Natural Law, Imperialism and Perpetual Peace: European Ideals (and Illusions) of Global Governance

Seminar description

 

There  is much talk these days of global governance—amongst politicians, in a wide a range of academic disciplines and here at the EUI, which is constructing its own Global Governance Programme . Global governance is a somewhat elusive and, since a very long time, deeply contested concept. Arguably, the current awareness that many key political, economic and cultural issues have global dimensions, with complexities that rise well above the city, the nation, the state, and organisations such as the European Union or NATO, has long and deep historical roots, often blissfully ignored in current debates.

The principal aim of this seminar is to explore a range of early modern solutions to the problems of global governance. The focus is on a series of proposals to establish enduring peace, concord and cooperation, if not unity, in Europe, the world and across humanity. More specifically, starting with the great Florentine humanist Dante, the course will look at proposals for universal monarchy, its critique in the writings of Erasmus and Vittoria, the attempts to set up a system of ius gentium, applicable to all of humanity, and laws of nations derived from natural law by writers such as Grotius, Locke, Vattel and Wolff, and the alternative 18th-century proposals for a world order based on ‘balance of power’, empire, perpetual peace and a new law of nations.

A second aim is to explore, where possible, the relevance of early modern writings on global governance for our current debates. Modesty here is a key scholarly virtue. On the one hand, whilst changing from context to context, at least some notions of balance of power, cosmopolitanism and natural law have been enduring and play important roles in contemporary debates. On the other hand, not many, if any at all, contemporary commentators are pleading for a return to universal monarchy…

 

Programme

 

14 October: Dante, Florence and the Renaissance Ideal of Universal Monarchy

• Dante, Monarchy, ed. Prue Shaw, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought, Book One, Cambridge, 1996, pp. 3-29.

Commentary

• Prue Shaw, ‘Introduction’, in Dante, Monarchy, ed. Prue Shaw, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought, Book One, Cambridge, 1996, pp. ix-xxxiv

• Anthony Black, ‘Empire and Nation’ in Political Thought in Europe, 1250-1450, Cambridge, 1992, 85-116.

 

21 October: Contested Universal Monarchy: Charles V, Erasmus and Vitoria

• Enea Vico, Carolus V•Aug•Imp•Caes, engraving, 1550

• Erasmus, ‘Letter to Alfonso Valdes’ in P.S. Allen (ed.), Opus Epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, vol. 8, Oxford, 1934, Letter 2126, p 91

• Francisco de Vitoria, ‘On Civil Power’ (1528), in Political Writings¸ ed. Anthony Pagden and Jeremy Lawrance, Cambridge, 1991, pp. 1-32

Commentary

• Martin van Gelderen, ‘Universal Monarchy, The Rights of War and Peace and the Balance of Power: Europe’s Quest for Civil Order’, in Bo Strath, Hans-Ake Persson (eds.), Reflections on Europe. Defining a Political Order in Time and Space, Peter Lang, 2007, 49-72, especially 49-58.

• Martin van Gelderen, ‘The Low Countries: The Quest for Concord, in Glenn Burgess, Howell Lloyd and Simon Hodson (eds.), European Political Thought 1450-1700: Religion, Law and Philosophy, New Haven. Conn/London, 2007, 376-415, especially, 376-384.

• Annabel Brett, ‘Scholastic Political Thought and the Modern Concept of the State’, in Annabel Brett and James Tully (eds.), Rethinking the Foundations of Modern Political Thought, Cambridge, 2006, pp. 130-148.

 

28 October: Natural Law and the Laws for Mankind: Vitoria and Grotius

Primary Sources

• Francisco de Vitoria, ‘On the American Indians’, in Political Writings¸ ed. Anthony Pagden and Jeremy Lawrance, Cambridge, 1991, pp. 233-291.

• Hugo Grotius, The Rights of War and Peace (De Iure Belli ac Pacis), ed. Jean Barbeyrac, London, 1738/reprint by the Lawbook Exchange, 2004), Book II, Chapter 2, pp. 142-158.

Commentary

• A. Anghie, ‘Francisco de Vitoria and the Colonial Origins of International Law’, in Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law, Cambridge, 2002, 13-31.

• Martin van Gelderen, ‘Iustitiam non includo: Carl Schmitt, Hugo Grotius and the Ius Publicum Europaeum’, History of European Ideas, Volume 37, Issue 2, June 2011, Pp. 154-159.

