British International Thinkers from Hobbes to Namier (Palgrave Macmillan History of International Thought)

British International Thinkers from Hobbes to Namier

The Palgrave Macmillan History of International Thought Series seeks to publish the best work in this growing and increasingly important field of academic inquiry. Its scholarly monographs cover three types of work: (i) exploration of the intellectual impact of individual thinkers, from key disciplinary figures to neglected ones; (ii) examination of the origin, evolution, and contemporary relevance of specific schools or traditions of international thought; and (iii) analysis of the evolution of particular ideas and concepts in the field. Both classical (pre-1919) and modern (post-1919) thought is covered. Its books are written to be accessible to audiences in International Relations, International History, Political Theory, and Sociology. Series Editor: Peter Wilson, London School of Economics and Political Science Advisory Board: Jack Donnelly, University of Denver David Long, Carleton University Hidemi Suganami, University of Keele Also in the Series: Internationalism and Nationalism in European Political Thought by Carsten Holbraad

The Hidden History of Realism: A Genealogy of Power Politics by Seán Molloy

The International Theory of Leonard Woolf: A Study in Twentieth-Century Idealism by Peter Wilson

Hugo Grotius in International Thought by Renée Jeffery

Tocqueville, Lieber, and Bagehot: Liberalism Confronts the World by David Clinton Harold Laski: Problems of Democracy, the Sovereign State, and International Society by Peter Lamb The War Over Perpetual Peace: An Exploration into the History of a Foundational International Relations Text by Eric S. Easley Liberal Internationalism and the Decline of the State: The Thought of Richard Cobden, David Mitrany, and Kenichi Ohmae by Per Hammarlund Classical and Modern Thought on International Relations: From Anarchy to Cosmopolis by Robert Jackson

The International Thought of Martin Wight by Ian Hall Honor in Foreign Policy: A History and Discussion by Michael Donelan Realist Strategies of Republican Peace: Niebuhr, Morgenthau, and the Politics of Patriotic Dissent by Vibeke Schou Tjalve Classical Liberalism and International Relations Theory: Hume, Smith, Mises, and Hayek by Edwin van de Haar From Hierarchy to Anarchy: Territory and Politics before Westphalia by Jeremy Larkins British International Thinkers from Hobbes to Namier Edited by Ian Hall and Lisa Hill

British International Thinkers from Hobbes to Namier

Edited by Ian Hall and Lisa Hill

BRITISH INTERNATIONAL THINKERS FROM HOBBES TO NAMIER

Copyright © Ian Hall and Lisa Hill, 2009. All rights reserved. First published in 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–0–230–60849–8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data British international thinkers from Hobbes to Namier / edited by Ian Hall & Lisa Hill. p. cm. “Product of a workshop held in Adelaide in July 2008.” Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978–0–230–60849–8 (alk. paper) 1. International relations—History. 2. International relations— Philosophy—History. 3. Political science—Great Britain—History. 4. Great Britain—Intellectual life. I. Hall, Ian, 1975– II. Hill, Lisa, 1961– JZ1329.5.B75 2009 327.1092⬘241—dc22

2009018101

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: December 2009 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

Contents

Acknowledgments

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Notes on Contributors

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1 Introduction Ian Hall and Lisa Hill

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2 The Glorious Sovereign: Thomas Hobbes on Leadership and International Relations Haig Patapan

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John Locke’s International Thought David Armitage

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Moral Sentiment Theory and the International Thought of David Hume Renée Jeffery

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Adam Smith on War (and Peace) Lisa Hill

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Edmund Burke and International Conflict Richard Bourke

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The International Political Thought of John Stuart Mill Georgios Varouxakis

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The Resilience of Natural Law in the Writings of Sir Travers Twiss Andrew Fitzmaurice

9 James Bryce and the Two Faces of Nationalism Casper Sylvest

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137 161

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Democracy and Empire: J. A. Hobson, Leonard Hobhouse, and the Crisis of Liberalism Duncan Bell

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The Never-Satisfied Idealism of Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson Jeanne Morefield

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12 The Realist as Moralist: Sir Lewis Namier’s International Thought Ian Hall

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Index

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Acknowledgments

This book is the product of a workshop held in Adelaide in July 2008. The editors are grateful to the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and the Australian Academy of the Humanities for their joint sponsorship of the workshop, as well as to the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Adelaide for additional funds. We would like to offer particular thanks to Emeritus Professor Wilfrid Prest for his generous support for the grant proposals and for the project as a whole. Mark Bode and Alan Goldstone provided editorial assistance on the manuscript and, together with Chris McElhinney, aided the organization of the workshop. The editors would also like to thank Kelly McKinley for compiling the index.

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Contributors

David Armitage is the Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History at Harvard University. Among his ten books to date are The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2000), The Declaration of Independence: A Global History (Harvard University Press, 2007), and, as co-editor, The British Atlantic World, 1500–1800 (2nd ed., Palgrave, 2009), and Shakespeare and Early Modern Political Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2009). Duncan Bell is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Christ’s College. He is the author of The Idea of Greater Britain: Empire and the Future of World Order, 1860–1900 (Princeton University Press, 2007), and the editor of three volumes, the most recent of which is Political Thought and International Relations: Variations on a Realist Theme (Oxford University Press, 2008). Richard Bourke is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of History, Queen Mary, University of London. He is the author of Peace in Ireland: the War of Ideas (Pimlico, 2003) and is currently writing The Political Life of Edmund Burke. Andrew Fitzmaurice is an Associate Professor in the Department of History, University of Sydney. He is the author of Humanism and America (Cambridge University Press, 2003) and edited Shakespeare and Early Modern Political Thought (with David Armitage and Conal Condren) (Cambridge University Press, 2009). He is currently completing A History of Terra Nullius, a longue durée analysis of the idea of occupation in the law of nations and colonization. Ian Hall is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of International Business and Asian Studies, Griffith University, Australia. He is the author of The

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International Thought of Martin Wight (Palgrave, 2006) and a number of articles on international theory and the history of international thought. Lisa Hill is a Professor in the School of History and Politics at the University of Adelaide, Australia. She is author of The Passionate Society: The Social, Political and Moral Thought of Adam Ferguson (Springer, 2006) and coauthor of The Politics of Human Rights in Australia (Cambridge University Press, 2009). Renée Jeffery is a Research Fellow in the Griffith Asia Institute, Brisbane, Australia. She is the author of Hugo Grotius in International Thought (Palgrave, 2006) and Evil and International Relations: Human Suffering in an Age of Terror (Palgrave, 2008). Jeanne Morefield is an Associate Professor in the Department of Politics, Whitman College. She is the author of Covenants Without Swords: Idealist Liberalism and the Spirit of Empire (Princeton University Press, 2005). Haig Patapan is a Professor in the Department of Politics and Public Policy, Griffith University, Australia. His research interests are in political philosophy, political leadership, and comparative constitutionalism. His recent publications include Machiavelli in Love: The Modern Politics of Love and Fear (Lexington, 2007), and the co-edited books Dissident Democrats (Routledge, 2008) and Dispersed Leadership in Democracies (Oxford University Press, 2009). Casper Sylvest is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science, University of Southern Denmark. He is the author of British Liberal Internationalism, 1880–1930: Making Progress? (Manchester University Press, 2009) as well as a series of articles on the history of international thought. Georgios Varouxakis is a Reader in the History of Political Thought in the Department of History, Queen Mary, University of London. He is the author of Mill on Nationality (Routledge, 2002) and Victorian Political Thought on France and the French (Palgrave, 2002) as well as the co-editor of Utilitarianism and Empire (Lexington, 2005). He has also published many articles on J. S. Mill and on political thought on nationalism and international relations.

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction Ian Hall and Lisa Hill

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f the history of British political thought, as one of the contributors to this book recently suggested, has been “one of the most fertile areas in anglophone historical scholarship of the past half-century,” the history of international thought has remained comparatively untilled ground during most of that time.1 In the past decade, however, work has begun in establishing the broad contours of the field, and although the “historiographical turn” has not quite occurred in international theory, there are signs that the “fifty years’ rift” between intellectual historians and students of international relations is starting to heal.2 Contributions to this nascent field of the history of international thought have come from historians, political theorists, and indeed international theorists, and it is the spirit of maintaining this interdisciplinary conversation that the scholars writing in this volume were invited to participate. The topics of conversation—within this book and beyond it—have varied. Great efforts have been spent to debunk myths about the ideas of past thinkers that have persisted in the discipline of International Relations (IR) and on providing new interpretations of their work.3 Similar industry has been shown in the recovery of the international thought that lurks on the fringes of the political philosophies of canonical writers from Thucydides to John Rawls.4 This work has helped to rewrite the history of international thought— especially for the thinkers of the twentieth century. Extensive research has been done better to understand the work of the interwar internationalists, whom Hedley Bull, like many other postwar theorists, once dismissed as

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“not remarkable for their intellectual depth or powers of explanation.”5 In the past two decades, monographs have appeared on more international thinkers of this period than any other, including J. A. Hobson, J. M. Keynes, Gilbert Murray, Harold Nicolson, Arnold J. Toynbee, Leonard Woolf, and Alfred Zimmern, as well as that scourge of liberal “utopianism,” E. H. Carr.6 There are signs of a rising tide of interest in postwar figures, too, for example, in Campbell Craig’s Glimmer of a New Leviathan (2003) and in the many recent books on Hans J. Morgenthau.7 These and other studies have shaken the long-held conviction of scholars of International Relations that their discipline emerged—fully formed, if somewhat innocent—from the ashes of the First World War, thence to progress in a series of Kuhnian “paradigm shifts” from the darkness of idealist “wisdom literature” into the light of realist and behaviorist “science.”8 One consequence of this realization has been a growing unease with the traditions of thinking of which international relations theorists once thought themselves to be the inheritors—whether realism, idealism, or even liberalism. It is now widely agreed that the “traditions tradition,” as Renée Jeffery has called it, has served more to obfuscate—and sometimes even to vulgarize—our understanding of past thinkers and their work rather than faithfully convey their intellectual legacies to the present.9 Each of the chapters of this book implicitly or explicitly contests the ways in which each thinker has been located and interpreted in one or other of these problematic traditions. The revival of interest in the history of international thought has also led to a re-engagement with the relationships between individual thinkers and their ideas with the practice of international relations. A particular interest has been shown in what David Armitage has called—in the context of the British Empire—the “ideological origins” of European imperialism. This interest is evident not just in his own work on the early modern period, but in that of Duncan Bell, Uday Singh Mehta, Jeanne Morefield, and Jennifer Pitts on the nineteenth century.10 In contention here is not merely the question of how far Europeans were driven by ideas and ideologies in the pursuit of overseas empire, but also how far liberalism, as one of the dominant modes of political thinking in the most extensive imperial polity, is inherently and inescapably imperialistic. Several chapters in this book address these problems, but emphasize, above all the heterogeneity of liberals and liberalism—from Adam Smith’s conviction that empire was inimical to liberal principles to James Bryce’s espousal of empire as the medium for the creation of order out of chaos that is the necessary precondition for the dissemination of those principles. These and other long-running debates remind us not only that international thought can have a decisive influence over international practice, but

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also that there is a great deal more to be done in the recovery and reinterpretation of past thinking about international relations. Although the work of recent American theorists—rightly or wrongly—continues to dominate the discipline of IR, the “best kept secrets” of European and non-Western thinking are still in the process of being brought into the open by theorists and historians.11 In parallel, the field has witnessed an increasing willingness to acknowledge that past thinkers—from the ancient, medieval, and modern periods—may offer insights or ideas pertinent to contemporary theorists’ concerns, not just those of historians.12 Richard Ned Lebow, for instance, has argued that classical notions of tragedy, located most clearly in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, might serve as wise counsel to present thinkers and practitioners.13 The prominence of Immanuel Kant’s thought in contemporary work on international ethics, by both international and increasingly by political theorists, is testimony to similar assumptions and motives.14 Thucydides and Kant, however, need not exhaust the possibilities open to present theorists, as the contributors to this volume seek to demonstrate. British International Thinkers This book is thus a contribution to a wider effort of historical recovery and revision, but it makes no apology for concentrating narrowly on the international thought derived from one particular place: the British Isles. British thinkers have made a significant, indeed perhaps even disproportionate, contribution to the study of international politics. They have set out some of the most fundamental concepts in the field, put and developed key arguments, even lent their names to whole schools of thought. The notion, for instance, that the relations between sovereign states resembles that of the anarchical “state of nature” is derived—as all who work in the field of International Relations well know—from the work of Thomas Hobbes.15 Likewise, the idea that states might, nevertheless, form an international society amid international anarchy has been attributed, by twentieth century “English school” theorists, to John Locke.16 In the writings of David Hume we may find some of the first and best explorations of the “balance of power”;17 in that of John Stuart Mill, a seminal study of the principle of nonintervention.18 British international lawyers were at the forefront of that field’s development in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, while British historians (and diplomats) played critical roles in the drafting of both the Covenant of the League of Nations and the United Nations Charter.19 The salience of British thinkers in the history of international thought is reason enough to examine some of their work in the present context, but

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there are others. One is the hitherto unexplored connections that might be thought to exist between British international thought and British political thought; that is, not merely political thought composed in Britain, but political thought written about Britain, about the relationships of its three historical kingdoms (and one principality), and what has been called its “extensions into the Atlantic world,”20 as well as those later in the African, Asian, and Pacific worlds. The links that work in this field, as well as work in the “new British history”21, have demonstrated between domestic and international politics, and indeed the European and international dimensions of British political thought, have yet to be taken seriously as they might be scholars of international relations. This book brings together essays by political and international theorists, as well as historians of political thought. It does so deliberately, informed by the conviction that the disciplinary focus of International Relations often fails to capture the intentions of thinkers and the meanings of texts. The chapters that follow offer reevaluations of canonical British thinkers or explore the work of British thinkers hitherto and unduly neglected. They do so with a variety of interconnected objectives: to correct persistent misinterpretations, to offer new insights, and, in some cases, to restore a thinker to the place he ought to occupy in our wider understanding of the history of international thought. Throughout, the essay writers seek to be both sensitive to the contexts—linguistic, political, economic, and social—within which a thinker thought, as well as to the state of contemporary scholarship concerning his work. Of all the thinkers addressed in this book, Thomas Hobbes, whom Quentin Skinner has argued taught the English how to speak with a “realist’s” voice,22 has arguably attracted most interest from international theorists and intellectual historians.23 Yet, as Haig Patapan reminds us in the first chapter Hobbes was himself “only incidentally or indirectly a student of international relations..” This lack of interest in international as opposed to domestic politics, Patapan argues, gives rise to significant problems. Although the “institution of a glorious sovereign,” as Patapan puts it, provides for security and stability in domestic society, it can also introduce, by Hobbes’s own account, greater insecurity and instability into international relations. In seeking glory abroad, as sovereigns tend to do, they can overstep the bounds of the prudent, causing and prolonging wars that threaten to imperil their own citizenry. For David Armitage, the initial challenge is quite different. Of all the thinkers in this book, Locke had the most extensive practical experience with international relations, gleaned from his diplomatic and political service. Yet while his standing in the history of political thought is high, Locke’s place in the history of international thought is barely acknowledged, except

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perhaps as a supposed enthusiast for the expropriation of Amerindians.24 Armitage seeks to redress this imbalance, detailing Locke’s significant writings on the law of nature and nations that form the basis of his international thinking. In his conclusion, he suggests that Locke’s Two Treatises was intended to address foreign policy as well as domestic politics and to outline the powers that ought properly to be held by the “federative” part of the commonwealth as distinguished from the executive or legislative branches. It is in his antimonistic theory of sovereignty, Armitage argues, that Locke’s most important contribution to the history of international thought is located. Like John Locke, David Hume is commonly passed over by students of past international theory as a marginal figure, recognized only for his brief essay on the balance of power. For Renée Jeffery, this easy dismissal is mistaken. She questions the value of attempting, as some have done, to force Hume into one or other traditional categories of international theory, arguing that much is lost, and little gained, by construing his thought as “realist” or “rationalist.”25 Jeffery argues instead that a better appreciation of Hume’s value might be gained by considering the virtues of his wider political and moral theory in the sphere of international ethics. Hume’s version of moral sentiment theory—that very British or, to be more precise, Scottish mode of thinking about ethics—has considerable possibilities for contemporary approaches to questions of justice in international politics. In her essay on Adam Smith, Lisa Hill highlights both the limitations of disciplinary interpretations of his work and the problems and possibilities of contexts. In exploring Smith’s attitude toward war, she addresses the claim that Smith has been wrongly and persistently classed within the liberal internationalist tradition and is better understood as a kind of realist. She concludes that, because Smith’s attitude toward war combines both “realist” and “liberal” elements, he challenges boundaries of the traditions of international relations, prompting us to rethink the usefulness of those traditions when considering the work of thinkers who obviously could not have been aware of them but who would also, doubtless, have resisted them if they had. Edmund Burke, as Richard Bourke argues, demonstrates a rather different set of problems to later interpreters of his international thought. To see Burke as a theorist is to mistake the purpose of his thinking: he was, first and foremost, “a publicist and a politician,” and these vocations conditioned the development of his views. But while his thought was directed by his practical purposes and while he drew heavily on inherited arguments, Burke did make a “striking and original”—indeed, as Bourke argues, a prescient— analysis of the causes of conflict in modern international relations in the course of his extended critique of the French Revolution.

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Unlike Burke, whose thought haunted “classical” international theorists for much of the twentieth century,26 John Stuart Mill languished until recently as one of the great neglected thinkers on international relations. For Georgios Varouxakis, however, the revival of interest in Mill has not brought about a balanced interpretation of his thought. He believes that too much contemporary scholarship has concentrated only on Mill’s essay on nonintervention or on his supposed role in justifying British imperialism. Varouxakis examines the wider corpus of Mill’s work on international relations: his writings on international law and morality, his other statements on intervention, and, most importantly of all, his unorthodox arguments about the nature of treaties and the commitments of states. Even more unconventional, according to Andrew Fitzmaurice, was the Victorian international lawyer Sir Travers Twiss. Neither “particularly remarkable” nor especially influential, Twiss is nonetheless worthy of note. Conventional opinion maintains that legal positivism swept the field of all opponents in the nineteenth century. However, Fitzmaurice argues that natural law survived in the work of Twiss. Fitzmaurice asks, with Twiss in mind, whether the argument that natural law and natural rights were “buried by nineteenth century nationalism” not to be disinterred until the midtwentieth century is as powerful as it might appear. In their essays, Casper Sylvest and Duncan Bell evaluate the legacies of late Victorian and Edwardian liberal internationalisms. Sylvest examines the thought of the acclaimed and influential James Bryce, the third Scot included in this book, on nationalism, casting light on the ambiguities that existed in liberal treatments of the problem. Bell, for his part, explores the relationship between the “new” liberals’ conception of the state and democracy to the international political order liberals envisaged. In so doing, he traces the difficult dilemma faced by British anti-imperialist liberals at a time when their country’s Empire reached its fullest extent: whether to oppose it outright or to transform it from within, making it an agent for good in international relations. Neither J. A. Hobson nor Leonard Hobhouse, Bell demonstrates, found clear answers to this dilemma; rather, while agreeing that the empire threatened to corrupt liberal principles, they vacillated between opposition and cautious support for its reform into a benevolent commonwealth of self-governing states. The final two chapters revisit the work of two thinkers who have been unduly neglected: Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson and Sir Lewis Namier. Although, as Jeanne Morefield notes, Lowes Dickinson is widely acknowledged to be the person who first coined the term “international anarchy”, as well as the name “League of Nations,” his work has been generally overlooked by later theorists. Morefield describes a thinker whose conception of human nature and its relation to international relations as well as his “never satisfied

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idealism,” set him apart from even his internationalist contemporaries. It is the nature of “realism” rather than “idealism” that is the central theme of Ian Hall’s chapter on Namier—the sole, unabashed British “realist” of the twentieth century and a provocation to the later, better-known thinkers of the English school of international relations. Notes 1. David Armitage, “Introduction” to his edited British Political Thought in History, Literature and Theory, 1500–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 1. There were, of course, sporadic attempts to explore the history of international thought during that period, notably by Martin Wight, whose “Why Is There No International Theory?” and “Western Values in International Relations,” (in Herbert Butterfield & Martin Wight, eds., Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1966), 17–34 & 89–131) represent the summation of his research in the field. 2. Duncan S. A. Bell, “International Relations: The Dawn of a Historiographical Turn?,” British Journal of Politics and International Relations 3:1 (2002), 115–126; David Armitage, “The Fifty Years’ Rift: Intellectual History and International Relations,” Modern Intellectual History 1 (2004), 97–109. 3. See, for example, Tim Dunne, “Mythology or Methodology: Traditions in International Theory,” Review of International Studies 19 (1993), 305–318 or Peter Wilson, “The Myth of the ‘First Great Debate,’ ” Review of International Studies 24 (Special Issue) (1998), 1–13. 4. See especially Chris Brown, Terry Nardin and Nicholas Rengger, eds., International Relations in Political Thought: Texts from the Ancient Greeks to the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) and, on the mistreatment of one past thinker, see D. A. Welch, “Why International Relations Theorists Should Stop Reading Thucydides,” Review of International Studies 29 (2003), 301–319. Two prominent works that directly challenge IR theorists’ conceptions and uses of past texts are Jonathan Haslam, No Virtue like Necessity: Realist Thought in International Relations (New Haven, CT, & Oxford: Yale University Press, 2002) and Richard Tuck, The Rights of War and Peace: Political Thought and International Order from Grotius to Kant (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). 5. Hedley Bull, “The Theory of International Politics, 1919–1969,” in Brian Porter, ed., The Aberystwyth Papers: International Politics 1919–1969 (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), 35. For a much more nuanced approach, see especially the essays in David Long and Peter Wilson, eds., Thinkers of the Twenty Years’ Crisis: Inter-War Idealism Reassessed (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995). 6. David Long, Towards a New Liberal Internationalism: The International Theory of J. A. Hobson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Donald Markwell, John Maynard Keynes and International Relations: Economic Paths to War and Peace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Christopher Stray, ed.,

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8.

9.

10.

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Gilbert Murray Reassessed: Hellenism, Theatre and International Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Derek Drinkwater, Sir Harold Nicolson and International Relations: The Practitioner as Theorist (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); W. H. McNeill, Arnold J. Toynbee: A Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); Peter Wilson, The International Theory of Leonard Woolf (New York: Palgrave, 2003); Jeanne Morefield, Covenants without Swords: Idealist Internationalism and the Spirit of Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004); Charles Jones, E. H. Carr and International Relations: A Duty to Lie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Jonathan Haslam, The Vices of Integrity: E. H. Carr, 1892–1982 (London: Verso, 1999). Campbell Craig, Glimmer of a New Leviathan: Total War in the Realism of Niebuhr, Morgenthau and Waltz (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003). On Morgenthau, see inter alia Christoph Frei, Hans J. Morgenthau: An Intellectual Biography (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001); Sean Molloy, The Hidden History of Realism: A Genealogy of Power Politics (New York: Palgrave, 2006); Michael C. Williams, ed., Realism Reconsidered: The Legacy of Hans J. Morgenthau (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) and William E. Scheuerman, Morgenthau (Cambridge: Polity, 2009). For a sophisticated version of this story, see Kalevi J. Holsti, The Dividing Discipline: Hegemony and Diversity in International Theory (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1985). Renée Jeffery, “Tradition as Invention: The ‘Traditions Tradition’ and the History of Ideas in International Relations,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 34:1 (2005), 57–84. See David Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), as well as Duncan Bell, The Idea of Greater Britain: Empire and the Future of World Order, 1860–1900 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), Uday Singh Mehta, Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteen-Century British Liberal Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), Morefield, Covenants without Swords, and Jennifer Pitts, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperialist Liberalism in Britain and France (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005). See also David Long and Brian Schmidt, eds., Imperialism and Internationalism in the Discipline of International Relations (Albany: SUNY Press, 2005). See Knud Erik Jørgensen, “Continental IR Theory: The Best Kept Secret,” European Journal of International Relations 6:1 (2000), 9–42; Gerard Holden, “The Politer Kingdoms of the Globe: Context and Comparison in the Intellectual History of IR,” Global Society 15:1 (2001), 27–51; and Jörg Friedrichs, European Approaches to International Relations Theory: A House of Many Mansions (London: Routledge, 2004). See, for example, the essays in Ian Clark, ed., Classical Theories of International Relations (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1996) or Beate Jahn, ed., Classical Theory in International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), as well as Brown, Nardin and Rengger, eds., International Relations in Political Thought.

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13. Richard Ned Lebow, The Tragic Vision of Politics: Visions, Ethics and Orders (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 14. For contrasting uses of Kant, see Michael Doyle, Ways of War and Peace: Realism, Liberalism and Socialism (New York: Norton, 1996) and John Rawls, The Law of Peoples with the Idea of Public Reason Revisited (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001). 15. One of the first to draw attention to this idea in the work of Hobbes, albeit in an oblique way, as Jeanne Morefield’s chapter shows, was Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, in The International Anarchy, 1904–1914 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1926). 16. This attribution is made by Hedley Bull in The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, 3rd ed. (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), 46–47. 17. David Hume, “Of the Balance of Power,” in Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, Inc., 1987). Online at: http://www.econlib.org/library/LFBooks/Hume/hmMPL30.html (accessed 6 August 2007). 18. John Stuart Mill, A Few Words on Non-Intervention, Foreign Policy Perspectives No. 8 (London: Libertarian Alliance, n.d. [1859]). 19. On the Covenant, Harold Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919 (London: Constable, 1934). On the Charter, see Ian Hall, “The Art and Practice of a Diplomatic Historian: Sir Charles Webster, 1886–1961,” International Politics 42 (2005), 470–490. 20. J. G. A. Pocock, Gordon Schochet and Lois G. Schwoerer, “The History of British Political Thought: A Field and Its Futures,” in Armitage, ed., British Political Thought, 12. 21. For representative texts in this mold, see R. R. Davies, The First British Empire: Power and Identities in the British Isles, 1093–1343 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) or Allan Macinnes, The British Revolution, 1629–1660 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2004). 22. Quentin Skinner, Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 23. For a critical assessment of the ways in which Hobbes has been treated, see Noel Malcolm, “Hobbes’s Theory of International Relations,” in his Aspects of Hobbes (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), 432–456. 24. For one expression of this view, see David Boucher, “Property and Propriety in International Relations: The Case of John Locke,” in Jahn, ed., Classical Theory in International Relations, 156–177. 25. For one carefully argued attempt to do this, using Martin Wight’s “three traditions,” see Edwin van der Haar, “David Hume and International Political Theory: A Reappraisal,” Review of International Studies 34 (2008), 225–242. 26. See, for example, the work of Herbert Butterfield, whom Martin Wight once described—accurately—as “the most restrained, gentle and unpessimistic of Burkeans” (review of Butterfield’s Liberty in the Modern World (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1953) in International Affairs 29:4 (1953), 475).

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CHAPTER TWO

The Glorious Sovereign: Thomas Hobbes on Leadership and International Relations Haig Patapan

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homas Hobbes lived to the ripe old age of 91, an impressive achievement for one who lived in the most dangerous of times.1 His long and eventful life coincided with one of the most turbulent and perilous periods in English history, marked by the execution of Charles I, the Civil Wars, the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, and finally the Stuart Restoration. It is perhaps this fact, above all, that explains Hobbes’s abiding interest in securing the stability of the state, even to the neglect of international relations. From his very first writing, a translation of Thucydides’ Peloponnesian Wars, to his major political works, such as Elements of Law (1640), De Cive (1642), and Leviathan (1651), to the posthumously published Dialogues (1681) and Behemoth (1682), his overriding concern was overcoming civil war and internal instability. This view gains some support from Hobbes himself. At the very end of his most well-known work, Leviathan, Hobbes states that having completed his “Discourse of Civill and Ecclesiasticall Government, occassioned by the disorders of the present time,” he will “return to my interrupted Speculation of Bodies Naturall; wherein (if God give me health to finish it,) I hope the Novelty will as much please, as in the Doctrine of this Artificiall Body it useth to offend.”2 From this account, it seems that Hobbes is primarily a political philosopher of domestic politics and only incidentally and indirectly a student of international relations.3 We

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see this confirmed by Hobbes’s claimed “Novelty,” for his actions, boasting that he is the first to have founded politics on solid ground, the first political scientist.4 He observes that just as “Time and Industry” produce new knowledge regarding the art of architecture, his newfound “Principles of Reason” set forth in “this discourse” will make the constitution of Commonwealths “(excepting by externall violence) everlasting.”5 Hobbes literally brackets or excludes the problem of “Externall violence” or more generally international politics as beyond the reach of his new political science. From this perspective, Hobbes would perhaps be amused by the fact that he is considered a seminal theorist of international relations. Such an historical approach to Hobbes’s scholarship may well explain his apparent silence regarding international relations; in doing so, however, it raises a series of profound questions. Is it possible to demarcate international and domestic politics in the way Hobbes seems to suggest? Does Hobbes’s “new science” nevertheless have an implicit teaching on international relations? What implications does such a teaching have for Hobbes’s claims that his discoveries promise an “everlasting” Commonwealth? In this chapter, I argue that Hobbes’s reticence regarding international relations is not a minor omission; his relative neglect of international politics undermines significantly his new political science.6 By concentrating on the “sovereign,” who sits at the intersection of the domestic and international, I suggest that Hobbes’s solution to political instability in the state—the institution of the glorious sovereign— exposes the state to greater international instability and therefore ultimately undermines the Hobbesian promise of an everlasting commonwealth. By his own measure, the Hobbesian sovereign will be a glory seeker, and as such, will pose in the international community (and consequently for the Hobbesian state) the same problems and dangers that Hobbes discerned in the glory seeker in the state of nature. Thus, the problem of the glorious sovereign is not only a problem for international relations, it poses a major challenge to Hobbesian political thought by revealing the ambiguous place of judgment, prudence, and statesmanship in Hobbes’s science, radically questioning its scientific, mathematical, and geometrical presuppositions.7 In the first part of the chapter, I outline Hobbes’s views on international relations, derived by implication and analogy from his writings on the constitution of the state. I then examine Hobbes’s understanding of the passions and show how his diagnosis of the state of nature and his proposed solution of awesome fear institutionalizes a proud, glory lover as sovereign. In the final part, I explore the extent to which such a glorious sovereign undermines Hobbes’s aspirations for a peaceful and commodious commonwealth.

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Hobbes and the Law of Nations In the Leviathan, near the end of chapter XXX, “Of the OFFICE of the Sovereign Representative,” Hobbes explains why he does not discuss international politics extensively. The passage deserves quoting at length: Concerning the Offices of one Soveraign to another, which are comprehended in that Law, which is commonly called the Law of Nations, I need not say any thing in this place; because the Law of Nations, and the Law of Nature, is the same thing. And every Soveraign hath the same Right, in procuring the safety of his People, that any particular man can have, in procuring the safety of his own Body. And the same Law, that dictateth to men that have no Civil Government, what they ought to do, and what to avoyd in regard of one another, dictateth the same to Commonwealths, that is, to the Consciences of Soveraign Princes, and Soveraign Assemblies; there being no Court of Naturall Justice, but in Conscience onely; where not Man, but God raigneth.8 This deceptively simple account suggests that international politics is identical to Hobbes’s well-known depiction of the laws of nature that apply where there is no “Civil Government,” that is, in the state of nature.9 For Hobbes, the Law of Nature, which is not in fact a law but a “precept, or generall rule,” contains the “Fundamentall Law of Nature,” which is “to seek Peace, and follow it,” and the Right of Nature, which is, “By all means we can, to defend our selves.”10 Where there is no common power to keep all in awe, the nature of man yields “three principall causes of quarrell”—Competition, Diffidence and Glory—which issue in a condition of “warre, as is of every man, against every man.”11 In such a state, “every man has a Right to every thing; even to one anothers body.”12 By analogy, therefore, it would seem that international relations, being identical to the state of nature, has all those aspects of the state of nature Hobbes depicts in chapter XIII, “Of the NATURAL CONDITION of Mankind, as concerning their Felicity, and Misery”: for example, it is a state of insecurity and animosity that requires self-reliance; because there is no common power it is lawless, and therefore “Right and Wrong, Justice and Injustice have there no place”; as a state of war, the “two Cardinall vertues” of war, Force, and Fraud predominate. Hobbes is aware, of course, that there are limits to such an analogical approach. As he notes, the posture of war between sovereigns, requiring constant vigilance and spying, does not lead to the incommodities of war for individuals, because sovereigns, in providing a common power within each state, uphold the “Industry of their Subjects.” Thus, international politics as a state of nature allows for, or is consistent with, the possibility of industry,

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cultivation of the earth, navigation, commodious buildings, and the general advancement in arts and letters.13 Nevertheless, he seems to confirm the inherent intractableness, and therefore fundamental dangerousness, of international politics. This “minimalist” understanding of Hobbesian international relations has been especially influential in the modern realist schools of international relations.14 Its limited scope has been challenged, however, by scholars who suggest that Hobbes’s equation of international politics with the state of nature in fact yields a more extensive range of duties and responsibilities for sovereigns. Although it does not amount to a comprehensive Kantian law of nations, such an understanding of Hobbesian international relations is much richer than the simple minimalism of realism.15 This “maximalist” Hobbesian internationalism has as its starting point an appreciation of the greater efficacy of the laws of nature in international relations.16 The analogy between the individual’s place in the state of nature, and the sovereign’s in international relations does not hold in certain important respects. Although sovereigns must assure their own safety and the security of the state, and therefore wars waged for this purpose are just because there is no other recourse,17 sovereign states are more secure than individuals in the state of nature (for example, they are not all equal; they need not sleep; they are not mortal). Moreover, because sovereigns uphold the “Industry of their Subjects,” alleviating their misery, those passions that incline individuals in the state of nature to peace are less forceful in international relations.18 But the absence of a common power in the international realm also means a greater freedom in international relations, so that the laws of nature need not be silent. As Johnson puts it, “peace will not be as urgent a priority as it is in relations among individuals, but the need to violate the laws of nature will also not be as urgent.”19 Hobbes’s claim, as we noted above, is that the law of nations is identical to the law of nature. The fundamental law of nature, “That every man, ought to endeavour Peace, as farre as he has hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek, and use, all helps, and advantages of Warre,” yields, according to Hobbes, 19 other laws.20 One of the most important of these is the second law of nature, a willingness, if others are also willing, to lay down one’s right to all things. The other laws of nature include justice, gratitude, and compleasance.21 These laws, the “true Morall Philosophy,” are eternal and always bind in conscience, but not in practice if there is no security. Each sovereign will therefore have to evaluate the extent to which they can safely be followed. Nevertheless, it is possible to extrapolate from Hobbes’s account an international realm shaped by such laws of nature. For example, sovereigns and states may legitimately seek peace whenever possible simply

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because peaceful solutions are more expeditious and less dangerous than recourse to war. Thus, covenants, contracts, or agreements between states may be entered into, in the spirit of gratitude and accommodation, even if their breach is not technically unjust. Some arrangements, for example, providing for ambassadorial immunity, are in the interest of all sovereigns, allowing free channels of communication between sovereigns and states.22 In any case, because for Hobbes coerced covenants—covenants entered into out of fear—are binding, international relations may be defined by valid contracts between stronger and weaker nations, enforced with the threat of war.23 Although war is always available to the sovereign, it should always be for the security and safety of the state and not the desire to avenge a past wrong or out of contumely, arrogance, or pride. Indeed, these principles dictate the way wars should be conducted, limiting as much as possible unnecessary cruelty in the persecution of war. It is tempting to venture that this complex of bilateral and multilateral covenants, treaties, obligations, and arrangements may in one sense be said to provide the foundations for an international community that ultimately replicates the Hobbesian sovereignty on the level of world government. Does Hobbes anticipate Kantian “perpetual peace”? The simple answer is no. As noted, the incommodities of international relations are less bleak and severe than the forbidding state of nature experienced by individuals, making the logic of an international Leviathan less compelling. Moreover, although clearly in favor of international peace, Hobbes’s conception of sovereignty—the core premise or presupposition of which is that sovereignty can never be divided or shared 24 —means that international peace secured and enforced by a world government (or confederation of republics) would deny the sovereignty of each state. If such an arrangement were to be stable or effective, Hobbes would see it as nothing more than a very large commonwealth or empire.25 Character of the Sovereign Both minimalist and maximalist interpretations of Hobbesian international relations reveal the crucial role of the sovereign in pursuing peace, to the extent that it does not jeopardize security, while encouraging domestic tranquillity and therefore prosperity. Hobbes’s “new science,” it seems, depends fundamentally on the prudence and judgment of political leaders.26 But Hobbes seems ambiguous on this point. On the one hand, he is not concerned with individuals but institutions, so that once his institutional arrangements are in place, anyone can be the sovereign.27 The Sovereign is the “Artificiall Soul,” of that “Artificiall Man,” “that great LEVIATHAN called a COMMON-WEALTH, or STATE.”28 As he states

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in his dedication to Francis Godolphin, “I speak not of the men, but (in the Abstract) of the Seat of Power, (like to those simple and unpartiall creatures in the Roman Capitol, that with their noyse defended those within it, not because they were they, but there).”29 For Hobbes, where you are, it seems, is more important than who you are.30 This view is supported by his debunking of the Aristotelian understanding that some should command because they are more prudent and wise. Hobbes’s response is, “For there are very few so foolish, that had not rather governe themselves, than be governed by others.”31 Natural equality means equality in prudence: “A plain husbandman is more Prudent in affaires of his own house, then a Privy Counseller in the affaires of another man.”32 Perhaps nowhere else is this made clearer than in Hobbes’s account of the “Generation of a Commonwealth,” which is silent as to the character of the sovereign, only requiring the reduction of many “Wills” unto one “Will.”33 Yet this view is countered in Hobbes by the implicit acknowledgment of the crucial role of the specific character and virtues of the sovereign. In his dedication to Godolphin, Hobbes accepts that Sidney Godolphin had many virtues, “not as acquired by necessity, or affected upon occasion, but inhaerent, and shining in a generous constitution of his nature.”34 Individuals, it seems, will differ regarding their skills, aptitude, and virtues. The political importance of this fact becomes evident when we see that Hobbes concedes an important difference between the justice of laws and their goodness. Although the law of nature is the foundation of justice, justice or injustice exists only once a commonwealth is constituted with a sovereign who can compel individuals to perform their covenants. All laws made by authorized sovereigns are thereby, by definition, just. But not all just laws are good laws. As Hobbes says, “A good Law is that, which is Needfull, for the Good of the People, and withall Perspicuous.”35 Though not bound by laws strictly understood, because there are none to enforce them, it is in the sovereign’s interest to yield to natural laws or right reason. Consequently, it is possible to judge the reasonableness of a sovereign’s actions, even if we cannot question or challenge its justice.36 Thus, the protreptic ambitions of the Leviathan and Hobbes’s other works seeking to educate sovereigns (and subjects) in what constitutes reasonable action.37 We can see this educative aspect especially in the extensive discussion of the sovereign’s rights and duties in the second part of the Leviathan, “Of Commonwealth.”38 Despite these reflections, however, there is no clear statement from Hobbes that most people are incapable of gaining such an education and therefore fulfilling such an office. Indeed, he suggests that his instructions are much easier and more accessible than the complex and contradictory religious instructions most have received.39 It would seem, then, that “who” the sovereign is may not actually

