empire or kingdom. … The statesmen of nation-states began speaking in the new voice of a sovereign people, a collective actor possessed of a collective identity and collective interests and goals.” Rodney Bruce Hall, “Territorial and National Sovereigns: Sovereign Identity and Consequences for Security Policy,” in Glenn Chafetz, Michael Spirtas and Benjamin Frankel, eds., The Origins of National Interests (London, 1999), 149.40. For instance, Nexon, Struggle for Power.41. Notably Philip S. Gorski, The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Early Modern Europe (Chicago, IL, 2003); idem., “Calvinism and State Formation in Early Modern Europe” in George Steinmetz, ed., State/Culture: State-Formation after the Cultural Turn (Ithaca, NY, 1999), 147–81.42. Wolfgang Reinhard, “Reformation, Counter-Reformation, and the Early Modern State: A Reassessement,” Catholic Historical Review, 75/3 (1989), 384.43. Heinz Schilling, Religion, Political Culture and the Emergence of Early Modern Society. Essays in German and Dutch History (Leiden, 1992), 239. See also Halvard Leira, “Justus Lipsius, Political Humanism and the Disciplining of 17th Century Statecraft,” Review of International Studies, 34/4 (1999), 669–92; idem., “Taking Foucault beyond Foucault: Inter-state Governmentality in Early Modern Europe,” Global Society, 23/4 (2009), 475–95.44. Schilling, Political Culture, 232.45. Reinhard, “Reformation, Counter-Reformation,” 386, 390.46. Schilling, Political Culture, 209. Also Randolph C. Head, “Catholics and Protestants in Graubünden: Confessional Discipline and Confessional Identities without an Early Modern State?,” German History, 17/3 (1999), 321–45.47. R. Po-chia Hsia, Social Discipline in the Reformation: Central Europe 1550–1750 (London, 1992), 3.48. Schilling draws upon the maxim employed by seventeenth century jurists, religio vinculum societatis—religion is the unifying bond of society. Heinz Schilling, “Confession and Political Identity in Europe at the Beginning of Modern Times (Fifteenth to Eighteenth Centuries),” Concilium, 6(1995), 4.49. Idem, “Reformation and Confessionalization in Germany and Modern German History,” in ICSR, Secularization and Religion: The Persisting Tension. Acts of The XIXth International Conference for The Sociology of Religion (Lausanne, 1987), 202.50. Lucien Febvre, The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century: The Religion of Rabelais (Cambridge, 1982), 347.51. Reinhard, “Reformation, Counter-Reformation,” 398.52. How confessionalisation strengthened the state economically, see Sheilagh C. Ogilvie, “Germany and the Seventeenth-Century Crisis,” Historical Journal, 35/2 (1992), 417–42.53. Reinhard, “Reformation, Counter-Reformation.” 400.54. Heinz Schilling, “Confessionalization in Europe—Causes and Effects for the Church, State, Society and Culture,” in Klaus Bussmann and Heinz Schilling, eds., 1648—War and Peace in Europe, (Münster/Osnabrück, 1998).55. Heinz Schilling, “Confessional Europe,” in Thomas A. Brady Jr, Heiko A. Oberman, and James D. Tracy, eds., Handbook of European History 1400–1600 (New York, 1995), 659.56. Schilling, “Confessionalization in Europe.”57. Idem., “Reformation and Confessionalization,” 208.58. Ibid.59. The confessional identity of the early modern states, Schilling argues, was nevertheless a “transitional type of identification. Confessional identity was the early form of a relatively uniform collective awareness of being ‘us’ which already was sharp.” Schilling, “Beginning of Modern Times,” 12.60. Figures from John Coffey, Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England 1558–1689 (London, 2000), 90, 99. For more on the topic, see Geoffrey F. Nuttall, “The English Martyrs, 1535–1680: A Statistical Review,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 22/3 (1971); W.H. Summers, “List of Persons Burned for Heresy in England,” Transactions of the Congregational Historical Society, 2 (1905–1906).61. Coffey, Persecution and Toleration, 81. Also W. Monter, “Heresy Executions in Reformation Europe, 1520–1565,” in Ole Petter Grell and Bob Scribner, eds., Tolerance and Intolerance in the European Reformation (Cambridge, 1996).62. Michael C. Questier, Conversion, Politics and Religion in England, 1580–1625 (Cambridge, 1996), 166.63. See John J. LaRocca, “‘Who Can’t Pray with Me, Can’t Love Me’: Toleration and the Early Jacobean Recusancy Policy,” Journal of British Studies, 23/2 (1984); Michael C. Questier, “Loyalty, Religion and State Power in Early Modern England: English Romanism and the Jacobean Oath of Allegiance,” Historical Journal, 40/2 (1997).64. Toleration of religious dissent was the exception throughout the period. Moreover, the religious