 

04 November: Natural Law and the Laws of Nations: Vattel and Wolff

Primary Sources

• Christian Wolff, Jus gentium methodo scientifica pertractatum (1749), trans. Joseph H. Drake (Oxford, 1934), Prolegomena, pp. 9-19.

• Emer de Vattel, The Law of Nations (Le Droit des gens (1758)), eds. Bela Kapossy and Richard Whatmore, Indianapolis, 2008,  Preface; Bk. III, ch. iii, pp. 3a-13a, 243-54.

Commentary

• Theo Christov, ‘Liberal Internationalism Revisited: Grotius, Vattel, and the International Order of States’, The European Legacy, 10:5, (2005).

• Nicholas G. Onuf, ‘City of Sovereigns’ in The Republican Legacy in International Thought, Cambridge, 1998, 58-84.

 

11 November: Davenant, Hume and the Balance of Power

Primary Sources

• Charles Davenant, ‘An Essay upon the Balance of Power’ in Essays, London, 1701.

• David Hume, ‘Of Civil Liberty’, and ‘Of the Balance of Power’ in Essays Moral, Political and Literary, Liberty Classics, Indianapolis, 1987, 87-96 and 332-342

Commentary

• John Robertson, ‘Universal monarchy and the liberties of Europe: David Hume’s critique of an English Whig doctrine’ in Nicholas Phillipson and Quentin Skinner (eds.), Political Discourse in early modern Britain, Cambridge, 1993, 349-373.

• Deborah Boucoyannis, ‘The International Wanderings of a Liberal Idea, or Why Liberals can learn to stop worrying and love the Balance of Power’, Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 5, No. 4, 2007, 703-727.

 

18 November: John Locke, Property and the Beginnings of Empire

Primary Sources

• John Locke, ‘Of Property’, in Two Treatises of Government (1682-1683, 1689), 2nd Treatise, Ch. 5, ed. Peter Laslett, Cambridge, 1988, 285-302

• John Locke, ‘The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina’ (1669) in Political Essays, ed. Mark Goldie, Cambridge, 1997, 160-181.

Commentary

• James Tully, ‘Rediscovering America: the Two Treatises and Aboriginal Rights’ in An Approach to Political Philosophy: Locke in Contexts, Cambridge, 1993, 137-176

• David Armitage, ‘John Locke, Carolina, and the Two Treatises of Government’, Political Theory, vol. 32, no. 5, 2004, 602-627.

• Lee Ward, ‘Locke on the  Moral Basis of International Relations’, American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 50, No. 3, 2006, 691-705.

 

25 November: Enlightened Empire or British Barbarism: Burke and Mill

• Edmund Burke,‘Speech on Fox’s East India Bill’  in Select Works of Edmund Burke, vol. 4, New Imprint of the Payne Edition. Foreword and Biographical Note by Francis Canavan, Indianapolis, 1999.

• John Stuart Mill, ‘On the Negro Question’  (1850) in The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XXI - Essays on Equality, Law, and Education, ed. John M. Robson, Introduction by Stefan Collini, Toronto/London, 1984.

Commentary

• Siraj Ahmed, ‘The Theater of the Civilized Self: Edmund Burke and the East India Trials’, Representations, vol. 78, no. 1, 2002, 28-55.

• Margaret Kohn and Daniel O’Neill, ‘A Tale of Two Indias: Burke and Mill on Empire and Slavery in the West Indies and America’, Political Theory, vol. 34, No. 2, 2006, 192-228.

 

02 December: Kant: Perpetual Peace or Cosmopolitan Pitfalls?

Primary sources:

• Immanuel Kant, "Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch" (1795), in Kant: Political Writings, ed. Hans Reiss, 2nd edn. (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 93-115.

Commentary

• Sankar Muthu, ‘Kant’s Anti-Imperialism: Cultural Agency and Cosmopolitan Right’, in Enlightenment against Empire, Princeton, 2003, 172-209

• James Tully, ‘The Kantian Idea of Europe: Critical and Cosmopolitan Perspectives’, in Public Philosophy in a New Key, vol II, Cambridge, 2009,  pp. 15-42.

 

09 December: American Founding Fathers and the new Law of Nations: James Madison

Primary Sources

• James Madison, ‘Universal Peace’ (1792) in Writings, ed. Jack Rakove, The Library of America, 1999, 505-508

• James Madison, An Examination of the British Doctrine, Which Subjects to Capture a Legal Trade, Not Open in Times of Peace, Philadelphia, 1806.