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matter, given proper Hobbesian instruction. But is everyone in fact equally receptive to Hobbes’s Euclidean rhetoric? In one important respect, it would seem not. Of the three causes of war in the state of nature, those stemming from pride seem to be least capable of listening to reason. Hence, Hobbes’s consistent attempt to deflate the pretensions of glorying and pride.40 Yet it is precisely the proud that Hobbes states will be sovereign.41 Hobbes’s solution to the problem of war in the state of nature is the union of all those who consent to equality—who repudiate pride. Such a union requires the proud or the glory seeker as sovereign who will superintend and keep overawed all parties to the contract. Even if this solution to the problem of pride results in domestic stability, will it not exacerbate it internationally, given the challenge and opportunity international relations presents to the glory seeker? What will stop Hobbes’s hope of a peaceful and industrious commonwealth from soon being transformed by ambitious sovereigns into Machiavellian armed camps, where martial virtù discharges the discordant humors in the republic? To evaluate the merits of this argument, it is necessary to understand Hobbes’s own assessment of the passions and the way they shape politics. Diffident, Competitive, Glorious Hobbes is famous for denying the ancients’ premise that human beings are “Politicall creatures” or lovers of some “greatest Good.”42 He rejects the classical understanding of types of human beings (and therefore regimes) defined by what they love or seek—for example, their love of honor or wealth or freedom—on the grounds that “there is no such Finis ultimus, (utmost ayme,) nor Summum Bonum, (greatest Good,) as is spoken of in the Books of the old Morall Philosophers.”43 Human motion, for Hobbes, is “Vitall” and “Voluntary.” Voluntary motion is created by imagination and results in “endeavour,” which is felt as either desire or aversion.44 Because there is no “greatest Good,” “Felicity” lies in “a continuall progresse of the desire, from one object to another.”45 But the feeling of unlimited power does not last because new desires and aversions are always created by the “Senses and Imaginations.”46 As a result, Hobbes famously declares, “in the first place, I put for a generall inclination of all mankind, a perpetuall and restlesse desire of Power after power, that ceaseth onely in Death.”47 Indeed, every good we seek—“Riches . . . Knowledge . . . Honour”—and every passion we feel “may be reduced to . . . Desire of Power,” because all things are to us “but severall sorts of Power.”48 According to Hobbes, three types of human movement (and therefore human beings) predominate in nature: the Diffident, the Competitive, and

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the Glorious.49 For all three, the unavoidable reality of limited or scarce goods means that, in pursuing their “Ends,” they are compelled to destroy or subdue one another.50 Yet each type confronts this scarcity and struggle in its unique way. That is, while all people seek power, they have different judgments about how much power they need and about what confers the necessary power. Diffidence, according to Hobbes’s definition, is “Constant Despayre,” that is, the constant opinion that you will not attain what you desire. While Hobbes says that there is a “general diffidence in mankind, and mutual fear one of another,” he also argues that some men are vainglorious and seek “superiority,” while others look only to equality.51 This latter person— one of “those men who are moderate”—wants more power only because he “cannot assure the power and means to live well, which he hath present, without the acquisition of more.”52 This lack of assurance is a form of “hopelessness” that makes the Diffident desperate, forcing them into enmity. The Diffident who is “reasonable,” according to Hobbes, will secure himself by “Anticipation”; “that is, by force, or wiles, to master the persons of all men he can, so long, till he see no other power great enough to endanger him: And this is no more than his own conservation requireth, and is generally allowed.”53 The disposition of the Diffident—a low estimation of one’s success in life, due to either constitution or experience—determines how he will wage war (reasonably; by anticipation) and when he will stop (“till he see no other power great enough to endanger him”).54 As Hobbes notes, diffidence as a “cause of quarrell” makes a man invade for “Safety” and use violence to “defend” his body and possessions. Thus, it seems that hopelessness of the Diffident yields moderation—the Diffident will not ordinarily seek to conquer or master all other human beings. But he is forced to counter the competitive.55 The Competitive does not simply desire, like the Diffident, to secure and defend his possessions. He wants more because he “cannot be content with a moderate power,” and so he goes beyond defending his immediate safety and uses violence to make himself “[master] of other mens persons, wives, children, and cattell.”56 How can we explain this difference between the two types? Hobbes’s general answer is that the Competitive seeks mastery for “Gain.” The reason for this, it would seem, is that, unlike the Diffident, the Competitive are hopeful that they have the power necessary to overcome other people.57 They may hold this hope because their bodies are constituted differently or because of their previous, generally successful experience, or a combination of both. In any case, the Competitive, unlike the Diffident, go on the offensive not as a matter of preemptive defense but to gain power over others. In doing so, however, they never think that “Mastery” is anything

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other than a means to gain; they tend not to derive pleasure in exercising their power over other human beings except in the sense that it indicates, or is a measure, of gain. Consequently, their need to master is always constrained and circumscribed by material gain, and they can tolerate others who do not threaten that gain. The limited character of the desire of the Competitive to conquer reveals the fundamental difference between the Competitive and the Glorious. According to Hobbes, glorying is a type of “Joy,” which is a pleasure of the mind.58 More specifically, it is an “exultation of the mind” arising from “imagination of a man’s own power and ability.”59 While all people alike seek power, some people look for their power exclusively in glory, which explains why Hobbes states that the “End” of some is “conservation” and for others “delectation,” or “intense delight.”60 Beyond the “short vehemence” of “carnall Pleasure” open to all people, intense delight can be found “in contemplating” one’s “own power in the acts of conquest,” which produces great pleasure at the confirmation to oneself of one’s power.61 Some glory seeking is to be expected of all people because even the most “moderate” person naturally demands some value be placed on his person and finds joy in “comparing himselfe with other men” and judging himself “eminent.”62 One piece of evidence for this view, Hobbes suggests, is the fact that everyone laughs, which is a rush of “Sudden Glory.”63 Moreover, there is clearly a link between glory and the security we naturally want, because conquering others can make you secure. But Hobbes also notes that glory seekers often pursue glory “farther than their security requires,” creating the problem that some seek glory even at the risk of their lives.64 For these people, glory becomes disengaged from its source in the pursuit of the power needed to preserve their vital motion. But why would anyone put the security of his person and property at risk for the sake of glory? Certainly, the characteristically human and intense nature of the pleasure of actual conquest must contribute to this forgetting or overreaching. Yet this is not the only reason. In Hobbes’s account of the person who invades for “Reputation,” we come to appreciate some of the major difficulties that inhere in the nature of acquiring and maintaining glory. “For every man looketh that his companion should value him, at the same rate he sets upon himselfe: And upon all signes of contempt, or undervaluing, naturally endeavours, as far as he dares (which amongst them that have no common power, to keep them quiet, is far enough to make them destroy each other,) to extort a greater value from his contemners, by dommage; and from others, by example.”65 The first difficulty concerns the demands of Glory. When we recall that, according to Hobbes, we tend to value ourselves higher than we value our neighbors, then we realize the inherent and unavoidable

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obstacle in satisfying the Glory lover.66 Our inherent inability to judge or “value” accurately (that is, equally) is the foundational human problem that exacerbates our dealings with each other. Hobbes argues that it is a law of Nature “That every man acknowledge other for his Equall by Nature.”67 Yet all people do not always do this and the glorious never do so, and it is this “Pride” that requires creation of the Leviathan—the “King of the Proud.”68 In addition to this core difficulty, there is the problem of construing “signs” of valuing. Unable to see internal motions, we attempt to read external signs, so that “trifles,” such as “a word, a smile, a different opinion” become signs of undervalue.69 These subtle indicators come to replace the gross signs of security—mastery of people and things—that comforts the diffident and the competitive. Yet the trivial and subtle nature of these signs shows how easy it is for us to misconstrue them, especially given our initial suspicions that we are being undervalued. Finally, the problem of Glory is that it enlarges the Glorious. The Glory lover can be personally slighted by “reflexion”—by undervaluing “their Kindred, their Friends, their Nation, their Profession, or their Name.”70 Thus, Glory expands the “self” of a person from his “body” to include a range of other things not usually linked to him. This, of course, is part of the intense pleasure of Glory, the feeling of being bigger, greater, or more majestic. Indeed, the Glorious falls in love with his reputation because “extraordinary power” continually satisfies the never-ending desire for power. Yet such passionate attachment to glory and its feeling of enlargement exposes the glorious to greater risk of undervaluing and therefore anxiety, demanding greater vigilance and attention in satisfying the need for glory. These problems in establishing true valuation pale in comparison with what is required to restore the joy or pleasure of glory upon being slighted. The glory lover needs to “extort a greater value from his contemners, by dommage; and from others, by example.” In short, the glory lover must prove his worth by publicly injuring the contemnors so that the victim will concede superiority and others will see in the injury proof of the glory lover’s power. Note the core dilemma for the glory lover: he is compelled to risk himself to show his power. Sustaining the joy that is glory may necessitate harming his body or undermining his power as property. In the extreme case, the glorious may risk his own life to show his power. Therefore, the pleasure of glory is not checked by the moderating demands of security and property in two senses. The first is in the sense that we have noted: the glorious person will illogically sacrifice his life for his name. The second is that the pleasure of glory seeks to ever increase its delectation: glory will in social terms seek ever-greater mastery, at the risk of security. Empire rather than “realistic accommodation” is the end point of glory.71

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Glory and International Relations The discussion above indicates that it is the glory seeker who will be Hobbes’s sovereign. According to Hobbes, war, the amoral, logical consequence of human “Endeavour,” is premised on the tendency of the Glorious type to challenge and test each other regarding their worth, thereby compelling both the Diffident and the Competitive to enter into warfare far beyond what they would ordinarily wage.72 If the Glorious could exist without struggling—that is, with an assurance of their power—then the Diffident (and perhaps the Competitive to a great degree) could lead a life as peaceful and productive as those of bees or ants.73 Hence, Hobbes posits an institutional arrangement where challenges to the sole Glorious are no longer possible or feasible, and where the Diffident and Competitive can prosper in his shadow.74 But such sovereignty will only fuel the pride of the Glorious. As sovereign, his own sense of worth (and therefore pleasure in contemplating it) will now be confirmed by success and magnified by the grandeur of office. The greater and more powerful the commonwealth, the more glorious the sovereign. With such greatness comes the increased likelihood of being contemned. Unchecked by common powers, sovereigns in their international relations will easily misconstrue such slights to pride as challenges to security.75 Sovereigns, seeking greater pleasure in asserting their glory, and attempting to repudiate the challenges to their reputation, will seek to defend themselves and their nations through proof of their superiority— through the use of increased sovereign power in international relations. To do so, however, they will need to put into place all those elements for successful campaigns, ranging from recruiting of spies to reveal secrets or mislead the enemy, to the construction of forts and defenses, to finally the raising of armies and navies to wage war. The more successful such ventures, the more the sovereign will be tempted not to disband such machinery, but to retain their services in more ambitious undertakings, ostensibly to secure itself, in fact to enhance the glory of the nation. Before too long, the sovereign’s glory will point to a policy of imperial ambitions, stimulated and sustained by its success. Hobbes of course knew of these dangers. As he notes, “yet in all times, Kings, and Persons of Soveraigne authority, because of their Independency, are in continuall jealousies, and in the state and posture of Gladiators.” 76 In admitting that there is no real difference between commonwealth by institution and commonwealth by conquest, he indicates the ubiquity of international war as the foundation of sovereignty.77 He also admits that such conquests are often not founded upon the laws of nature: “For such

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commonwealths, or such monarchs, as affect war for itself, that is to say, out of ambition, or vain-glory, or that make account to revenge every little injury, or disgrace done by their neighbours, if they do not ruine themselves, their fortune must be better than they have reason to expect.”78 His extensive discussion of the laws of nature, especially against revenge, contumely, pride, and arrogance, show his clear-sighted appreciation of the powerful nature of these passions.79 Aware of this problem, Hobbes may reply that the danger of glory will depend on the circumstances of each country. It is only the sovereign of the wealthy, powerful, and strategically or geographically well-placed commonwealths who will be tempted to seek glory. Yet his account of the continuous skirmishes by the “infinite number of little Lords” in Germany80 suggests that glory (with its attendant “insatiable appetite, or Bulimia, of enlarging Dominion”81) may be a problem for all sovereigns. Hobbes may also argue that, given the identity of public and private interests in a monarchy, the welfare of the people and the dangers and costs of war will provide a natural check on this glorying: “Now in Monarchy, the private interest is the same with the publique. The riches, power, and honour of a Monarch arise onely from the riches, strength and reputation of his Subjects. For no King can be rich, nor glorious, nor secure; whose Subjects are either poore, or contemptible, or too weak through want, or dissention, to maintain a war against their enemies.”82 Sensible sovereigns do not take “any delight, or profit they can expect in the dammage, or weakening of their Subjects, in whose vigor, consisteth their own strength and glory.”83 Clearly, continuous warfare that impoverishes its people and ruins a state will make it much more likely to be dissolved or conquered by neighbors. Thus, there is a powerful reason for sovereigns to restrain themselves for the sake of preserving their glory.84 But it is the nature of glory seekers to risk all for all. Though aware of such arguments, which suggest a sort of natural justice for unreasonable actions, the glorious sovereigns will excuse themselves as the exception who will succeed, and in failure blame everyone but themselves. The lessons learned from failure may be either too late or disregarded by the glorious sovereigns. This raises a profound question regarding the extent to which the proud can, in a sense, be done away with in a Hobbesian world through institutions and laws. Hobbes would, of course, deny that all glorying should be dispensed with—a certain form is essential for sovereignty. Yet he does argue that his teachings will result in more reasonable sovereigns. As we have noted, he thinks it is relatively easy to educate the “vulgar” or the “Common people.”85 If true, then the only problem for Hobbes is to convince such an authority to take up his teaching and apply it in the Commonwealth. But this presents a twofold challenge: the need to oust the rich, potent, and learned in the pulpits and the universities who already have the ear of the

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sovereign, preaching their vain and false philosophy;86 and to convince the sovereign to adopt Hobbes’s principles.87 Hobbes states that a sovereign would take up his teaching because it is to his benefit and security.88 Yet he concedes that he cannot expect this sovereign to be a scientist. It is sufficient that sovereigns and their ministers know the “Science of Naturall Justice,” they need not understand their origins in “Sciences Mathematical.”89 What emerges from these attempts is a clear confirmation of the limits to the scientific study of politics and, therefore, Hobbesian education. If the many are like “clean paper,” and if the sovereign need not understand the mathematical source of the “Science of Naturall Justice,” it seems that even those “diligently, and truly taught” (both the few and the many) will accept Hobbes’s teaching on trust.90 Indeed, Hobbes’s consistent reference to his teaching as a “Novel Doctrine” shows that his attempt to refound politics on a rational basis is really a replacement of Scholastic Doctrine with what appears to be his new scientific piety, with peace as its credo and power as its theology.91 Therefore, his “Principles of Reason” are another contending dogma, and Leviathan is the new Bible of the Hobbesian world, even containing its own Ten Commandments.92 As long as the people are educated in Hobbesian terms, accepting the primacy of “power,” “rights,” and “social contract,” then the character of the sovereign becomes irrelevant for political rule. Leaving aside the profound questions this argument raises concerning the place of rhetoric and persuasive speech in Hobbes’s understanding of reasoning as reckoning from definitions, Hobbes may be justified in claiming that his new dogmatics, compared with its predecessors, certainly moderate glorying.93 Yet in doing so, he implicitly accepts that “who” is sovereign becomes important. Moreover, to the extent that glorying is unavoidable and politically necessary, and insofar as it is characterized by a fundamental immoderation or unreasonableness, it is not clear if Hobbes’s institutional solution to the problem of domestic politics does not reassert, by means of international glorying, the problem of pride in a much more powerful and therefore dangerous way. Glorious Sovereign and Leadership Students of international relations influenced by Hobbes have tended to focus on the primacy of fear in shaping international politics. As Hobbes’s writings indicate, there are sound reasons for taking such an approach. This concentration on fear, however, has been at the expense of neglecting the other passions that, according to Hobbes, lead to political instability and war. As we have seen, Hobbes had an extensive and sophisticated insight into the significance of honor and glory in shaping both domestic and international politics, a theme that has received insufficient attention in the

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contemporary international relations scholarship. Thus, a return to Hobbes and his subtly crafted writings yields a more subtle appreciation of the range of passions that dominate politics. Such a return also reveals, however, a persistent ambiguity in both Hobbes and contemporary scholarship influenced by him. What is the role and influence of individuals and, therefore, political leadership in determining the character of international relations? Hobbes claims to be the first true founder of the science of politics or the first political philosopher. He presents his turn to politics as a diversion from his true interests in the “speculation of Bodies Naturall.” This diversion, “occassioned by the disorders of the present time,” is “without partiality, without application, and without other designe” than “to advance the Civill Power.”94 Hobbes seeks to redefine classical, Christian, and even Machiavellian virtue with his new democratic reasonableness. This new virtue, derived from the dignity of keeping one’s word and respecting others, appears indifferent to the necessity of good judgment or prudence, especially from its leaders. Thus, both his international and domestic politics are at the mercy of the character of the leader, who in his opinion will have precisely that constitution that will make the Leviathan impossible.95 Although he appears to be founding the modern liberal state, reliant on rights and commodious living made possible by industry and scientific innovation, what he designs exposes the probability of the armed camp. In this way, Hobbes’s apparent disregard of international relations reveals the Achilles heel of his teaching altogether—the absence of prudential statesmanship essential for the maintenance of such an institutional solution. Hobbes may counter that he is that person and that such insight is necessary only once and has been undertaken by him through his writings. Hobbes, it seems, risks public condemnation as well as the animosity of the few and powerful he seeks to displace not out of any personal motive of gain or advantage but for public good.96 Leviathan, it would seem, is proof of the need and force of nobility or “gallantness of courage” in securing political stability, a gallantness that Hobbes considers rarely found and which is seemingly unaccountable in terms of his interpretation of human “endeavour.”97 Leaving aside the problem of glorying in such a claim, it is not clear that Hobbes’s artifice, presuming an unknowable and therefore unpredictable cosmos, can therefore truly withstand or keep at bay the mysterious forces that move and shape all matter.98 Hobbes’s reason does not conquer chance. Notes 1. For an overview of his life see John Aubrey, Brief Lives, ed. Oliver Lawson Dick (London: Secker & Warburg, 1958) and Hobbes’s correspondence in the

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2.

3. 4.

5. 6.

7.

8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

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Clarendon edition of Hobbes’s works, The Correspondence of Thomas Hobbes, 2 vols, ed. Noel Malcolm (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994, 1997). Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. C. B. Macpherson (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1968), Review And Conclusion, 728–729, hereafter Hobbes, Leviathan, chapter number, page number. Corroborated by the Frontispiece to the Leviathan, where the sovereign’s gaze is directed away from the borders into the state itself. With reference to his “Science of Naturall Justice,” he notes that, “neither Plato, nor any other Philosopher hitherto, hath put into order, and sufficiently, or probably proved all the Theoremes of Morall doctrine, that men may learn thereby, both how to govern, and how to obey.” Hobbes, Leviathan, 31, 407–408. Hobbes, Leviathan, 30, 378. Emphasis added. Thus, I take up Kant’s critique of Hobbes developed in Perpetual Peace and “Idea for Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose”—that the problem of a perfect civil constitution cannot be solved unless the problem of external relations with other states is addressed—but do so from Hobbes’s own presuppositions. On the relationship between Hobbes and Kant see Howard Williams, Kant’s Critique of Hobbes (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003). As has often been noted, Hobbes regards his methodological innovation as consisting of applying the principles of mathematics generally, and geometry more specifically, to human beings. According to him, the results of such an undertaking—starting with definitions and then adding or subtracting words until proper conclusions are reached—are irrefutable truths regarding politics, especially concerning the essential rights of sovereigns and the obedience owed by subjects. Hobbes is not modest regarding his achievement. Leviathan, 30, 394. Deceptively simple because, in reducing the Law of Nations to Hobbesian Law of Nature, he implicitly repudiates stoic notions of ius gentium: see Thomas L. Pangle and Peter J. Ahrensdorf, Justice Among Nations: On the Moral Basis of Power and Peace (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999), 144–153. For Hobbes’s earlier account of the place of international relations, see De Cive, in Man and Citizen. ed., trans. Bernard Gert (Gloucester, Mass: Peter Smith, 1972), chapter 10, paragraph 17; chapter 14, paragraph 4. Hereafter Hobbes, De Cive, chapter number, paragraph number. Hobbes, Leviathan, 14, 189–190. Ibid., 13, 185–186. Ibid., 14, 190. Ibid., 13, 187, 186. For the influence of Hobbes on modern realists, such as Morgenthau, Niebhur, Carr, Butterfield, Osgood, Kennan, Beitz, and Kissinger, see C. Navari, “Hobbes, the State of Nature and the Laws of Nature,” in Ian Clark and Iver Neumann, eds., Classical Theories of International Relations, (Macmillan Press: Houndmills, 1996), 21–41; H. Williams, International Relations in Political Theory, (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1992); M. Smith, Realist Thought from Weber to Kissinger (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University

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15.

16.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

22. 23. 24.

25.

26. 27. 28. 29.

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Press, 1986). On his continuing influence on neo-realists, such as Walz, see Pangle and Ahrensdorf, Justice Among Nations, 239–257. It became the basis of the so-called English school of international relations: see Hedley Bull, “Hobbes and International Anarchy,” Social Research 41 (1977), 717–738; Claire Cutler, “The Grotian Tradition in International Relations,” Review of International Studies 17 (1991), 41–65; Martin Wight, International Relations: Three Traditions (London: Holmes and Meier, 1992); and the discussion in Michael C. Williams, “Hobbes and International Relations: a Reconsideration,” International Organization 50:2 (1996), 213–236. I draw on Laurie Johnson, Thucydides, Hobbes, and the Interpretation of Realism (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1993), 87–94. For similar or more ambitious attempts to develop a Hobbesian law of nations, see Donald W. Hanson, “Thomas Hobbes’s ‘Highway to Peace,’ ” International Organization 38, no. 2 (Spring 1984), 329–354 and Francis Cheneval, “The Hobbesian Case for Multilateralism,” Swiss Political Science Review, 13:3 (2007), 309–335. Hobbes, Leviathan, 11, 161; L 17, 223). Ibid., 13, 187–188. Johnson, Thucydides, Hobbes, and the Interpretation of Realism, 87. Hobbes, Leviathan, 14, 190. The remaining 17 laws are enumerated in chapter XV: 3. justice; 4. gratitude; 5. compleasance; 6. pardon; 7. to look to the future in revenge; 8. against contumely; 9. against pride; 10. against arrogance; 11. equity; 12. equal use of common things; 13. the use of lot; 14, primogeniture; 15. mediators; 16. submission to arbitrement; 17. no man is his own judge; 18. impartiality of judges. Hobbes, Leviathan, 23, 293. Ibid., 14, 198. Ibid., 29, 363–364; 19, 240. For a discussion of these themes, including the Kantian critique of Hobbes, see Nancy A. Stanlick, “A Hobbesian View of International Sovereignty,” Journal of Social Philosophy 37:4 (2006), 552–565; Ernst B. Haas, “Reason and Change in International Life: Justifying a Hypothesis,” Journal of International Affairs, 44:1 (Spring 1990), 209; Charles Covell, Kant and the Law of Peace: A Study in The Philosophy of International Law and International Relations (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan Press; New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998); Williams, Kant’s Critique of Hobbes. On the idea of “normative prudence” in international relations, see Alberto R Coll, “Normative Prudence as a Tradition of Statecraft,” Ethics & International Affairs 5:1 (1991), 33–51. Note that Hobbes distinguishes three types of sovereignty: monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy ( Leviathan, 19, 239). Ibid., Introduction, 81. Ibid., Dedication, 75. At least Hobbes still relied on living creatures such as geese. Bentham extends this argument to its limits when, in his Panopticon, he implies that no one need occupy the sovereign’s place.

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30. Hobbes, Leviathan, 15, 211. 31. Ibid., 8, 138. Note, however, how he seemingly retracts this position. Equality must be the new consensus, even if not true: “or if Nature have made men unequall; yet because men that think themselves equall, will not enter into conditions of Peace, but upon Equall termes, such equalitie must be admitted.” The breach of this precept is called “Pride.” Leviathan, 15, 211. For his more profound critique of prudence, see his distinction between “Prudence,” based on experience, and “Science,” which relies on “Reason” and “Reckoning (that is, Adding and Substracting [sic]) of the Consequences of generall names agreed upon,” Leviathan, 3, 97; 5, 111–115. 32. Ibid., 17, 227. 33. Ibid., Dedication, 75. 34. Ibid., 30, 388. 35. Ibid. 36. See, for example, Hobbes’s preference for monarchy over democracy on the grounds of the greater knowledge and understanding that is possible for the monarch. Contrary to modern deliberative democrats, Hobbes suggests that democratic representatives know more about acquiring wealth than knowledge, and in giving their advice in long discourses excite men to action rather than understanding: “For the Understanding is by the flame of the Passions, never enlightned, but dazled,” Leviathan, 19, 242. 37. On the rhetoric, see Quentin Skinner, “Thomas Hobbes: Rhetoric and the Construction of Morality,” Proceedings of the British Academy 76 (1990): 1–61; Quentin Skinner, Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Haig Patapan, “ ‘Lord Over the Children of Pride’: the Vaine-Glorious Rhetoric of Hobbes’ Leviathan,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 33:1 (2000), 74–93. 38. See, for example, the discussions of the rights of the sovereigns by institution (Hobbes, Leviathan, 18, 228–239); of the liberty of subjects (Ibid., 21, 261–274); of the public ministers of sovereign power (Ibid., 23, 289–294); and especially of the office of the sovereign representative (Ibid., 30, 376–394). 39. See the discussion regarding the “Objection from the Incapacity of the Vulgar,” Hobbes, Leviathan, 30, 378–379. 40. On the problem of glory, see generally: Leo Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes, its Basis and its Genesis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953); Gabriella Slomp, Thomas Hobbes and the Political Philosophy of Glory (Houndmills: Macmillan Press Ltd, 2000); J. Hampton, “Hobbesian Reflections on Glory as a Cause of Conflict,” in Peter Caws, ed., The Causes of Quarrel—Essays on Peace, War and Thomas Hobbes (Beacon Press: Boston, 1989), 78–96; William Sacksteder, “Mutually Acceptable Glory as a Cause of Conflict,” in Ibid., 97–113; Andrew Altman, “Glory, Respect, and Violent Conflict,” in Ibid., 114–127 41. The reason for this, as we will see, is that it is only the proud who would be willing to pursue power through glory. 42. Hobbes, Leviathan, 17, 225; 11, 160.

28 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

50. 51.

52. 53. 54. 55.

56. 57.

58. 59.

60.

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Ibid., 11, 160. Ibid., 6, 118. Ibid., 11, 160. Ibid., 6, 124; 11, 161. Ibid., 11, 161. Ibid., 8, 139.Ibid., 11, 161. See Hobbes’s discussion of “Manners” and the “NATURALL CONDITION of mankind,” Leviathan, 11, 160–168; 13, 183–188. There is a fourth type, the scientist, whom Hobbes holds out as the hope and promise of peace for humanity. The scientist experiences intense pleasure due to the pleasures of curiosity. Such joy results in Glorying, and “ADMIRATION,” which appears more selfsufficient, Ibid., 6, 124. But the scientist is still public-spirited: see, for example, the loyalty of scientists (Ibid., 46, 683–4); their contribution to commodious living (Ibid., 11, 162). Note, however, that Hobbes calls the sciences “small Power,” Ibid., 10, 151. Ibid., 13, 184. Hobbes, Human Nature, in The Elements of Law: Human Nature and De Corpore Politico, ed. J.C.A. Gaskin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), XIV, 3, hereafter Hobbes, Human Nature, chapter number, section number. Hobbes, Leviathan, 11, 161; Human Nature, XIV, 3. Hobbes, Leviathan, 13, 184. Ibid. Ibid., 13, 185. Hobbes’s discussion of fear has been central to the international relations scholarship on the “security dilemma.” In this context, see John Herz, “Idealist Internationalism and the Security Dilemma,” World Politics 2:2 (1950), 157–180; Ken Booth and Nicholas J. Wheeler, The Security Dilemma: Fear, Cooperation and Trust in World Politics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); Edward A. Kolodziej, Security and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Andrew H. Kydd, Trust and Mistrust in International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005). Hobbes, Leviathan, 13, 185. These human types are differentiated in part by their different amounts of endeavor. Greater endeavor and thus greater passion is the result of a combination of bodily factors (i.e., greater innate vital motion, more sensitive sense organs: Hobbes, Leviathan, 8, 135) and “the natural temper of the brain” (i.e., stronger imagination, quicker reason: Leviathan, 8, 135–139; Hobbes, Human Nature, X, 1). Hobbes, Leviathan, 6, 122. Ibid., 6, 124–125. There are two types of glorying: confidence and vainglory. Confidence is a “constant hope of ourselves” based on “the experience” of our “own former actions.” Vainglory is imagining power based “on the flattery of others; or onely supposed by himselfe, for delight in the consequences of it,” Ibid., 6, 125. Ibid., 13, 184; 11, 161.

Thomas Hobbes on Leadership & International Relations 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

67. 68.

69. 70. 71.

72. 73.

74.

75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82.

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Ibid., 13, 184. Hobbes, Human Nature, XIV, 3; Leviathan, 17, 226. Hobbes, Leviathan, 6, 125. Ibid., 13, 185. Ibid. People think they are wiser than others because they “see their own wit at hand, and other mens at a distance.” The only exceptions are those “whom by Fame, or for concurring with themselves, they approve.” Ibid., 13, 184. Ibid., 15, 211. Ibid., 28, 362. For an insight into the character of Hobbes’s piety, cf. the Leviathan, a creature of the Lord, set over the children of pride (Job 41: 34), with Hobbes’s artificial body, made by the “Art of man,” whose business is “Salus Populi” or the peoples’ safety, Ibid., Introduction, 81. Ibid., 13, 184. Ibid., 13, 185. This discussion does not address the added complexity of how religion will shape glorying. This is significant because, as noted above, Hobbes accepts that in international relations, there being “no Court of Naturall Justice,” the sovereign will be bound, “but in the Conscience onely; where not Man, but God raigneth,” Leviathan, 30, 394. An adequate understanding of Hobbes’s treatment of this problem would have to start with his discussion of religion in the Third and Fourth Parts of the Leviathan, as well as the Behemoth, where he examines the role of religion in international relations. As Hobbes says, the “Desires, and other Passions of man, are in themselves no Sin,” Leviathan 13, 187. Ibid., 17, 225. Note that Hobbes’s list of six elements that distinguish social animals (bees and ants) and humans emphasizes the problem of honor. Ibid., 17, 225–227. Other glory lovers besides the sovereign are soberly advised by Hobbes not to attempt to attain “Sovereignty by Rebellion” lest they perish in the try. The sovereign is advised to take such people in as counselors or let them acquire limited glory by successful acquisition in the marketplace. In all circumstances, however, the sovereign must keep a close eye on the power or “Popularity” of any of his subjects. Ibid., 15, 205; 30, 391–392; 30, 393. Without denying, of course, that slights may in fact constitute such a security threat. Hobbes, Leviathan, 13, 187. The identity lies in the fact that fear is the basis of both forms of sovereignty. Ibid., 20, 252. Hobbes, De Cive IX, 220. Hobbes, Leviathan, 15, 210–212. Ibid., 10, 158. Ibid., 29, 375. Ibid., 19, 241–242.

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83. Ibid., 18, 238. 84. Once other sovereigns adopt such an approach, then commercial glory assumes prominence and modifies martial glory and cruelty: see Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws and the modern scholarship on ‘democratic peace.” 85. Of the incapacity of the “vulgar” or the “Common people” he makes a twofold claim. First, his teaching is so “consonant to Reason” that no unprejudiced person would have difficulty understanding it. The second is more radical: most people are like “clean paper,” ready to receive whatever the Public Authority impresses on them. Hobbes, Leviathan, 30, 379. 86. See generally Leviathan, chapter 46 regarding vain philosophy and fabulous traditions. Note that Hobbes is critical of the pagans generally, especially Aristotle (but not Plato, because of his emphasis on geometry). But his real concern is in fact scholasticism or Thomism; that is, the Christian appropriation of classical political philosophy (although he says that the Schoolmen may not have always appropriated Aristotle’s true teaching because they did not understand his need to write in such a way as to avoid the fate of Socrates: Leviathan, 46, 692). He singles out the famous scholastic Suarez, whom he attacks for writing “whole volumes” of so much “Absurdity” that Suarez must have been either “Mad” or trying “to make others so.” Ibid., 8, 147. 87. See, for example, the discussion of the advantages of such teaching for the sovereign in Leviathan, chapter 30, where Hobbes addresses the duties of the sovereign. 88. Hobbes, Leviathan, 30, 379. 89. Ibid., 31, 407. The only way such a sovereign will accept Hobbes’s Doctrine is by reading “in himself, not this or that particular man; but Man-kind,” as outlined by Hobbes, Introduction, 83). In doing so he will avoid the “uselesse” Platonic attempt to have “Sovereigns and Philosophers.” Ibid., 31, 407. 90. Ibid., 30, 377. Compare this with his consistent attempt to reject trust and faith in the authority of books. He says, for example, that “they that trusting onely to the authority of books, follow the blind blindly.” Ibid., 5, 21. Indeed, words “are the mony of fooles, that value them by the authority of an Aristotle, a Cicero, or a Thomas, or any other Doctor whatsoever.” Ibid., 4, 106. 91. Ibid., Conclusion, 726. 92. Ibid., 30, 380–383. 93. Hobbes’s understanding of “Science”—which is based on “Reason”—as “Reckoning (that is, Adding and Substracting) of the Consequences of generall names agreed upon” seems to sit uneasily with the importance of rhetoric for Hobbes. Leviathan, 5, 111. On this question see especially Skinner, “Thomas Hobbes: Rhetoric and the Construction of Morality,” and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes, and Patapan, “ ‘Lord Over the Children of Pride’: the Vaine-Glorious Rhetoric of Hobbes.” 94. Hobbes, Leviathan, A Review, and Conclusion, 728; Dedication, 75. 95. On the problem of “agency” in “realist” international relations theory, see Johnson, Thucydides, Hobbes, and the Interpretation of Realism, 148–200.

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96. In the epistle dedicatory to De Homine (1658), Hobbes says that its publication has been delayed because he had been “fighting the beasts” and had to answer “clamourings and insults” after he published De Cive (1642, 1647). Hobbes, De Homine, in Man and Citizen. ed., trans. Gert, 33–86, 35. In Behemoth (completed around 1668), he states that teaching the science of justice can be dangerous, and indeed he seemed to have published it to refute attacks on Leviathan. Hobbes, Behemoth or The Long Parliament, ed. Ferdinand Töennies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). Leviathan itself was published in 1651, years after he escaped to France. Finally, Hobbes refused to publish the Dialogue between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common Law in his lifetime. 97. Hobbes, Leviathan, 15, 207. Can Hobbes the scientist account for Hobbes the author? On Shaftesbury’s (Characteristicks, Volume I, treatise II, section I, paragraph 90; Indiana: Liberty Fund, Inc., 2001)) sarcastic assessment that, while Hobbes held that there is “nothing which naturally drew us to the Love of what was without, or beyond ourselves,” the “Love of such great Truths and sovereign Maxims as he imagin’d these to be, made him the most laborious of all Men in composing Systems of this kind for our Use; and forc’d him, notwithstanding his natural Fear, to run continually the highest risk of being a Martyr for our Deliverance” see Haig Patapan and Jeffrey Sikkenga, “Love and the Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes’ Critique of Platonic Eros”. Political Theory: An International Journal of Political Philosophy 36:6 (2008): 803–826. For a comparable argument regarding Machiavelli and modern philosophers more generally, see Haig Patapan, Machiavelli in Love: the Modern Politics of Love and Fear (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2006). 98. See Cooper’s suggestion that Hobbes as philosopher does not show his pride, and in fact redefines the vocation of the philosopher. Julie E. Cooper, “Thomas Hobbes on the Political Theorist’s Vocation,” The Historical Journal, 50:3(2007), 519–547.