toleration granted was far from acceptance. See Olivier Christin, La Paix de Religion. L’autonomisation de la Raison Politique au XVIe Siecle (Paris, 1997).65. See Roger B. Manning, Religion and Society in Elizabethan Sussex: A Study of the Enforcement of the Religious Settlement, 1558–1603 (Leicester, 1969).66. Quoted in Coffey, Persecution and Toleration, 83. Also J. Hurstfield, “Church and State, 1558–1612: The Task of the Cecils,” in G.J. Cuming, ed., Studies in Church History (Cambridge, 1965).67. Quoted in Coffey, Persecution and Toleration, 33.68. Ibid., 38.69. For the historical background of the Schmalkaldic League—essentially a defensive alliance of Lutheran polities within the Empire—see Müller, “Alliance and Confession,” 135. For an overview of England’s relations with Protestant Powers, see Susan Doran, England and Europe in the Sixteenth Century (New York, 1999), 88–95.70. Froude argued, “those who believe that human actions obey the laws of natural causation, might find their philosophy confirmed by the conduct of the great powers of Europe during the early years of the Reformation.” James Anthony Froude, History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada, Volume 3 (London, 2001 [1870–1875]), 1. For full discussion of the historiography of these events, see Rory McEntegart, Henry VIII, the League of Schmalkalden and the English Reformation (London, 2002), 1–9.71. See McEntegart, League of Schmalkalden; idem., “Towards an Ideological Foreign Policy: Henry VIII and Lutheran Germany, 1531–1547,” in Doran and Richardson, Tudor England). Also David Scott Gehring, Anglo–German Relations and the Protestant Cause: Elizabethan Foreign Policy and Pan–Protestantism (London, 2013).72. McEntegart, League of Schmalkalden, 225. E.I. Kouri, England and the Attempts to Form a Protestant Alliance in the Late 1560s: A Case Study in European Diplomacy (Helsinki, 1981), 14 supports this argument.73. See Neelak Serawlook Tjernagel, Henry VIII and the Lutherans: A Study in Anglo–Lutheran Relations from 1521 to 1547 (Saint Louis, 1965), 120–34.74. See McEntegart, League of Schmalkalden.75. Instructions prepared for English envoys, quoted in McEntegart, “Ideological Foreign Policy,” 77.76. Ibid., 82.77. Ibid., 83.78. Tjernagel, Henry VIII, 153.79. See Ibid.80. McEntegart, “Ideological Foreign Policy,” 100. An interesting point in terms of the early association of England with the international Protestant cause is raised in Gilbert Millar Tudor Mercenaries and Auxiliaries (Charlottesville, VA, 1980), 128. For later developments, see David J.B. Trim, “Huguenot Soldiering c. 1560–1685: The Origins of a Tradition,” in Matthew Glozier and David Onnekink, eds., War, Religion and Service: Huguenot Soldiering, 1685–1713 (London, 2007).81. A good overview stressing continuities in early sixteenth century diplomacy is found in Gary M. Bell, “Tudor–Stuart Diplomatic History and the Henrician Experience,” in Charles Carlton, ed., State, Sovereigns and Society in Early Modern England: Essays in Honour of A.J. Slavin (New York, 1998).82. David Potter, “Mid-Tudor Foreign Policy and Diplomacy, 1547–1563,” in Doran and Richardson, Tudor England, 107.83. Quoted in Ibid., 121.84. Ibid., 127.85. Ibid.86. For instance David Potter, “Mid-Tudor Foreign Policy,” 127.87. Stephen Alford, The Early Elizabethan Polity: William Cecil and the British Succession Crisis, 1558–1569 (Cambridge, 2002), 53–55.88. Elizabeth’s matrimonial issues are treated in detail in Susan Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony: The Courtships of Elizabeth I (London, 1996).89. See idem, “Religion and Politics at the Court of Elizabeth I: The Habsburg Marriage Negotiations of 1559–1567,” English Historical Review, 104(1989).90. Susan Doran, Elizabeth I and Foreign Policy, 1558–1603 (London, 2000), 14. See also Kouri, Protestant Alliance, 21.91. Doran, Elizabeth I and Foreign Policy, 30–31.92. Doran, Monarchy and Matrimony, 130.93. Ibid., 136–37.94. Doran, Elizabeth I and Foreign Policy, 39.95. Wernham, for instance, characterises the policies under Elizabeth as more or less rational and constant. Wernham, Before the Armada; idem., After the Armada: Elizabethan England and the Struggle for Western Europe 1588–1595 (Oxford, 1984). Cf. Charles Wilson, Queen Elizabeth and the Revolt of the Netherlands (London, 1970); Wallace MacCaffrey, The Shaping of the Elizabethan Regime: Elizabethan Politics, 1558–72 (Princeton, 1994).96. Trim, “Protestant Alliance,” 144–45.97. These loans came directly for Huguenot commanders, advances to German commanders, or hiring German mercenary armies. English merchants also helped transport donations from Dutch refugees and English sympathisers