• James Madison, ‘War Message to Congress (1812)’ in Writings, ed. Jack Rakove, The Library of America, 1999, 685-693.

• James Madison, ‘Advice to My Country’ (1834) in Writings, ed. Jack Rakove, The Library of America, 1999, 866-867.

Commentary

• Peter Onuf and Nicholas Onuf, ‘The New Law of Nations’ in Federal Union, Modern World: The Law of Nations in an Age of Revolutions, 1776-1814, Madison, Wisconsin, 1993, 185-220.

 

 

 

Suggestions for Further Reading:

General Studies

• A. Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law, Cambridge, 2002.

• Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: a study of order in world politics, London, 1977.

• John M. Headley, The Europeanization of the World: On the Origins of Human Rights and Democracy, Princeton, 2007.

• Anthony Pagden, Lords of all the World. Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France c. 1500-c. 1850, New Haven and London, 1995.

• J.G.A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, five vols. (so far), Cambridge, especially, vol.  2 (1999) and 4 (2005)

• Richard Tuck, The Rights of War and Peace: Political Thought and the International Order from Grotius to Kant, Oxford, 1999.

 

 

Universal Monarchy

• Franz Bosbach, Monarchia Universalis. Ein politischer Leitbegriff der Frühen Neuzeit, Göttingen, 1988.

• J.H. Burns, Lordship, Kingship, and Empire. The Idea of Monarchy, 1400-1525, Oxford, 1992.

• John M. Headley, 'Gattinara, Erasmus, and the Imperial Configurations of Humanism', Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, 71 (1980), 64-98.

• Frances A. Yates, 'Charles V and the Idea of Empire' in Frances A. Yates, Astraea. Tne Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century, London, 1975, 1-28.

 

Natural Law and the Grotian Tradition

• Annabel Brett, ‘Natural right and Civil Community: the Civil Philosophy of Hugo Grotius’, The Historical Journal, Vol. 45, No. 1, 2002, pp. 31-51.

• Annabel Brett, Changes of State: Nature and the Limits of the City in Early Modern Natural Law, Princeton, 2011.

• Hedley Bull, Benedict Kingsbury, Adam Roberts (eds.), Hugo Grotius and International Relations, Oxford, 1990.

• Georg Cavaller, ‘Vitoria, Grotius, Pufendorf, Wolff and Vattel: Accomplices of European Colonialism and Exploitation or True Cosmopolitans?, Journal for the History of  International Law, vol. 10, 2008, pp. 192-198.

• A. Claire Cutler, ‘The ‘Grotian tradition’ in international relations’, Review of international Studies, vol. 17 (1991), pp. 41-65.

• Knud Haakonssen, Natural Law and Moral Philosophy: from Grotius to the Scottish Enlightenment, Cambridge, 1996.

• T.J. Hochstrasser, Natural Law Theories in the Early Enlightenment, Cambridge, 2000.

• Ian Hunter, Rival Enlightenments: Civil and Metaphysical Philosophy in Early Modern Germany, Cambridge.

• Edward Keene, Beyond the Anarchical Society: Grotius, Colonialism and Order in World Politics, Cambridge, 2002.

• Nicholas G. Onuf, ’Civitas Maxima: Wolff, Vattel and the Fate of Republicanism," American Journal of International Law, 88 (1994): 280-303.

• Nicholas Greenwood Onuf, The Republican Legacy in International Thought, Cambridge, 1998.

• Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man. The American Indian and the ori-gins of comparative ethnology, rev. ed., Cambridge, 1986.

• Richard Tuck, Philosophy and Government, 1572-1651, Cambridge, 1993.

 

Balance of Power

• Ernst Haas, ‘The Balance of Power: Prescription, Concept, or Propaganda’, World Politics, vol. 5, no. 4, 442-477.

- Jonathan Haslam, No Virtue like Necessity: Realist Thought in International Relations since Machiavelli, New Haven, 2002.

• Richard Little, The Balance of Power in International Relations: Metaphors, Myths and Models, Cambridge, (please check).

• Hans Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, New York, 1948.

• Michael Sheehan, the Balance of Power: History and Theory, London, 1995.

• John Vasquez and Colin Elman (eds.), Realism and the Balancing of Power: A New Debate, Prentice Hall, 2003.

• Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics, Reading, Mass., 1979.

 

Locke and the Beginnings of Empire

• David Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire, Cambridge, 2000.

• Barbara Arneil, John Locke and America: The Defence of English Colonialism, Oxford, 1996.

• Andrew Fitzmaurice, Humanism and America: An Intellectual History of English Colonisation, 1500-1625, Cambridge, 2003.

• Duncan Ivison, ‘Locke, Liberalism and Empire’, in Peter Anstey (ed.), The Philosophy of John Locke: New Perspectives, London, 2003, 86-105.

• Jonathan Scott, When the Waves Ruled Britannia: Geography and Political Identities, 1500-1800, Cambridge, 2011.

• James Tully, An Approach to Political Philosophy: Locke in Contexts, Cambridge, 1993.

• Jeremy Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality: Christian Foundations in Locke’s Political Thought, Cambridge, 2002.

• Lee Ward, John Locke and Modern Life, Cambridge, 2010.

 

Imperialism and Enlightenment

• Duncan Bell (ed.), Victorian Visions of Global Order: Empire and International Relations in Nineteenth-Century Political Thought, Cambridge, 2007.

• Duncan Bell, The Idea of Greater Britain: Empire and the Future of World Order, 1860-1900, Princeton, 2011.

• David Bromwich (ed.), Edmund Burke: On Empire, Liberty, and Reform, New Haven, 2000.

• David Cannadine, Ornamentalism: How the  British saw their Empire, Oxford, 2002.

• Iain Hampsher-Monk, ‘Burke’s justification for internal intervention’, Historical Journal, vol. 48, no. 1, 2005, 65-100.

• Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837, New Haven, 1992

• Paul Langford, A Polite and Commercial People: England, 1727-1783, Oxfrod, 1992.

• Uday Singh Mehta, Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought, Chicago, 1999.

• Sankar  Muthu, Enlightenment against Empire, Princeton, 2003.

• Jennifer Pitts, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France, Princeton, 2006.

• Emma Rothschild, The Inner Life of Empires: An Eighteenth-Century History, Princeton, 2011.

• Frederick Whelan, Edmund Burke and India: Political Morality and Empire, Pittsburgh, 1996.

• Jennifer Welsh, Edmund Burke and International Relations, Basingstoke/New York, 1995

• Kathleen Wilson, The Island Race:Englishness, Empire, and Gender in the Eighteenth Century, London, 2003.

• Kathleen Wilson (ed.), A New Imperial History: Culture, Identity and Modernity in Britain and the Empire, 1660-1840, Cambridge, 2004.

 

Kant and Cosmopolitanism

• Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, Penguin Books, 2006.

• Seyla Benhabib, Another Cosmopolitanism, Oxford, 2010.

• James Bohman and Matthias Lutz-Bachmann (eds.), Perpetual Peace: Essays on Kant’s Cosmopolitan Ideal, Cambridge, MA, 1997.

• David Held, Cosmopolitanism: Ideals and Realities, Polity Press, 2010

• Pauline Kleingeld, Kant and Cosmopolitanism: The Philosophical Ideal of World Citizenship, Cambridge, 2011.

• Karen O’Brien, Narratives of Enlightenment: Cosmopolitan History from Voltaire to Gibbon, Cambridge, 1997.

• Amelie Oksenberg Rorty and James Schmidt (eds), Kant's 'Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim': A Critical Guide, Cambridge, 2009.

• Nicholas Greenwood Onuf, The Republican Legacy in International Thought, Cambridge, 1998.

• James Tully, Public Philosophy in a New Key, two vols., Cambridge, 2009.

 

American Founding Fathers and the  Law of  Nations

• Theo Christov, 'The Federal Idea of Europe: Late Eighteenth-Century Debates,' in Dominic Eggel and Brunhilde Wehinger, eds., Imaginnig Europe in the Eighteenth Century, Hannover: Wehrhahn Verlag, 2008.

• Peter Onuf and Nicholas Onuf, Federal Union, Modern World: The Law of Nations in an Age of Revolutions, 1776-1814, Madison, Wisconsin, 1993.

• J.C. A. Stagg, Mr. Maidson’s War: Politics, Diplomacy, and Warfare in the Early American Republic, 1783-1830, Princeton, 1983.

• Gordon Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815, Oxford, 2009, especially chapters 17-19.