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CHAPTER THREE

John Locke’s International Thought David Armitage

A

t first sight, John Locke (1632–1704) would not be an obvious candidate for inclusion in a canon of British international thinkers. He died three years before the Anglo-Scottish union of 1707 created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and was therefore strictly English, not British. None of his major published writings, among them the three Letters on toleration (1689, 1690, 1692), the Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689/90), the Two Treatises of Government (1689/90), Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693), and The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695), was primarily or even substantially concerned with any of the subjects that would now be considered under the rubrics of international relations or international law. Most of Locke’s attempts in these works to theorize the relations between peoples and states, to derive norms for international relations, or to describe and analyze the international society of his times, were relatively brief and episodic, and the various reflections on England’s foreign affairs scattered throughout his correspondence and manuscripts were not widely circulated in his lifetime and remain little known even today. In short, the question of Locke’s international thought seems to be like the puzzle of the dog that did not bark in the night. However, Locke’s biography gives the lie to any suspicion that he was indifferent to, or inexperienced in, international matters. In the 1670s, he spent almost four years in France (1675–1679) and later lived for nearly six years in Holland (1683–1689). In his early thirties, he had been secretary to the English envoy Sir Walter Vane during his mission to the Elector of

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Brandenburg at Cleves from December 1665 to February 1666. The aim of the embassy had been to prevent the Elector from allying with the Dutch and to join the English instead during the Second Anglo-Dutch War, but the Elector strung the English along, and a frustrated Vane left without any firm assurances. The negotiations gave Locke an intimate view of the workings of international diplomacy as he stayed alert for information and handled the mission’s official correspondence.1 Yet Locke was modest about his own capacities: “If my intelligence be not soe considerable as you may expect you will pardon it to my want of experience and language not of will and endeavour,” he protested to William Godolphin in 1665. His superiors did not share this low estimation of his talents. As soon as he returned to England in February 1666, he was offered the position of secretary to an English embassy to Spain; he declined that opportunity, as he did the chance later the same year to be secretary to an English mission to Sweden.2 Over the following decades, Locke also accrued wide experience in English colonial administration. From 1669 to 1675, he was secretary to the Lords Proprietors of the infant colony of Carolina, among whom his patron, Anthony Ashley Cooper, later the first Earl of Shaftesbury, was a leading member. He had financial and proprietary interests in the company Cooper and others set up to trade between the Bahamas and the North American mainland, and also in the Royal African Company, the English monopoly for trading in slaves from Africa to America. Between 1673 and 1674, he was secretary to the Council for Trade and Foreign Plantations and, toward the end of his life, from 1696 to 1700, he was among the first commissioners appointed to the newly founded Board of Trade. These administrative duties and financial investments gave Locke knowledge of English colonial and commercial activity in North America, from New York to Carolina, in the Caribbean, Ireland, and Africa.3 Few Englishmen of his time could lay claim such practical cosmopolitanism. After the Glorious Revolution of 1688–1689, which brought Locke’s return from exile in Holland, a new monarch presented novel possibilities. In the spring of 1689, William III offered Locke three diplomatic postings: at the Imperial court in Vienna, the Electoral court at Brandenburg, or somewhere else. He declined them all due to the acuteness of the ongoing crisis for “Protestant and English interest through out Europe” and what he protested was his incapacity for the Germans’ “warme drinking.” In 1698, he could have become secretary to the ambassador in Paris or even secretary of state, but he again demurred, with elaborate politeness: “I am too much a novice in the world for the imployment proposed.”4 The time he had lived in Europe, the offers he received, and the time he spent as an administrator means that Locke was, in fact, the English political thinker

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between Hobbes and Namier with the most extensive international experience and diplomatic opportunities. Among the British international thinkers treated in this volume, only David Hume—erstwhile secretary in the 1740s to General James St. Clair and attendant to the British ambassador to France in the aftermath of the Seven Years’ War—might stand comparison with him in this regard.5 Few of these details were widely known until historical scholarship on Locke’s biography and editorial labor on his writings put the study of his life and works on a more secure footing. This might help to explain why even the most historically minded of international theorists were almost silent on the matter of Locke’s contribution to their field. For example, the founding members of the so-called English School of International Relations mentioned him only in passing. For Martin Wight, Locke exemplified the richness of political theorizing that could be used to show up the poverty of international theory: “[T]he student of International Relations cannot, its seems, be . . . directed to classics in his branch of politics, of the stature of Aristotle or Hobbes or Locke or Rousseau. Is it because they do not exist?”6 For Hedley Bull, Locke offered little more than an alternative to the Hobbesian account of international anarchy: “Locke’s conception of the state of nature as a society without government does in fact provide us with a close analogy with the society of states”: anarchic, to be sure, because the members of that society must enforce their own laws, yet still minimally social. This hardly amounted to a robust or distinctive vision of international society, and Bull devoted only a few sentences to noting it. On such a slender basis, no Lockean tradition of international theory emerged in the English School alongside its Grotian, Hobbesian, and Kantian forms.7 A conception of the international realm as a “Lockean culture”, in which states are the bearers of rights, respect one another’s sovereignty and view each other as rivals rather than enemies under “the live and let live logic of the Lockean anarchical society”, later emerged from American constructivism. However, it did not find general acceptance after its introduction by Alexander Wendt in 1999 as a new third way between Hobbesianism and Kantianism.8 Perhaps as a consequence, the critical literature on Locke as an international theorist was until recently as incoherent as it was sparse. One strand indebted to the work of the political theorist Leo Strauss argued, pace Bull, that Locke was in fact a Hobbesian. In the words of the leading exponent of this view, “[C]ontrary to the surface impression . . . Locke deliberately seeks to convey, his conception of the state of nature—whether with regard to individuals or states—is in fact fundamentally Hobbesian in character”: that is, he assumes the primacy of foreign over domestic policy and espouses

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a mercantilist vision “which attaches overriding importance to the right of self-preservation.”9 Another interpretation influenced by the historian of American liberalism Louis Hartz discerned a distinctively Lockean tradition in American foreign policy consisting of an attachment to the balance of power, a commitment to multilateral organizations, and “a self-confident pragmatism” exercised in the international state of nature as well through westward expansion and Indian removal.10 This last feature also foreshadowed a more recent trend that has interpreted Locke’s main contribution to international thought as a theory of property that could justify colonization through the cultivation of wasteland: “The American settlers and their frontiersmen have their natural spokesman in Locke.”11 If any consensus emerged about what constituted a distinctively Lockean theory of international relations, it was that his account of the rights of individuals in the state of nature, and the laws of nature that constrained them, were reproduced in an international state of nature where states took on the moral characteristics of such individuals and acted according to the same laws.12 As we will see in the conclusion to this chapter, John Rawls, the only major philosopher to have taken Locke seriously as an international thinker, shared this analysis of Locke. This account also underpins a recent attempt to show that “Locke . . . provides the firmest foundations for an international law open to all states willing to abide by it” and “devises an international law resting on sovereign equality.” However, other recent literature on Locke’s international thought has rejected such a conception of Lockean “Liberal Legalism.”13 It has been suggested instead that Locke “shows little confidence that the natural law principles of morality can be effectively embodied in international institutions” and questioned whether he “takes the situation of states to be symmetric to that of individuals in the state of nature and permits states of use the executive power of the law of nature altruistically” on the grounds that “[a]lthough Locke does permit individuals to engage in altruistic punishment, he does not allow states to use their coercive power to do the same.”14 In light of such fundamental disagreement about Locke’s basic principles and the conclusions that can be drawn from them, there is clearly a need to revisit Locke’s international thought in his major political work, the Two Treatises of Government, as well as in writings that have not generally been considered in this context. *

*

*

International thought might be defined as theoretical reflection on that peculiar political arena populated variously by individuals; by peoples, nations, and states; and, in the early modern period, by other corporate

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bodies such as churches and trading companies. Such reflection concerns the nature of the interactions between these actors and the norms that regulate—or should regulate—them. With this definition in mind, it is worth asking just what were the broadly characteristic features of Locke’s international thought as they emerge from across his writings. Locke argued that the norms for states were to be found in the law of nature and the law of nations, but that the two could not be identified with each other. In this, as we shall see, Locke was quite distinct from Thomas Hobbes, another major seventeenth-century thinker whose fragmentary international thought has attracted much more attention. Locke’s vision was developmental, if not necessarily progressivist; it could be seen to have moved in stages but without any determining teleology, save perhaps toward putting the world’s land under cultivation and turning nature toward human self-preservation. However, these natural imperatives did not justify the dispossession of nonEuropean peoples whom Locke knew to be international actors capable of entering into diplomatic relations and positive agreements. Indeed, the “federative” capacity such peoples possessed was a distinctive property of any well-constituted commonwealth. Finally, the English commonwealth in particular could only be properly reconstituted in the face of Catholic threats from within and without by rededicating it to the Protestant cause spearheaded by William of Orange. Locke had traveled a long way from his earliest remarks at Oxford on England’s foreign relations to the Williamite position he promoted in 1689–1690. His very first publications were on matters of peace and war: a congratulatory poem addressed to Oliver Cromwell (“You rule in peace that world, you gain’d by war”) and another in celebration of the Treaty of Westminster that concluded the first Anglo-Dutch War in 1654 (“to make a world’s but to compose / The difference of things, and make them close / In mutual amity”).15 His first extensive reflection on the practical relations between commonwealths and the normative foundations that underpinned them appeared in the “Essays on the Law of Nature” (c. 1663–1664), which he delivered as lectures in his capacity as Censor in Moral Philosophy at Christ Church. In the fifth of the lectures, he asked whether the law of nature could be known from the general consent of men and answered that it could not. One reason was the contingency of the customs that arise from positive consent “prompted by the common interests and convenience of men, such as the free passage of envoys, free trade, and other things of that kind; or from an expressly stated contract, such as the fixed boundary-lines between neighbouring peoples . . . and many other such things.”16 At first blush, this might sound like Hobbes’s enumeration of the laws of nature in The Elements of Law (1640), De Cive (1641), or Leviathan (1651).17

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Although what Hobbes included among those laws changed across his major works, his grounds for identifying them did not: “As for the law of nations, it is the same with the law of nature. For that which is the law of nature between man and man, before the constitution of the commonwealth, is the law of nations between sovereign and sovereign after.” Hobbes consistently maintained this identification of the law of nations with the law of nature. Many later writers would judge this to be his most original contribution to the natural law tradition.18 Locke would not have been among them. He argued that “the agreement about envoys having safe passage . . . is positive and does not imply a law of nature” and did so on anti-Hobbesian grounds. “According to the law of nature all men alike are friends of one another and are bound together by common interests, unless (as is maintained by some) there is in the state of nature a general war and perpetual and deadly hatred among men [quod aliqui volunt, in statu naturae commune sit bellum et hominibus inter ipsos perpetuum et internicinum odium].” The law of nature does not assume humans are inflamed by such hatred or that they must “be divided into hostile states [in hostiles civitates divisos].” Locke took the examples of the peoples of Asia and America to show that they were not bound by the same positive laws as the inhabitants of Europe: “Therefore, all this general consent derived from contract does not prove a natural law, but should rather be called the law of nations [jus gentium], which is not imposed by the law of nature but has been suggested to men by common expediency [communis utilitas].”19 Such a distinction between the law of nature and the law of nations was utterly conventional and could be traced back to the Roman jurists of the Digest. Locke would develop his political thought greatly in the decades that followed his early Oxford lectures, but he would never have agreed with Hobbes that “the Law of Nations, and the Law of Nature, is the same thing.”20 When Locke laid out his mature political theory in the Two Treatises of Government, he attributed much more weight than had Hobbes to agreements among the “several States and Kingdoms” of the world (II. 45).21 Such positive acts determined the difference between the state of nature and the state of war, the latter “not consisting in the number of Partysans, but the enmity of the Parties, where they have no Superiour to appeal to” (I. 131). Locke’s acknowledgment that the state of nature and the state of war were quite distinct left more room even than Hobbes had done for the continuing operation of the law of nature after civil societies had been instituted. Indeed, the interactions of commonwealths were proof, if any were needed, that the state of nature was not simply a conjectural assumption but for many a continuing empirical condition. “[A]ll Princes and Rulers of Independent

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Governments all through the World, are in a State of Nature,” and hence “ ‘tis plain the World never was, nor ever will be, without Numbers of Men in that State” (II. 14). Treaties and other positive acts might distinguish this state of nature from a state of war, but their presence or absence did not abolish the state of nature even among commonwealths bound together by alliances: “For ‘tis not every Compact that puts an end to the State of Nature between Men, but only this one of agreeing together mutually to enter into one Community, and make one Body Politick; other Promises and Compacts, Men may make one with another, and yet still be in the State of Nature” (II. 14). Commonwealths did not suffer “the Inconveniences of the State of Nature” to the same degree as individuals (II. 13), and so they do not enter into regional or global bodies politic but remain in an enduring international state of nature. As such, “the whole Community is one Body in the State of Nature, in respect of all other States or Persons out of its Community” (II. 145). Apart from the rulers of states, aliens also remained beyond the reach of positive law and were subject only to the natural law found in the state of nature, by which “every man Hath a Right to punish the Offender, and be Executioner of the Law of Nature” (II. 8). How else, Locke asked, could rulers execute or punish foreigners in their dominions? “Those who have the Supream Power of making Laws in England, France or Holland, are to an Indian, but like the rest of the World, Men without Authority” (II. 9). Only by virtue of the natural right to preserve humanity, and hence to punish an offender in a precivil state by executing the law of nature, could sovereigns condemn strangers for their transgressions. Migrants, like aliens, also found themselves in an international state of nature whenever they left an established commonwealth. The commonwealth’s jurisdiction over any individual is derivative, “since the Government has a direct Jurisdiction only over the Land, and reaches the Possessor of it . . . only as he dwells upon, and enjoys that,” by virtue of which he gives tacit consent to the government. Jurisdiction was thus territorial rather than personal, jurisdiction. Anyone could leave if they, “by Donation, Sale, or otherwise, quit the said Possession,” to become “at liberty to go and incorporate himself into any other Commonwealth, or to agree with others to begin a new one, in vacuis locis, in any part of the World, they can find free and unpossessed” (II. 121; compare II. 115). Locke imagined large swathes of land, especially in “some in-land, vacant places of America,” might be available for cultivation and settlement by such migrants (II. 36).22 On Locke’s account, commonwealths claimed the Earth’s surface through positive agreements in which they mutually recognized each other’s exclusive territorial rights. Such agreements had emerged gradually over time.

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The trajectory of human interaction with nature had begun with individual appropriation to satisfy the need for self-preservation. This permitted in turn the aggregation of property by individuals, who sought the protection of commonwealths for their holdings. Only after the invention of money could humans first accumulate and then exchange the profits of their labor and move from a condition of natural community to a regime of private property (II. 34–44). After that momentous development, “the several Communities settled the Bounds of their distinct Territories . . . and so, by Compact and Agreement, settled the Property which Labour and Industry began; and the Leagues that have been made between several States and Kingdoms, either expressly or tacitly disowning all Claim and Right to the Land in the others Possession, . . . have by positive agreement, settled a Property amongst themselves, in distinct Parts and parcels of the Earth” (II. 45; compare II. 38). However, these positively delimited territorial tranches were surrounded by two remnants of the primitive commons that had been universal in the state of nature: namely, “the Ocean, that great and still remaining Common of Mankind” (II. 30) and the “great Tracts of Ground . . . which (the Inhabitants thereof not having joyned with the rest of Mankind, in the consent of the Use of their common Money) lie waste, and are more than the People, who dwell on it, do, or can make use of” (II. 45). These commons were open to all those who could make a claim on their products without depriving others of the means of their subsistence. However, this did not mean that they were entirely outside the ambit of positive acts by sovereigns. For example, immediately after describing the ocean as a common, Locke noted that “what Ambergriese any one takes up here, is by the Labour that removes it out of that common state Nature left it in, made his Property who takes that pains about it” (II. 30). The unusual choice of ambergris—the fragrant intestinal secretion of a sperm whale, often found floating at sea—was likely indebted to Locke’s involvement with settlement and trade in the Americas. He knew that ambergris was found in both Carolina and the Bahamas. Indeed, in the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, which Locke was involved in revising in 1682 at around the same time he was probably composing chapter 5 of the Second Treatise (“Of Property”) in which this passage appears, the Proprietors claimed right of trover over half of the ambergris “by whomsoever found” in Carolina.23 The ocean may have been a “great . . . common” but such a positive claim could still trump the natural rights of those who recovered its produce by their labor. Locke’s “agriculturalist” argument for a right of possession, as derived from the application of labor to the fruits of nature or to land lying waste, has often been taken to be a charter for the dispossession of native peoples

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by the allegedly more “Industrious and Rational” Europeans (II. 34).24 Yet Locke did not assume that indigenous peoples were irrational, nor did he argue that they could be dispossessed on account of their beliefs, or lack of them: “For the reason of the thing is equal, both in America and Europe . . . neither Pagans there, nor any Dissenting Christians here, can with any right be deprived of their worldly Goods . . . nor are any Civil Rights to be either changed or violated upon account of Religion in one place more than another.”25 As we have seen, Locke derived the authority of the commonwealth from the property rights of the individuals who made it up; one index of the existence of such authority was the capacity to enter into engagements with other similar authorities. Twice in the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, the Proprietors acknowledged “treaties, with the neighbour Indians or any other” and the power “to make peace and war, leagues and treaties, etc., with any of the neighbour Indians.”26 In this regard, the Proprietors, and presumably also Locke, recognized the rights and authority of “the neighbour Indians,” through specifying their capacity to employ what in the Second Treatise he would call the “Federative” or treaty-making power. Locke’s analytical isolation of the capacity to enter into agreements external to the commonwealth would be his most conspicuous innovation with regard to international affairs in the Two Treatises; it was also the least successful. In chapter 12, “Of the Legislative, Executive, and Federative Power of the Commonwealth,” he proposed a division of powers that was novel in light of English constitutional analysis. The legislative power had the authority to make laws for the preservation of the community but would only be in session intermittently; it was therefore necessary to have “a Power always in being” to enforce the laws continuously: this would be the executive power (II. 143–144). The one remaining power “answers to the Power every Man naturally had before he entred into Society,” namely, the federative power, containing “the Power of War and Peace, Leagues and Alliances, and all the Transactions, with all Persons and Communities without the Commonwealth.” Locke knew that this division was unfamiliar and sheepishly introduced it with a neologism: it “may be called Federative, if any one pleases” (II. 145–146), meaning the power to enter into treaties, or foedera. Because this power could not be exercised according to precedent, it was “left to the Prudence and Wisdom of those whose hands it is in, to be managed for the publick good” and should therefore be exercised by the holder of the executive power (II. 147–148). In English constitutional terms, Locke was simply describing the royal prerogative to engage with foreign powers.27 He had not in fact defined a new power nor embodied the “federative” authority in any unprecedented agent, such as Parliament. His coinage

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had no immediate afterlife, and later thinkers ignored his distinction when discussing of the separation of powers.28 The Two Treatises of Government had contingent purposes tied to the national and international politics of their own time. When they were published in November 1689, Locke hoped that they would be “sufficient to establish the Throne of our Great Restorer, Our present King William. . . . And to justifie to the World, the People of England, whose love of their Just and Natural Rights, with their Resolution to preserve them, saved the Nation just when it was on the very brink of Slavery and Ruine.”29 If that had been their sole aim, of course, the Treatises would have been consigned to oblivion along with a hundred other Williamite pamphlets. Locke presented the bulk of his argument in the Two Treatises as applicable to all rights-bearing adult humans in those parts of the world that possessed monetized economies, regimes of private property, and governments to protect the inheritances of their subjects or citizens. From that argument, they could infer a right of resistance to tyranny and recover their original natural rights to self-preservation and punishment on the rare occasions that that might be justifiable. This amounted, in short, to a political theory about the rights and obligations of rulers and ruled, about the legitimation of domestic authority, and the possibilities for the internal reform of a commonwealth. Locke’s brief references to the world beyond the commonwealth—the external arena where commonwealths traded, collided, or colluded—and to the people outside the commonwealth—aliens, migrants, and “Indians,” for example—were mostly overlooked by subsequent commentators who found little or nothing in Locke’s work that could approximate to an international theory. Just a few months after the Two Treatises appeared in print, in the spring of 1690, Locke wrote his only essay devoted solely to international affairs. In this untitled and unpublished piece, he defended William of Orange’s “delivery [of England] from popery and slavery” and warned that if James II “ever returne, under what pretences soever, Jesuits must governe and France be our master.” He presented the diplomatic options available to England in stark terms: either an “alliance for the security of Christendom” against France, or “expos[ing] it to popish rage and revenge.” Internal divisions could be disastrously exploited by England’s enemies, and everyone who acknowledged that William had restored security should affirm “the justice, as well as generosity” of “his glorious undertaking.” He painted a lurid picture of “a war upon our hands of noe small weight” that could bring in “blood, slaughter, and devastation.” For all these reasons, he urged “every protestant, every Englishman amongst us” to consider “what mortal quarrell he has to any of his country men” when “the religion, liberty, safety of

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himself and his country . . . are at stake and will be lost if we hold not now togeather”30 This was the voice of an international thinker definitely not our contemporary, but thoroughly English, Protestant, and Whig. *

*

*

It is by now a commonplace in the emergent field of the history of international thought that there has been an imbalance, both philosophical and historical, between the study of political theory and that of international theory. The task of the history of international thought is to correct that imbalance by finally giving due attention to reflection on international affairs by past thinkers like Locke.31 I end with one precocious effort to do just that, made 40 years ago by John Rawls in the spring of 1969. Rawls took as the theme for his regular Harvard lecture course on Moral Problems the topic of “Nations and War.” The aim of the series—delivered during the Vietnam War, a conflict whose justice Rawls vehemently denied—was, he insisted, to treat “the moral basis of the law of nations” as a philosophical matter rather than as a commentary on current events. As Rawls noted in the opening lecture, “This part of moral and pol[itical] phil[osophy] has been relatively neglected. The great classics of political thought concern for the most part the nation state—its inst[itution] and their moral basis. (Consider Hobbes and Locke, Rousseau and Kant, Hegel and Marx, etc.) Of course, they have had something to say on these matters, but not as much.” Rawls suggested that the reason for this neglect “might spring from the greater relative success in being able to change and reform the national political system” while the international system had remained until recently mostly unchanged: “a multi-state sys[tem] regulated, if at all, by the so-called balance of power.”32 Rawls’s expressed aim in these lectures was to work toward a full social contractarian theory of the law of nations, in line with the principles of A Theory of Justice, which he would soon publish in 1971. It is usually assumed that Rawls only turned systematically to the international applications of his theory in the last decade of his life, with the successive iterations of what he called in publications of the 1990s “the law of peoples”; however, these lectures from 1969 show that his international theory developed immediately alongside his political theory, even if it would not be prepared for publication until two decades later.33 As in The Law of Peoples (1999), Rawls wrestled with the question of justice between societies with very different moral principles—Christian versus infidel or, later, liberal peoples versus “decent hierarchical peoples”—and argued that a doctrine similar to the one he had elaborated for domestic society in accordance with “justice

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as fairness” was also necessary for international society. “In order to work in to this, let’s turn to Locke for a moment.” And with this, Rawls produced only the second attempt (after Richard Cox’s Straussian account in 1960) to reconstruct Locke’s international thought.34 Rawls presented Locke as “a sort of half-way house” between a natural law theory of the law of nations exemplified by Aquinas and the thoroughgoing social contract theory Rawls himself wished to offer. He argued that Locke’s social contract applies only within societies but not between them. The people within it create the commonwealth as a sovereign body to protect the common good, but this “artificial person” remains in a state of nature with regard to other commonwealths “because there is no political power to which they as artificial persons are subject.” Rawls took Locke to be saying that “the Law of Nations is simply, for practical purposes, the N[atural] L[aw] as a body of ethical principles . . . applying to the moral rights and duties of nations”; he admitted that Locke recognized the fundamental principle of pacta sunt servanda behind the making of treaties between commonwealths, “but he does not, it seems, think of these as comprising a body of positive law.”35 As we have seen, as an exposition of the Second Treatise, this may underestimate the importance of positive agreements in Locke’s international thought, especially as those agreements secured the territorial integrity of commonwealths derivatively from the accumulated property of their citizens. As Rawls’s language of “artificial persons” also indicates, it might also too closely assimilate Locke to Hobbes, especially in assuming his belief in the homology between the law of nature and the law of nations. Rawls was nonetheless correct in seeing that, for Locke, the commonwealth could not take on any powers that had not been possessed by the individuals who had constituted it. Just as individuals in the state of nature were equal, free, and independent, so are states in the international arena; just as individuals have the executive power of the law of nature, so have states. “In external affairs in the community of nations, the rights of nations are derived from those of ind[ividual]s. As the basic rights of ind[ividual]s are equal, so are those of nations.” At this point in his lectures, Rawls moved on to defining “nations” in his quest for a social contractarian account of the law of nations that left Locke behind as a suggestive, but incomplete, forerunner, perhaps helpful as a foil but not the bearer of a plausible theory. “our problem is this: Locke takes the fundamental N[atural] L[aw] as given (along with the original state of equality, of equal right). It is based eventually on the right of creation. What we want to do is to work out a full S[ocial] C[ontract] theory from the idea of the O[riginal] P[osition].”36 Locke would never bulk large among Rawls’s philosophical inspirations. Rawls erased most of the traces of history, as well as the international applications of his

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theory, from the Theory of Justice. And when he did return to the law of peoples in the last years of his life, Locke would not be among the sources he considered when framing his realistic utopia. As we have seen, Rawls was not alone in failing to find in Locke’s writings a coherent international theory. Like almost all the handful of subsequent scholars who have sought such a theory, he confined himself to searching the Second Treatise alone, as if to confirm the apprehension that international thought can only be excavated from within the canon of political thought rather than by supplementing it with other sources of reflection and debate. In this chapter, I have tried to follow recent historical students of Locke in ranging across his work, both systematic and occasional, printed and unpublished, to suggest other sources for recovering his international thought. Many of Locke’s direct interventions were closely tied to immediate circumstance and to the imperatives of a Protestant power within the European state system with expansive interests in the Atlantic world and in burgeoning global commerce. When Locke had addressed foreign relations directly, it was often as a “lover of his King and country, a lover of peace and the protestant interest”: a specifically English international thinker who was also committed to “the common interest of Europe” against the Catholic Bourbon threat.37 His one innovation—the proposal that the “Federative” be considered a separate power—did not take root. The later use of his theories to justify dispossession of indigenous peoples throughout the anglophone common-law settler world, from Connecticut to New South Wales, left him open—perhaps unfairly—to postcolonial critique.38 For all these reasons, it may be understandable that Locke contributed little to later international theory. However, the range of his concerns and the evidence of his engagement with foreign affairs should justify his admission to any historical canon of international thought. Notes 1. Letterbook of Sir Walter Vane, December 1665–February 1666 (in Locke’s hand), British Library, Add. MS 16272; The Correspondence of John Locke, ed. E. S. de Beer, 8 vols to date (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976–), I, 225–27; Roger Woolhouse, Locke: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 60–66. 2. Locke to William Godolphin, December 12/22 1665; Locke to John Strachey, February 22 1666, and February 28 1666; Charles Perrott to Locke, August 21 1666, in Correspondence, ed. de Beer, I, 233, 263, 289–290. 3. For more on these aspects of Locke’s life and thought, see David Armitage, “John Locke: Theorist of Empire?,” in Sankar Muthu, ed., Empire and Modern Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

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4. Roger Woolhouse, “Lady Masham’s Account of Locke,” Locke Studies 3 (2003), 182–183 (Vienna, Brandenburg, “or a third place which I remember not”); Locke to Charles Mordaunt, 21 February 1689; Locke to Sir John Somers, 28 January 1698, in Correspondence, ed. de Beer, III, 575, VI, 308. 5. On Hume’s experience en mission see Emma Rothschild, “The Atlantic Worlds of David Hume,” in Bernard Bailyn and Patricia L. Denault, eds., Soundings in Atlantic History: Latent Structures and Intellectual Currents, 1500–1830 (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2009), 410–412, 415–417; and on his international thought, Renée Jeffery, “Moral Sentiment Theory and the International Thought of David Hume,” in this volume. 6. Martin Wight, “Why Is There No International Theory?” (1959), in Herbert Butterfield and Martin Wight, eds., Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1966), 17. Compare Wight’s review of Raymond Aron, Peace and War (1962; Eng. trans., 1966), quoted in Ian Hall, The International Thought of Martin Wight (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006), 110: “So much has been written about [international relations], but where are its Hobbes and Locke, its ‘Wealth of Nations’?” 7. Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (London: Macmillan, 1977), 48; cf. Bull, “Society and Anarchy in International Relations,” in Butterfield and Wight, eds., Diplomatic Investigations, 44: “Locke’s speculations about life of men in anarchy will leave us dissatisfied.” For a brief elaboration of Locke’s theory of international relations along these lines, see Luciano Menozzi, Studi sul pensiero etico politici di Locke. Le relazioni internazionali (Rome: Cavour, 1974). 8. Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 279–297. For one sceptical discussion of Wendt’s “Lockean culture,” see Hidemi Suganami, “On Wendt’s Philosophy: A Critique,” Review of International Studies 28 (2002), 23–37. 9. Richard H. Cox, Locke on War and Peace (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960), xix–xx; yet see John Dunn, The Political Thought of John Locke: An Historical Account of the Argument of the “Two Treatises of Government” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 158–164. For Locke (and Montesquieu) as providing “less frank and more edifying versions of the Hobbist-Spinozist political teaching,” see Thomas L. Pangle and Peter J. Ahrensdorf, Justice Among Nations: On the Moral Basis of Power and Peace (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999), 153–157. 10. Roger D. Masters, “The Lockean Tradition in American Foreign Policy,” Journal of International Politics 21 (1967), 253–277; also in Masters, The Nation Is Burdened: American Foreign Policy in a Changing World (New York: Knopf, 1967), 289–305. 11. Howard Williams, International Relations and the Limits of Political Theory (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1996), 100; David Boucher, “Propriety and Property in International Relations: The Case of John Locke,” in Beate Jahn, ed., Classical Theory in International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

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12.

13.

14.

15.

16. 17.

18.

19.

20. 21.

22. 23.

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2006), 156–177. For a more nuanced historical account of Locke and colonialism see Richard Tuck, The Rights of War and Peace: Political Thought and the International Order from Grotius to Kant (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 167–181. Alex Tuckness, “Punishment, Property, and the Limits of Altruism: Locke’s International Asymmetry,” American Political Science Review 102 (2008), 470–471. Michael Doyle and Geoffrey S. Carlson, “Silence of the Laws? Conceptions of International Relations and International Law in Hobbes, Kant, and Locke,” Columbia Journal of Transnational Law 46 (2008), 660–666, 649. Lee Ward, “Locke on the Moral Basis of International Relations,” American Journal of Political Science 50 (2006), 704; Tuckness, “Punishment, Property, and the Limits of Altruism,” 471. Cf. Alexander Moseley, “John Locke’s Morality of War,” Journal of Military Ethics 4 (2005), 119–128. John Locke, “Verses on Cromwell and the Dutch War” (1654), in Locke, Political Essays, ed. Mark Goldie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 201–203. Locke, “Essays on the Law of Nature” (c. 1663–1664), in Political Essays, ed. Goldie, 107. Thomas Hobbes, The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic, ed. Ferdinand Tönnies, 2nd ed. introd. M. M. Goldsmith (London: Cass, 1969), 87; Hobbes, On the Citizen, eds. Richard Tuck and Michael Silverthorne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 51; Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck, rev. ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 108. Hobbes, The Elements of Law, ed. Tönnies, 190; David Armitage, “Hobbes and the Foundations of Modern International Thought,” in Annabel Brett and James Tully with Holly Hamilton-Bleakley, eds., Rethinking the Foundations of Modern Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 223–230. Locke, “Essays on the Law of Nature,” in Political Essays, ed. Goldie, 107–08; Locke, Essays on the Law of Nature, ed. W. von Leyden (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954), 162. Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Tuck, 244. John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett, rev. ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). All references to the Two Treatises are to this edition by Treatise and paragraph number. Jimmy Casas Klausen, “Room Enough: America, Natural Liberty, and Consent in Locke’s Second Treatise,” Journal of Politics 69 (2007), 760–769. The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina (1669), § 104, in Locke, Political Essays, ed. Goldie, 180; David Armitage, “John Locke, Carolina, and the Two Treatises of Government,” Political Theory 32 (2004), 613–615, 626 n. 77. A widespread tendency encapsulated in Jonathan Israel’s description of “Locke the champion of big property, empire, and appropriation of the lands of Amerindians”: Israel, “Enlightenment! What Enlightenment?,” Journal of the History of Ideas 67 (2006), 529.

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25. John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, ed. James H. Tully (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983), 43. I have argued this point at greater length in Armitage, “John Locke: Theorist of Empire?,” in Muthu, ed., Empire and Modern Political Thought. 26. The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina , §§ 34, 46, in Locke, Political Essays, ed., Goldie, 169, 171. 27. Halsbury’s Statutes of England and Wales, 4th ed. (London: Butterworths, 1985–), XVIII, 720–721. 28. OED, s.v., “federative.” Montesquieu’s “république fédérative” was only related etymologically, not genealogically, to Locke’s “Federative” power. 29. “The Preface,” in Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Laslett, 137. 30. John Locke, untitled MS (c. April 1690), MS Locke e. 18, Bodleian Library, Oxford, in James Farr and Clayton Roberts, “John Locke on the Glorious Revolution: A Rediscovered Document,” The Historical Journal 28 (1985), 395–398; ptd. as Locke, “On Allegiance and the Revolution,” in Political Essays, ed. Goldie, 307–313. 31. David Armitage, “The Fifty Years’ Rift: Intellectual History and International Relations,” Modern Intellectual History 1 (2004), 97–109. 32. John Rawls, lectures on “Moral Problems: Nations and War” (Spring 1969), University Archives, Harvard University, Acs. 14990, box 12, letter file 4, “Lectures on the Law of Nations . . .” (1968–1969) (contractions expanded). I am very grateful to Duncan Ivison for discussion of these lectures. 33. John Rawls, “The Law of Peoples,” in Stephen Shute and Susan Hurley, eds., On Human Rights: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 1993 (New York: BasicBooks, 1993), 41–82; Rawls, The Law of Peoples: with “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited” (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1999). 34. Rawls, “Moral Problems: Nations and War,” “Lecture VI—Natural Law and Rights: Aquinas and Locke,” Harvard University Archives. Cox is the only writer on Locke whom Rawls cites in the lectures. 35. Rawls, “Moral Problems: Nations and War,” “Lecture VI—Natural Law and Rights: Aquinas and Locke,” Harvard University Archives. 36. Rawls, “Moral Problems: Nations and War,” “Lecture VII—The Full S[ocial] C[ontract] Theory Law of Nations (I) (How to set up),” Harvard University Archives. 37. Farr and Roberts, “John Locke on the Glorious Revolution,” 395; Locke to Edward Clarke, January 29 1689, in Correspondence, ed. de Beer, III, 546. 38. Among many fine studies, see especially James Tully, “Rediscovering America: The Two Treatises and Aboriginal Rights,” in Tully, An Approach to Political Philosophy: Locke in Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 137–176; Duncan Ivison, “The Nature of Rights and the History of Empire,” in David Armitage, ed., British Political Thought in History, Literature and Theory, 1500–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 191–211.

CHAPTER FOUR

Moral Sentiment Theory and the International Thought of David Hume Renée Jeffery

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egend has it that David Hume’s funeral, conducted in the pouring rain on August 29, 1776, was attended by a crowd of followers who “fearfully crouched behind gravestones, to see if the devil would appear to carry off” the soul of the man known as the “Great Infidel.”1 So it was that a thinker with one of the most distinctive and important voices of the Enlightenment was bid his final farewell. Christened David Home, the Scots version of his name, Hume was born in Edinburgh on April 26, 1711. By his own admission a bookish type of “studious disposition,” Hume recalled in his autobiography that he was “seized very early with a passion for literature . . . the ruling passion of [his] life.”2 The second son of a minor laird—his father Joseph died when Hume was an infant— Hume’s life was marked by the need to find a respectable profession and secure a steady income.3 Although his family suggested that law would be his “proper Profession” on account of his “studious Disposition . . . Sobriety, and . . . Industry,” Hume “found an unsurmountable Aversion to every thing but the pursuits of Philosophy and general Learning,” and thought law, in particular, to be “nauseous.”4 Having completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Edinburgh, Hume thus decided instead to become a “Scholar and Philosopher.”5 He pursued his studies with such vigor that he was struck down with what was diagnosed as a “disease of the learned” for which “a ‘Course of Bitters and Anti-hysteric Pills’ were

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recommended . . . together with an ‘English Pint of Claret Wine every Day’ and a long horseback ride.”6 Despite his devotion to scholarship, Hume never held a university post. His application for appointment to the chair in pneumatics and moral philosophy at the University of Edinburgh was rejected following concerns raised by Francis Hutcheson and William Leechman that his supposed atheism made him unsuitable to lecture on the truth of the Christian religion, one of the key tasks of the post. Thus, free from the drudgery of academic life, Hume went on to become “the first distinguished man of letters in Britain to earn a modest fortune from literature alone.” 7 To supplement his income, Hume also served in a number of other capacities during his life: as an assistant to General St. Clair, as a personal secretary to the British ambassador in Paris and later as the embassy’s chargé d’affaires, as an undersecretary of state, and as a tutor to the lunatic Marquise of Annandale. Hume died on August 25, 1776, as his attending doctor wrote, in “such a happy state of composure of mind, that nothing could exceed it.”8 On hearing of his passing, his great friend Adam Smith wrote approvingly of Hume as “a perfectly wise and virtuous man,” known for his frugality, charity, generosity, his “constant pleasantry,” delicacy, and modesty.9 Hume himself concurred, describing himself in “My Own Life” as “a man of mild disposition, of command of temper, of an open, social, and cheerful humor, capable of attachment, but little susceptible of enmity, and of great moderation in all [his] passions.”10 Hume’s first work was A Treatise on Human Nature published in 1739 and 1740 and aimed to formulate a “comprehensive philosophical system about human nature.” Despite its popularity in contemporary philosophy, however, it was “not a success during [his] lifetime.”11 Hume later wrote of his book: “Never literary attempt was more unfortunate . . . It fell dead-born from the press, without reaching such distinction, as even to excite a murmur among the zealots.”12 He had, he admitted, probably published it too soon: “I was,” he said, “carry’d away by the Heat of Youth & Invention to publish too precipitately.”13 To correct his mistake Hume resolved to “cast . . . anew”14 the three books that comprised the Treatise and publish each as independent works. The first book appeared in modified form as the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, known as Hume’s First Enquiry, in 1748. The second appeared as his Political Discourses in 1752, while a revised version of Book Three was published in 1751 as An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals. In addition, Hume published Essays: Moral and Political (1741–1742), A Dissertation on the Passions (1757), The Natural History of Religion (1757) and his six-volume masterpiece, The History of England (1754–1762) during his lifetime. His posthumous publications include My Own Life (1777),

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Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1774), and Essays on Suicide and the Immortality of the Soul (1783). Although he is viewed as perhaps the “most authentic voice of the Enlightenment,”15 Hume stands among the greatest classical thinkers routinely and systematically neglected by scholars of international relations. Like many of his contemporaries, Hume’s contribution to the history of ideas in international thought is more often viewed in terms of his subsequent, and often anachronistic, placement within one or more retrospectively constructed intellectual traditions, than in terms of his own writings.16 Thus, writers such as Martin Wight label Hume a “realist” because of his discussions of the balance of power,17 while others view him more readily as a cosmopolitan because of the universalist aspects of his thought.18 In more recent scholarship, Frederick G. Whelan has described a “Machiavellian Hume” as the representative of a “hybrid category” called “realist liberalism” or “liberal realism,”19 while Edwin van der Haar, drawing on Wight’s “three traditions” of international thought as his “template,” characterizes Hume, not as a Hobbesian realist or a Kantian revolutionist, but as a Grotian rationalist.20 As a thinker of the Scottish Enlightenment, Hume subscribed to a particular intellectual project that put itself at odds with the central ideas of both Hobbesian realism and the sort of classical cosmopolitanism that would later become associated with Kant. Indeed, the most “distinctive feature” of the Scottish Enlightenment was its attempt to derive an ethic “neither from self-interest nor from reason,”21 the two pillars of the realist and cosmopolitan approaches. Rather, many writers associated with the Scottish Enlightenment, such as Hume, argued that passions dominate reason and sought to conceive a social ethic derived “from a moral sense that inspired sympathy, benevolence and compassion for others.”22 In doing so, Hume challenged the central tenets of what later became known as the realist, cosmopolitan, and Grotian traditions, as well as the concepts and assumptions that underpin them. Despite the fame of his History of England, heralded by Voltaire as “perhaps the best ever written in any language,”23 writers such as Knutsen readily dismiss itas containing little more than “scattered speculations on international relations that are couched in terms of maintaining equilibrium.”24 Indeed, most accounts of Hume’s international thought focus, unsurprisingly, on two brief essays (1742) “Of the Balance of Power,”25 which provides an historical account of the development of the idea of the balance of power from the ancient Greeks to the present, and less often, “Of the Balance of Trade.”26 Similarly neglected, two of Hume’s other works ordinarily categorized as works of moral philosophy, his Treatise on Human Nature and

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An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals speak, sometimes indirectly, to scholars of international politics. This neglect is somewhat surprising because the works address several issues of direct relevance to international relations: the formation of human and, by extension, international society and the operation of justice within it, and the foundations of morals. Critically, Hume’s discussion of both these issues ultimately drew on his further set of ideas about human nature and the human condition, a further subject of foundational interest to scholars of international relations. With this in mind, this chapter outlines Hume’s engagement in two interrelated debates of the time and highlights the extent to which his contribution to them was at odds with his contemporary characterization. The first debate was concerned with the foundations of society and led Hume to an engagement with the arguments of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, both of whom had used notions of the state of nature and the establishment of the social contract to explain the formation of human society. For Hume, as we will see, the foundations of society could not be found in the social contract or the need to mitigate against the ever-present dangers of our egoistic, selfinterested, human nature, but in passion and in utility. Hume’s contribution to the second debate, concerned with the foundations of morals, also drew heavily on the concept of utility and the central role that passion plays in human life. For Hume, as for other members of the Scottish Enlightenment, the foundations of morals could be located not in reason but in sentiment. As such, Hume’s moral sentiment theory, arguably the most underappreciated and underutilized aspect of his work, provides an alternative approach to international ethics that is incompatible with realism and, despite its universalism, is not served well by classification as cosmopolitan. The Foundations of Human Society Hume rejected the argument, common to Hobbes and Locke, that the establishment of human society could be explained in terms of a progression from the state of nature to society via the instrument of the social contract. That idea was, according to Hume, fundamentally flawed, “a mere fiction.”27 As Hume explained in An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, the idea of the state of nature maintains that, “On the first origin of mankind, we are told, their ignorance and savage nature were so prevalent, that they could give no mutual trust, but must each depend upon himself, and his own force or cunning for protection and security. No law was heard of: No rule of justice known: No distinction of property regarded: power was the only measure of right; and a perpetual war of all against all was the result of men’s untamed selfishness and barbarity.”28 Hume questioned “whether such a