to La Rochelle in 1572 and 1573. Ibid., 160–62.98. The ensuing suspension of Anglo–Dutch commerce lasted until 1573. Cf. Kouri, Protestant Alliance, 67–70.99. Trim, “Protestant Alliance,” 166–67.100. Gehring, Anglo–German Relations, 4.101. For instance, Wallace MacCaffrey, “Elizabethan Politics: The First Decade, 1558–1568,” Past and Present, 24(1963). Also see Reinhard Bendix, Kings or People: Power and the Mandate to Rule (Berkeley, CA, 1978), 289, adopting the view that Elizabeth’s personal concerns guided much of her foreign policies and that “there is little dispute about the queen’s great caution in her domestic and foreign policies.”102. “With remarkable accuracy, Elizabethan foreign policy-makers knew how the Empire worked (and how it did not) and kept up with changing situations due to intelligence from ambassadors and resident agents.” See Gehring. Anglo–German Relations, 5, 9.103. Cecil quoted in Trim, “Protestant Alliance.”104. The English intervention proved largely instrumental in securing a compromise between the Crown and the Huguenots. Ibid., 150–51.105. These events influenced strongly the implementation of English pro-Protestant policies on the Continent for the next decades. See Mark Charles Fissel, English Warfare 1511–1642 (London, 2001), 137.106. Trim, “Protestant Alliance,” 147. Then see Alford, Elizabethan Polity, 56.107. Ibid., 154–55.108. Quoted in Ibid., 148.109. See Fissel, English Warfare, 137.110. Trim, “Protestant Alliance,” 168. See also Idem., “Calvinist Internationalism and the English Officer Corps, 1562–1642,” History Compass, 4/6 (2006).111. Idem., “The ‘Secret War’ of Elizabeth I: England and the Huguenots During the Early Wars of Religion, 1562–77,” Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of Great Britain and Ireland, XXVII/2 (1999).112. Gehring, Anglo–German Relations, 10.113. Trim, “Protestant Alliance,” 164–65.114. Fissel, English Warfare, 142.115. Norman L. Jones, “Elizabeth’s First Year: The Conception and Birth of the Elizabethan Political World,” in Haigh, Elizabeth I, 50.116. See Alford, Elizabethan Polity, 189.117. Ibid., 194.118. Trim, “Protestant Alliance,” 156.119. Quoted in Ibid.120. Ibid.121. Quoted in Ibid., 174.122. See Kouri, Protestant Alliance; idem., “For True Faith or National Interest? Queen Elizabeth I and the Protestant Powers,” in E.I. Kouri and Tom Scot, eds., Politics and Society in Reformation Europe: Essays for Sir Geoffrey Elton on His Sixty-Fifth Birthday (London, 1987). Also Walther Kirchner, “England and Denmark, 1558–1588,” Journal of Modern History, 17/1 (1945).123. Trim, “Protestant Alliance,” 157.124. See Benjamin de Carvalho, “Keeping the State: Religious Toleration in Early Modern France and the Role of the State in Minority Conflicts,” European Yearbook of Minority Issues, 1 (The Hague, 2003), 5–29.125. Trim, “Protestant Alliance,” 158–60. This time, England achieved a formal agreement with the electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, and the duke of Brunswick in the form of the Articuli praecipi foederis, quod Sereniss. Regina Angliae que cum Evangelicus Germaniae Principius iuire constituit.126. Wernham, After the Armada.127. Trim, “Protestant Alliance,” 160.128. Ibid., 139.129. Trim makes the case that the view of Elizabeth as confessionally neutral in her approach to foreign policy emanates from her first historian, William Camden. Ibid., 140.130. This view contrasts with that held by, for instance, Ben Lowe, who claims that “the religious issues were perhaps most obvious, but were never the determining factor in making policy.” Ben Lowe, “Religious Wars and the ‘Common Peace’: Anglican Anti-war Sentiment in Elizabethan England,” Albion, 28/3 (1996), 435.131. Trim, “Protestant Alliance,” 153. This view echoes Andrew Pettegree, “Elizabethan Foreign Policy,” Historical Journal, 31/4 (1988), 972.132. Andrew Pettegree, “Queen B,” History Today, 45 (March 1995), 50.133. Trim, “Protestant Alliance,” 145.134. Bendix, Kings or People, 287.135. Kouri, “National Interest?”136. Trim, “Protestant Alliance,” 142.137. Ibid. See also Kouri, “National Interest?”138. Kouri, Protestant Alliance.139. Erik Ringmar, Identity, Interest, and Action: A Cultural Explanation of Sweden’s Intervention in the Thirty Years War (Cambridge, 1996), 3.Additional informationNotes on contributorsBenjamin de CarvalhoBenjamin de Carvalho is a Senior Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) in Oslo. He holds his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge (King’s College) and specialises in early modern international relations, including state formation, identity, religion, and sovereignty.

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