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condition of human nature could ever exist” and, further to this, whether it “could continue so long as to merit the appellation of a state.”29 Hume disputed the atomistic view of humans, conceived as naturally independent beings, that is central to Hobbes’s state of nature.30 “Men,” he argued, “are necessarily born into a family-society”31 and, as such, it is unnecessary to merely hypothesize the social bonds formed between human beings.32 In Hume’s view, the original condition is the family and, as a result, human beings cannot be conceived outside society. In particular, he argued that both Hobbes and Locke ignored one of the central features of human nature, sexual attraction, in their descriptions of the state of nature. As Hume wrote in his Treatise: The first and original principle of human society . . . is no other than that natural appetite betwixt the sexes which unites them together and preserves their union till a new tie takes place in their concern for their common offspring. This new concern becomes also a principle of union betwixt the parents and offspring and forms a more numerous society where the parents govern by the advantage of their superior strength and wisdom, and at the same time are restrained in the exercise of their authority by that natural affection which they bear their children. In a little time, custom and habit, operating on the tender minds of the children, makes them sensible of the advantages of which they may reap from society, as well as fashions them by degrees for it by rubbing off those rough corners and untoward affections which prevent their coalition.33 Thus, Hume also maintained that the family constitutes the natural starting point of broader human society. Two important points emerge from this discussion. The first concerns the importance of the passions in the formation of human society. Passions, according to Hume, are “secondary or reflective impressions” that, in some circumstances, are directly derived from “original impressions, or impressions of sensation,” such as “bodily pains and pleasures.”34 They are divided, in Hume’s scheme, into direct and indirect varieties. Direct passions are those that “arise immediately from good and evil, from pain and pleasure” and include “desire, aversion, grief, joy, hope, fear, despair, and security.” Indirect passions include “pride, humility, ambition, vanity, love, hatred, envy, pity, malice, [and] generosity.”35 Contrary to natural rights and natural law explanations of the formation of society, Hume argued that the “passions of lust and natural affection” render human society “unavoidable.”36 That is, human society forms, in the first instance, not out of a need for mutual self-preservation, as Hobbes’s state of nature model suggests, but

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because humans derive pleasure from sex and friendship. As Hume wrote in his essay “Of the Rise of the Arts and Sciences,” “Nature has implanted in all living creatures an affection between the sexes, which, even in the fiercest and most rapacious animals, is not merely confined to the satisfaction of the bodily appetite, but begets a friendship and mutual sympathy, which runs through the whole tenor of their lives.”37 Despite locating the origins of human society in the passions of “lust and natural affection,” Hume also argued that “Man, born in a family, is compelled to maintain society from necessity, from natural inclination, and from habit.”38 The formation of political society to “administer justice, without which there can be no peace . . . nor safety, nor mutual intercourse” thus relies on the fact that “all men are sensible of [both] the necessity of justice to maintain peace and order . . . [and] the necessity of peace and order for the maintenance of society.”39 Thus, the second important point to stem from this discussion, one that is less at odds with the basic sentiments of natural rights theories, is that Hume also maintained that “in order to form society, it is requisite not only that it be advantageous, but also that men be sensible of these advantages.”40 That is, society is formed on the basis of utility. Justice and Utility The concept of utility plays a central role in Hume’s understanding of moral judgment and the formation and functioning of human society. For Hume, “[u]tility, not speculative truth, is the ultimate criterion in public affairs as in private.”41 Although the notion of utility that appears in Hume’s work is derived from Francis Hutcheson’s enunciation of the principle of “the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers,”42 Hume’s concept of utility is more obviously conceived in terms of “usefulness.”43 This is not, however, to suggest that Hume was a utilitarian, for unlike the classical utilitarians, Hume’s concept of utility did not play a prescriptive role.44 Despite arguing, alongside Hobbes and Locke, that society is formed because it is useful,45 Hume objected to the role that promises play in explaining the move from the state of nature to society within social contract theory.46 Promises, understood as behavioral conventions, “cannot be understood apart from society” and thus, in Hume’s view, cannot logically help to explain its formation.47 Thus, contrary to the contractarian view, Hume argued that it is possible to identify two different types of moral duties that support the foundation and functioning of society: those “impelled by natural instinct or immediate propensity which operates on them” such as the “love of children, gratitude to benefactors, pity to the unfortunate,” and

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those “not supported by any original instinct of nature.”48 This second set of moral duties is “performed entirely from a sense of obligation, when we consider the necessities of human society, and the impossibility of supporting it, if these duties were neglected.”49 We thus uphold promises, not out of some natural instinct, but because the “general interests or necessities of society” demand it.50 Hume thus wrote: I observe that it will be for my interest to leave another in the possession of his goods, provided he will act in the same manner with regard to me. He is sensible of a like interest in the regulation of his conduct. When this common sense of interest is mutually expressed and is known to both, it produces a suitable resolution and behaviour. And this may properly enough be called a convention or agreement between us, though without the interposition of a promise; since the actions of each of us have a reference to those of the other, and are performed upon the supposition that something is to be performed on the other part. Two men who pull the oars of a boat do it by an agreement or convention, though they have never given promises to each other.51 What follows from this is Hume’s further claim that the rules of justice are “artificial,”52 as opposed to natural, as the natural lawyers had it. They are formulated to remedy the “irregular and incommodious” aspects of human society and work “to bestow stability on the possession of . . . external goods, and leave every one in the peaceable enjoyment of that we may acquire by fortune and industry.”53 That is, as Hume sought to demonstrate, “public utility is the sole origin of justice.”54 Law, in Hume’s view, therefore reflects what is both “useful and beneficial” to the functioning of human society and, in particular, the regulation of property.55 Even the laws of nature, Hume argued, are so formulated as to establish “the convenience and necessities of mankind.”56 Such was its importance in Hume’s view that he insisted “on the priority of law to every other form of social behaviour” while, at the same time, treating justice in the same manner as social utility.57 Utility in International Relations For Hume, societies of states and the law of nations established to regulate their relations were also a product of utility. He wrote that “when a number of political societies are erected, and maintain a great intercourse together, a new set of rules are immediately discovered to be useful in that particular situation; and accordingly take place under the title of Laws of

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Nations.”58 Foremost among these rules are “the sacredness of the person of ambassadors, abstaining from poisoned arms, quarter in war, with others of that kind, which are plainly calculated for the advantage of states and kingdoms, in their intercourse with each other.”59 Unlike human individuals who cannot exist outside association with other individuals, Hume noted that “nations can subsist without intercourse” and, further to this, “may even subsist, in some degree, under a general war.”60 For Hume, this meant that a distinction could be drawn between the obligations individuals and states have to uphold the rules of justice. He thus wrote that the “observance of justice, though useful among [nations], is not guarded by so strong a necessity as among individuals; and that moral obligation holds proportion with the usefulness.”61 Thus, nations in their dealings with one another will, in Hume’s view, only fulfill their moral obligations if it is in their interests to do so. Taking this line of argument even further, Hume continued to argue that “reasons of state may, in particular emergencies, dispense with the rules of justice, and invalidate any treaty or alliance, where the strict observance of it would be prejudicial, in a considerable degree, to either of the contracting parties.”62 This stands in sharp contrast to individuals who cannot, except for reasons of “the most extreme necessity,” justify breaking promises or invading the properties of others.63 Hume took a similar view of other aspects of international relations. “War,” he wrote, “has its laws as well as peace . . . Common interest and utility beget infallibility a standard of right and wrong among the parties concerned.”64 Similarly, the formation of confederated commonwealths, of which he cites the Swiss Cantons and United Provinces as contemporary examples, is guided by the principle of utility that give the union a “peculiar sacredness and authority,” the violation of which can be considered “more criminal than any private injury or injustice.”65 Finally, Hume’s view of the European colonial enterprises of the time was also driven by calculations of utility. Thus, he “heartily approved” of the British colonization of North America,66 writing in The History of England that the North American colonies were “established on the noblest footing that has been known in any age or nation . . . The spirit of independency, which was reviving in England, here shone forth in its full lustre.”67 He did not, however, approve of fighting against them in the American war of independence for he feared it would prove too costly. Hume’s understanding of the foundation and functioning of society, domestic and international, was thus thoroughly utilitarian. Society is established and maintained, according to him, because it is useful for achieving justice, peace, and order and for sustaining human relationships with one another. Recognition and acceptance of the favorability of society and its positive elements (as well as identification and rejection of its negative

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aspects) are functions of our passions that, as we will see in the following section, are closely related to moral sentiments. Moral Sense Theory Both the Treatise on Human Nature and An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals address the “general principles of morals” by inquiring into the general principles of human nature.68 What Hume meant by “principle” was not, as Beauchamp explains, normative but rather meant those “conditions in human nature that can be studied empirically and formulated in his science of human nature.”69 Thus, Hume’s principles of human nature and, by extension, principles of morals, do not seek to prescribe how human beings ought to behave, but to identify how they do behave. Both works thus sought to address an ongoing debate in moral philosophy concerning whether the foundations of morals could be located in reason or in sentiment. Hume wrote in An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals: “There has been a controversy started of late . . . concerning the general foundation of MORALS; whether they be derived from REASON, or from SENTIMENT; whether we attain the knowledge of them by a chain of argument and induction, or by an immediate feeling and finer internal sense; whether, like all sound judgment of truth and falsehood, they should be the same to every rational intelligent being; or whether, like the perception of beauty and deformity, they be founded entirely on the particular fabric and constitution of the human species.” 70 As Hume revealed in “A Letter from a Gentleman to his Friend in Edinburgh” (1745), the individuals involved in this dispute were Samuel Clarke and William Wollaston, who were both philosophers and theologians and proponents of the idea that morals are founded on reason, and Francis Hutcheson and Lord Shaftesbury, who both favored moral sentiment theory. Hume, as we will see shortly, sided with Hutcheson and Shaftesbury (whose works are discussed briefly below) in the dispute and developed a modified version of the moral sense theory that they advocated. Anthony Ashley Cooper: “A Sense of Right and Wrong” The moral sense theory that stands at the center of Scottish Enlightenment thought is most commonly attributed to the third Earl of Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper (1671–1713). The “elegant Lord Shaftesbury,” 71 as Hume referred to him, was particularly concerned to refute the arguments of both Locke and Hobbes that centered notions of virtue and ethics on self-love. In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke had argued

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that “[i]f virtue was generally approved, it was not because it was innate, but because it was ‘profitable,’ conducive to one’s self-interest and happiness.”72 Although Shaftesbury did not mention Locke in his essay “An Inquiry Concerning Virtue, or Merit,” which was published without his permission in 1699, it was, “in effect, a refutation of Locke.” 73 Shaftesbury also “depicted Hobbes as eliminating moral motivation and the moral virtues by reducing them to self-love” and argued that the notions of “self-interest and fear of either human or divine authority,” central to Hobbes’s thought, were “improper motives in the moral life.”74 Rather than being derived from self-interest, reason, or even religion, Shaftesbury argued that virtue is preceded by our “moral sense” or “sense of right and wrong.”75 This sense, he explained, is “implanted in our nature” and is “a first principle in our constitution and make.”76 Shaftesbury’s moral sense theory thus posited that this sense of right and wrong forms the basis of moral judgment.77 Possessed of a “natural capacity to react,” conceived in terms of the spontaneous internal reactions we have to “objects and events that we experience,” the “common person can judge the moral correctness or incorrectness of the motives and actions of others.”78 Shaftesbury thus wrote that “it is therefore by Affection merely that a Creature is esteem’d good or ill.” 79 What is more, this capacity to distinguish between right and wrong does not rely on the faculty of reason: “Let us suppose a Creature, who wanting Reason, and being unable to reflect, has, notwithstanding, many good Qualitys and Affections; as Love to his Kind, Courage, Gratitude, or Pity.’Tis certain that if you give to this Creature a reflecting Faculty, it will at the same instant approve of Gratitude, Kindness, and Pity; be taken with any shew or representation of the social Passion, and think nothing more amiable than this, or more odious than the contrary. And this is to be capable of Virtue, and to have a Sense of Right and Wrong.”80 Francis Hutcheson: Moral Sense and Moral Judgment The most famous defense of Shaftesbury against the stinging attack he received from Bernard Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees: Private Vices, Public Benefits (1732) came from Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746).81 In An Inquiry Concerning the Origin of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue: In Which the Principles of the Late Earl of Shaftesbury Are Explained and Defended, Against the Author of the Fable of the Bees, later published as An Inquiry Concerning the Origin of Our Ideas of Virtue or Moral Good, Hutcheson argued that “moral sense”—here a developed version of Shaftesbury’s concept—is the basis of judgment and ethical action. Human beings, Hutcheson argued, “are creatures moved by both self-love and by generous affections, and

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without a moral sense we should have no way of adjudicating between the claims of what Hutcheson called ‘a calm self-love’ and the claims of altruistic benevolence.”82 Hutcheson thus argued against the Epicurean view “ ‘revived by Mr. Hobbes’ That all the Desires of the human Mind, nay of all thinking Natures, are reducible to Self Love, or Desire of private Happiness: That from this Desire all Actions of any Agent do flow.”83 In contrast, Hutcheson maintained: “We have not only Self-Love, but benevolent Affections also toward others, in various Degrees, making us desire their Happiness as an ultimate End, without any view to private Happiness: That we have a moral Sense or Determination of our Mind, to approve every kind Affection either in our selves or others, and all publickly useful Actions which we imagined do flow from such Affection, without our having a view to our private Happiness, in our Approbation of these Actions.”84 Moral sense, “either of our own Actions, or of those of others” may therefore be “counterbalanc’d by Interest” but the view to our own advantage cannot be the only ground upon which to judge approbation.85 Moral sense is thus conceived alongside the senses of “sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste” as “an internal sense that generates moral judgments, moral distinctions, and moral knowledge.”86 In so arguing, Hutcheson made a significant contribution to the development of moral sense theory although, in the end, he “turned out to be a transitional figure.”87 The extent to which Hume was influenced by Hutcheson is a matter of some debate. Norman Kemp Smith argues that “It was under the direct influence of Francis Hutcheson that [Hume] was led to recognize that . . . judgments of value of whatever type are based . . . solely on feeling.”88 Others, including Tom Beauchamp, are less convinced and maintain that, regardless of his many influences, Hume’s contribution was a distinctive and original one.89 In this, they are certainly correct. Hume’s Moral Sentiment Theory Hume, siding with Hutcheson and Shaftesbury, famously argued that reason “is and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey.” Reason, he continued in his Second Enquiry, is “not alone sufficient to produce any moral blame or approbation” and, “being cool and disengaged, is no motive to action” for it “directs only the impulse received from appetite or inclination, by showing us the means of attaining happiness or avoiding misery.”90 Defined by Hume as “the discovery of truth or falsehood,”91 reason thus functions as nothing more than a “calculator, an instrument of analysis,”92 that assists us in understanding our passions.

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In refuting the role of reason in the determination of morals, Hume was particularly dismissive of explanations of the foundations of morals provided by thinkers of the natural law tradition whose works he studied at the University of Edinburgh.93 For natural law theorists such as Hugo Grotius, the laws of nature are those evident to all rational human beings.94 It is thus posited that, without being explicitly informed of these fundamental rules, human individuals, using their powers of reason, will be able to deduce them for themselves. For this reason, these laws are considered natural, immutable, and universal. However, Hume argued against the idea that we all have an innate capacity to discover immutable laws of nature through the faculty of reason as Grotius and others had. Rather Hume, by focusing on the role that sentiments and utility play in the determination of morals, “undermine[d] the whole theory of natural law with its immutable values discoverable by rational inquiry.”95 Hume described moral sentiment, also referred to as “internal sense or feeling,” as being “excited by utility.”96 Usefulness is thus “a source of moral sentiment” for “every thing, which contributes to the happiness of society, recommends itself directly to our approbation and good-will.”97 That is, those principles and actions that contribute to general happiness provoke in us positive and approving feelings. According to this reasoning, “morality is determined by sentiment,”98 because enacting moral principles “call[s] forth . . . favorable and affectionate sentiments.”99 The reason for this response is found in the influence that the principles of humanity have over sentiments. The principles of humanity are, according to Hume, “capable, in many instances, of influencing our actions” and, as such, “must, at all times, have some authority over our sentiments.”100 They do this by providing us with a general sense of what is useful and what is dangerous to society.101 What follows from this is that two different species of sentiment can be identified. Sentiments produced by the selfish passions are different “in each individual, according to his particular situation” and treat the “greater part of mankind with the utmost indifference and unconcern.”102 Conversely, sentiments “which arise from humanity” and bring with them a sense of “approbation or censure” are universal.103 Hume’s related argument that the very “notion of morals implies some sentiment common to all mankind,”104 however, has been branded the “fallacy of the universal man.”105 As Wertz explains, “[t]his fallacy is allegedly committed when an historian makes inferences on the assumption that a people or individuals are intellectually and psychologically the same at all time, places, and circumstances.”106 However, what Hume meant by the existence of a “sentiment common to mankind” is that what is “useful, or agreeable to a man himself, or to others” is always the foundation of virtue.107 The “sentiment common to all

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mankind” is thus “the feeling of approval that people experience when they find something useful or agreeable.”108 The existence of a common sentiment does not, however, suggest by extension that all human beings hold the same moral values. On the contrary, Hume argued that “Those who found morality on sentiment, more than on reason, are inclined to . . . maintain, that, in all questions which regard conduct and manners, the difference among men is really greater than at first sight it appears.”109 Thus, while “writers of all nations and all ages concur in applauding justice, humanity, magnanimity, prudence, veracity; and in blaming the opposite qualities,”110 the particular customs of different peoples determine “which of the ‘sources of moral sentiment’ will predominate in a particular culture.”111 Different customs, Hume explained, “by giving an early bias to the mind” may influence what is thought useful or agreeable and to what extent.112 For example, while luxury may be thought “ruinous and pernicious in a native of Switzerland, which only fosters the arts,” it may be thought to “encourage industry in a Frenchman or an Englishman.” As such, we should not expect “either the same sentiments, or the same laws in Berne, which prevail in London or Paris.”113 Hume’s moral sentiment theory also allows for different judgments about the usefulness of particular actions according to the circumstances in which they are enacted: “Sometimes also the peculiar circumstances of things render one moral quality more useful than others, and give it a peculiar preference.”114 For example, “during a period of war and disorder, the military virtues should be more celebrated than the pacific, and attract more the admiration and attention of mankind.”115 He continues: “So different is even the same virtue of courage among warlike or peaceful nations! And indeed, we may observe, that, as the difference between war and peace is the greatest that arises among nations and public societies, it produces also the greatest variations in moral sentiment, and diversifies the most our ideas of virtue and personal merit.”116 Virtue, Hume explained, can be defined as “whatever mental action or quality gives to a spectator the pleasing sentiment of approbation.”117 It is, as Beauchamp notes, “a fusion of two analytically distinct components: (1) a mental quality in the person contemplated, and (2) a perception by those who contemplate the person.”118 These mental qualities “form what, in common life, we call PERSONAL MERIT,”119 a term synonymous with virtue in Hume’s thought. Personal merit, Hume goes on to say, “consists altogether in the possession of mental qualities, useful or agreeable to the person himself or to others.”120 These sets of qualities are thus the same four Hume identifies as the four sources of moral sentiment: qualities useful to others, qualities useful to ourselves, qualities immediately agreeable to ourselves, and qualities immediately agreeable to others, the last

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three of which are each afforded their own section in An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals.121 Among the “qualities useful to others,” Hume lists benevolence, justice, fidelity, honor, allegiance, chastity, charity, affability, lenity, mercy, and moderation,122 while “qualities useful to ourselves” include discretion, caution, enterprise, industry, frugality, strength of mind, wisdom, memory, assiduity, economy, and prudence, along with “temperance, sobriety, patience, constancy, perseverance, forethought, considerateness, secrecy, order, insinuation, address, presence of mind, quickness of conception, [and] facility of expression.”123 “Qualities agreeable to ourselves” include cheerfulness, greatness of mind, courage, tranquillity, and delicacy of taste,124 while those “agreeable to others” are good manners, politeness, wit, ingenuity, modesty, decency, and cleanliness.125 Like moral sentiments, Hume also argues that virtues are universal, “friendship, sympathy, mutual attachment, and fidelity, qualities [all being] esteemed in all nations and all ages.”126 Despite the long list of virtues Hume identifies, the social virtues— justice and especially benevolence—are considered the most important.127 Their merit is derived, at least in part, from their utility.128 “The merit of BENEVOLENCE,” Hume wrote, “arising from its utility, and its tendency to promote the good of mankind . . . is, no doubt, the source of a considerable part of that esteem, which is so universally paid to it.”129 As a natural sentiment that “engages us to pay to the interests of mankind and society,”130 benevolence is, in Hume’s view, the very foundation of morality. As such, it contends with the fundamental principle of the “selfish system of morals” maintained by Hobbes and Locke,131 self-love. Hume, therefore, sought to preempt objections to his system of morals that argued that “all benevolence is mere hypocrisy, friendship a cheat, public spirit a farce, fidelity a snare to procure trust and confidence; and that, while all of us, at bottom, pursue only our private interest, we wear these fair disguises, in order to put others off their guard, and expose them the more to our wiles and machinations.”132 He did this in the conclusion to An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals with his now famous discussion of the “sensible knave.” In Hume’s view, acting morally—that is, in accordance with benevolence and justice and without explicit regard to self-interest—is usually beneficial for the actor in question. The reason for this, as discussed above, is that moral actions inspire sentiments of approbation and approval by those who witness them, which in turn leads them to respond favorably to both the act and the actor. However, Hume did recognize that there are certain circumstances in which acting unjustly best serves the interests of the individual in question. Thus, Hume writes, “There is not, in any instance, the smallest pretext for giving [vice] the preference above virtue, with a view

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to self-interest; except, perhaps, in the case of justice, where a man, taking things in a certain light, may often seem to be a loser by his integrity.”133 In this circumstance a “sensible knave” “may think, that an act of iniquity or infidelity will make a considerable addition to his fortune, without causing any considerable breach in the social union and confederacy.”134 The sensible knave will thus act against the principles of virtue in his own self-interest, taking care to hide his actions and avoid the “total loss of reputation, and the forfeiture of all future trust and confidence with mankind” that would result from the secret becoming known.135 Hume acknowledged that if we use the same reasoning as the sensible knave, it is difficult to provide a coherent alternative. However, using different reasoning, Hume provided two arguments in favor of pursuing virtue over vice, honesty and transparency over cheating and secrecy. First, he argued that “antipathy to treachery and roguery is too strong to be counterbalanced by any views of profit or pecuniary advantage” in those of “ingenuous nature.”136 That is, in individuals who possess “an uncorrupted moral nature,” moral sentiment will still often triumph over self-interest because those individuals derive happiness from “inward peace of mind, consciousness of integrity, [and] a satisfactory review of [their] own conduct.”137 Second, Hume also argued that the knaves are “in the end, the greatest dupes, and have sacrificed the invaluable enjoyment of a character, with themselves at least, for the acquisition of worthless toys and gewgaws.”138 That is, choosing vice over virtue may seem to serve self-interest but, in the end, we are best served by acting in accordance with morality. Conclusion In contemporary international thought, David Hume is rarely afforded the sort of sustained attention his works deserve. Rather, in a manner that has become “traditional” in the field, he is simply relegated to one of a number of different categories or traditions of thought, another name to join the evergrowing lists of thinkers treated in this way. Although he is most commonly characterized as either a realist or a cosmopolitan, more recent attempts at categorizing his work have seen him labeled a “Grotian rationalist,” liberal realist, and realist liberal. However, this obsession with understanding Hume’s works, not on their own terms, but in terms of a series of more recently devised categories, has fundamentally limited his treatment in the field. Thus, while the characterization of Hume as a realist has focused much discussion of his work on his essay on the balance of power, his portrayal as a cosmopolitan has brought attention to his discussions of international political economy and, in particular, the role of trade in international relations.

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Although neither of these trends is problematic in and of itself, the ongoing impact has been the marginalization of another, arguably more important and certainly more interesting, aspect of his work. Hume’s moral sentiment theory provides an as-yet underexplored approach to international ethics grounded in an understanding of human nature and human society that is significantly far removed from those that dominate the field. Hume’s theory provides an alternative to the self-interestedness of realism, without expecting saintly self-sacrificial behavior. It breaks the reliance on reason that underpins both realist and cosmopolitan ethics by recognizing that our sense of right and wrong is, at its core, just that, a sense. Reason, Hume recognizes, has an important role to play in understanding and even directing our passions, but it is upon sentiment that morality is founded. Most importantly, Hume’s moral sentiment theory provides an approach to international ethics that embraces not only humanity, but the human condition. It does not seek to iron out our natural, instinctive responses to acts that take place, both right and wrong, by imposing a sort of cerebral method of judgment on the determination of morals. Rather, it recognizes that what makes us human is what guides our sense of morality, from the visceral revulsion we feel when we witness a gross humanitarian atrocity taking place, to the sense of approbation we feel in response to acts of virtue, sympathy, justice, and benevolence. Notes 1. Roderick Graham, The Great Infidel: A Life of David Hume (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2004), 354. 2. David Hume, “My Own Life,” in The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688, Foreword by William B. Todd. 6 vols. (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1983). Accessed from http://oll.libertyfund. org/title/1868 on February 12, 2009, 3, xxvii. 3. J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 2:177–178. 4. Hume, “My Own Life,” 3; Hume quoted in Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (London: Duckworth, 1996), 283. 5. Hume quoted in MacIntyre, Whose Justice?, 283. 6. Ernest Campbell Mossner, The Life of David Hume (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 67. 7. Mossner, The Life of David Hume, 4. 8. Letter from Doctor Black to Adam Smith quoted in Letter from Adam Smith to William Strahan, in The History of England, xxxix. 9. Letter from Adam Smith to William Strahan, xi and xxxix. 10. Hume, “My Own Life,” 21.

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11. Tom L. Beauchamp, “Editor’s introduction” to An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, hereafter EPM, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 8–9. 12. Hume, “My Own Life,” 6. 13. Hume to Gilbert Elliott of Minto, March or April 1751, in Beauchamp, “Editor’s introduction” to EPM, 9. 14. Hume, “My Own Life,” 8. 15. Mossner, The Life of David Hume, 4. 16. See my “Tradition as Invention: The ‘Traditions Tradition’ and the History of Ideas in International Relations,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 34:1 (2005), 57–84 for a discussion of the use of intellectual traditions in international relations and Hugo Grotius in International Thought (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) for a discussion of the impact of the traditions tradition on a thinker of the period. 17. Martin Wight, International Theory: The Three Traditions, ed. Gabriele Wight and Brian Porter, (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1991), 17; Hume in Wight, International Theory, 247; See Hume, EPM, 4.3., 100; see also David Boucher, Political Theories of International Relations: From Thucydides to the Present (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 145. 18. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, 268; Schlereth, The Cosmopolitan Ideal in Enlightenment Thought: Its Form and Function in the Ideas of Franklin, Hume, and Voltaire, 1694–1790 (Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977); Karen O’Brien, Narratives of Enlightenment: Cosmopolitan History from Voltaire to Gibbon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). In this vein, Denis Diderot famously sought to identify himself alongside Hume as a “cosmopolite or citizen of the world.” Quoted in Patrick Hayden, Cosmopolitan Political Ethics (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 16. 19. Frederick G. Whelan, Hume and Machiavelli: Political Realism and Liberal Thought (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004), 1–2. 20. Edwin Van de Haar, “David Hume and International Political Theory: a Reappraisal,” Review of International Studies 34:2 (2008), 237–238. 21. Gertrude Himmelfarb, The Roads to Modernity: The British, French and American Enlightenments (London: Vintage, 2004), 31. This is not to suggest that all thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment formed a unified school of thought but is to highlight a common theme in many of their writings. 22. Ibid. 23. Voltaire quoted in A. J. Ayer, Hume: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 14. 24. Torbjorn Knutsen, A History of International Relations Theory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), 122. 25. David Hume, “Of the Balance of Power,” in Essays: Moral, Political and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1987). 26. David Hume, “Of the Balance of Trade,” in Essays: Moral, Political and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1987).

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27. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 199?), III.II.II, 62. 28. Hume, EPM, 3.1.15, 87. 29. Ibid., 3.1.16, 88. 30. James Moore, “Hume’s Theory of Justice and Property,” Political Studies 14:2 (1976), 105. 31. Hume EPM, 3.1.16, 88. 32. Duncan Forbes, “Hume and the Scottish Enlightenment,” in Hume, 2:82. 33. Hume, Treatise, III.II.II, 56–7. 34. Ibid., III.II.I, 3. 35. Ibid., III.II.I., 4. 36. Ibid., III.II.II, 57. 37. David Hume, “Of the Rise of the Arts and Sciences,” in Selected Essays, ed. Stephen Copley and Andrew Edgar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 72. 38. David Hume, “Of the Origin of Government,” in Selected Essays, ed. Stephen Copley and Andrew Edgar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 28. 39. Ibid. 40. Hume, Treatise, III.II.II, 56. 41. Hume, History of England, quoted in Mossner, “An Apology for David Hume,” 669. 42. Hutcheson quoted in Himmelfarb, 32. This phrase is often incorrectly attributed to Jeremy Bentham. 43. Hume, EPM, 4.3., 100. 44. Beauchamp, “Editor’s introduction” to EPM, 40. That is, Hume observed that society is formed because it is useful, not that society ought to be useful. 45. Corey Venning, “Hume on Property, Commerce, and Empire in the Good Society: The Role of Historical Necessity,” Journal of the History of Ideas 37:1 (1976), 80. 46. Shirley Robin Letwin, “Hume: Inventor of a New Task for Philosophy,” Political Theory 3:2 (1975), 138. 47. James Moore, “Hume’s Theory of Justice and Property,” Political Studies 24:2 (1976), 108. 48. David Hume, “Of the Original Contract,” in Selected Essays, ed. Stephen Copley and Andrew Edgar, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 286–287. 49. Ibid., 287. 50. Ibid., 288. 51. Hume, Treatise, III.II.II, 60. 52. Ibid., III.II.I, 55. 53. Ibid., III.II.II, 59. 54. Hume, EPM, 3.1.1, 83. 55. Ibid., 3.2.27, 91. 56. Ibid., 3.2.29, 92. 57. Moore, “Hume’s Theory of Property and Justice,” 116. 58. Hume, EPM, 4.2, 99. 59. Ibid.

Moral Sentiment Theory of David Hume 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74.

75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81.

82. 83.

84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91.

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Ibid., 4.3, 99–100. Ibid., 4.3., 100. Ibid., 4.3., 100. Ibid., 4.3., 100. See R.J. Glossop, “Hume and the Future of the Society of Nations,” Hume Studies 10:1 (1984), 46–47. Hume, EPM, 4.20, 103. Ibid., 4.4., 100. Venning, “Hume on Property, Commerce, and Empire in the Good Society,” 86. Hume, History of England, Vol. V, Appendix IV, 146–147. EPM, 1.10, 76. Beauchamp, “Editor’s introduction” to EPM, 24. Hume, EPM, 1.3, 73–4. Ibid., 1.4, 74. Himmelfarb, The Roads to Modernity, 26–27. Ibid., 29 and 27. Beauchamp, “Editor’s introduction” to EPM, 21; Shaftesbury, “An Inquiry Concerning Virtue or Merit,” in British Moralists, being Selections from Writers Principally of the Eighteenth Century, ed. Lewis Amherst Selby-Bigge, 1 (1897), II.I.I.28. Himmelfarb, The Roads to Modernity, 27. Shaftesbury in Himmelfarb, 27–8; II.I.I.27; II.I.III.13. Shaftesbury, “An Inquiry,” I.III.I.21. Beauchamp, “Editor’s introduction” to EPM, 21. Shaftesbury, “An Enquiry Concerning Virtue or Merit,” I.5. Ibid. I.III.III.25. Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees or Private Vices, Publick Benefits. With a Commentary Critical, Historical, and Explanatory by F.B. Kaye. 2 vols. (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1988). MacIntyre, Whose Justice?, 271. Francis Hutcheson, An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections, with illustrations on the Moral Sense, ed. Aaron Garrett (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2002), II.I. See also Francis Hutcheson, An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas Of Beauty and Virtue, ed. Wolfgang Leihold (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2004), II.I.III. Ibid. Francis Hutcheson, An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas Of Beauty and Virtue, ed. Wolfgang Leihold, II.I.V. Beauchamp, “Editor’s introduction” to EPM, 21. MacIntyre, Whose Justice?, 279. Norman Kemp-Smith, quoted in Beauchamp, “Editor’s Introduction” to EPM, 23. Beauchamp, Ibid., 23. Hume, EPM, App. 1.3, 158; App. 1.21, 163. Hume, Treatise, III.I.I., 33.

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92. Sheldon S. Wolin, “Hume and Conservatism,” American Political Science Review 48:4 (December 1954), 1002. 93. N. Capaldi, “Hume as Social Scientist,” in David Hume: Critical Assessments, ed. Stanley Tweyman (London: Routledge, 1995), 5. 94. Hugo Grotius, De Jure Praedae: Commentary on the Law of Prize and Booty, trans. Gwladys L. Williams (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1950). 95. Wolin, “Hume and Conservatism,” 1003. 96. Hume, EPM, 1.9, 75; fn to 5.1, 104. 97. Ibid., 5.17, 109. 98. Ibid., App. 1.10, 160 (emphasis added). 99. Ibid., 2.5, 79. 100. Ibid., 5.39, 114. 101. Ibid. 102. Ibid. 9.7, 148. 103. Ibid. 104. Ibid., 9.5, 147. 105. David H. Fischer in S.K. Wertz, “Hume, History, and Human Nature,” 481; see David H. Fischer, Historians’ Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), 203–206. 106. Wertz, “Hume, History, and Human Nature,” 481. 107. Hume, quoted in Richard H. Dees, “Hume and the Contexts of Politics,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 30:2 (1992): 228. 108. Ibid. 109. David Hume, “Of the Standard of Taste,” in Selected Essays, ed. Stephen Copley and Andrew Edgar, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 134. 110. Ibid. 111. Dees, “Hume and the Contexts of Politics,” 229. 112. David Hume, “A Dialogue,” in EPM, 42, 195. 113. Ibid., 41, 195. 114. Ibid., 38, 194. 115. Ibid., 39, 194. 116. Ibid., 39, 194. 117. Hume, EPM, App. 1.10, 160. 118. Beauchamp, “Editor’s introduction” to EPM, 28. 119. Hume, EPM, 1.10, 76. 120. Ibid., 9.1, 145. 121. Hume, “A Dialogue,” 42, 195; EPM Sections 6–8. 122. Hume, EPM, 1.11, 77; 5.44, 117. 123. Ibid., 6.8, 121; 6.9, 121, 6.10, 122; 6.11, 122; 6.15, 123; 6.16, 124; 6.19, 125, 6.21, 126. 124. Ibid., 7.1, 131; 7.11, 134; 7.16, 135; 7.28, 138. 125. Ibid., 8.1, 139; 8.3, 139; 8.8–9, 140–1; 8.12, 143; 8.13, 143. 126. Hume, “A Dialogue,” 28, 192. 127. Hume, EPM, 1.11, 77.

Moral Sentiment Theory of David Hume 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134. 135. 136. 137. 138.

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Ibid., 2.8, 80. Ibid., 7.19, 136. Ibid., 5.43, 116. Ibid., App. 2,1, 165. Ibid., App. 2.1, 164. Ibid., 9.22, 155. Ibid., 9.22, 155. Ibid., 9.24, 156. Ibid., 9.23, 155. Beauchamp, “Editor’s introduction” to EPM, 39; EPM, 9.23, 1555–156. Hume, EPM, 9.25, 156. A “gewgaw” is a trinket.

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CHAPTER FIVE

Adam Smith on War (and Peace) Lisa Hill

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dam Smith (1723–1790) was born “a fatherless and sickly child” to a “relatively well-to-do family” in Kirkaldy, Scotland.1 He was a lifelong friend of David Hume, a leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, and, among other things, chair of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow. He is best known as a pioneer of political economy, but he was also a moral philosopher with an enduring interest in social theory and human psychology. Smith’s first major work was The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), but he is better known for An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), which secured his reputation as the father of modern economics. Smith’s most influential ideas relate to his theory of natural liberty and the free market, which formed the basis of what is now referred to as classical economics. But he also wrote on many other topics, including those of international relations and war. In this chapter, I explore Adam Smith’s attitude toward war and address two claims that have been made about this attitude. The first is that Smith never envisioned a long-term harmony of interests between states brokered by mutually enabling global commerce. For this reason, it has been argued that Smith has been wrongly and persistently classed within either the liberal internationalist or cosmopolitan tradition. Instead, he is better understood as a kind of realist in his attitude toward war. Others have argued, less ambitiously, that Smith’s attitude toward war is more positive than is generally accepted, the inference being that it is not a problem that he necessarily wished away. The following discussion explores both sets of claims

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and shows that Smith was not only averse to war but, more importantly, also did not consider it to be an inevitable and permanent fact of life. Andrew Wyatt-Walter has argued that Smith saw war as an “ever-present reality” and that “[t]here is little trace of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century liberal argument that war is an irrational and wealth destroying enterprise.” Wyatt-Walter also claims that Smith denied that “commerce could reveal a true harmony of interests” between nations but rather exacerbated interstate conflict, partly because trade creates friction between states and partly because the more developed is a nation, the more vulnerable it is to aggression.2 Martin Wight saw Smith as advocating “a multiplicity of independent sovereign states . . . whose relationships are ultimately regulated by warfare.”3 For Peter Minowitz, Smith perceives war as a permanent problem because of the persistence of the nation-state.4 But, as I will seek to show, there is every reason for assuming that Smith hoped and expected commerce to become the universal alternative to war. Despite the commercial conflicts exacerbated by trade-restricting and monopoly-inducing mercantilism coupled with the persistence of the nation-state, Smith believed that when conducted according to the laws of natural liberty, commerce was “naturally” a pacifying medium.5 It is not suggested, however, that he can be easily classified within any of the late-modern, anti-realist international relations categories, only that he is not an unequivocal realist in his expectation of the role of war in regulating relationships between states. Smith’s Attitude Toward War To what extent is it true to say that Smith held international peace as his expectation or even ideal? Some writers have suggested that Smith’s rather pragmatic attitude toward war indicates that he saw it as a permanent feature of human relations. For example, J. Shield Nicolson disputes that Smith “was a man who loved peace at any price . . . and hated the very idea of war.”6 According to Donald Winch, Smith’s ambivalence about war is reflected in “evidence . . . that military considerations assumed increased importance to [him] as he grew older.” Winch and others have noted that “Smith always regarded the art of war as the noblest of arts” and that he often portrayed “the patriotic and heroic military virtues in glowing terms.” 7 This is true, but it is debatable whether it indicates that Smith was not averse to war; further, even if he was not averse to war, this does not mean that he thought that war was a perpetual inevitability. It should be noted that the vast bulk of the textual evidence points to Smith’s intense dislike of war. This was partly because of its enormous cost, of which he never ceased to complain.8 Among other evils, this constant

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drain on the public purse exacerbated the public debt problem and, with it, the pernicious system of patronage.9 Certainly Smith valorized the warlike virtues and noted that “[t]he hero who serves his country successfully in foreign war gratifies the wishes of the whole nation, and is, upon that account, the object of universal gratitude and admiration.”10 But he nowhere glorifies or even approves war; he simply observes how people tend to valorize martial valor and glamorize war. In fact, Smith’s description of war is far from positive. War is a sometimes necessary (but generally unnecessary) evil that most people mistakenly romanticize.11 The “common soldier” is the most deluded, volunteering for military service in the mistaken belief that war will bring “honor and distinction” whereas, in reality, it only brings a life of hard labor and the “whole price of [his] blood.”12 Upper-class soldiers have a much better chance of achieving glory and surviving to enjoy it. Nevertheless, “great warlike exploit” is often “undertaken contrary to every principle of justice, and carried on without any regard to humanity,” so that even the “worthless characters” involved attract a degree of social approval.13 Further, war is a routine theater of injustice because, in quarrels with strangers, the all-important impartial spectator has no power of persuasion before the unusually partial audience of compatriots: “When two nations are at variance, the citizen of each pays little regard to the sentiments which foreign nations may entertain concerning his conduct. His whole ambition is to obtain the approbation of his own fellow-citizens; and as they are all animated by the same hostile passions which animate himself, he can never please them so much as by enraging and offending their enemies.”14 Under conditions of war, “the laws of justice” and “nations” are “very seldom observed. Truth and fair dealing are almost totally disregarded; treaties are violated and worse still, the violation . . . sheds scarce any dishonour upon the violator.” Indeed, “the ambassador who dupes the minister of a foreign nation, is admired and applauded.”15 But even where war is waged according to such laws, it is still a regrettable business because such laws have been “laid down with very little regard to the plainest and most obvious rules of justice.” In the case of unjust war, “it is commonly the sovereign or the rulers only who are guilty” but their “innocent” subjects are the ones who invariably pay the dreadful price: “Whenever it suits the conveniency of a public enemy . . . the goods of the peaceable citizens are seized both at land and at sea; their lands are laid waste, their houses are burnt, and they themselves . . . are murdered or led into captivity; and all this in the most perfect conformity to what are called the laws of nations.”16 Animating Smith’s work were two underlying preoccupations: the first was a desire to spread wealth and ameliorate poverty. The second was an intense dislike of conflict,17 which he regarded as a universal human trait.18 He disparaged

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all forms of conflict and social disharmony partly because personal “happiness” is synonymous with “tranquillity”;19 the tranquil, sedate “state of the mind” is its “natural” condition.20 The tranquillity of the “public” is an even greater concern; in fact “the peace and order of society, is of more importance than even the relief of the miserable.”21 The achievement of both peace and prosperity lay in one source: free trade. Contrary to Wyatt-Walter’s (and others’) claims, then, Smith certainly did think war was a disastrous and “wealth destroying exercise.” But the question of whether or not Smith was completely averse to war is separate from whether he is a realist, because realists are as averse to war as anyone else; it is just that they are more pessimistic about the likelihood of sustained peace. The more important question is: did Smith really think that war between states was a permanent reality? Is War Inevitable? Security and State Responsibility Much has been made of Smith’s designation of defense as the first duty (above justice and public works) of the sovereign. Nicholson tenders it as proof that Smith subordinated it to his interest in opulence and did not believe that commerce would mitigate war and reduce interstate conflict.22 It is certainly true that Smith lists “Defence” before “Justice” and “Public Works” in his outline of the minimal functions of the state, but to suggest that this makes Smith more interested in defense than political economy is rather a stretch, not least because so little of Smith’s energy is taken up with the theme of defense compared to that lavished upon the theme of the wealth of nations. The claim that Smith privileged security is also odd because it assumes that Smith is making some kind of normative judgment when he lists “Defence” before “Justice” and “Public Works.” Because security is, in fact, the first responsibility of the sovereign, Smith can only have been making a descriptive point here.23 Admitting this makes him neither more interested in the topic, nor more skeptical about the long-term possibilities of peace. It does, however, make him a realist in the short term, to the extent that he believed defense was necessary. Other proof of Smith’s realism and greater interest in defense over opulence is deemed to be found in the fact that Smith made “various ‘national security’ exceptions to the system of natural liberty.”24 It is well known that Smith did make such exceptions. For example, he recommended the imposition of bounties upon the exportation of British sailcloth and gunpowder.25 His approval of the controversial Navigation Acts that controlled trade but served defense interests is another key example.26 In fact, Smith made many exceptions to his system of natural liberty, recognizing that some problems

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were collective action problems that could not be resolved by the market. Defense was just one of them. Smith’s willingness to make exceptions to his natural liberty system for the sake of security does not make him more interested in security than wealth; it only shows that he was a pragmatist about the achievement of material prosperity. Smith repeatedly acknowledged that, without security, the pursuit of national wealth was pointless, even impossible. Only when “[t]he natural effort of every individual to better his own condition” is unleashed under conditions of “freedom and security” will the society be prosperous and happy.27 An organized system of justice underpinned by regular armies affords “to industry, the only encouragement which it requires, some tolerable security that it shall enjoy the fruits of its own labour.”28 Peace is desired as a condition for the achievement of economic prosperity because war and interstate friction disrupt trade and commerce: “All jealousies . . . between different nations . . . are extremely hurtfull to commerce and limit public opulence.”29 Although some trade restrictions were necessary for the sake of security, in general, such restrictions only fuel mutual animosities and harm prosperity30 and therefore, over time, would need to be relaxed. For example, the long-standing conflict between Britain and France was particularly detrimental to commerce. “It were happy, therefore, both for this country and for France, that all national prejudices were rooted out, and a free and uninterrupted commerce established.”31 Henry Mackenzie credited Smith with inspiring the Parliament of 1784’s initiatives “to establish profitable commercial relations between Britain and France.” He noted that, whereas previously, there had existed “between these countries . . . a war of prohibitions and high duties,” which, among other things, counterproductively encouraged smuggling, Smith’s ideas had shifted public opinion toward the benefits of free trade and thereby assisted the peace settlement of 1783. An important component of this settlement “was an article . . . that the two countries should take measures for settling a commercial treaty between them.” This treaty was effected in September 1786.32 Whereas once trade restrictions between the two countries had mirrored and exacerbated national hostilities, now commerce—via mutually enabling free trade—gave cause and sustenance to peace. Yet, Smith certainly appreciates that commerce does not put an end to the threat of war, at least not in the short term. War might be irrational where pacific and mutually enabling commerce is an available alternative, but Smith was well aware of human irrationality and the potential for human aggression and nationalistic enmity to break out at any time. But he saw war as primarily an artifact of mercantilism rather than as an inevitable consequence of human relations. Whereas “commerce” is by nature a source of “friendship” between

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nations, under the pernicious influence of mercantilism—with its endless round of retaliatory trade restrictions—it “has become the most fertile source of discord and animosity.”33 War would therefore be phased out with the eradication of mercantilism (and therefore British imperialism, which Smith conceived as driven by mercantilism)34, the global spread of development, and the establishment of a proper system of international free trade. But Wyatt-Walter sees this as unlikely and argues that, for Smith, commercial development actually fuels interstate conflict. He notes that Smith believed commercial nations were more “weak and vulnerable” than less developed ones, not only because of their increased attractiveness to rival nations but also because of the effect of the division of labor on martial virtue and therefore the capacity of citizens to defend themselves from attack.35 It is true that Smith does say some of these things.36 Compared to those who rely on “the more solid” and “durable . . . improvements of agriculture, nations whose wealth is based on commerce and manufactures are more vulnerable to national ruin because such wealth can be easily carried away or destroyed.”37 But the inference that all of this means that commercial development exacerbates, rather than minimizes, war is questionable. Standing Armies Versus Citizen Militias Although, on the one hand, Smith thought that rich nations are more likely to be invaded than poorer ones, on the other, he also believed their prosperity enables them to mitigate this threat due to effects of specialization in the martial arts.38 Because “the natural (i.e., specialized and commercial) habits of the people render them altogether incapable of defending themselves,”39 standing armies are developed as a more efficient and effective substitute. Professional standing armies (as opposed to citizen militias) afford “opulent and civilized” nations a considerable military advantage over the “poor and barbarous”40 and, as a result, commercial nations enjoy a superior capacity to protect the expansion of trade and commerce. Whether people like it or not—and regardless of its effect on civic virtue—standing armies are unavoidable in developed nations.41 Due to the increasing refinement of specialization, the “noble” art of war becomes too “complicated” to be practiced by the great mass of the people. It thus becomes “necessary . . . that it should become the sole or principal occupation of a particular class of citizens.” But this cannot happen without state assistance; it would be against the interests of private persons to become professional soldiers without some “particular encouragement from the publick.” Thus, “it is the wisdom of the state only which can render it for his interest to give up the greater part of his time to this peculiar occupation.”42

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These views were controversial because specialization and professionalization in martial functions held great significance for eighteenth century Scots. Historically, Scottish identity had been closely entwined with its claims to military prowess, and Scotland was distinctive in combining martial social structure with a strong martial ethnic and cultural identity. This distinctiveness was severely undermined in 1663 when the Scottish Estates voted a Militia Act “in which they acknowledged his Majesty’s royal prerogative and undoubted right of the sole power of the raising, arming and commanding of his subjects.”43 The loss of a Scots militia meant greater reliance on professional standing armies, a trend that many of Smith’s contemporaries adamantly opposed. Adam Ferguson was one such contemporary. Inspired by the Polybian observation that the union of Rome’s military and civil orders was its chief strength,44 Ferguson inveighed against the dangerous separation in functions between soldier and statesman, roles that are otherwise “naturally” conjoined. Ferguson conceived this split as creating a kind of schism in the human psyche writing that the separation of “the arts of policy and war, is an attempt to dismember the human character.”45 It was also bad for prudential reasons: a statesman “ignorant of war” is about as useful to the defense of a state as a “mariner” who is “unacquainted with variable winds and storms.”46 The militia issue had been a long-standing one in Scottish political discourse (most notably in the agitations of Andrew Fletcher). Ferguson developed his views on the subject most fully in the Essay on the History of Civil Society and in two promilitia pamphlets that were published anonymously.47 Reflections Previous to the Establishment of a Militia (1761) and The History of the Proceedings in the Case of Margaret, Commonly Called Peg, only Lawful Sister to John Bull, Esq. (1761) argued for the right of Scotland to raise its own citizen militia. They were written in response to the failure of the Scottish Militia Bill (1760) and against the background of Scotland’s pointed exclusion from the militia bill sponsored by William Pitt in 1757 and the threat of invasion by France.48 Like the Scottish Militia Bill, the Pitt-sponsored bill reflected British fears of a further Jacobite uprising.49 Ferguson’s pamphlets excited considerable interest and, in 1762, he became a founding member of “The Poker Club,” the main purpose of which was to campaign for the establishment of a Scots militia.50 Smith shared Ferguson’s regret at the dismemberment of human character brought about by specialization, but he was more concerned about the division of labor’s effect on order and intelligence than on martial or political virtues. This, Nicholas Phillipson suggests, locates him outside the civic tradition to which Ferguson remained stubbornly loyal.51 Unlike Ferguson, Smith had “no dilemma of wealth and strength.”52 Professional armies—the

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hallmark of the economically advanced state—did not enervate prosperous nations; rather, they strengthened it because they were demonstrably more capable and efficient and better protectors of liberty than citizen militias.53 Smith was careful to reassure his readers, and in particular promilitia enthusiasts like Ferguson, that standing armies were no danger to liberty. On the contrary, the sovereign who enjoys the “security” of an extensive, professional, and well-armed military is unburdened of “that troublesome jealousy” that causes less secure governors perpetually “to watch over the minutest actions” and stand poised to “disturb the peace of every citizen.” Paradoxically, the militarily insecure (that is, the avocationally defended) state is also the oppressive, stifling state: Where the security of the magistrate, though supported by the principal people of the country, is endangered by every popular discontent; where a small tumult is capable of bringing about in a few hours a great revolution, the whole authority of government must be employed to suppress and punish every murmur and complaint against it. To the sovereign, on the contrary, who feels himself supported, not only by the natural aristocracy of the country, but by a well-regulated standing army, the rudest, the most groundless, and the most licentious remonstrances can give little disturbance. He can safely pardon or neglect them, and his consciousness of his own superiority naturally disposes him to do so. That degree of liberty which approaches to licentiousness can be tolerated only in countries where the sovereign is secured by a well-regulated standing army. It is in such countries only, that the publick safety does not require, that the sovereign should be trusted with any discretionary power, for suppressing even the impertinent wantonness of this licentious liberty.54 Smith welcomes the deepening and expansion of commerce, not just for its wealth and comfort-generating effects, but also because it brings with it an organized and stable state and therefore “the liberty and security” of people who “had before lived almost in a continual state of war with their neighbors.”55 Standing armies are also an effective means for hastening progress in “a barbarous country” via their capacity to support “regular government” throughout a country.56 In a similar way, standing armies provide deterrence in the international realm. Contrary to promilitia enthusiasts like Ferguson, Smith insisted that a “well-regulated standing army is superior to every militia.” They are the only armies that “an opulent and civilized nation” can support and they are the “only means” by which “such a nation” can defend itself and preserve its “civilization . . . for any considerable time.”57 Smith thus preemptively rejects

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the Kantian (and later Benthamite) view that the maintenance of standing armies is an impediment to cosmopolitan peace. War remained a fact of life in Smith’s time, but it was also a fact of life that could be addressed over time at its root causes.58 The fact that he cleaved to the Roman motto Si vis pacem, para bellum (if you wish for peace, prepare for war) does not mean he thought war was a permanent fixture. But it does indicate that it was a potential threat in the short term, at least until the system of international free trade or natural liberty had become firmly established. The deterrence effect—and therefore peace—afforded by standing armies would provide breathing space for global free trade to take hold and for international norms of pacific intercourse to become entrenched. Smith’s ultimate position on the Navigation Acts confirms his long-range optimism; he saw them as a necessary—although definitely temporary—expedient as evidenced by the fact that he recommended the phasing out of monopoly restrictions on the colonial trade in a long and detailed disquisition on the subject toward the end of the Wealth of Nations.59 Diplomacy, Patriotism, and Conflict Smith also explains how commerce is responsible for the development of another means for the avoidance of war: diplomacy. Whereas Wyatt-Walter has taken Smith’s comments on this subject to mean that commerce per se exacerbates war and interstate conflict, for Smith, this is only true if the commerce is protected and constrained, thereby triggering animosities, retaliatory restrictions, and outright hostilities.60 Certainly, diplomacy developed in the early stages of commercial history to cope with conflicts caused by interference with the market as well as culture clashes that occur when strangers start to trade.61 And, to be sure, Smith does say that “extensive commerce renders it impossible to preserve peace a month, unless grievances be redressed by a man of authority who knows the customs of the country,” but he then adds that the “custom of sending ambassadors preserves peace, and by giving intelligence, prevents one country from being invaded by another without timeous notice.” Networks of ambassadors are also a vital form of intelligence for the practice of diplomacy.62 In the short term, the presence of commercial foreigners does create some friction, but this should be interpreted not as an enduring trend, but as the birth pangs of cosmopolitan commercial culture. Diplomacy plays an important role in smoothing the way for the diffusion, infiltration, and normalization of commercial cosmopolitanism and, therefore, the gradual phasing out of war. Elsewhere, Smith clarifies this point. He notes that our “ancestors” habitually “considered strangers and enemies as one and the same thing” and,

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in general, had “no knowledge” of “other nations” except for “what they have got when at war with them.” Having had “no commerce or intercourse with them by trade,” they could only be known as “an enemy.” Things began to change, however, with “progress” and “improvements” in the arts when people started to appreciate “the benefit of having foreigners coming amongst them” who could “carry out what is superfluous of the product of the country” and import “the superfluities” of their home country for the “convenience” and enjoyment of the recipients. As a result, and in order to “encourage the settling of foreign merchants amongst them,” states now began to offer diplomatic protection to foreigners.63 Smith hopes and expects that global commerce will enrich all nations and, in the process, discourage the popular misconception that national greatness is a zero-sum game. Patriotism habitually blinds us to the reality that, when practiced freely, commerce is a scene of infinite mutual enrichment and flourishing. The patriot perceives “with the most malignant jealousy and envy, the prosperity and aggrandisement of any other neighbouring nation.” Neighbors “all live in continual dread and suspicion of one another,” while every nation “imagines it foresees its own subjugation in the increasing power and aggrandisement of any of its neighbours.” But an “enlarged and enlightened mind”—such as Smith sought to cultivate in his readers—feels “no aversion to the prosperity even of an old enemy” and will rejoice in “the internal happiness and prosperity of the other, the cultivation of its lands, the advancement of its manufactures, the increase of its commerce, the security and number of its ports and harbours,” and “its proficiency in all the liberal arts and sciences” because these “are all real improvements of the world we live in” and therefore theoretically available to everyone regardless of nationality. “Mankind are benefited, human nature is ennobled by them.” Therefore, they are “proper objects of national emulation, not of national prejudice or envy.”64 Although we are accustomed to perceiving the “wealth of a neighbouring nation” in realist terms as extremely threatening in the sphere of “war and politicks,” such wealth is “certainly advantageous in trade.” Under conditions of “peace and commerce,” rich nations are better “customer[s]” and sellers than poor ones. Anyone with a head for business knows that “where little wealth circulates, there is little to be got” but “where a great deal is in motion, some share of it may fall to them.” The best route to enduring prosperity for everyone (including Britain) is not to “beggar” our neighbors by protectionism or to arrive at the same effect by aggression and invasion, but to surround ourselves with independent “rich, industrious, and commercial nations.”65 Commerce is thus not only the means to peace, prosperity, and material enjoyment throughout the globe, but the circuit breaker to a

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vicious “spiral” whereby protectionism leads to poor economic performance; poor economic performance increases “the political pressure for protection at home” and monopoly abroad, resulting in “heightened international animosity, resentment and warfare” with wartime debt completing the disastrous spiral.66 For Smith, commercial states—with their particular interest in free trade—are more likely to seek alliances than to prosecute wars. Indeed the “state of peace” is synonymous with the state of “commerce.”67 Commerce only gives rise to “discord and animosity” under the pernicious influence of a “monopolising spirit.” The peace of Europe has been far more greatly disturbed by “the impertinent jealousy of merchants and manufacturers” than it has by the “capricious ambition of kings and ministers.”68 Contrary to classical accounts, the cause of war is not found in a deep-rooted flaw of human psychology (hubris) but in mercantilism; it is, therefore, an eradicable problem to be dealt with at the policy level. The Nation-State? Peter Minowitz has argued that war, for Smith, will be a permanent problem because the nation-state will not disappear. Rather, “national boundaries will remain, and with them will remain sources of international conflict: nations will be tempted to pursue ‘wealth and greatness’ via military means . . . and pride, ‘insolence’ and injustice will not be vanquished from the human heart.”69 Other scholars have argued to the contrary that Smith perceived the nation-state as historically transitory. For John Berdell, the logic of Smith’s historiography means that there will be an “expansion of the social unit beyond the nation-state corresponding to the growth of foreign commerce beyond and between states.”70 Robert Gilpin agrees, suggesting that, for Smith (as for Engels much later), “the nation-state” is just one “progressive stage in human development” because it enlarges “the political realm of economic activity.” 71 Smith’s position probably lies somewhere between these two points. Although it is certainly true that he does see nation-states as a threat to social progress and an impediment to the spread of benevolence, it is debatable whether he sees them as ever disappearing altogether.72 It is also true that he observed, with more than a hint of regret, that there was no impartial, “common superior” to resolve “disputes,” mediate national prejudices, and perhaps even enforce compliance with “the laws of nations” in the international sphere.73 But—apart from the Imperial Parliament he proposed as a last-ditch measure to resolve the American conflict and whose membership was limited to the British Isles and America—he gives no sign that he hoped

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for or envisioned the emergence of the kind of supranational government that would render the nation-state obsolete.74 This is not surprising, given his well-known aversion to monolithic, centralized, and total forms of rule. Smith obviously sees the nation-state as fairly resilient and, given the strength of patriotic sentiments, he seems to have expected the nation-state to endure as a political and legal entity. At the same time, this does not mean that war will be a permanent reality. Smith apparently foresees that both the behavior of individual states and relationships between states will alter greatly. He tells us that the commercial is the final or ultimate economic stage with further expansion and development taking place within that stage, culminating in a self-equilibrating system of states that interact to trade rather than to exploit, invade, or subvert.75 Because global commercialism is the end point of history, there would have to be at least some alteration in the character of the nation-state for it to operate more efficiently, rationally, and profitably within the newer, much larger economy. Eventually the nation-state will be not so much transcended as demoted and its boundaries made more fluid and permeable. Further, over time, the system of empire and subject states will dissolve, superseded by an international anarchy of sovereign states and a balance of powers brokered by trade and its concomitant dispersion of wealth throughout the developed and developing world.76 But, apart from a generalized desire to trade, what specifically will drive the weakening of nation-states? What can possibly break down the intensity, even violence, of national sentiments? Smith’s answer is the division of labor supported by the force of habit and convention. Specialization will undermine the fierce and exclusivistic loyalties attendant on nation-states, just as they broke down our once-powerful, particularistic, and seemingly indestructible loyalties to the extended family. Smith conceives the division of labor as an exponentially developing phenomenon that not only distributes wealth and technical refinement but also alters profoundly the social fabric. Although, on the one hand, it permits greater levels of social distance, on the other, it also enhances and expands (impersonal) integration, thereby enlarging the ever-widening circles of amicable, commercial strangership. Smith’s explanation of the breakdown of the extended family, the tribal community, and the feudal estate and the tendency toward larger and more impersonal social networks strongly suggests that global trade based on an international division of labor will, in similar fashion, weaken national ties and complete an historical process that has been in train for millennia.77 Although Smith never suggests that national loyalties will be obliterated, he does hope that they can be domesticated and detoxified by commerce. Under the influence of free trade, “national friendship” will replace that “mercantile jealousy” that “both inflames, and is itself inflamed, by the

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violence of national animosity.”78 After all, even our most intense and seemingly permanent loyalties are really only artifacts of habit.79 In the system of perfect liberty, national boundaries will not constrain the movement of goods, labor, or capital.80 Whereas the domain of politics is the nation-state, the economy encompasses the entire globe. In the invisible, ideal commercial polity of Smith’s imagination, the laws of natural liberty do not always coincide with the positive laws of nations and men. For example, although the smuggler is deemed “highly blameable” for “violating the laws of his country,” nevertheless, such a person has in no way violated the more sacred laws “of natural justice” and is probably an otherwise “excellent citizen, had not the laws of his country made that a crime which nature never meant to be so.”81 It should be acknowledged that Smith has moments of deep pessimism about the possibility of a system of natural liberty ever being allowed to establish itself. And, even in his more optimistic moments, he doubts whether such a system could “ever be entirely restored due to the prejudices of the publick” and the “unconquerable . . . private interests of many individuals.”82 Nevertheless, if we quarantine Smith’s personal reservations (which he may have exaggerated for rhetorical effect) from his social theory, the logic of his historiography suggests that an imperfect or partial version of such a system would eventuate in the long run. With the adoption of his recommendations, he anticipates the emergence of a system of deterrence and international anarchy or equilibrium. Once free trade has become routine, the “natives” of subject colonies will grow “stronger” and “those of Europe . . . weaker.” Eventually, the world’s population will “arrive at that equality of courage and force which, by inspiring mutual fear” can effectively “overawe the injustice of independent nations into some sort of respect for the rights of one another.” Unlike many contemporary political cosmopolitans, Smith does not believe that economic cosmopolitanism will create inequality. The best means for achieving equity and balance is through free trade and the accompanying “mutual communication of knowledge,” “improvements,” and technology it “necessarily” brings with it (Smith appears to us here as an early “technology optimist”).83 Presumably, all states will become commercially developed and, therefore, able to defend themselves militarily, a need that will, in any case, become less urgent over time as the pacific habits of global commerce become entrenched and normalized.84 And contrary to most understandings of international anarchy within IR theory, Smith does not see this system as subject to the security dilemma85 because, in the long run, all sovereign states will become more or less equal in power. In other words, contrary to Wyatt-Walter’s claim that Smith saw states as locked into a perpetual and inescapable security dilemma,86 Smith predicts

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the emergence of a system of “general deterrence”87 and a multipolar balance of power to guarantee peace and security while “amicable strangership” takes hold. Once nations adopt “the liberal system,” they will operate as a single community of amicable but separate “provinces of a great empire” held together by an international and interdependent division of labor.88 Note here that Smith sees the balance of power in what are usually taken to be realist terms, insofar as it is synonymous with anarchy.89 In these passages, Smith seems to challenge the boundaries of traditional categories in contemporary IR , prompting us to consider the usefulness of such traditions when contemplating the work of thinkers who obviously could not have been aware of them90 but who would also, doubtless, have rejected them if they had. But if avoiding these categories is impossible, then Smith can be said to straddle them: that he is an important pioneer of liberal thought is beyond question, yet he also strikes many realist notes in his international thought, thereby underlining that liberalism does not always lead to idealism. Smith agrees with the realist assumption that human agents are self-interested,91 power seeking,92 and more creatures of passion than reason.93 He also rejects the liberal IR assumption that appropriate institutional structures can manage and contain such drives, proposing instead an anarchic or self-equilibrating balance-of-powers mechanism for the containment of interstate aggression.94 Finally, he takes the self-interested nation-state (albeit reluctantly) as his political—but not necessarily economic—unit of analysis. And yet, he believes that, in the long run, economic cosmopolitanism will prevail and that commerce will become the universal alternative to war largely because this is in the interests of states. This mix of machtpolitik (power politics) and constrained optimism may seem confusing, but only to those who insist on retrospectively applying late modern categories to thinkers who cannot possibly be expected to conform to them. Conclusion Smith’s attitude toward war combines both realist and liberal elements. His approach to managing international affairs in the short term has pronounced realist tendencies. However, for the long term, he is an economic (as opposed to political) cosmopolitan who optimistically anticipated the emergence of a pacific global regime of self-interested, cooperative actors. War can be avoided in the short term via military deterrence. The main point of a militarily strong state is not to wage war or to serve the imperialistic pretensions of states but to preserve the prosperity and liberty of commercial regimes and to protect the expansion and diffusion of commerce. Smith expected a permanent peace to be brought about with the end of

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mercantilism and the emergence of a self-organizing system of global free trade that will offer mutual enrichment and enablement to formerly antagonistic states. Norms of international commerce will cement the permanent peace and, over time, people will become habituated to foreigners and foreign commerce. Patriotic passions will be offset by our self-interested and routine involvement in commerce with strangers. Moreover, as we have seen, Smith anticipated that, in the long run, international free commerce would have an equalizing effect on the power asymmetries that made some nations vulnerable to military aggression in the first place. In the end, nations will be both less inclined to wage war and less vulnerable to any irrational interstate aggression that might break out. Smith both desired and expected pacific global relations to become a permanent fact of life. Notes 1. Ian Simpson Ross, The Life of Adam Smith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), xvii–xviii. 2. Andrew Wyatt-Walter, “Adam Smith and the Liberal Tradition in International Relations,” Review of International Studies 22:1 (1996): 5–28. 3. Martin Wight, International Theory: The Three Traditions, eds. Gabrielle Wight and Brian Porter (London: Leicester University Press, 1991), 7. 4. Peter Minowitz, “Invisible Hand, Invisible Death: Adam Smith on War and Socio-Economic Development,” Journal of Political and Military Sociology 17 (Winter 1989), 305–315, at 306. 5. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations. An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, IV. iii.c.9, ed. R.H. Campbell and A.S. Skinner (Oxford: Clarendon Press), 493. 6. Joseph Shield Nicholson, Project of Empire: A Critical Study of the Economics of Imperialism, with Special Reference to the Ideas of Adam Smith (London: Macmillan, 1909), 15. 7. Donald Winch, Adam Smith’s Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 105; Nicholson, Project of Empire, 15. 8. See, for example, Wealth of Nations, IV.i.26–29, 441–5. 9. Much of the national debt was offset by public credit that was seen to increase the crown’s patronage powers J.G.A. Pocock, “Virtue and Commerce in the Eighteenth Century,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 3, no. 1 (1972): 119–134, at 19–20. For a discussion of the problems of patronage in the seventeenth century, see Linda Levy Peck, Court Patronage and Corruption in Early Stuart England (Boston. Unwin Hyman, 1979). 10. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. D.D. Raphael and A.L. MacFie (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), IV.ii.2.13, 232. 11. Wealth of Nations, I.x.b.30: 126; Moral Sentiments, VI.iii.8, 239. 12. Wealth of Nations, I.x.b.30, 126.

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24. 25. 26.

27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

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Moral Sentiments VI.iii. 8, 239–40. Moral Sentiments III. 3.42, 154. Moral Sentiments III. 3.42, 154. Moral Sentiments III. 3.42, 154–5. In spite of all this rhetoric of “justice” in international relations, as Pitts notes, Smith nowhere specifies “what rights nations should be understood to have: whether rights not to be interfered with, or perhaps simply not to be robbed and destroyed.” See Jennifer Pitts, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 57. Moral Sentiments V.i.ii.1.20, 226; Moral Sentiments VI.ii.2.12, 231. Moral Sentiments III.3.30, 149. See also Moral Sentiments I.ii.3.7, 37. Moral Sentiments, III.3.30., 149. See also Ibid., I.ii.3.7., 37. Adam Smith, “Of the Imitative Arts,” in Essays on Philosophical Subjects, ed. I.S. Ross (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 197. Moral Sentiments V.i.ii.1.20, 226; Moral Sentiments,VI.ii.2.12, 231. Shield Nicholson, Project of Empire, 15. Although international relations theorists may disagree on what security actually includes, no serious scholar of international thought will insist that the sovereign’s first duty is anything other than security. Andrew Wyatt-Walter, “The Liberal Tradition”: 2, 12. See also Donald Winch, Adam Smith’s Politics, 104. Wealth of Nations, IV.v.a.36; Wealth of Nations, IV.22.24. Smith says, “The act of navigation is not favourable to foreign commerce, or to the growth of that opulence which can arise from it . . . As defence, however, is of much more importance than opulence, the act of navigation is, perhaps, the wisest of all the commercial regulations of England.” See Wealth of Nations, VI.ii.30, 464–5. Wealth of Nations, IV.v.b.43, 540; Wealth of Nations,V.i.a.39–40, 705–706. Wealth of Nations, I.xi.i., 256. Adam Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence (B), eds. R.L. Meek, D.D. Raphael and L.G. Stein (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 264–265; 512. Wealth of Nations, IV.ii.29, 464. Lectures on Jurisprudence, 264–265; 512. Henry Mackenzie, quoted in Ian Simpson Ross, The Life of Adam Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 352–3 . Wealth of Nations, IV. iii.c.9, 493; Ibid, IV.ii.38, 467; Ibid, V. ii.g.2, 852. See, for example, Wealth of Nations, IV.i.32, 448. See also IV.vii.a.16, 561. Wyatt Walter, ‘Adam Smith and the Liberal Tradition’, 20. For example, Wealth of Nations, V.i.a15, 697–8. “The ordinary revolutions of war and government easily dry up the sources of that wealth which arises from commerce only.” See Wealth of Nations III.iv.24, 426–7. Wealth of Nations, V.i.a.39: 705; Ibid., i.a.40: 706. In concert with the military advantage afforded by the “invention of fire-arms,” which “at first sight” might

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appear to be “pernicious . . . is certainly favourable to the permanency and to the extension of civilization.” See Wealth of Nations, V.i.a-b.44, 708. Wealth of Nations, V.i.a.15, 697–8. Wealth of Nations, V. i.a-b, 44, 708 “However much standing armys may be exclaimed against, in a certain period of society they must be introduced.” See Lectures (B), 337, 543. Smith was predated in the attitude by William Arnall who strikes similarly modern notes in his defense of standing armies. Contrary to the views of those with classical prejudices, standing armies are no danger to liberty. Because “England was made up of artisans, not legions, and because ‘the civil magistrate is superior to military powers, and the armies of our state [are] in subjection to common laws’ there was no need to fear military takeovers.” See Thomas Home, “Politics in a Corrupt Society: William Arnall’s Defense of Robert Walpole,” Journal of the History of Ideas 41, no. 2 (1980): 601–14, at 608–9. Wealth of Nations, V.i.a.14, 697. John Robertson, The Scottish Enlightenment and the Militia Issue (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1985), 1–5. Jean Wilkie, The Historical Thought of Adam Ferguson, Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, Washington D.C: (The Catholic University of America, 1962), 148. The theme of the standing army as an instrument of corruption is also present in the writings of Lord Shaftesbury, another of Ferguson’s sources. See: F.J. McLynn, “The Ideology of Jacobitism—Part II,” History of European Ideas 6, no. 2 (1985): 173–88, at 179. Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society, ed. Fania Oz-Salzberger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996 [1767]), 218. Adam Ferguson, “Essay 15: Of the Separation of Departments,” in Collection of Essays, ed. Yasuo Amoh (Kyoto: Rinsen Book Co., 1996), 148. Richard Sher, “Adam Ferguson, Adam Smith and the Problem of National Defense,” Journal of Modern History 61, no. 2 (1989): 240–68, at 258–65. Jane B. Fagg, ‘Biographical Introduction’, in The Correspondence of Adam Ferguson, ed. V. Merolle, (London: William Pickering, 1995), xxxiv. Robert Hamowy, The Social and Political Philosophy of Adam Ferguson, Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation: (University of Chicago, 1969), 198. Richard Sher, “Problem of National Defense,” 259. See also Adam Ferguson, Biographical Sketch or Memoir of Lieutenant-Colonel Patrick Ferguson Originally Intended for the British Encyclopedia (Edinburgh: Printed by John Moir, 1816), 10. Nicholas Phillipson ‘Adam Smith as Civic Moralist’, in Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment, eds. Istvan Hont and Michael Ignatieff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 181. Hiroshi Mizuta, “The Two Adams in the Scottish Enlightenment,” Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 191 (1981): 812–19; Ibid, 815. Smith, Wealth of Nations, V.i.a., 23; 28; 39. Smith did, however, concede that the standing armies of the Roman republic and Cromwell were pernicious but

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insisted that under ideal conditions, that is, where “the sovereign is himself the general. . . . a standing army can never be dangerous to liberty. On the contrary, in some cases it may be favourable to liberty.” See Wealth of Nations II.Vi.a.41, 706–7. For a more detailed discussion on the relationships of the two Adams here, see Richard Sher, “Problem of National Defense,” passim. Wealth of Nations, V.i.a. 41, 706–707. Wealth of Nations, III.iv. 4, 412. Wealth of Nations, V.i.a.40, 705–6. Wealth of Nations, V.i.a.44, 708 Wealth of Nations, IV.iii.c. 9, 493. Wealth of Nations, IV.viii, 642–662. For example, “The war of 1672 seems to have been in part occasioned by this commercial dispute [between the Dutch and the French]. The peace of Nimeguen put an end to it in 1678, by moderating some of those duties in favour of the Dutch, who in consequence took off their prohibition.” See Wealth of Nations, IV.ii.38, 467. Wealth of Nations, V.i.e.2, 732 Lectures (B), 353–8, 552. Lectures (A), 93–94, 307. Moral Sentiments VI.ii.2.3, 228–9. Wealth of Nations IV.iii.c.11, 495. John Berdell, International Trade and Economic Growth in Open Economies (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2002), 36. Wealth of Nations IV.iii.c.11, 494. Wealth of Nations IV. iii.c.9, 493. Minowitz, “Invisible Death”: 306. Berdell, International Trade, 40–1. Robert Gilpin, “The Politics of Transnational Economic Relations” International Organization 25, no. 3 (1971): 398–419, at 400–1. Berdell, International Trade, 30. Moral Sentiments, VI.ii.2.3, 228; Lectures (B) 339, 45. For further discussion, see Dalphy I. Fagerstrom, “Scottish Opinion and the American Revolution,” The William and Mary Quarterly 11, no. 2 (1954): 252–275. It is also a “natural” form of social and economic organization as reflected in the phrase “system of natural liberty.” Wealth of Nations IV.ii.43, 471. Wealth of Nations, III.iv.12, 420; Lectures(A), vi.46–49, 348–349; Wealth of Nations, I.ii.1–3, 25–27. Wealth of Nations IV.iii.c. 13, 496. Moral Sentiments I.ii.1.7, 222. Berdell, International Trade, 39. Wealth of Nations V. ii. k. 64, 898 (my emphasis). Wealth of Nations IV.ii.43, 471 (my emphasis).

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83. Wealth of Nations IV,vii.c, 80–1, 626–7. 84. Hume described this dynamic well when he wrote that the refinement and diffusion of military technology reduced rather than exacerbated violent conflicts between states: Such technology “though it seemed contrived for the destruction of mankind, and the overthrow of empires, has in the issue rendered battles less bloody, and has given greater stability to civil societies. Nations by its means have been brought more to a level: Conquests have become less frequent and rapid: Success in war has been reduced nearly to be a matter of calculation: And any nation overmatched by its enemies, either yields to their demands, or secures itself by alliances against their violence and invasion.” See David Hume, The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688, Volume II (London: J. Mcreery, 1807), 432. 85. Whereby powerful states evoke insecurity in the less powerful who then compete for power themselves (via arms races, preventive war, e.g.) which, in turn, causes the hitherto more powerful states to pursue even more power, giving rise to an endless competition for power. See John Herz, “Idealist Internationalism and the Security Dilemma,” World Politics 20, no. 2 (1950): 157–80; passim. 86. Wyall-Walter, “Liberal Tradition”: 18–19. 87. As opposed to “special deterrence” such as witnessed in the Cold War nuclear arms race, where the United States and Soviet nuclear arsenals were built up for the specific deterrence of each other. 88. Wealth of Nations IV,v.b.39, 538–9. 89. Contrary to Martin Wight’s claim that Smith’s international laissez-fairism “repudiates the doctrine of the balance of power.” See Wight, Three Traditions, 263. 90. For a discussion that problematizes the “traditions tradition” within international relations theory, see Renee Jeffery, “Tradition as Invention: The ‘Traditions Tradition’ and the History of Ideas in International Relations,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 34, no. 1 (2005): 57–84. 91. Wealth of Nations, I.ii.2, 26–27. 92. Lectures A, I. 24, 13; 1979, III. ii. 10, 388. 93. Moral Sentiments, II.i.5.10, 77–8. 94. According to Boucoyannis, the balance of power doctrine is, in fact, “a core principle of Liberal theory” that was “abandoned” by “modern Liberalism in IR . . . as a conservative idea” only to be subsequently “transformed historically into a Realist principle.” See 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 5, no. 4, (2007): 703–727, at 704. Although Boucoyannis is, I think, wrong to characterize early liberals like Smith as uncommitted to progress and the view that “Liberalism predicts peace through commercial interdependence,” she is right to criticize realists for their perception of liberalism as necessarily naïve and overly optimistic. See Ibid., 705, 708.

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CHAPTER SIX

Edmund Burke and International Conflict Richard Bourke

A

significant body of scholarly literature habitually presents the writings of Edmund Burke as constituting a contribution to international relations theory. This perspective derives in large part from an examination of Burke’s later writings, especially those concerned with the outbreak of the French Revolution and the pattern of its subsequent development.1 Some of this literature claims Burke as the inaugural representative of a specific “English school” of international thought.2 This idea is not completely without foundation because Burke did indeed champion the cause of the British constitution as an exemplary model of political engineering, favorably contrasting it with the organization of France. But this fact is hardly sufficient to qualify him as a British theorist of international relations—or as the creator of any kind of “school” for that matter. Burke was above all else a publicist and a politician, although it is clear that he was preoccupied with international affairs, particularly as these unfolded after 1789. But although it is distorting to appropriate Burke to either nineteenthor twentieth-century academic categories and norms, mistaking him for a theorist or an international lawyer, it is clear that his arguments do draw on assorted traditions of legal theory, including common law and natural law traditions.3 Of course, the key question is what Burke did with these traditions: what insights did they contribute to his thinking about politics, and what programs of action did they help to justify?4 My main concern in this

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chapter is to isolate Burke’s views on international conflict as they developed over the course of his career. I do, however, submit to the main emphasis of recent scholarship and concentrate on the period after 1789, when Burke’s arguments became striking and original—largely on account of the unprecedented situation that he was forced to think about creatively. I build on the work of others who have explored the terms on which Burke advocated regime change in revolutionary France, but I try to break new ground in analyzing his understanding of the causes of conflict. Burke believed that conflict inside France, and subsequently hostilities within Europe, had been fostered by the militant destructiveness of the revolution. It was his dissection of the causes underlying this destructiveness that prompted him to endorse a drastic form of intervention. He saw the French Revolution as having begun as a bid for domestic political conquest. In due course, he described it as driven to secure the conquest of Europe. I identify the underlying principles to which Burke ascribed this hungry ambition. He construed these basic principles as representing a radical new departure in the history of Europe and the world. From this angle, they could be taken to have ushered in the era of modern politics, although their modernity was curiously regressive. They had succeeded in undoing the achievements of civilization by twining a kind of savagery with insurgency. In charting the emergence of modern militancy, Burke offered a bleak assessment of some of the key characteristics of postrevolutionary politics. His diagnosis readily lent itself to desperate foreboding, and it was easily coopted to serve as retrograde polemic. But, nonetheless, it stands as a corrective to the naïve liberalisms of the nineteenth century that fêted commercial civilization as containing the means of abolishing conflict. In his Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments, Benjamin Constant took modern liberty as exemplified by trading nations to have bred among their populations a spirit of “calculation” distinct from the ancient impulse to belligerence and dominion.5 Despite this deliverance, the French Revolution had invented an entirely new pretext for war in the midst of an emergent commercial pacifism: liberating nations from the “yoke” of their own governments.6 But for Constant, this declared mission was a hypocritical masquerade. The true underlying cause of modern insurgency and bellicosity was a misplaced attempt to revive a bygone Spartanism in a modern setting.7 However, although Constant’s thesis stands as a reminder of the fatal misalliance between revolutionary expectation and the means of its realization, it hardly captures the peculiarity or elucidates the vehemence of modern conflict. It tries to explain insurrectionary violence in terms of ideological anachronism, as if the partisan spirit of postrevolutionary history was a product of “mistranslation” or of the burden of “incommensurability”

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between existing circumstances and antiquated values.8 It is an assumption of this chapter that Burke’s account of modern conflict more accurately captures both the character and the causes of militant hostility. His most convincing contribution to political analysis lies in his attempt to anatomize international conflicts originally founded on doctrinal disputes. To scrutinize the dynamics of postrevolutionary ideological combat, he developed an account of partisan animosity on the analogy of religious warfare. But typically, the analogy has been literally applied, leading to gross simplification. This situation obliges us to return to Burke’s original argument to extract its true explanatory force. The essay proceeds in three stages that correspond to the main sections into which it is divided. I begin with Burke’s earliest treatment of the perceived threat to international stability posed by the advent of revolutionary democracy in France. I proceed in the next section to set out Burke’s commitment to balance-of-power politics during the aftermath of the Seven Years’ War, itemizing the pillars that in his view supplied that arrangement with support. In my last section, I turn to his examination of the collapse of the post-Westphalian “system” of international politics under the influence of the implacable “disposition” of France. My aim throughout is to develop a deeper sense of Burke’s account of the causes behind the domestic implosion of French power and, by extension, of the sources of international conflict both immediately preceding and then in the midst of the revolutionary wars. Countries Against Courts Burke rose in the House of Commons on February 9, 1790, to deliver an assessment of developments in France. It was his first public statement on events across the Channel since before the elections to the Estates General in the spring of 1789. The intervention was occasioned by a debate on the army estimates that had been initiated the previous Friday, February 5. On that day, questions had been raised about the logic of increasing the peace establishment in the context of a reduction of Britain’s imperial responsibilities and in the absence of a tangible foreign threat. The military establishment for 1790 exceeded that at the outset of hostilities against America in the early months of 1775. But it was also in excess of the average army establishment since the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in 1783. Despite the loss of the 13 American colonies, together with both Florida and Minorca, Britain’s military capacity had been incrementally expanded as the requirements for imperial security had decreased. Having estimated the defenses of the Empire at large, the opposition turned its attention to the state of Europe

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next: although the Speech from the Throne had acknowledged the absence of any discernable belligerent attitude on the part of the major powers on the continent, the opportunity for economy was being ignored. It was above all the unsettled state of politics in France that pointed to the possibility of retrenchment.9 Fox joined the debate early with an attack on the government’s measures before dwelling on the situation in France. On this occasion, as he put it to the House, he was not alarmed by the “constitutional” threat posed by an expanding military establishment in peacetime Britain; instead, he was dismayed by the waste of military expenditure given the predicament of France: she hardly posed a danger under the conditions of present disorder, and when she emerged from her current “tumults,” she would prove a “better neighbour.” Fox anticipated improved international relations on account of the form of government France was likely to assume once she secured the expected benefits of her ongoing revolution. At that point, as Fox imagined it, a correspondence between the domestic constitutional organization of Great Britain and postrevolutionary France would ensure a mutually supportive political relationship.10 It was as a result of the commitments paraded in Fox’s speech, delighting in the triumph of liberty in France, that Burke felt compelled to respond the following Tuesday, on 9 February. He had been absent from the chamber during Fox’s intervention on 5 February, but with his colleague now declaring himself to be one of those who “exulted” in the French Revolution, he felt driven at last to take a stand.11 Burke’s fraught exchange with Fox famously culminated in his announcement that he was henceforth “separated in politics” from Fox’s ally, Richard Sheridan.12 Soon the “Substance” of his speech was to make its appearance as a pamphlet; almost immediately thereafter it was translated into French.13 Having disapproved of Lord Valletort for indiscreetly publicizing his views on the state of France as recently as January 23, Burke was now determined to challenge what he perceived to be a pervasive complacency about the revolution.14 It remained for him to demonstrate how developments in France could be construed as having a bearing on the international scene. Burke began by submitting that military preparations ought to be based on a desire to preserve the balance of power in Europe. He recognized, with Pitt and Grenville, that there did not exist any tangible threat to a balance favorable to Britain, although less immediately apparent hazards required ongoing vigilance. Nonetheless, outwardly, France had in effect abolished herself from the political map of Europe. Since the beginning of her efforts to reform the monarchy, she had only achieved an unintended degradation of her power, corrupting her constitution, her military, and her commerce.

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Burke proceeded to examine each corruption in its turn before concluding with a panegyric on the Glorious Revolution: whereas 1688 introduced reform so that revolution could be prevented, 1789 delivered the progressive dilapidation of France.15 The question was how this outcome affected the politics of Europe. Burke’s early engagement with the crisis in France was motivated by his concern with its likely effect on British politics. Although he conceded that the French Revolution represented a reduction in French power, nonetheless he viewed its significance in terms of international affairs. Already with his first recorded responses to the news from France, he emphasized how developments had beggared all prediction. Reports gave the impression of a “wonderful Spectacle” of revolution, as Burke put it to the Earl of Charlemont on August 9, 1789: the course of events was at once “paradoxical and Mysterious,” leaving observers with no option but to marvel.16 “Every step taken” is “a New prodigy,” he confided to Philip Francis on November 15.17 He spelled out to William Windham, a close disciple, the result: “What has happened puts all speculation to the blush.”18 Attempts to calculate the consequences would continue to be baffled, but it was still imperative to have a sense of how proceedings might develop. In a letter sent to Burke on September 15, 1789, Windham related how he considered the present crisis almost over. He had acquired firsthand experience of France between the middle of August and early September, informing Burke on his return that “the new Constitution will be settled without a struggle.”19 But Burke had been more skeptical from the beginning. In response to Windham, he made this skepticism apparent. It was difficult to see how the revolution could be stopped, and so it was unlikely that any form of civil discipline could be imposed.20 Two months later, he concluded that political life in France would yet have to pass through a variety of “transmigrations” before it could settle on a final form of existence.21 This uncertainty continued into the new year. “Man is a gregarious animal,” Burke mused in a January letter to an unknown correspondent. As a consequence of this tendency, it was inevitable that the corruption of French manners would yield to the instinct for society sooner or later. Ultimately, the revolution would have to assume “a more habitable form.”22 However, the prospect of that eventuality lay far off. Nonetheless, the proximity of France gave permanent grounds for caution. Although Burke repeatedly voiced his conviction between September 1789 and February 1790 that the revolution had all but completed the “extinction” of France, he continued to betray an acute awareness that she remained a “Neighbouring and rival Country.”23 At no time was this sentiment more loudly proclaimed than during the opening of the debate in the

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House of Commons on February 9, 1790. On that occasion, in response to Henry Flood’s notice that he would seek a debate on the right to an “equal representation of the people” as soon as business in parliament permitted, Burke called attention to the desperate condition to which France had been reduced by succumbing to the allure of pleas for democratic rights. There was, he declared, “a wild storm gathering over all Europe.” Although he did not elaborate on the form that the impending upheavals were likely to take, he left little doubt as to the enormity of the disturbance in the offing: “this was a moment, of all the periods in the history of the world, the most critical to all Europe.”24 In a part of his reported intervention on the army estimates for 1790 that was excised from the final published version of his speech, Burke indicated where this elusive danger lay. “Who,” Burke asked, “could seriously imagine that there was not less danger to be apprehended from France, as an enemy, than as a friend?” He then went on to answer his own question: France’s friendship in her current condition would be altogether more threatening because it would encourage those already inspired to imitate her example.25 A letter sent to Burke by Thomas Paine from Paris less than a month earlier gives an indication of the fears Burke had in mind. “The Revolution in France is certainly a Forerunner to other Revolutions in Europe,” Paine contended, oblivious to the consternation he would awaken in his recipient. He then offered a brief tour d’ horizon of the political situation across Europe, inspecting developments in Bohemia, Rome, Spain, and Brabant. Every effort to suppress the dissemination of French ideas would inevitably have the opposite effect: that of “spreading” the relevant “doctrines,” thereby encouraging the French “Contagion.”26 Paine was frank in his view that the communication of French doctrines would succeed in bypassing the familiar stalemate of European power politics. “Politically considered,” he surmised, the French Revolution represented a “new Mode of forming Alliances affirmatively with Countries and negatively with Courts.”27 In other words, revolutionary ideology offered a novel method for subverting the established sovereignties of Europe. Domestic resistance could be fomented from outside the jurisdictions of European courts by the introduction of infectious new ideas. When Burke came in February to object against Fox that the immediate disposition of France was not the issue—republics, like monarchies, could be lured into concord or roused to aggression as circumstances varied—and that therefore the decisive question in international politics was that of “strength” rather than the forms of governments, he was keenly aware of the fact that the power of France no longer resided simply in her economic and military capacity.28 But in this he was only developing a thought that had also

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occurred to Paine, a thought that Paine had then presumed to communicate to Burke. Paine felt sure that there was not a court in Europe that would dare to tangle with France in its hour of fragility and distraction. Her fragility, as a matter of fact, was the secret of her strength. France’s political weakness was a product of her divisions—of the fractiousness of the army in particular. However, it was precisely the example of military insubordination that made the French Revolution dangerous to its neighbors. The process of smuggling dissident opinion abroad, leading to the hostility of “Countries” against their “Courts,” would acquire maximum leverage at the point where radical principles infiltrated foreign forces. Even Prussia would balk at a reckless forward policy against the French, unnerved by the potential impact of revolutionary rhetoric on her own army.29 Similarly alert to the exposure of European states to the circulation of opinion, in his 1790 speech on the army estimates, Burke fastened onto the problem of Britain’s “vicinity” to insurrectionary France.30 In the Reflections on the Revolution in France, which finally appeared nine months after the publication of his speech on army estimates, Burke refined the expression of his distress about the growth of “epidemical fanaticism” across Europe. It was, he claimed, being publicized by the intrigues of zealous proselytism reminiscent of the spirit of the Reformation. To what country in Europe, he asked, did the “fury” of Münster Anabaptism not “furnish just cause of alarm?” A century and a half later the peril, in Burke’s estimate, was still graver: not only was revolutionary fanaticism being “dispersed with incredible assiduity,” but it also promoted a blind destructiveness that defied comparison with the past.31 In a policy statement drafted for private circulation just over a year after the appearance of the Reflections, Burke famously described the French “disease” as proceeding from a “Revolution of doctrine and theoretick dogma.”32 He was now angling for a direct confrontation with France, building on his earliest concerns about the infectiousness of democracy, but extrapolating more brazenly to the implications of his diagnosis. His point was that democracy could not be contained except by a forthright military response. In the final section of this article, I turn to consider the reasons why Burke came to the conclusion after 1791 that direct intervention in French affairs had become necessary. But more immediately it remains to be shown how the infectiousness of French principles operated in Burke’s mind. By the early- to mid-1790s, he had decided that France was not merely dispensing poisonous philosophy, but it also was intrinsically aggressive at its core. However, this was not Burke’s original perception. In 1790, his view was that French republicanism was no more belligerent than any other form

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of power. But if it was not particularly militant, it was singularly catching: republicanism in France was democratic, and democracy had tantalizing popular appeal. In his 1790 speech on army estimates, Burke discoursed at length on the historical significance of the vicinity between France and Britain. It was always the case that a “similarity of sentiments” would foster “connections” between peoples. But in the seventeenth century, it was the correspondence between the manners of European courts that threatened to draw all sentiment toward the most slavish forms of politeness. Versailles had been the capital of this gallantry and splendor, seducing both Charles II and James II into an emulation of this brand of “gilded tyranny.” It was Britain’s good fortune that while this “infection” had bewitched the monarchy and insinuated itself to some degree among “all ranks of the people,” it had not debauched the nation as a whole, leaving a patriotic alliance the wherewithal to resist it. But today “the disease is altered,” Burke now warned. The forms of flattery that can induce a population to admire monarchical despotism fall short of the inducements held out by democracy: popular vanity, of all forms of political corruption, is the most captivating.33 Because the spirit of democracy is driven by the principle of equalization, it is forced to trade in the business of comparison.34 It tempts by the promise of power and advantage—“our natural inclinations are flattered,” as Burke put it—but it maddens under the influence of envy and malice. Burke invoked the aspiring and embittered ambition that afflicted the Roman populace after the fall of the republic as depicted by Tacitus at the outset of his Histories to makes sense of the ferocity of the revolution: hostility against privilege was motivated by “spite” (livor) but it covered itself by a “false” appeal to “liberty” (falsa species libertatis).35 This, according to Burke, accounted for much of the vindictiveness that incited revolutionary violence, but he further surmised that vindictiveness was encouraged by irreligion. Atheism, Burke contended, gave licence to violence, and irreligion in France was “embodied into a faction.”36 On February 5, 1790, when Fox extolled the virtuous potential of the revolution in France, the news was relayed to Burke, and it touched a nerve. What stung him in particular was Fox’s suggestion that the current disposition of the armed forces across the Channel proved that military habits were compatible with citizenship, “A man, by becoming a soldier, did not cease to be a citizen,” Fox had insisted.37 It was on precisely this line that Burke fixated in his response to Fox in the Commons four days later. He adverted to the recent record of disorder among the French troops and traced this to the confusion bred by a divided military command: the existence of a nominal allegiance to the monarchy was contradicted by a declared allegiance to

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the nation, the crown and municipal forces were pitted against one another, and the whole was submerged within a polity drowning in a rising tide of democracy and atheism. With France comprising “a balance of armies, not of orders,” the threat of domestic anarchy was evident. The extremity of the situation was such as to mark the end of the balance of power in Europe as established by the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697.38 The problem remained how to develop a suitable response. Party Against Faction Burke’s concern with the state of France dates back to the beginning of his career. It formed part of a larger preoccupation with the fortunes of power politics in Europe. In An Account of the European Settlements in America, which he put together with his friend and collaborator William Burke at the outset of the Seven Years’ War, the condition of European politics is surveyed through an assessment of the colonial policies of the great empires: the British, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, and French. Political success is traced to entrepreneurial virtù, or to the spirit of invention and enterprise. National capacity is measured in terms of international power as promoted by the colonial “projects” of the leading European states.39 However, at the same time, Burke admitted that undertakings of this kind need to be vetted by discriminating judgment: while countless “visionary schemes” supported under Cromwell inevitably came to nothing, the encouragement to innovation nonetheless spurred energy and momentum; on the other hand, the jealousy of Spain was altogether counterproductive, consigning the national spirit to a condition of lethargy and decline. But set alongside the example of the Spanish and the British, the ambition of the French seemed to pay consistent dividends: “We have been engaged for above a century with France in a noble contention for the superiority in arms, in politics, in learning, and in commerce; and there never was a time, perhaps, when this struggle was more critical.”40 By deliberately attending to her colonial and trading policy, the might of France had persisted down to the present war. In the Account, the remarkable rise of France to its peak of grandeur in the mid-seventeenth century is traced to the strategy of recovery from the Wars of Religion, in the first instance ascribed to the genius of Richelieu, but credited above all to the perseverance of Colbert.41 The apotheosis of Colbertian policy is identified with French dominance of West Indian trade: “upon the whole, we have the greatest reason to be jealous of France in that part of the world.”42 This dominance had been the product of naked energy and zeal promoted under the tutelage of an absolute monarchy. But

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it remained a question whether the domestic conditions favoring “active industry” abroad would continue to be responsive to the demands of “systematic policy.”43 In a pamphlet published six years after the Peace of Paris, as the fallout from the Seven Years’ War continued to pervade British political debate, Burke itemized the reasons for doubting the compatibility in France between domestic harmony and foreign ambition, anticipating “some extraordinary convulsion” in the French financial system that would ultimately engulf the whole society and state.44 But equally he detected a “cankerworm” in the British “rose”—a distemper that might yet poison its constitutional balance.45 The Observations on a Late State of the Nation is Burke’s earliest political pamphlet, written at the age of 39 during the early part of his parliamentary career. Its purpose was to defend the record of the Rockingham administration against a recent spate of attacks from Grenville supporters, but most immediately it sought to refute The State of the Nation by William Knox.46 Knox had set out to defend both the Peace of Paris and the Stamp Act while at the same time arguing that the chief advantages of the “late war” had been subsequently reaped by the Family Compact. In response, Burke launched a blistering assault both on Knox’s principles and his command of the facts. He also jibed at his opponent’s basic purpose—to recommend his own “connexion” for the role of government of the country, with Grenville ministering as the Duc de Sully to a conciliatory George III. But, as Burke argued, it was plain ridiculous to compare the unrest of the British public under George III with the divisiveness of French factionalism overcome by Henri IV. The “monstrous and overcharged picture of the distresses of our situation,” Burke insisted, ought not to be confused with the sorry condition of France after her emergence from “the most cruel and desolating civil war that perhaps was ever known.”47 Less than a year before the appearance of the Observations, Burke had conceded in a lengthy speech on address that the power of France was still greatly to be feared. The context for this sentiment was the recent Genoese cession of Corsica to the French. “Corsica naked I dread not,” he admitted, “but Corsica a Province of France is terrible to me.”48 However, this seeming terror was considerably more muted when Burke came to report on the state of the nation in response to Knox’s alarm at the apparent revival of French fortunes in the immediate aftermath of the Seven Years’ War. Knox was charged with having resorted to a host of “common-place lamentations” to advance the implausible claim that while Britain had been well served by the terms of the Peace of Paris, it was the French who had principally benefited from the consequences of the war itself.49

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Burke’s argument was that, on the contrary, the treaty had betrayed British interests by failing to negotiate any credible protection against the new threat to the European balance represented by the Bourbon alliance. But although this failure dictated that Britain ought now to develop a fresh understanding with Prussia, the war itself represented an unequivocal British triumph.50 To continue to reap the rewards of victory, it was necessary but not sufficient to project a potent image abroad with a view to attracting allies in opposition to the Franco-Spanish axis. But a further condition of international stability was the security of established constitutional arrangements against the ambition of innovating “physicians” of state.51 That meant admitting the necessity of public men concerting to form “parties” as the only sure protection against political corruption. Party, in Burke’s new sense, was to be carefully distinguished from “faction.” It was founded on the notion of a principled “combination” whose adherents were immune to the temptations of court favor. As such, they served the common welfare and attracted public trust.52 Burke returned to the ideal of a party of principle in the letter he wrote to the Earl of Charlemont on August 9, 1789, containing his earliest reflections on the revolution in France. “Party is absolutely necessary,” he affirmed. “I thought it always so in this Country ever since I have had any thing to do in publick Business.”53 At that early point in his career, and throughout the 1760s, Burke had been keen to refute the claims of a rising “school” of politics that he associated with John Douglas and John Brown.54 Brown’s notorious Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times had appeared after the loss of Minorca to the French at the outset of the Seven Years’ War and sought to pin the decline in national honor on an “effeminacy” in public morals that had attended the growth of aristocratic wealth and power. The spread of luxury among the landed gentry in “mixed” commercial polities like the British bred factions of a kind that sapped the unity of the nation, leaving the country prey to the cohesive power of the French monarchy.55 By 1770, Burke’s retrospective verdict on Brown’s diagnosis was that it had served to advance the cause of court favoritism in British politics, severing the people out of doors from their natural leadership in parliament.56 That leadership was supplied by the “great Whig connexions” whose power had traditionally been “rooted in the country,” supported by the esteem in which they were held by the public at large.57 By comparison with this established security to the common interest, it was government by court favoritism that could be seen to constitute a “faction” in the state. Such divisiveness could only be offset by the united action of “good men.” Good men had to combine out of a sense of duty to the commonwealth, thereby forming patriotic parties of principle.58

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The Roman connotation of “good men” (boni) was deliberate on Burke’s part: it implied an association of political “friends” committed to the defense of the propertied interest.59 Without that commitment, political parties deteriorated into factions, as Burke began to insist after the outbreak of the revolution in France. The history of Roman populares exemplified that process of deterioration. In his earliest considered analysis of the French Revolution, Burke castigated demotic combinations as a cause of division in any commonwealth, demonstrating his case by reference to Cinna, Marius, and Saturninus.60 However, democracy in France, unlike Roman populism, had been able to prosper in the absence of all political restraint, giving vent to an inexhaustible fury without precedent in the past. It seemed to Burke to infuse French politics with a blend of energy and malice. Malus Animus On February 18, 1793, in a debate on Fox’s resolutions against war with France, Burke confirmed that he supported the resort to military action on two distinct but related grounds. First, he aligned himself with the majority view in the House of Commons that war had become necessary to counteract the manifest aggression of France. Since the declaration of war against Austria on April 20, 1792, the progress of French arms had become relentless. Victory at Valmy on September 20 was followed within two days by the invasion of Savoy. Soon this southward thrust into Italy was complemented by the capture of Mainz and Frankfurt along the Rhine, and then by the invasion of the Netherlands in November. The success of General Dumouriez at Jemappes enabled the French forces to overrun the Austrian Netherlands, leaving Holland vulnerable to attack. The stark reality of these conquests had spurred the British government into action, winning Burke’s unequivocal approval: it was on the evening of December 15, 1792, that he took his seat on the treasury bench for the first time.61 However, Burke further insisted that a military response was called for on yet more fundamental grounds. Although he agreed with Pitt, Grenville, and Hawkesbury that French expansion would have to be met by force, he also contended that war was justified by the “disposition” of the enemy country.62 In saying this, he was accepting the characterization of his position recently proposed by Fox: he embraced the idea, as Fox had suggested, that the power of France was possessed by what he termed a “malus animus.”63 The radicalism of Burke’s proposals for dealing with France is a product of his assessment of this malign spirit. It was as a consequence of the operation of this unprecedented genius that he considered balance-of-power politics to be under severe threat, presaging the transformation of European warfare and diplomacy.

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It was the existence of this alleged malus animus that constituted Burke’s primary objection to France. Internal disarray was matched by external malevolence. Indeed, the two were intimately connected with one another. The momentous journée of August 10, 1792, soon followed by the September massacres and the formal abolition of the monarchy, were indicative of a devouring fury that Burke had long ascribed to the basic principles of the French Revolution. Events had now made clear the extent to which the domestic distemper would affect French foreign affairs. This outcome, Burke contended, had long been obvious. It had recently been confirmed by the decree of November 19, 1792, extending the promise of fraternal assistance to the oppressed peoples of Europe. The danger lurking in this pronouncement would be exposed within a month with the promulgation of a supplementary decree committing France to the establishment of revolutionary regimes in the territories she had conquered.64 This, Burke declared, not only constituted a direct belligerent threat, it “went to subvert the whole state of mankind.”65 On this basis, war would not be employed as a mere instrument of dominion but as a method of philosophical conversion. This arrangement told against any prospect of future peace because the new philosophy was itself a recipe for war. The advent of revolutionary belligerence marked the end in Burke’s mind of a politics of prudence guiding the conduct of international affairs. Prudence served to safeguard interests rather than to promote principles, and it looked to concrete advantage rather than to habitual attachments: it calculated profit irrespective of established alliances and without regard to prevailing political doctrines.66 However, the revolution had effectively eliminated any commitment to this rigorous calculus, not least because it hinged on philosophical principles: it was primarily an event in the world of opinion, secondarily an occurrence in the world of power. Opinion ultimately depended on the support of political power, but the revolution had nonetheless recast a fundamental relationship. It had realigned the terms of exchange between governments and their legitimating principles.67 Revolutionary opinion encouraged power to disregard calculations of interest in favor of conformity to doctrine. At the same time, it did so while cloaking national ambition in the guise of cosmopolitan intent. From Burke’s perspective, the French Revolution was fundamentally “cosmopolitan” in orientation, but its cosmopolitanism had three alarming characteristics: it was expansionist, it was implacable, and it was subtly deceptive.68 On March 22, 1793, in the debate on the traitorous correspondence bill, Burke set about exposing the bogus fraternalism of France: “France had endeavoured under the specious pretext of an enlarged benevolence,” he claimed, “to sow the seeds of enmity among nations, and destroy all local

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attachments.”69 Its goal was to subvert all patriotic allegiance in the name of delusive international charity. The reality underlying this fraudulent cosmopolitanism was a self-regarding proselytizing zeal. The net result was a form of expansionism that was militant and malevolent in equal measure. It is a remarkable feature of Burke’s career that he had formulated most of the premises that made up this conclusion by January 1791. A year and a half earlier, however, things were somewhat different. Writing to Lord Fitzwilliam in November 1789 about the prospect of salvation for France, he reckoned that “civil war” represented the “only chance for producing order in their Government.”70 It was Burke’s earliest flirtation with the idea of counterrevolution. But no sooner was this possibility considered than it was practically discounted for the foreseeable future. The country was “undone,” as Burke put it, and “irretrievable” by any means available: the monarchy lacked all energy, royal authority had been sapped, the clergy were no longer respected, and the nobility were without support.71 As a result, there was no faction, division, or order in the state that might be galvanized into conducting a civil war. Two months later, a matter of weeks before he delivered his speech on the army estimates, he remained doubtful that the option of counterrevolution existed: “I see no way, by which a second revolution can be accomplished,” he admitted to an unknown correspondent.72 Although the chances of launching an internal counterrevolutionary strike seemed highly unlikely to Burke down to the close of 1789, he did not embrace the idea of outside intervention until the winter of 1790–1791 either. Writing on March 29, 1790, to Adrien Duport, who had taken a prominent part in advancing the cause of judicial reform in the National Assembly, Burke was clearly apprehensive about the potential collapse of France. The decree of December 22 the previous year establishing electoral and administrative assemblies across the monarchy, together with the division of the country into departments by the decree of February 26, had rendered the dismemberment of the polity a probability. This was expected to entail the drastic humiliation of a great power. But while some of his colleagues were in the process of bringing to bear against France the attitude of Cato the Elder toward his Carthaginian foe—Carthago delenda est [Carthage must be destroyed]—Burke professed to find that prospect more dangerous than it might appear. He then conveyed the extent to which it had been widely observed that the elimination of France would upset “the total balance of Europe”—a result of considerable concern to the “welfare” of Britain. But this was, he concluded, a complicated subject on which he had not yet been able to form a complete “Judgment.”73 A decisive judgment crystallized in early 1791. Writing on January 25 to the Comtesse de Montrond during her exile at Neuchâtel, he declined her

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invitation to him to contribute further to the pamphlet war on France, indicating that just one week earlier he had drafted a letter explaining his position on recent developments in response to inquiries made by a concerned member of the National Assembly. The letter in question, addressed to François-Louis-Thibault de Menonville, elected to the Estates General from Mirecourt in Lorraine, was duly published in May in London as a Letter to a Member of the National Assembly. But for the moment, Burke protested the “utter inutility” of any new statement on the situation in France. If Cazalès, Lally-Tollendal, Mounier, and Calonne had all failed to make an impact with their public pronouncements, how could an isolated Englishman be expected to succeed?74 Then came the crucial point: France was commanded by a determined power before which the court of reason could only lose its credit if obliged to plead its case on such unequal terms. Opponents of the revolution faced an “armed Tyranny,” Burke asserted, “and nothing but arms can pull it down.”75 In the absence of armed counterrevolutionary capacity inside France, the challenge would have to be launched from outside the jurisdiction. In his Letter to a Member of the National Assembly, Burke spelled this out: the appropriate “power,” he proclaimed, “must come from without.”76 Writing in March to the Chevalier de la Bintinaye just before the Letter was due to appear in French translation, Burke emphasized that his response to Menonville had been composed in part precisely to demonstrate “the utter impossibility of a counter revolution from any internal Cause.” This was in large measure a legacy of the monarchy itself: to enhance its own strength, it had weakened “every other force” under its supervision. France’s sole remaining hope therefore resided in the possibility of intervention by one of the major states of Europe. However, with Prussia, Austria, and Russia currently distracted by comparatively trivial disputes, a highly precarious situation—one which the “ancient Maxims” of policy were poorly adapted to remedy—was being allowed to pursue its catastrophic course.77 In the face of this improvidence, Burke built his case for meeting the current predicament with “force,” justified on the grounds of “policy.”78 It was still the case that Burke did not regard French might with alarm in 1791—she remained a diminished power from his perspective—but he nonetheless feared the cast of her underlying animus. As a brooding presence in Europe waiting for her “moment,” fortune would ultimately serve her fundamental tendency. This tendency, he implied, was one of militant ambition, as his references to the “spirit” of conquering Islam were designed to insinuate.79 All the same, as he went on to elaborate, French fanaticism had a character all its own. It destroyed the domestic affections, perverted the passion of love, and uprooted every “aristocratic” sentiment from the

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mind.80 It had a definite, primordial and all-encompassing objective, which it pursued with unexampled application: namely, the elimination of the figure of the propertied gentleman from politics.81 To achieve this, it had to transform the moral character of the population so as to prepare it for the work of militant destruction. Burke argued in the Letter that the fabrication of a new national genius adequate to this task was enabled, as he had already claimed in his army estimates speech and in the Reflections, by the seductions of democratic ambition: the deluded expectation among the mass of the population of acquiring power was intoxicating in the extreme, inspiring the credulous conviction that “a people of princes” was in the making.82 But although the hunger for popular dominion was easily awoken, the morals of the demos would still have to be corrupted to inure them to the methods of violent revolution. The violence in question was unleashed in the form of terror—by “assassination” together with the threat of assassination.83 But to accustom a population to such means of enforcement and coercion required the antecedent reeducation of moral habits and dispositions. Burke famously singled out the “paradoxes” of Rousseau—“the insane Socrates of the National Assembly”—as having facilitated this process of indoctrination.84 According to Burke, Rousseau had originated and perfected in his fiction and his Confessions the method of artificially deranging natural human dispositions.85 This was achieved by systematically substituting vanity for humility as a spring of action: first taste was corrupted, then morals perverted, and finally immorality was hypocritically justified as necessitated by the demands of a higher ethical calling. In this way, the pretense of universal benevolence could mask the obliteration of social sympathy, and thereby vindicate the most ruthless means of advancing subversion in the name of “égalité.”86 In Burke’s mind, it was “atheism”—the arguments in particular of Helvétius and Voltaire—that enabled the completion of this system of belief by eradicating the restraints imposed by “the tribunal of conscience.”87 Because the disease had spread so far, only the most radical surgery stood a chance of reversing the decline. That meant rebuilding France, not on the model of the British constitution so much as on the basis of the “principles” that informed it.88 These principles, Burke recognized, would have to assume a wider European currency if they were to halt the universal ambition of revolutionary sectarianism. From December 1791 through October 1793, Burke argued for the development of a European coalition of forces capable of counteracting popular party rage. “It is a religious war,” he exclaimed in his despairing Remarks on the Policy of the Allies. However, it was “religious” in the sense of constituting an antireligion bent on the establishment of a secular ideology. It did

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not operate by pitting sect against sect in the style of past religious conflicts. Instead, it mobilized a new fanaticism against religion with the purpose of extending the rights of man at the expense of the rights of property.89 Before the actual opening of the revolutionary wars in Europe, during the aftermath of the flight to Varennes of June 20, 1791, Burke was pressing for British leadership of a concerted effort against France to gain advantage in the ongoing war of principles.90 The French Revolution, he remarked, represented a new era of factional strife that was doctrinal and political at the same time. Under these conditions, the empire of “opinions” dominated the calculation of “interests.” As a consequence, the democratic spirit of party expunged the sentiments necessary for the support of “party” in Burke’s original sense of a combination populated by “good men.”91 The party of philosophy would have to be made to yield to a party of aristocratic principle. This was the ultimate objective of the counterrevolutionary “restoration” sought by Burke from 1791 down through the closing years of his life. But the reconstruction of France could only be secured by means of a war of partisanship: Burke rejected the goal of conquest aimed at the destruction of a rival power, proposing instead to extirpate the revolution. He was very clear that the rejuvenation of the French state in accordance with British principles was to be conducted in defense of the common law of Europe and not with a view to annexing a defeated dependent.92 The terminus of this program of international action was not the achievement of an everlasting peace among nations, but the revitalization of the principle of European balance. A new, menacing, and fractious power had been germinated by the events of 1789 in France. It represented an unprecedented and implacable breed of imperialism, driven toward militant self-aggrandizement due to its pathological nature. Burke’s response to this spectacle of expanding power was to seek a reversion to the established forms of “civilised” conflict as the best means of curtailing modern belligerence inclined to total war.93 Conclusion Alexis de Tocqueville’s The Old Regime and the Revolution is haunted by Burke’s writings on France. It carefully absorbs its precursor’s insights while interposing revisions and objections of its own. “Like Islam,” Tocqueville remarked in the closely argued chapter 3 of book 1 of his 1856 work, the revolution “flooded the earth with its soldiers, apostles and martyrs.”94 It had no territory of its own but took the whole world for its object, in the process making enemies of fellow citizens and discovering compatriots in enemy jurisdictions. As a result, “all foreign wars took on something of the character

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of civil wars; in all civil wars foreigners appeared.”95 Traditional European raison d’ état yielded to the empire of opinion. But because opinion is fashioned by preaching and propaganda, the revolution “took on the appearance of a religions revolution. . . . or rather,” he went on, “it itself became a new kind of religion, an incomplete religion it is true, without God, without ritual, and without a life after death.”96 Tocqueville’s debt to Burke in all this is conspicuous. But are their arguments actually the same? The equation between religion and political extremism was so pervasively revived in the period surrounding the Second World War that Raymond Aron could meditate on “L’avenir des religions séculières” without the paradox risking the appearance of contradiction.97 In postwar explorations of political radicalization, Tocqueville’s precise identification of the cult of ideological fundamentalism as at best an “incomplete” religion has tended to be quietly elided. But his careful formulation was itself a modification of Burke. In The Old Regime, the enthusiasm for revolutionary regeneration is associated with the “passion” of religious conviction. However, for Burke, religious sentiment is naturally expressed in the form of piety unless corrupted by the introduction of alien passions. It might well happen that religion could come to be infected by enthusiasm. But, of course, opinion in the most general sense is exposed to the corrupting influence of the passions. Burke developed this argument in the spring of 1796, publishing it in his Second Letter on a Regicide Peace in October. There he argued that those “who have made but superficial studies in the Natural History of the human mind, have been taught to look on religious opinions as the only cause of enthusiastick zeal.”98 Both Hume and Voltaire might have been offered as examples of the kind of superficiality Burke had in mind, although he declined to mention any person in particular. Instead, he set about expounding his own thesis that, although enthusiasm did not lie at the root of fanaticism, fanaticism could certainly take the form of enthusiasm. The atheistic fanaticism of Jacobin philosophy was enthusiastic only in a metaphorical sense.99 It derived from a perversion of sentiment against religion rather than a perversion of religious sentiment. Its chief practical consequence was to fortify the intellect in holding fast to its depraved convictions. By destroying “the image” of God in man, atheism prepared the mind for a revolution in morals.100 Burke believed that the atrocities of the French Revolution had been made possible by an assault on morality based on irreligion. It followed from this that moral enormities were founded on a betrayal of humanity. This depended on the Christian assumption that humanity was a resource against depravity rather than the cause of its occurrence. However, although Burke’s analysis of moral corruption is based on this assumption, his

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account of radicalization is not. The process of reeducating morality carried out by the revolution was conducted in Burke’s view with the intention of uncoupling authority and property. That enterprise was advanced in the name of democracy with the goal of extending absolute dominion. Two core ingredients made up this vision, and they constitute Burke’s contribution to understanding modern conflict. His principal insight lay in his grasp of equality as source of social and political conflict. He recognized egalitarian aspiration as relentless in its ambition. This relentlessness apparently gave democracy an unquenchable appetite for power. Its objective was nothing other than the achievement of “universal empire.”101 This claim constitutes Burke’s second main contribution to understanding modern conflict, but it amounts to a polemical assertion rather than an insight. In arguing that democratic republicanism was possessed by a peculiar lust for power, Burke constructed an early image of modern imperialism. The French state, he argued, was driven by the logic of its own principles toward aggrandizement through conquest. “Every thing,” Burke wrote, “is referred to the production of force.” Democracy, in other words, inspired modern Machiavellianism. It was militant in its “principles,” its “maxims,” and its “spirit.”102 The concept of an unstoppable, expansive power compelled by its inner workings to extend its reach resurfaced with the theory of economic imperialism formulated by Hobson and Hilferding around a century ago. It depended on the idea of a peculiarly modern drive for dominion, but its conception had originated with Burke. Notes I am grateful for the comments I received on this chapter from the contributors to this volume during a preparatory conference organized by Ian Hall and Lisa Hill on British international thought held at the University of Adelaide in 2008. Portions of the chapter were also delivered to the Séminaire franco-britannique d’ histoire at the Université de Sorbonne, Paris IV, and at a conference on Révolution et empire chez Edmund Burke jointly convened by L’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and the Université Paris-Diderot, both in 2009. My thanks to Luiz-Felipe de Alencastro, Jean-François Dunyach, and Robert Mankin for their respective invitations and their questions. My thanks in addition to Ultán Gillen, Colin Jones, Brendan Simms and Iain Hampsher-Monk for further comments. 1. The pioneering monograph in this field is Jennifer M. Welsh, Edmund Burke and International Relations (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995). But see also R. J. Vincent, “Edmund Burke and the Theory of International Relations”, Review of International Studies, 10:2 (1984), 205–218; David Boucher, “The Character of the History of the Philosophy of International Relations and the Case of Edmund Burke”, Review of International Studies, 17:2 (April 1991), 127–148;

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4.

5.

6. 7. 8.

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Jennifer M. Welsh, “Edmund Burke and the Commonwealth of Europe: The Cultural Bases of International Order” in Ian Clark and Iver B. Neumann eds., Classical Theories of International Relations (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996); David P. Fidler and Jennifer M. Welsh eds., Empire and Community: Edmund Burke’s Writings and Speeches on International Relations (Boulder: Westview Press, 1999). See Martin Wight, “Why is there no International Theory?” in Herbert Butterfield and Martin Wight eds., Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics (London: Allen & Unwin, 1966); and R. J. Vincent, “Edmund Burke and the Theory of International Relations”, Review of International Studies, 10:2 (1984), 205–218 On the English school more generally, see Timothy Dunne, Inventing International Society: A History of the English School (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998). For Burke’s debt to common law forms of argument, see J. G. A. Pocock, “Burke and the Ancient Constitution: A Problem in the History of Ideas”, in Pollock, Politics, Language, and Time: Essays on Political Thought and History (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press 1971). For Burke’s place in the history of “modern”, post-Grotian natural law, see David Armitage, “Edmund Burke and Reason of State”, Journal of the History of Ideas 61:4 (October 2000), 617–34. This is centrally addressed in Iain Hampsher-Monk, “Edmund Burke’s Changing Justification for Intervention”, The Historical Journal, 48:1 (2005), 65–100. See also, more recently, Brendan Simms, “A False Principe in the Law of Nations: State Sovereignty, Liberty and Intervention in the Age of Westphalia and Burke”, in Brendan Simms and David Trim, eds., Humanitarian Intervention: A History to 1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments (1810), ed. Etienne Hofmann, trans. Dennis O’Keefe (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2003) 356. For a discussion of this dimension of Constant’s thought, see John Dunn, “Liberty as a Substantive Political Value” in Interpreting Modern Political Responsibility: Essays 1981–1989 (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990). Ibid., 281. Ibid., 366–368, where Gabriel Bonnot de Mably features as the main ideological culprit. On the problem of political “mistranslation” in the sense intended here, see Sudipta Kaviraj, “Marxism in Translation: Critical Reflections on Indian Radical Thought” in Richard Bourke and Raymond Geuss, eds. Political Judgement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). For an attempt to resuscitate Constant’s views on historical “incommensurability” as a means of explaining the “disaster” of Jacobinism, see Bernard Williams, “Saint-Just’s Illusion” in Making Sense of Humanity and Other Philosophical Papers, 1982–1993 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). The Parliamentary Register; or History of the Proceedings and Debates of the Commons (London: 1790), XXVII, 48–50. The objections were raised by Marsham in response to the Secretary of War, Sir George Yonge.

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10. Ibid., 54–59. 11. Ibid., 75: “a change, as sudden and unexpected, had take place in affairs, in which some exulted, and of which number, in one point of view, he considered himself as included, from feelings and from principle.” 12. Ibid., 100. 13. Substance of the Speech of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, in the Debate on the Army Estimates, in the House of Commons, on Tuesday, the 9th Day of February, 1790. Comprehending a Discussion of the Present State of Affairs in France (London: 1790); Discours de M. Burke, sur la situation actuelle de la France, prononcé par ce celebre orateur, & un des chefs de l’opposition, dans la Chambre des communes d’Angleterre. Le fevrier 1790. Lors du fameaux debat sur les estimations de l’armee (France: s.n., 1790). There were in fact multiple (flawed) translations of this speech: see William B. Todd, A Bibliography of Edmund Burke (London: R. Hart-Davis, 1964; repr. Godalming, Surrey: St. Paul’s Bibliographies, 1982), entry numbers 52 f–j. The earliest report of the speech in France appeared in Le Moniteur for 24 February 1790. Reviews appeared in Journal historiques et littéraire (15 June 1790) and Révolutions de Paris (April 1790). 14. For Burke’s reprobation of Valletort’s imprudence on this score, see F. P. Lock, Edmund Burke Volume II: 1784–1797 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 255. 15. Parliamentary Register, 80–94. 16. The Correspondence of Edmund Burke Volume VI, July 1789–December 1791, eds. Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 10. 17. Ibid., 38. 18. Ibid., 25 (27 September 1789). 19. Ibid., 20 (15 September 1789). 20. Ibid., 25 (27 September 1789). 21. Ibid., 46 (Letter to Charles-Jean-François Depont, n.d. November 1790). 22. Ibid., 80. 23. On the extinction of France, see ibid., 36 (Letter to Lord Fitzwilliam, 12 November 1789); Parliamentary Register, 89. For the earliest reference to France’s neighborhood with Britain, see Burke, Correspondence, VI, 10 (Letter to Lord Charlemont, 9 August 1789). 24. Parliamentary Register, 64–65. 25. Ibid., p. 92. 26. Burke, Correspondence, VI, 71–72. 27. Ibid., p. 71. 28. Substance of the Speech of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, in the Debate on the Army Estimates, in the House of Commons, on Tuesday, the 9th Day of February, 1790, third edition reprinted in Edmund Burke, Pre-Revolutionary Writings, ed. Ian Harris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 308. 29. Burke, Correspondence, VI, 71.

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30. Burke, Pre-Revolutionary Writings, 309. 31. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. J. G. A. Pocock (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), 134–135. 32. Edmund Burke, Thoughts on French Affairs (1791) in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke Volume VIII: The French Revolution 1790–1794, ed. L. G. Mitchell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 341. 33. Burke, Pre-Revolutionary Writings, 309–310. 34. For a discussion of Burke’s views on revolutionary democracy, see Richard Bourke, “Enlightenment, Revolution and Democracy”, Constellations, 15:1 (March 2008), 10–32. 35. Cornelius Tacitus, Historiae, ed. C. D. Fisher (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1911), I, i; cited in Burke, Pre-Revolutionary Writings, 310. 36. Ibid., 311. 37. Parliamentary Register, 55. Fox defended his remark against Burke’s attack on it on 9 February 1790. See ibid., 95. 38. Burke, Pre-Revolutionary Writings, 316, 318. 39. Edmund Burke and William Burke, An Account of the European Settlements in America (1757; 3rd rev. ed.: 1760), 2 vols. On the contrast between Britain, France and Spain more generally, see ibid., I, 64–65 and pp. 234–320. For brief remarks on Holland and Portugal, see ibid., II, 57–58. 40. Ibid., II, p. 49. 41. Ibid., I, p. 65; II, 4–5. 42. Ibid., II, p. 23. 43. Ibid., II, p. 60. 44. Edmund Burke, Observations on a Late State of the Nation (1769) in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke II: Party, Parliament and the American Crisis, 1766–1774, ed. Paul Langford (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 151. For subsequent anticipations of “convulsion” in Burke, see Michael Sonenscher, Before the Deluge: Public Debt, Inequality, and the Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 25–26. 45. Burke, Observations on a Late State of the Nation, 208. 46. William Knox, The Present State of the Nation, particularly with Respect to its Trade, Finances, &c.; Addressed to the King and Both Houses of Parliament (London: 1768). Among the other productions that Burke had in his sights were John Almon, The History of the Late Minority, Exhibiting the Conduct, Principles of that Party, During the Years 1762, 1763, 1764 and 1765 (London: 1766); [James Scott?], A Short History of the Conduct of the Present Ministry, with Regard to the American Stamp Act (London: 1766); Thomas Whately, Considerations on the Trade and Finances of this Kingdom, and on the Measures of the Administration with Respect to those Great National Objects (London: 1766). 47. Burke, Observations on a Late State of the Nation, 207. 48. Edmund Burke, “Speech on Address” (8 November 1768) in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke Volume II: Party, Parliament and the American Crisis, 1766–1774, ed. Paul Langford (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981) p. 98. For Burke’s further contributions to the Corsican debate, see Sir Henry

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51. 52. 53. 54. 55.

56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.

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Cavendish’s Debates of the House of Commons during the Thirteenth Parliament of Great Britain, ed. J. Wright (London: 1841–1843), 2 vols., I, 59–60. For the wider context, see Nicholas Tracy, “The Administration of the Duke of Grafton and the French Invasion of Corsica, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 8:2 (1974–1975), pp. 169–82. See also H. M. Scott, British Foreign Policy in the Age of the American Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 115–22. Burke, Observations on a Late State of the Nation, 112. Ibid., p. 113. On Rockinghamite foreign policy in response to the Treaty of Paris, see Paul Langford, The First Rockingham Administration, 1765–1766 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), 83–02. Burke, Observations on a Late State of the Nation, 114. Ibid., 208–215. Cf. Edmund Burke, Thoughts on the Present Discontents (1770) in Writings and Speeches II, 321. Burke, Correspondence, VI, 9–10. As recounted in ibid., 267. John Brown, An Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times (London: 1757), 29, 170, 205. Cf. John Douglas, Seasonable Hints from an Honest Man on the Present Important Crisis of a New Reign and a New Parliament (London: 1761). Burke, Thoughts on the Present Discontents, 274–7. Ibid., 264. Ibid., 315. For Burke’s reliance on the Ciceronian ideal of amicitia, see ibid., 316. Burke, Correspondence, VI, 47 (Letter to Charles-Jean-François Depont, n.d. November 1790). This is recorded in The Parliamentary History of England from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803 (London: 1806–20), 36 vols, XXX, 119n. For ministerial thinking at the time, see Jeremy Black, British Foreign Policy in the Age of Revolutions, 1783–1793 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), Chap. 9. Ibid., 435. Fox employs the phrase to describe one of the “two principles” used to defend a resort to war in ibid., XXX, 424. For the contents of the first and second propagandist decrees of November 19 and December 15, 1792, see Archives parlementaires de 1787 á 1860: Recueil complet des débats législatifs et politiques des chambers françaises, première série (Paris 1787–1799), vol. 53, pp. 479–81 and vol. 55, p. 76. (Paris: 1879–1913), 12 vols., 53, 4724. For discussion, see M. Bouloiseau, “L’Organisation de l’Europe selon Brissot et les Girondins, à la fin de 1792, Annales historiques de la révolution française, 57 (1985), 290–294. For the wider context, see T. C. W. Blanning, The Origins of the French Revolutionary Wars (London and New York: Longman, 1986), 73–80; T. C. W. Blanning, The French Revolutionary Wars, 1787–1802 ((London: Arnold, 1996), 71–105. Parliamentary History, XXX, p. 436. On the “prudent views of modern politics” as best suited to the maintenance of the European balance of power, see David Hume, “Of the Balance of Power”

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68.

69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74.

75. 76. 77. 78.

79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84.

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(1754) in Essays Moral, Political and Literary (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1985), 339. Part of Hume’s point was that the treaties of Ryswick (1697), Utrecht (1713) and Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) betrayed a factious disregard on Britain’s part for the spirit of cautious calculation. On the general theme, see Richard Bourke, “Sovereignty, Opinion and Revolution in Edmund Burke”, History of European Ideas, 25:3 (1999), 99–120. Burke’s characterization of the revolution as a cosmopolitan masquerade dates back to his original response to Richard Price’s Discourse on the Love of Our Country (1789). On this, see Richard Bourke, “Theory and Practice: the Revolution in Political Judgement” in Bourke and Geuss eds. Political Judgement. Parliamentary History, XXX, 645. Burke, Correspondence, VI, 36 (12 November 1789). Ibid. Ibid., 79 (? January 1790). Burke, Correspondence, VI, 106. Ibid., 211–212. In addition to these figures, Burke also mentions the failed but admirable efforts of the Abbé Jean Sifrein Maury; Jean de Dieu-Raymond de Cucé de Boisgelin, Archbishop of Aix; François de Bonal, Bishop of ClermontFerrand; and Anne-Louis-Henri de La Fare, Bishop of Nancy. Cf. Edmund Burke, Letter to a Member of the National Assembly (1791) in Writings and Speeches VIII, 324–325, where his earlier criticism of Mounier and Lally-Tollendal is explained and qualified. Burke, Correspondence, VI, 211. Burke, Letter to a Member of the National Assembly, 305. Burke, Correspondence, VI, 241–242 (? March 1791). Burke, Letter to a Member of the National Assembly, 297, 307, 308. Burke’s examples of recent “policy” illustrating the contemporary currency of intervention are the Prussian restoration of William V of Holland in 1787–1788; the restoration of imperial authority in the Netherlands in 1790; the restoration of the Prince-Bishop of Liège in 1790; and the intervention of Prussia on behalf of Turkey in 1790. Ibid., 306. Ibid., 315–319. Ibid., 296, 298, 309. Ibid., 301, 305. Ibid., 319. Ibid., 314, 318. A year earlier, in a letter sent to an unknown correspondent, Burke had singled out the paradoxes of the Contrat social for critical comment: “little did I conceive that it could ever make revolutions, and give law to nations.”.See Burke, Correspondence, VI, 81. Anarcharsis Cloots, in a letter sent to Burke on May 12, 1790, had himself identified the design of enlightenment philosophy with the ancient moralists: “On se croiroit en vérité, au centre

Edmund Burke and International Conflict

85.

86. 87. 88. 89. 90.

91.

92.

93. 94.

95. 96. 97.

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de l’Attique; et nos Antisthenes, nos Crates, nos Diogenes, nos Zénon, nos Socrate, ne sont pas moins dignes du pinceau de Raphaël, que la fameuse Ecole d’Athenes”. See ibid., 114. For discussion of Burke’s engagement with Rousseau, see Iain HampsherMonk, “Rousseau, Burke’s Vindication of Natural Society, and Revolutionary Ideology”, European Journal of Political Theory (Forthcoming). Burke, Letter to a Member of the National Assembly, 311–318. Ibid., 319. Ibid., 329. Edmund Burke, Remarks on the Policy of the Allies (1793) in Writings and Speeches VIII, 485. In this he committed himself to the view that the revolution unleashed a new species of Prinzipienkrieg. For the absorption of this thesis into historiography, see the classic study of Leopold von Ranke, Ursprung und Beginn der Revolutionskriege, 1791 und 1792 (Leipzig: 1879). For Burke’s intention of resuscitating the European balance, see Thoughts on French Affairs, 343. For the persistence of Burke’s commitment to “party” on the Rockinghamite model of amicable “connexion” see above n. 52. Burke, Remarks on the Policy of the Allies, 488–491. For his earliest remarks on the “old common law of Europe,” see Reflections, 32; for a development of the thesis, see Edmund Burke, First Letter on a Regicide Peace (1796) in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke Volume IX: The Revolutionary War (1794–1797) and Ireland, ed. R. B. McDowell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 248. On “civilized” war in contrast with total war, see Burke, Letter to a Member of the National Assembly, 320. Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Revolution. Volume One: The Complete Text, eds. François Furet and Françoise Mélonio, trans. Alan S. Kahan (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1998), 101. Ibid., 99. Ibid., 101. Raymond Aron, “L’avenir des religions séculières” (1944), Commentaire, 8:28–29 (1985), 369–383. In the discourse of the time, “paganism,” “superstition,” and “metaphysics” were often substituted for plain “religion.” See, for example, Aurel Kolnai, The War Against the West (London: Victor Gollanz, 1938); R. G. Collingwood, “Fascism and Nazism” (1940) in David Boucher, ed., Essays in Political Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989); Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, 2 vols,(London, Melbourne and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1945, 1966). Edmund Burke, Second Letter on a Regicide Peace (1796) in Writings and Speeches IX, p. 278. Here I depart from the seminal argument set out in J. G. A. Pocock, “Edmund Burke and the Redefinition of Enthusiasm: The Context as CounterRevolution” in François Furet and Mona Ozouf, eds., The French Revolution

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and the Creation of Modern Political Culture: The Transformation of Political Culture 1789–1848 (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1989). 100. Burke, Second Letter on a Regicide Peace, 278. 101. Ibid., 267. 102. Ibid., 288.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The International Political Thought of John Stuart Mill Georgios Varouxakis

“[W]

henever we need to argue about whether it is right or wrong, just or unjust, to send an army across a border, it is useful to return to Mill’s ‘few words’ [on nonintervention],” wrote Michael Walzer in 2007. “He is our contemporary. Indeed, I argue that he speaks directly to current U.S. debates about foreign policy and international society.”1 Academics often begin their articles or books by stressing how neglected the topic they are about to discuss has been. Works are still written today that claim the topic of this essay, Mill’s thought on international politics, has been ignored or neglected, in general or by at least some related academic discipline. Such claims today are illtimed by around a decade. A time was, before the recent explosion of interest in what is now called “international political theory,” when there was indeed very little commentary on Mill’s thought on international relations.2 It speaks volumes that the late Martin Wight even confused Mill with his father.3 The nineteenth century more generally had, it has correctly been said, “largely . . . dropped out of view.”4 J. S. Mill was more or less absent from general studies of political thought on international relations until the late 1990s.5 Precious few works noted some of his pronouncements briefly, and his views on international relations were the main focus of no more than one rather unsatisfactory article written in 1961.6 This has changed in the last decade or so. There is an ever-growing literature on one or more aspects of Mill’s thought on international politics.7 He

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now has a place in anthologies of political thought on international relations or international ethics.8 The younger Mill is now accorded the status of one of the “leading international thinkers” who are set apart by “the fact that their thought retains its intellectual force long after it was written down and the events that provoked it have faded into history.”9 In other words, in the last few years, Mill has been “canonized” in the emerging canon of “international political theory,” as he had long been part of the canon of the history of political and economic thought.10 Theory and Practice: The “Public Moralist” as Observer of International Politics It is important for academic political theorists who pronounce on J. S. Mill to remember that Mill was not an academic political theorist. He was not arguing for the sake of argument (or for the needs of a research assessment exercise of one sort or another), addressing other political theorists with whom one might debate the logical and analytical merits of their respective arguments. Besides being a thinker, Mill was very much an involved political activist and, furthermore, saw himself as such.11 Stefan Collini’s term public moralist is especially apt in Mill’s case.12 He became deeply engaged in a great number of controversies and felt particularly strongly about a series of issues during his lifetime. More often than not, Mill acted on his strong feelings by campaigning in the press as well as in public meetings, in voluminous correspondence, and in any other way he could, trying to convince not just fellow theorists but also governments and the public, often in more than one country. His writings on international relations are no exception to this. Thus, it would be an inadequate approach to these writings to offer merely a textual analysis of what was actually written in the relevant published texts, which were not very long. The context in which they were written, the preoccupations from which they arose, and the immediate as well as longer-term crises, national and international, that they were written in response to have to be borne in mind in each case. One also needs to stress that Mill (being in good company in this) was adamant that international politics was peculiarly complicated. As he wrote in his mature years, no one would deny that there were some rare cases where “different moral obligations conflict”: But, though this is not likely to be denied, there exists very generally a cowardly reluctance to look the fact in the face, and make provision for it, as one of the unavoidable inconveniences of an imperfect condition. People are afraid lest the force of recognised duties should be weakened,

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by admitting the liability of one duty to be overruled by another; and, though well knowing that this does happen, and not prepared to deny that it sometimes ought to happen, they prefer to be excused from giving their approbation beforehand to so unpleasant-looking a fact. The consequence is, that those who, having the responsibility of action, are forced to make for themselves some path through these moral entanglements, finding no rules or principles laid down for them but such as ignore instead of meeting the difficulties of the case, decide according to the dictate either of their selfish interests, or of some prevailing sentiment, which, if more disinterested, is not necessarily a truer guide. And since national concerns, by reason of their superior complication, afford by far the greatest number of these disputable questions of obligation, this is one (and not the smallest) among the causes of that laxity of principle which has almost always prevailed in public matters, even when the moralities of private life have met with a tolerable amount of observance.13 This was the spirit in which Mill set out to discuss the thorny issue of “Treaty Obligations” in 1870, but also, more generally, issues of international morality throughout his mature life. “International Law” or “International Morality”? The peculiar difficulties of international/interstate politics as compared with domestic politics are reflected, first of all, in the different nature and status of the legal arrangements regulating (or purporting to regulate) each of the two spheres. It is well known that the term international law was coined by Mill’s early mentor, Jeremy Bentham.14 However, regarding the nature of international law, Mill was clearly not following Bentham, but rather Bentham’s neighbor and—up to a point—disciple, John Austin.15 J. S. Mill had a long and complex relationship with John Austin and his wife Sarah, and there are good reasons to believe that Austin’s influence on Mill was greater than average scholarly wisdom would have one believe.16 Mill attended John Austin’s lectures on jurisprudence at University College London (UCL) (the closest he ever came to a university education). Then Mill reviewed Austin’s The Province of Jurisprudence Determined twice, in 1832 and again in 1863 when a second edition was published posthumously by Austin’s widow. Austin aspired to offer strict definitions of different kinds of law, and one result of that ambition and precision was that he came to speak of “international law” or “the law of nations” (as it was called before Bentham’s neologism began to be widely used) as law improperly so called. Austin introduced the famous command theory of law, according

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to which a law had to be issued as a command by a sovereign authority to its subordinates, that authority having the power to enforce sanctions for noncompliance with the command. This was not the case with the law as applied between nations or states (to speak more accurately than even Bentham did). As Austin put it, “the law obtaining between nations is not positive law: for every positive law is set by a given sovereign to a person or persons in a state of subjection to its author.” Given this stipulation, “the law obtaining between nations is law (improperly so called) set by general opinion. The duties which it imposes are enforced by moral sanctions: by fear on the part of nations, or by fear on the part of sovereigns, of provoking general hostility, and incurring its probable evils, in case they shall violate maxims generally received and respected.”17 The attentive former student agreed, given how he put the matter in his second review of Austin’s influential book: The laws with which jurisprudence is conversant . . . have next to be discriminated from what are called laws only by way of analogy—rules prescribed and sanctioned only by opinion: to which Mr Austin, by a happy extension of the term Positive as applied to law, gives the name of Positive Morality, meaning the moral opinions and sentiments actually prevailing in any given society, as distinguished from Deontology, or morality as it ought to be. Of this character is much that is commonly (to the great confusion of the minds of students) called by the name of Law. Significantly, “the strongest case is that of International Law, which, as independent nations are not subject to any common political superior, ought not to be termed Law, but Positive International Morality.”18 Austin’s argument that the law of nations or international law fell into the category of laws “improperly so called” was “highly controversial.”19 One reason, besides its sheer novelty, was that the argument had clear implications related to belief in Christianity. As one of Austin’s (and London University’s) ecclesiastical critics put it, the most authoritative writers on the subject, Grotius, Pufendorf, and Vattel, all spoke of the law of nations “as law in the proper sense of the word: it is spoken of as a rule dictated by a superior: and the superior is, that holy and awful Being, to whom no reference whatever is made in all the schemes of ethics, jurisprudence, and the politics, which the Council of the London University have published.” According to T. W. Lancaster, “If there be a God, and if he be the moral governor of the world, then it must follow, that the moral rule of international intercourse is a law: that nations are amenable to a common superior; and that they are obnoxious to a legal sanction.”20

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Mill has been taken to task recently for not being sufficiently critical of Austin’s arguments in his two reviews of The Province of Jurisprudence Determined.21 But whatever the case might be with regard to other aspects of Austin’s writings on the nature of law, Mill, who was much more radical in his religious skepticism than Austin might have been, was not that likely to have been put off by the implications of Austin’s characterization of international law as not properly law for belief in Christianity. (Although Austin was not explicit about it, his theory undermined orthodox belief in God, as Lancaster’s comments make clear). In any case, there is no reason to doubt the sincerity or consistency with which Mill held the Austinian view of international law. He argued along the same lines several times in all sorts of different writings and at different times and phases of his intellectual development and political activism. Thus, in what was arguably his most radical exposition of his views on international affairs, written in 1849, he came to discuss criticisms of the foreign policy declarations of the short-lived Provisional Government of the French Second Republic (also short-lived, it soon would turn out). In responding to a criticism that had invoked international law as completely opposed to what the French had stated their policy as being, this is what Mill had to say: May we venture, once for all, to deny the whole basis of this edifying moral argumentation? To assist a people struggling for liberty is contrary to the law of nations: Puffendorf [sic] perhaps does not approve of it; Burlamaqui says nothing about it; it is not a casus belli set down in Vattel. So be it. But what is the law of nations? Something, which to call a law at all, is a misapplication of terms. The law of nations is simply the custom of nations. It is a set of international usages, which have grown up like other usages, partly from a sense of justice, partly from common interest or convenience, partly from mere opinion and prejudice. Now, are international usages the only kind of customs which, in an age of progress, are to be subject to no improvement? Are they alone to continue fixed, while all around them is changeable? According to Mill, in an age when so much was changing in the circumstances of European societies, international morality could not stay immutable: “What is called the law of nations is as open to alteration, as properly and even necessarily subject to it when circumstances change or opinions alter, as any other thing of human institution.” And there was more, Mill went on: And mark, in the case of a real law, of anything properly called a law, it is possible to maintain (however erroneous may be the opinion) that

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there is never any necessity for disobeying it; that it should be conformed to while it exists, the alternative being open of endeavouring to get it altered. But in regard to that falsely-called law, the law of nations, there is no such alternative; there is no ordinance or statute to repeal; there is only a custom, and the sole way of altering that, is to act in opposition to it. A legislature can repeal laws, but there is no Congress of nations to set aside international customs, and no common force by which to make the decisions of such a Congress binding. The improvement of international morality can only take place by a series of violations of existing rules; by a course of conduct grounded on new principles, and tending to erect these into customs in their turn.22 He went on speaking of “international morality” and referring to “what is called international law” in writings such as the oft-quoted essay “A Few Words on Non-Intervention” of 1859.23 Further, Mill continued asserting the Austinian conception of international law as not properly law but rather as positive international morality in a work where he was adamant about its major importance, whatever it was to be called, and where he recommended, as his father had done in the 1820s, that it should be obligatory learning for educated members of the public.24 In setting out the rather demanding ideal university curriculum that he defended at his Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St. Andrews in 1867, Mill said: “To these studies I would add International Law; which I decidedly think should be taught in all universities, and should be part of all liberal education.” The need for it was “far from being limited to diplomatists and lawyers; it extends to every citizen.” But he hastened to clarify that “International Law” or “Law or Nations” was a misnomer: “What is called the Law of Nations is not properly law, but a part of ethics: a set of moral rules, accepted as authoritative by civilized states.”25 And he also stated that “these rules neither are not ought to be of eternal obligation,but do and must vary more or less from age to age, as the consciences of nations become more enlightened and the exigencies of political society undergo change.” But, he continued, these rules “mostly were at their origin, and still are, an application of the maxims of honesty and humanity to the intercourse of states.” They had been introduced “by the moral sentiments of mankind, or by their sense of the general interest, to mitigate the crimes and sufferings of a state of war, and to restrain governments and nations from unjust or dishonest conduct towards one another in time of peace.”26 And in a statement indicative of his ambitious and demanding conception of citizenship, Mill went on to argue that, given that every country stands in numerous and various relations with the other countries of the world, and that “many, our own among

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their number, exercise actual authority over some of these,” a knowledge of “the established rules of international morality” was “essential to the duty of every nation, and therefore of every person in it who helps to make up the nation, and whose voice and feeling form a part of what is called public opinion.” And in an emphatic statement reminiscent of a similar argument by Edmund Burke, Mill declared: Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject. It depends on the habit of attending to and looking into public transactions, and on the degree of information and solid judgment respecting them that exists in the community, whether the conduct of the nation as a nation, both within itself and towards others, shall be selfish, corrupt, and tyrannical, or rational and enlightened, just and noble.27 So in general, the younger Mill adopted throughout his life and writings John Austin’s argument that international law is not properly law, but rather positive international morality based on the shared ethical beliefs and customs of “civilised” nations in their dealings with one another.28 This being the case, however, it should be stressed that Mill was adamant that that international morality was of paramount importance, so important, in fact, that its basics should be a compulsory part of what is taught in universities. This would help citizens perform their role—a demanding role of vigilance in a cosmopolitan patriotic conception of citizenship.29 What Mill also insisted on—and here Austin’s argument helped him make the case easier—was that what was called international law, not being really “law” and being part of ethics, was as changeable with different circumstances and improvable as any other part of ethics and any other part of human affairs. And he had some strong views as to what should be part of that “international morality” for the foreseeable future. Intervention, Nonintervention, and Nationality Unarguably, the most commented upon of Mill’s contributions to international political thought is his article “A Few Words on Non-Intervention” published near the end of that tumultuous year, 1859.30 However, Mill discussed the subject of foreign intervention elsewhere as well at various stages

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of his life. He began analyzing arguments on the justifiableness or otherwise of intervention in foreign disputes quite early on, in 1830–1831, as a result of his close attention to (and reporting of) the political debates in France during the early years of the July Monarchy.31 In the course of a few months (between December 1830 and April 1831) he seems to have adopted and defended in his journalistic writings the position on intervention propounded by some of the leaders of the French “left” of the time, the opposition to Louis Philippe’s monarchy (the parti du mouvement). They were arguing that counterintervention to restore the balance of internal forces in a country where the despotic European powers had already intervened was not a violation of the “principle of non-intervention” but rather a stricter and more correct interpretation of it.32 Mill repeated this argument in various formulations in an article he co-authored in 1837, in the oft-quoted article “A Few Words on Non-Intervention” of 1859, as well as in a number of expositions of his principles in his electoral campaign of sorts for the Westminster election in 1865.33 So far so simple, it would appear, although—as with most issues in international politics—the examples he had to deal with in each case posed complicated challenges that led him to modify the argument in subtle ways. However, there is an important work where Mill went further than the principle outlined so far—a difference that has escaped later commentators’ attention.34 In his “Vindication of the French Revolution of February 1848” (1849), he went beyond defending counterintervention.35 To all intents and purposes, in 1849, Mill asserted the right of liberal powers “to assist struggling liberalism” wherever possible, without reference to whether or not any of the “despotic” powers had already intervened. It is clear from both his Autobiography and his correspondence that Mill was emboldened to say, in the immediate aftermath of the revolutions of 1848, things that he feared would have been too radical to state publicly earlier.36 There is no gainsaying a noticeable degree of radical and indeed revolutionary exuberance in what Mill wrote about international affairs in the “Vindication.” But he did not repeat those statements and positions again. Rather, his arguments in “A Few Words” ten years later are much closer to what he had written in 1831 and 1837. One of the main reasons why Mill’s “A Few Words” has gradually become part of the canon is the (favorable) attention paid to it by Michael Walzer in his seminal book Just and Unjust Wars (1977). I believe Walzer to be right in stressing the importance of Mill’s refusal to allow what is now called “regime change” because of what Walzer called the “self-help” argument used by Mill. Walzer correctly drew attention to Mill’s insistence that foreigners should not interfere with the internal struggles for liberty in a country because a free government supported by foreign bayonets was a contradiction in terms

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and would not last. However, Mill insisted that, when that balance was already being interfered with by foreigners supporting the “wrong side” (the anti-liberal forces within the country), then liberal powers had a right and indeed an obligation to intervene (whenever they could prudently do so) to restore the internal balance. This was the argument for counterintervention to enforce nonintervention that Mill had already supported as of 1831, as noted earlier. However, I think that Walzer is wrong in also asserting (both in 1977 and in 2007) that Mill (in 1859 in “A Few Words”) advocated intervention to assist national liberation struggles. (“Foreign states and armies can come to the aid of a national liberation struggle against foreign rule, but they cannot come to the aid of a revolutionary struggle against domestic despotism— this is Mill’s argument.”37) The situation is a little more messy, to the extent that Mill refrained from arguing for assistance to national liberation movements, unless a foreign power (a “third” party, literally) had already intervened to assist the power that was trying to suppress the national liberation movement. Walzer gave the example of Hungary as a case where Mill was advocating coming “to the aid of a national liberation struggle against foreign rule.” However, what Mill said about Hungary was used as his example of a case where “[i]ntervention to enforce non-intervention is always rightful, always moral, if not always prudent.”38 It was here that Hungary’s example was adduced: It might not have been right for England (even apart from the question of prudence) to have taken part with Hungary in its noble struggle against Austria; although the Austrian government in Hungary was in some sense a foreign yoke.39 But when, the Hungarians having shown themselves likely to prevail in this struggle, the Russian despot interposed, and joining his force to that of Austria, delivered back the Hungarians, bound hand and foot, to their exasperated oppressors, it would have been an honourable and virtuous act on the part of England to have declared that this should not be, and that if Russia gave assistance to the wrong side, England would aid the right.40 In other words, whatever his feelings and predilections, Mill was circumspect enough in what he wrote in “A Few Words” to the extent that he advocated counterintervention only as a response to prior foreign intervention. This circumspection may be the reason why Mill’s arguments in “A Few Words” were by and large approved by the recently enthroned first Chichele Professor of International Law and Diplomacy in Oxford, Mountague Bernard. Barely a year after the publication of “A Few Words on

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Non-Intervention,” Bernard gave and had published a lecture entitled On the Principle of Non-intervention. Bernard referred to “A Few Words,” approving Mill’s assertion of the importance of treating the subject and commenting that “Mr Mill himself has given us a short essay on the subject, very just for the most part and expressed with his usual clearness and strength, treating it entirely from an ethical point of view.”41 Bernard was adamant in his lecture that international law would be fatally undermined if intervention to support national liberation movements at the expense of existing state borders were allowed and undertaken. What complicates the case is that this was exactly what Mill had advocated ten years before he wrote “A Few Words” in his “Vindication of the French Revolution of 1848” (1849). The implications of doing so are revolutionary of course. Mill crossed that Rubicon explicitly and vociferously in 1849 (“Vindication”) in what was his most radical statement on international relations. But he did not assert such a revolutionary principle in 1859 in “A Few Words”. The main reason for the difference was Mill’s changing attitude toward the principle of “nationality.” In 1849, though even then not as naïve and unaware of the dangers posed by nationalism as later commentators would have us believe, he certainly offered his support for national liberation as a means to the attainment and better working of free representative government. The argument in question is better known from his much more careful and qualified exposition of it in chapter 16 of his book Considerations on Representative Government (1861).42 However, what has escaped the attention of commentators is that Mill clearly became more and more worried about the implications of nationalist sentiments and increasingly reluctant to afford them any encouragement. I have argued elsewhere that the best way to describe his position on these issues is to say that he stood for what I would call a version of cosmopolitan patriotism.43 This increasing uneasiness about nationalism as well as some other more concrete worries about particular international developments in 1859 led Mill to state the principles he laid down on nonintervention in the careful way he did in “A Few Words.” Walzer also seems to me to be wrong in arguing that Mill did not discuss—and therefore did not advocate—what Walzer calls “humanitarian intervention.”44 War Like many liberals, Mill thought that war caused an awful lot of pain, retarded civilization, and should be robustly combated against. He was infuriated by his French acquaintance, Alexis de Tocqueville, when the latter

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insisted that France should go to war with Britain in 1840 to avenge France’s slighted honor.45 Examples could be multiplied. But Mill was not a pacifist. Principles and circumstances had to be weighed, and the predicted impact on the morality and character of those concerned had to be a major consideration. In one of his articles during the American Civil War, when it is well known that he supported the North, he made clear why he could not “join with those who cry Peace, peace”: “war, in a good cause, is not the greatest evil which a nation can suffer. War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse.” This was, on the part of the North, “a war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice.” Furthermore, “A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.” Thus, “As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to battle for the one against the other.”46 But, although there were situations when war could not be wished away, the general spirit of his writings and correspondence was that whatever diminished the chances of war occurring was good for mankind. Like others, he believed that commerce had a tendency to diminish the propensity to war. Mill’s disapproval of what he saw as the excessive and over-preponderant hold of commercial values on “the English character” did not mean that he did not see immense benefits to the spread of commerce. In fact, he stressed that the importance of the “moral” consequences of the spread of commerce far outweighed any other of its beneficial consequences. Thus, “commerce first taught nations to see with good will the wealth and prosperity of one another.” And, “It is commerce which is rapidly rendering war obsolete, by strengthening and multiplying the personal interests which are in natural opposition to it.”47 Another hope was based on the role of women. As their influence increased, it would contribute to increased aversion to war.48 Ethical Pragmatism? Or: Should Treaty Obligations Always Be Enforced? Mill had some significant recommendations on the thorny ethical issues involved in the observance (or nonobservance) of diplomatic treaties. He already discussed this issue in 1849 (“Vindication”),49 but his most elaborate treatment was in an article he dedicated to this subject. In November 1870, there was in Britain a vociferous clamor for war against Russia in response

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to Russia’s repudiation of the clauses of the Treaty of Paris of 1856 (signed on the conclusion of the Crimean War) that had forced defeated Russia to accept that the Black Sea was to remain neutral waters. The unilateral abrogation by Russia of the neutralization of the Black Sea led to press uproar in Britain, mainly due to the sense “that national honour was at stake.” Premier Gladstone, who had reasons to wish to resist the pressure for an escalation and “felt that the arrangement of 1856 was too impractical to uphold,” faced serious opposition in the press, in parliament, and in his own government.50 Mill clearly felt strongly on the matter, as is testified by the density and intensity of his related correspondence as well as by the fact that he dispatched three letters to the editor of The Times (published on November 19, 24, and 30).51 He also wrote an article entitled “Treaty Obligations” for John Morley’s Fortnightly Review of December 1870.52 Mill’s comments on the “cowardly reluctance to look the fact in the face” were made in “Treaty Obligations.” As he went on to say from the passage already quoted, no case exemplified those general observations more than that of international treaties. Through the greater part of the nineteenth century, “the conscience of Europe” had been habituated to “the demoralising spectacle of treaties made only to be broken.”53 Having stood by and watched several such violations, including such gross acts as the annihilation of the Republic of Cracow in 1846, why was the pubic in Britain so agitated then, in November 1870, at the repudiation of some of the terms of the Treaty of 1856? Alas, not because public morality had progressed and become more sensitive to the respect of international obligations, but rather due to “the different aspect affronts and injuries wear to the unreflecting when addressed to ourselves and when addressed to others,” Mill feared.54 As he wrote in his first letter to The Times, it was “under the plea of honour” that war was being urged by many.55 Or, as he put it in his correspondence, those in favor of war would “sacrifice the safety of England to mere bluster and brag.” That the treaty of 1856 had not been allowed to fall into disuse (as it should have, in his opinion) “is a legacy of the evil Palmerstonian days.”56 Mill was adamant in “Treaty Obligations” that watching treaties not bind and nations unable to trust each other’s pledged word was “an evil state of things, most injurious to public morality.” It did not follow, however, “that this evil is likely to be remedied by ignoring the fact, that there are treaties which never will, and even which never ought to be permanently observed by those who have been obliged to submit to them; far less, therefore, to be permanently enforced.” The question therefore was: what means, then, are there of reconciling, in the greatest practicable degree, the inviolability of treaties and the sanctity of national faith, with the undoubted fact that treaties are

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not always fit to be kept, while yet those who have imposed them upon others weaker than themselves are not likely, if they retain confidence in their own strength, to grant a release from them?”57 He proposed two major rules that nations should be willing to abide by if such a reconciliation were to be achieved: In the first place, “They should abstain from imposing conditions which, on any just and reasonable view of human affairs, cannot be expected to be kept.” In the second place, “They should conclude their treaties, as commercial treaties are usually concluded, only for terms of years.” Expanding on the first rule, Mill argued that it was essential to establish the kinds of obligations “which nations are not warranted in imposing on one another.” Without going into details, one fundamental principle arising from his first rule was clear to Mill: The community of nations is essentially a republic of equals. Its purposes require that it should know no distinction of grades, no rights or privileges enjoyed by some and refused to others. The basis of international law—without which the weak, for whose protection chiefly international law exists, would never be secure—is, that the smallest and least powerful nation, in its capacity of a nation, is the equal of the strongest. Whatever rights belong to one belong to all, and can only be temporarily forfeited, even by misconduct, unless the erring nation is to be treated as a savage, and thrust out of the communion of civilised nations altogether.58 This meant that “all treaties which bind a nation, within itself and in its own affairs, by restrictions not common to all the rest, violate this principle.” In this category of restrictions, Mill included “a stipulation that a country shall maintain one form of government, or abjure another; that she shall abstain from fortifying places situated within her own territory; that she shall limit to a prescribed amount her army or her fleet, or the portion of each stationed in a particular part of her dominions,” unless equivalent limitations of armaments were consented to by the other signatories to the treaty “or by nations in general.” Such restrictions could be admissible “as a temporary penalty for crimes committed against other states.” Mill added one all-important proviso: that the period for which such “exceptional disabilities” could justly be imposed ought not to exceed the length of a generation; “or, more properly, the period at the end of which a majority of the adult population will have grown up from childhood subsequently to the offence, so that the people suffering the penalty are no longer, as a body, the same with those who shared in the fault.”59 However, for that very reason, the second stipulation was no less important: “Nations cannot rightfully bind themselves or others beyond the period to

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which human foresight can be presumed to extend; thus aggravating the danger which, to some extent, always exists, that the fulfilment of the obligation may, by change of circumstances, become either wrong or unwise.” Mill hastened to clarify that the expiration of a treaty should not imply that any money indemnity exacted by it should be repaid or that any territory ceded should be restored. Rather, the lapse of the treaty after a specified period would “merely reinstate the nation that had been punished, in those common rights of all nations, the enjoyment of which is the normal condition of an independent State; rights which no nation ought to be, and no high-spirited nation will ever consent to be, permanently dispossessed of.”60 So far so good, and so theoretical, one might say. But what should one do when faced with a nonideal situation, when a treaty that was not concluded, as Mill had recommended, for a finite number of years, but rather purported to be binding in perpetuity, was unilaterally repudiated by one of its signatories? This was the situation Gladstone’s government was finding itself in at the time. Given what I argued earlier in this chapter, it is not surprising that Mill had an answer to this question: “If these principles are sound, it remains to be considered how they are to be applied to past treaties, which, though containing stipulations which, to be legitimate, must be temporary,61 have been concluded without such limitation, and are afterwards violated, or, as by Russia at present, repudiated, on the assumption of a right superior to the faith of engagements.” Mill argued that, if “a lawless act” had been committed in the case under consideration, it did not entitle those who had imposed the conditions “to consider the lawlessness only, and to dismiss the more important consideration, whether, even if it was wrong to throw off the obligation, it would not be still more wrong to persist in enforcing it.” For “if, though not fit to be perpetual, it has been imposed in perpetuity, the question when it becomes right to throw it off is but a question of time.” And “no time having been fixed, Russia fixed her own time, and naturally chose the most convenient.”62 Meanwhile, Russia could have chosen a more honorable way of doing what it did. She should have “first exhausted all endeavours, and consented to some sacrifices, to attain the freedom she claimed by the general consent of Europe.” However, “this misconduct of Russia . . . does not entitle us to bring upon millions of innocent persons the unspeakable evils of war, in order to enforce an obligation which it was wrong to impose, and which we ought therefore plainly to declare that we do not desire to reimpose.” The appropriate response for the British government, Mill thought, was to protest vociferously and to follow a precedent set in the case of the annihilation of the Republic of Cracow (1846) by France’s then foreign minister, François Guizot. But the best solution would be joint peaceable action with the other

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powers concerned (the co-signatories of the Treaty of Paris), and he hoped that “if our Government stands firm against the unreasonable clamour of the war party,” “some arrangement may be come to by which the obnoxious stipulations may be abrogated with the consent of all concerned.”63 It would be interesting to compare Mill’s pronouncements on treaty obligations with the views on the same subject of the Chichele Professor as stated three years earlier. In “The Obligation of Treaties” (1867), Mountague Bernard left no doubts as to the difficulties involved in the issue.64 He insisted on the paramount importance of clarity and precision when treaties are concluded, so that disputes might be avoided in the future. But he did not go anywhere near Mill’s radical proposal that treaties that deprived states of rights constitutive of statehood and sovereignty should never be concluded for more than a limited period (roughly that of a generation).65 Mill comes out as having combined a particularly demanding set of ethical principles with a remarkable degree of pragmatism. Notes 1. Michael Walzer, “Mill’s ‘A Few Words on Non-intervention’: A Commentary”, in Nadia Urbinati and Alex Zakaras, eds, J. S. Mill’s Political Thought: A Bicentennial Reassessment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007),347–56, at pp. 348, 349. 2. On “international political theory” see, for instance: Chris Brown, Sovereignty, Rights and Justice: International Political Theory Today (Cambridge: Polity, 2002), 1–14; David Armitage, “The Fifty Years’ Rift: Intellectual History and International Relations”, Modern Intellectual History, 1 (2004), 97–109; Robert Jackson, Classical and Modern Thought on International Relations: From Anarchy to Cosmopolis (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 1–16. 3. The third category of international theory writings Wight identified—in a nowclassic article—was “[t]he parerga of political philosophers, philosophers and historians. Among them he included ‘J. S. Mill’s essay on the law of nations.” Martin Wight, “Why Is There No International Theory?”, in Herbert Butterfield and Martin Wight, eds., Essays in the Theory of International Politics, (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1966), 19. Apparently Wight had in mind James Mill’s ‘Law of Nations’. 4. Justin Rosenberg, quoted in: Edward Keene, International Political Thought: A Historical Introduction (Cambridge: Polity, 2005), 160. Keene adds, in the same context, that “it is the nineteenth-century liberals such as Mill who have probably suffered most” (ibid., 161). 5. Mill is absent from books such as: David Boucher, Political Theories of International Relations: From Thucydides to the Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); Howard Williams, International Relations in Political Theory (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1992); Howard Williams,

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Moorhead Wright and Tony Evans, eds., A Reader in International Relations and Political Theory (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1993). Two notable exceptions were: Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations (New York: Basic Books, 1977), 87–97, 101; and Charles R. Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), 82, 84n., 85–87, 112–114—both of which discussed briefly some of Mill’s main arguments in “A Few Words on Non-Intervention” (1859). Mill’s views on intervention were also briefly discussed in: R. J. Vincent, Nonintervention and International Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974), 54–56, 61–63; and Carsten Holbraad, The Concert of Europe: A Study in German and British International Theory 1815–1914 (London: Longman, 1970), 162–165, 168, 170, 176. The only article dealing directly with Mill’s international thought before the recent emergence of interest was: Kenneth E. Miller, “John Stuart Mill’s Theory of International Relations”, Journal of the History of Ideas, 22:4 (1961), 493–514; for brief comments see also F. R. Flournoy, “British Liberal Theories of International Relations (1848–1898),” Journal of the History of Ideas, 7:2 (1946), 195–217. Leaving the even greater body of work on Mill and imperialism/colonialism aside (a topic that I will not discuss here, because it requires more than a different article to do it any justice), some of the recent literature on Mill on international relations issues includes: Georgios Varouxakis, “John Stuart Mill on Intervention and Non-Intervention”, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 26:1 (1997), 57–76; Georgios Varouxakis, Mill on Nationality (London: Routledge, 2002); Endre Begby, “Liberty, Statehood, and Sovereignty: Walzer on Mill on Non-Intervention”, Journal of Military Ethics, 2:1 (2003), 46–62; J. Joseph Miller, “Forced to be Free: Rethinking J. S. Mill and Intervention”, Politics and Ethics Review, 1:2 (2005), 119–137; Beatte Jahn, “Classical Smoke, Classical Mirror: Kant and Mill in Liberal International Relations Theory”, in Beatte Jahn, ed., Classical Theory in International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 178–203; Walzer, “Mill’s ‘A Few Words on Non-Intervention’: A Commentary”, in Urbinati and Zakaras, 347–356; Thomas E. Schneider, “J. S. Mill and Fitzjames Stephen on the American Civil War”, History of Political Thought, 28:2 (2007), 290–304. See, e.g.: Chris Brown, Terry Nardin and Nicholas Rengger, eds., International Relations in Political Thought: Texts from the Ancient Greeks to the First World War, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 486–493; Gregory M. Reichberg, Henrik Syse, and Endre Begby , eds., The Ethics of War: Classic and Contemporary Readings, (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 574–585. Jackson, Classical and Modern Thought, 14. See also Brown, Sovereignty, Rights and Justice, 48, 62, 77–80, 93–94, 174, 247–248; Keene, International Political Thought, 160–4, 166–172. Mill emphasized how his practical experience as an employee of the East India Company benefited him and prevented him from being merely “a speculative writer” (J. S. Mill, The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, general editor

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F.E.L. Priestley and subsequently John M. Robson (Toronto and London: The University of Toronto Press, 1963–1991), hereafter CW, followed by volume number in Roman numerals and by page number/s in Arabic numerals, I, 87). Stefan Collini, Public Moralists: Political Thought and Intellectual Life in Britain 1850–1930 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 1–3. Emphasis (in both cases) added: “Treaty Obligations” (1870), in CW, XXI, 341–348, 343. Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ed. J.H. Burns and H.L.A. Hart, with a new Introduction by F. Rosen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 6, 296–297. See also Jeremy Bentham, Principles of International Law, in The Works of Jeremy Bentham, ed. John Bowring, (11 vols, Edinburgh: William Tait, 1843), Vol. II, 535–560. For an exposition of the problematic editing of the four essays that compose Principles of International Law see: Gunhil Hoogensen, International Relations, Security, and Jeremy Bentham (London: Routledge, 2005), 40–54. For a recent analysis on Bentham and international law see David Armitage, ‘ “A New Vattel”: Jeremy Bentham and the Law of Nations” (unpublished paper); see also: Hoogensen, International Relations, 94–100; M. W. Janis, “Jeremy Bentham and the Fashioning of ‘International Law’’, American Journal of International Law, 78 (1984), 405–418; B. Jacobini, ‘Some Observations Concerning Jeremy Bentham’s Concepts of International Law’ ”, American Journal of International Law, 42 (1948), 415–417; Georg Schwarzenberger, “Bentham’s Contribution to International Law and Organisation”, in George W. Keeton and Georg Schwarzenberger , eds., Jeremy Bentham and the Law: A Symposium (London: Stevens & Sons, 1948), 152–184. For a good introduction to Bentham’s writings on international politics see: Stephen Conway, ‘Bentham on Peace and War’ Utilitas, 1:1 (1989), 82–101. For an analysis of the development of ideas on international law in nineteenth-century Britain see: Casper Sylvest, “International Law in Nineteenth-Century Britain”, The British Yearbook of International Law, Vol. 75 (2004) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005), 9–70; for a more brief guide through the overall context see also Casper Sylvest, ‘The foundations of Victorian international law’, in: Duncan Bell, ed., Victorian Visions of Global Order: Empire and International Relations in Nineteenth-Century Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 47–66; also: Michael Lobban, “English Approaches to International Law in the Nineteenth Century”, in Matthew Craven, Malosia Fitzmaurice and Maria Vogiatzi, eds., Time, History and International Law (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 2007), 65–90. See Wilfrid E. Rumble, The Thought of John Austin: Jurisprudence, Colonial Reform, and the British Constitution (London: Athlone Press, 1985), 24–26; cf. A.D.E. Lewis, “John Austin (1790–1859): Pupil of Bentham”, The Bentham Newsletter, 2 (1979), 18–29. For a work that does highlight Austin’s importance for the younger Mill see: Richard B. Friedman, “An Introduction to Mill’s Theory of Authority,” in J. B. Schneewind, ed., Mill: A Collection of Critical Essays (London: Macmillan, 1968), 379–425.

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17. John Austin, The Province of Jurisprudence Determined [1832], ed. Wilfrid E. Rumble (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 171. 18. Mill, ‘Austin on Jurisprudence’ [1863], CW, XXI, 167–205, 177. 19. Wilfried E. Rumble, ‘Introduction’, in Austin, The Province of Jurisprudence Determined, vii-xxvii, xvii. See also Wilfried E. Rumble, ‘Nineteenth-Century Perceptions of John Austin: Utilitarianism and the Reviews of The Province on Jurisprudence Determined ’, Utilitas, 3:2 (1991), 199–216, 214. 20. T. W. Lancaster, quoted in: Wilfrid E. Rumble, Doing Austin Justice: The Reception of John Austin’s Philosophy of Law in Nineteenth-Century England (London: Continuum, 2005), 68–69. Lancaster was attacking the 15-page prospectus of Austin’s course in jurisprudence at the recently (1826) established University of London in Gower Street (later University College London), which provoked vociferous reactions from religious circles on account of its secular ethos; see Rumble, Doing Austin Justice, 68–69; and Rumble, ‘NineteenthCentury Perceptions’, 213–214. 21. Rumble, Doing Austin Justice, 75–101 (Chapter 5: ‘John Stuart Mill on Austin’). 22. “Vindication of the French Revolution of February 1848”, CW, XX, 345–346. 23. Thus: “. . . the rules of ordinary international morality imply reciprocity.” (CW, XXI, 118); “. . . that its legitimacy may be considered to have passed into a maxim of what is called international law.” (CW, XXI, 121). 24. James Mill, The article “Law of Nations”, reprinted from The Supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica (London: J. Innes, n.d. [original: 1823]), 28. 25. Emphasis added: Mill, Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St. Andrews [1867], CW, XXI, 217–257, 246. 26. Ibid., XXI, 246. Although international law was slow to establish itself as a subject, by the time Mill gave his Inaugural Address at St Andrews (1867), the Chichele Chair of International Law and Diplomacy at Oxford University had been established in 1859 (and the Whewell Chair of International Law at the University of Cambridge was shortly to be first occupied in 1869): see Sylvest, “The Foundations”, 63 (n.19). 27. CW, XXI, 246–247. 28. Mill spoke of “international law” without challenging its status as proper law in a brief article he wrote in 1870 (“Treaty Obligations”, CW, XXI, 343–348), but there is no reason to believe that he changed his mind between 1867 (“Inaugural Address . . .”) and 1870. Rather, he had other much more urgent preoccupations to argue for in “Treaty Obligations” (whether Britain should go to war with Russia or not—see Section VI) for him to have time to discuss the nature of “international law”. 29. See Georgios Varouxakis, “Cosmopolitan Patriotism in J. S. Mill’s Political Thought and Activism”, in Nadia Urbinati and Alex Zakaras , eds., J. S. Mill’s Political Thought: A Bicentennial Reassessment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 277–297. 30. First published in Fraser’s Magazine, LX (December 1859) and included by Mill to be reprinted in his volumes of selected essays under the title Dissertations and Discussions, Vol. III (1867), 153–78; now in: CW, XXI, 109–24.

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31. For more see: Varouxakis, Victorian Political Thought on France and the French (Basingtoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 59–66 32. For details see Varouxakis, “Mill on Intervention,” particularly 61–67. 33. “The Spanish Question” [1837], CW, XXXI, 359–388, particularly 373–375; Mill, letter to James Beal, 17 April 1865, ibid., XVI, 1033; “The Westminster Election of 1865 [1]”, CW, XXVIII, 17; “Westminster Election 1865 [4]”, ibid., XXVIII, 39. 34. With the exception of Varouxakis, “Mill on Intervention,” particularly 70–75. 35. First published in Westminster Review, LI (April 1849); reprinted in Mill’s Dissertations and Discussions; now in CW, XX, 317–363. 36. Ibid., I, 241; Ibid., XIV, 72. 37. Walzer, ‘Mill’s “A Few Words . . .” ’, 352. 38. Emphasis added: CW, XXI, 123. 39. Cf. what T. H. Green had to say in the late 1850s on the same question: “But our duty was most clearly defined when Russia violated the integrity at once of Hungary and the Wallachian Principality—the latter being the very offence which we made a “casus belli” a few years afterwards, and Hungary, properly speaking, being an independent nation merely allied with Austria. Having a reasonable chance of success, we ought not to have shrunk from interfering to prevent such a violation of law on account of the possible dangers that might have arisen, any more than we should hesitate to apprehend a murderer for the chance of his having a pistol in his pocket.” Emphasis added: T. H. Green, ‘Can interference with foreign nations in any case be justifiable?’ in T. H. Green, Collected Works of T. H. Green, 5 vols, ed. Peter Nicholson (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1997), Vol. 5 [Additional Writings], 15–19, 18–19. This is striking given that Green (an admirer of Cobden and Bright) is seen as “a staunch defender of the principle of non-intervention in international politics” (Duncan Bell and Casper Sylvest, “International Society in Victorian Political Thought: T. H. Green, Herbert Spencer, and Henry Sidgwick”, Modern Intellectual History, 207–238, 218 n33). For an assessment of the peculiarities of the case of Hungary in 1848–1849 see: E. J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital 1848–1875 (London: Cardinal, 1989 [1975]), 31–33. 40. CW, XXI, 124. 41. Mountague Bernard, On the Principle of Non-intervention: A Lecture delivered in the Hall of All Souls’ College (Oxford and London: J. H. and Jas. Parker, December 1860), 3, 22. 42. CW, XX, 344–8; Ibid., XIX, 546–552. 43. See Varouxakis, “Cosmopolitan patriotism . . .”; and Varouxakis, Mill on Nationality. 44. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 90. See my arguments to the contrary in: Varouxakis, “Mill on Intervention”, 72–73 (and n.80 and n.82). 45. For some details see: Varouxakis, Mill on Nationality, 32–37, 103–110. 46. ‘The Contest in America’ [1862], CW, XXI, 125–142, 141–142. 47. Principles of Political Economy, Ibid., III, 594. 48. The Subjection of Women, Ibid., XXI, 330. See also Ibid., XVI, 1442. 49. Ibid., XX, 340–344.

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50. Jonathan Parry, The Politics of Patriotism: English Liberalism, National Identity and Europe, 1830–1886 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 284–286; W. E. Mosse, “Public opinion and foreign policy: the British public and the war scare of November 1870”, Historical Journal, 6:1 (1963), 38–58; R. W. Seton-Watson, Britain in Europe 1789–1914: A Survey of Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1938), 499–500. 51. CW, XVII, 1775, 1776–1777, 1777–1778, 1778–1880, 1780, 1780–1882, 1783, 1783–1784, 1784—letters to Leonard H. Courtney (November 18 1870); Henry Fawcett (November 18 1870); John Morley (November 18 1870); Leonard H. Courtney (November 19 1870); Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke (November 19 1870); William Thomas Thornton (November 21 1870); Henry Fawcett (November 23 1870); Joseph Sturge (November 23 1870); Emile de Laveley (November 26 1870). 52. Mill, “Treaty Obligations”, CW, XXI, 341–8. For short (and rather shallow) comments on this article see Miller, “J. S. Mill’s Theory of International Relations,” 181–182. 53. CW, XXI, 343. 54. Ibid., XXI, 343–344. 55. Ibid., XXV, 1224. 56. Ibid., XVII, 1781, 1778. Mill absolutely loathed Palmerston because of what he saw as Palmerston’s dangerous populist manipulation of foreign policy for domestic popularity purposes. He wrote once, on such an occasion, that he “would walk twenty miles to see him [Palmerston] hanged” (CW, XIII, 459–460). 57. Ibid., XXI, 345. 58. Ibid., XXI, 346. 59. Ibid., XXI, 346. 60. Ibid., XXI, 346–347. 61. The stipulation of the Treaty of 1856 imposing the demilitarization of the Black Sea fell squarely in that category, given what Mill had said earlier on and the examples he had given (Ibid., XXI, 346). 62. Ibid., XXI, 347. 63. Ibid., XXI, 348. 64. Mountague Bernard, ‘The Obligation of Treaties’ (Lecture IV), in Montague Bernard, Four Lectures on Subjects Connected with Diplomacy (London: Macmillan, 1868), 163–205. 65. It should be noted that Mill insisted, in the same spirit (and roughly at the same time) on limiting the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine by Germany to a finite period (of, say, around 30 years) or, even better, making an independent neutralized republic of it, and then offering the population of the provinces a referendum to decide whether they wished to be part of Germany or France thereafter. See Mill’s correspondence of the period, e.g., CW, XVII, 1767, 1795.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Resilience of Natural Law in the Writings of Sir Travers Twiss Andrew Fitzmaurice

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n the basis of all the available evidence, it would seem that Sir Travers Twiss, Regius Professor of Civil Law at Oxford and Queen’s Advocate General, married a prostitute. Twiss moved in elevated circles. He was on friendly terms with leaders and statesmen including Queen Victoria, Prince Metternich, and William Gladstone.1 Twiss had married Lady Twiss in Dresden in 1862 when he was, at 53, a man “of middling age” while she, at 22, was a “handsome and smart” young woman of supposedly Polish background. Unfortunately for Twiss, a London solicitor called Alexander Chaffers came to his door in 1863 asking for 150 pounds in order that he might continue to conceal his knowledge of Lady Twiss’s former life as a “foreign” prostitute who walked the streets of the West End. Twiss paid 50 pounds through his solicitor, “in full of all demands,” and no doubt held his breath. When Chaffers eventually returned, Twiss refused to pay any more. But Twiss had become entangled with an honorable blackmailer. Chaffers was as good as his word, and on April 4, 1871, he publicly denounced Lady Twiss by statutory declaration at the Bow Street Police Court. Chaffers claimed that Lady Twiss, under the name Marie Gelas, had been the “inmate of a score of London dens.”2 Her conduct was so shameful, “even for a woman of her abandoned class,” that she had been thrown out of a number of “resorts,” including Holborn Casino.3 Following her marriage to Twiss, Lady Twiss’s rise had been such that she was twice presented at court and introduced to Queen Victoria.

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Twiss had no choice but to bring a charge against Chaffers of libel in the attempt to extort money. Indeed, the Archbishop of Canterbury virtually ordered him to pursue that course (Twiss was Vicar General to the Archbishop).4 The case was proceeding well at first for the Twisses, but Chaffers mounted what in Victorian England was surely a kamikaze defense. He argued that he knew Lady Twiss was “a woman of the town,” of course, because he had first picked her up on April 15, 1859, in Regent Street “between 9 and 10 o’clock in the evening” and “accompanied her to her lodgings” where he paid her a sovereign for two hours of her time.5 Thereafter, he had spent many evenings with Maria Gelas, passing “the whole night with her,” and she had continued as his mistress right up until 1863, a year after her marriage to Twiss.6 He added, moreover, that Travers Twiss had also been one of her clients prior to their marriage and had kept her at the rate of five pounds per week.7 On top of this evidence, one of Lady Twiss’s key witnesses refused to corroborate her account of her origins.8 At this point in 1872, Twiss and his wife abandoned the case, and Twiss resigned from all his public offices, including that of Queen’s Advocate General. It would appear that, regarding status as a mantle, Twiss and Maria Gelas had invented Lady Twiss as the orphaned daughter of a Polish nobleman and general. The marriage in Dresden had been a ruse. It must have been a painful irony, obvious to all, that Twiss was one of four eminent men entrusted with the 1865 Royal Commission on marriage law. A principal duty of the commission had been to examine the adequacy of the proofs for the contract of marriage.9 The libel case had been “the town-talk for a fortnight.”10 This was the end of Twiss’s public service in Britain. He fled London for Basle because, according to his own account, he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. “My mind would have given way under the weight of the calamities.”11 John Jackson, the Bishop of London, wrote across the top of one of Twiss’s scrawled notes concerning the scandal: “Twiss: The man I believe to be a little mad but thoroughly indignant.”12 This was not, however, the end of Twiss’s intellectual career. Indeed, retirement had its advantages, and it should come as no surprise that Twiss reacted to this disaster by spending the next six years translating the six volumes of Henry Bracton’s thirteenth century Laws and Constitution of England from Latin into English.13 This may appear to be a remarkable story. Gross moral turpitude on the part of an Oxford Professor of Civil Law in Victorian England was not to be expected. I believe, however, that this event in Twiss’s personal life sheds light on his professional life. Twiss was a natural law theorist. According to Jeremy Bentham and his many Victorian followers, natural law theory was a form of gross intellectual turpitude. Like Oxford Civil Law professors

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married to prostitutes, natural law theorists were supposed to be a fairly rare breed in Victorian England. Most recent commentators have agreed that natural law theory was almost all but extinguished in the nineteenth century. It would seem therefore that Travers Twiss was guilty of perversion in both his private and professional lives. On the question of Twiss’s marriage, however, we might ask whether it was really so extraordinary. Perversion was surely the obverse side of the Victorian moral order. The story of Twiss’s marriage is in many ways characteristically Victorian.14 What I would like to suggest in this paper is that a similar argument applies to Twiss’s professional life: that is, natural law theory, I will argue, was thriving as much as prostitution in Victorian England, even if, like prostitution, it was not supposed to, and Twiss was only one of many practitioners. Twiss’s life spanned the century: he was born 1809 and died in 1897.15 During this time, he was a professor of political economy at Oxford, succeeding Herman Merivale in that post; professor of international law at King’s College, London; and Regius Professor of Civil Law at Oxford. He was called to the bar in 1840 and became the Queen’s Advocate General in 1867. As an authority in ecclesiastical as well as civil law, in 1852 he became the Vicar General to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and in 1858 became Chancellor of the Diocese of London. Even after his withdrawal from public life in 1872, Twiss remained one of the most prominent international lawyers of his generation. Indeed, he was a leader of the generation who fought for the institutional recognition of the discipline. But my argument here is that Twiss was neither particularly remarkable as an intellectual nor was he particularly influential. Rather, I will argue, he was representative of a widely shared understanding of international law in Victorian Britain. We have become accustomed to the notion that natural law peaked in the seventeenth century in the writings of the “modern” natural theorists such as Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes, Samuel Pufendorf, and John Locke. In the Enlightenment, the emphasis shifted from natural law to natural rights as writers such as Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746) and Adam Ferguson (1723–1816) questioned the usefulness of basing theories of human behavior on an original state of nature and argued that everything that could be learned from this hypothetical state could more easily be gained from history. The Enlightenment natural rights theorists were superseded in the nineteenth century by the positivists, led by Bentham and John Austin, and by the evolutionary legal theorists of whom Henry Sumner Maine is the obvious example.16 Some cracks are now starting to appear in this account insofar as it concerns the nineteenth century and the decline of both natural law and natural rights. The outstanding effort in this regard is Martti

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Koskenniemi’s Gentle Civilizer of Nations, which has tried to “do away” with the image of nineteenth century lawyers as positivists with a passion for sovereignty.17 Jennifer Pitts has conceded that there were one or two natural law exceptions to the positivist rule.18 Casper Sylvest has recognized that the “succession of an outmoded naturalism by a confident positivism” is “too simplistic,” while conceding that natural law nevertheless had a “rough ride.”19 I would argue that the extent of nineteenth century natural law theory was greater than even Sylvest claims and that British natural law theorists did not perceive themselves to be besieged by positivism. Twiss’s Genealogy of the Law of Nations Travers Twiss provided a highly instructive genealogy for the history of the law of nations and international thought in his numerous works, including Two Introductory Lectures on the Science of International Law published in 1856 and The Law of Nations published in 1861. According to Twiss, the law of nations was initiated in its first period by Grotius who depended largely on natural law for his general conclusions about relations between states.20 Twiss argued that, following the Thirty Years’ War, an increasing number of treaties were being made between states, and this enabled for the first time the study of the theory of the law of nations along with the positive study of their relations (this distinction, Twiss said, Grotius had instituted in his division between natural and customary law). He claimed that this distinction between natural law-based theory and the positive description of relations between states was in the first instance made in 1650 by the Oxford Professor of Civil Law Richard Zouch.21 The second period in the history of the law of nations was dominated by Pufendorf who, as far as Twiss was concerned, obstructed rather than advanced the study of natural law.22 The third period, from 1740 to 1785, was characterized by the writing of Christian Wolff who perfected the natural law approach to the law of nations. This period was also characterized by a great advance in positivism led by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz and Johann Jacob Moser.23 Leibnitz, according to Twiss, was the first to begin the positivist work of collecting conventions concluded between independent states. But Twiss’s positivist hero was Moser, the German constitutionalist. Moser appealed to experience over reason as a weapon against absolutism and compiled a history of judicial artifacts that Dale Van Kley describes as a “sprawling formless museum.”24 But, according to Twiss, Moser had “constructed a science, hitherto unknown, of the positive law of nations.”25 At the end of the eighteenth century, therefore, Twiss saw the law of nations divided between the two great branches: the natural law approach

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and the positivists. He then went on to explain the final and most important development in the understanding of law of nations, which began with the work of Georg Friedrich von Martens. This fourth period, which Twiss believed continued through to his own time of writing, was, he declared, “characterized by the combined cultivation of the two branches as a whole.”26 For Twiss, therefore, the dominant understanding of international law in the nineteenth century came not from positivism but, rather, was a fusion of natural and positive law. According to Twiss, von Martens, followed by Theodore Schmalz, Johann Ludwig Klüber, and Henry Wheaton, brought these two branches of international law together into one system in which the practical application of law followed the general principles distilled by the great natural law theorists. Importantly, Twiss did not believe himself to be promoting his preferred system of international law in this history. What he understood himself to be doing was simply describing the development of theories of international law up to the present day. It would appear that historians have accepted the authority of Bentham and Austin in describing a nineteenth century dominated by positivism, and particularly a positivism hostile to natural law.27 In contrast, Twiss saw natural law maintaining a central role in the understanding of international law and, importantly, he understood natural law and the positive study of law to be complementary. Indeed, according to Twiss, natural law had only just reached its peak in his own time because it had developed a mature relationship with positivism. There could hardly be a greater contrast, therefore, between Twiss’s perception of the natural law tradition and the notion that natural law was in decline in this period. He completely dismissed what he appeared to regard as two extremes of the late eighteenth century: first, he dismissed Kant and his followers as Utopians and, notably, he ignored Bentham and dismissed Austin among the positivists.28 In the final pages of his Two Introductory Lectures on the Science of International Law, Twiss turned to Austin whom he noted “seems disposed to banish the term ‘international law’ from the vocabulary of jurisprudence, and to substitute ‘international morality.’ ”29 Twiss responded that there was indeed no international sovereign, no lawgiver nor supreme judge. But he insisted on maintaining the notion of a law by returning to the central tenet of the seventeenth century or “modern” natural law theorists, namely, “selfprotection” or self-preservation. Self-protection was sufficiently powerful to merit the title of law, argued Twiss, because, like the laws of a sovereign, it is compelling. A state, he said “cannot violate this law without exposing itself to the hazard of suspending its own international life.”30 Twiss was skeptical about the notion of a state of nature. “Man is sometimes spoken of,” he observed, “as living in a state of Nature when he is living

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under the rudest forms of physical life, and the law of his existence under such forms is by certain writers laid down to be the Law of Nature applicable to human beings.”31 He argued, however, in the fashion of Adam Ferguson, that all human states are natural, although he cited the Scottish lawyer James Reddie (1775–1852) on the application of that principle to the law of nations: “Whether we regard man in a rude state of what is termed savage life, or in a refined state of what is called civilized society, the one condition being equally natural with the other, the law which Reason suggests to him in either case will be equally the Law of Nature.”32 For Twiss, this was the law of nature, “the law which Natural Reason teaches all mankind.”33 It has been argued that as the natural law tradition increasingly emphasized natural rights during the eighteenth century, there was a corresponding shift away from thinking about duties.34 Importantly, however, Twiss emphasized that the first role of natural law was that it imposed “obligations,” or duties, upon states. The test of the “Independence” of a political community was “their aptitude or capacity to discharge the obligations of Natural Society towards other political communities.”35 “It is obvious,” he argued, “that Nations are under a natural obligation to refrain from all acts which tend to destroy their Natural Society.”36 The purpose of the natural society of political communities is to allow the preservation of its members so that the failure of a state to act according to its natural duties would lead to it ceasing to exist: “The sanction of the Natural Law of Nations is found in the fact that its violation terminates the existence of an Independent State.”37 It would appear to be our idée fixe with nineteenth century positivism that has allowed a scholar as careful as Jennifer Pitts to describe Twiss as one of the “Victorian positivist jurists” who insisted only upon describing “indisputable social facts.” As proof of this positivism, she cites Twiss in the Preface to his Law of Nations claiming to “make ‘no pretension’ to present a normative theory” and with being concerned with “the existing usages of state life.”38 Taken on such evidence alone, Twiss could qualify as a positivist, and he certainly had no quarrel with positivism. But in the following sentence, Twiss added that his further object was to discover the way in which the uses of state life reflected a “right” or “jus” in international relations. His interest, that is, was in whether those uses were, as he put it Grotian natural law language, merely “an instinctive appreciation on the part of independent political bodies of what is necessary for their existence, or is conducive to their mutual well being.”39 Twiss carefully insisted in this same work, and even in the Preface, on the limitations of positivism, warning, for example, against regarding law as the creation only of sovereign powers.40 In the chapter in his Law of Nations on the “Sources of the Law of Nations,” Twiss opened with a lengthy discourse on “Natural and Positive

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Law” and there, as in his lectures, he insisted that the natural law governing the behavior of states was self-preservation. Indeed, in this work, Twiss presented the strikingly contemporary argument that self-preservation among the states was enforced all the better by the threat of war in the context of the “Balance of Power amongst the Greater States.”41 Contemporary Natural Law Theorists When we turn from Twiss to his British contemporaries, it is clear that a far greater number shared his attachment to natural law than we have been prepared to concede. In 1820, the anonymous author of A plain and candid statement of facts, respecting the natural and civil rights of man declared that “Preservation of life is the first law of nature.”42 James Reddie made it clear in his Inquiries in International Law, first published late in his life in 1842, that there was a struggle between positivism and natural law. That struggle was no doubt familiar to him from the dinner table because his own son, John Reddie, had published in 1828 A Letter to the Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain on the Expediency of a Proposal to Form a New Civil Code for England. In this letter, he ridiculed “what has been rather absurdly termed natural law” and argued instead that all law is the product of history and custom, even supposedly “natural” laws.43 But James Reddie, like Twiss, refused to see the traditions of natural law and positivism as antagonistic while at the same time he mounted a strong defense of the need for natural law foundations to international law. “Care must be taken, not to found the international law of mankind entirely on the stipulations of treaties, or even upon the usages of the modern nations of Europe, notwithstanding the high degree of civilization they have attained; and not to assign the natural law of nations, a subordinate, or secondary place.”44 This, he claimed, was an “error, to which the practical school is also liable.” James Reddie argued that “the positive law of nations” was “frequently called the practical law of nations; though rather incorrectly, because the principles of the natural law of nations, are as frequently applicable in actual practice, as the rules of international law founded on the acts of men.”45 William Oke Manning (1809–1878) claimed to be the author of the first systematic English treatise on the laws of nations (a term he preferred over “international law”), although there was little that was original in his treatment of the subject.46 He framed his discussion in terms of the law of nature arguing that “the obligations of the fundamental principles of the law of nations arise from the law of nature.”47 For Manning, as for Twiss, the laws of nature were those revealed by the seventeenth century natural law theorists. This was the theory of unsociable sociability, that is, the claim that it is

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out of a need to protect ourselves that we seek society and respect laws that bind us. Manning argued that to behave in this way was to act in a manner consistent with “utility,” that is, in accordance with our self-interests and greatest happiness. He noted that, although this principle of utility was very ancient, it was Bentham who had popularized it in his own time.48 But, for Manning, this was proof that the work of Bentham and the utilitarians was entirely consistent with natural law theory. Like Twiss, Manning saw no conflict between positivism and utilitarianism on the one hand and natural law on the other. He sought a synthesis between these two great branches of the law of nations. Like Twiss, Manning followed his chapter on the natural law of nations with a chapter on the positive law of nations. Like Twiss, Manning devoted a large portion of his work to showing that this synthesis between natural law and positivism had been sought by previous generations of writers but was reaching maturity in his own time. Manning also employed the notion of a state of nature, thus rejecting skepticism about the usefulness of this mythical state. The community of nations was proof of the existence of this state of nature that was, he argued citing Locke and Hooker (and implicitly rejecting Hobbes and Pufendorf on this question), a state of liberty but not of license. For Manning, as for Twiss, natural law applied to the international community of states as much as it did to individuals in a state of nature.49 Manning’s use of the state of nature was by no means idiosyncratic. In The Law of Nature and Nations (1855), Leone Levi made extensive use of the notion of a state of nature and, while disagreeing with Hobbes that it was a state of war, he too concluded that we are driven to society by the natural law of self-preservation. For Levi, as for Twiss, this was the principle that guided the conduct of states in their relations with each other. Similarly, in his 1850 lecture Natural Law, Charles James Foster declared that all legislative systems, no matter how diverse, are pervaded by “a principle common to human nature,” and all legislative systems may also be judged, he added, by the degree to which they act on that principle. “But what is this principle?” he asked. He then proceeded with a lecture that embraced the modern natural law assumptions of Grotius and Pufendorf but also, like Twiss and Manning, insisted on the compatibility of normative thinking with the positivism of Bentham and Austin.50 Four years later, in 1854, Robert Joseph Phillimore (1810–1885), in his three-volume Commentaries upon International Law, declared that custom and usage were merely the outward reflection of “the consent of nations to things which are naturally . . . binding upon them.”51 Whereas Maine would argue that natural law was an historical and cultural creation, Phillimore used history and positive law to demonstrate the universality of natural law.

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The Civil Law Context One year later, in 1855, Twiss followed Phillimore as Regius Professor of Civil Law at Oxford. By this date, the duties of the Regius Professor had become almost nonexistent but it was precisely for this reason that, immediately following his appointment, Twiss petitioned the university to reinvigorate the discipline of civil law, pointing to its links with all fields of the law. He saw his own tenure of the chair as an opportunity to that end.52 Both Twiss and Phillimore were prominent members of the Doctors’ Commons, the college of civilian lawyers; Levi was a less prominent member.53 The Doctors’ Commons was dissolved in the 1860s prior to which time it was notoriously described in David Copperfield (1850) as “a cosey, dosey, old-fashioned, time-forgotten, sleepy-headed little family party.”54 Prior to its demise, however, the civilian lawyers of the Doctors’ Commons exercised real power by serving the ecclesiastical courts and the admiralty courts, the two formal institutional contexts in which the civil law was employed in England. The role of Queen’s (or King’s) advocate general, the position held by Twiss from 1867 to 1872, was drawn from the Doctors’ Commons and was parallel to that of attorney general in the common law. The queen’s advocate general was consulted by government on admiralty matters in particular. Roundell Palmer, who was solicitor general from 1861 to 1863 in Palmerston’s government, remarked that when, for example, a British ship, The Prince of Wales, was wrecked and plundered on the Brazilian coast, “reprisals were taken on the advice of Sir Robert Phillimore only” (Phillimore being at that time the queen’s advocate general) while Palmer was completely bypassed.55 Far from being dozy and cozy, the Doctors’ Commons was a busy and tempestuous college in its last century. The Minute Book for the period from July 12, 1828, to July 10, 1865, reveals that Twiss, for example, was present at college meetings several times a year for 37 years.56 The Court of Probate Act of 1857 was the death knell of the college, transferring authority in ecclesiastical matters to the common law courts. The meeting of the college held on Friday, January 15, 1858, with 20 of 26 members present revealed that a small majority of the college members were in favor of dissolving the Doctors’ Commons and profiting from the sale of its property, which was worth a tantalizing 4000 pounds per member.57 Twiss, along with Dr. John Lee, led a spirited but ultimately futile resistance against this movement and, despite “most stormed” debates, the college gradually wound down.58 Just as the formal functions of civil law began to become redundant, the rise of international law provided a new need for civil law and civil lawyers because it inherited from the law of nations a deep debt to the Roman law

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jus gentium. Far from being moribund, civil law gained a new lease on life. Indeed, Twiss’s own life was divided by the changing role of the civil law. In his early career, from the 1830s to the 1860s, his time was largely consumed by his thriving practice in the ecclesiastical courts.59 In this period, he also held university lectureships, practiced in the admiralty courts, and published on a variety of subjects including international law. By the 1850s and 1860s, with the gradual demise of the ecclesiastical courts, he was increasingly occupied with international law, including his role as queen’s advocate general. By the 1870s and 1880s, international law was very much Twiss’s focus, just as it had by that time become the main concern of civil law in England. This shifting role for civil law was evident in George Bowyer’s (1811–1883) Commentaries on the Modern Civil Law (1851). Bowyer, a reader at the Middle Temple, argued that Roman law, the foundation of civil law, was the “most important source of equitable rules to determine questions in the Law of Nations.”60 Twenty-three years later, he argued that the civil law had flourished even more since the publication of his Commentaries of 1851 because of the growing importance of international law.61 Like many of his contemporaries, Bowyer placed international law in a natural law framework. He argued that the ancients had misunderstood the character of natural law. For a correct understanding, it was necessary to turn to the “moderns,” including Grotius and Pufendorf.62 Like Manning, Levi, Foster, and Twiss, Bowyer defined natural law as the “universal obligatory law” whereby the “interest of man” and the “great power of human creatures to hurt each other” leads us to “mutual assistance.”63 He saw his book as “an introduction to Grotius, Pufendorf and Vattel” who, he observed, could not be understood without a “competent knowledge of the Civil Law.”64 This view was shared by many international lawyers. Manning commented in 1839 that the reason “the systematic writers on the Law of Nations” had “been all foreigners” was chiefly due to “the similarity of the method of studying the Law of Nations, and that adopted in the study of the Roman Law.”65 As a Scot, James Lorimer, professor of the law of nature and nations at the University of Edinburgh, was no stranger to the civil law. He was true to the natural law obligations of his chair when he published his treatise the Institutes of Law . . . as Determined by Nature in 1872. He believed himself to be defending Scottish law, with its civic law tradition, against the influence of Bentham and Austin, and he deliberately sought to develop legal principles from Scottish and Continental natural philosophers.66 Even somebody as deeply committed to Henry Sumner Maine’s historical interpretation of law as John Westlake, Maine’s successor as Regius Professor of

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Civil Law at Cambridge, was unable entirely to dispense with the notion of natural law.67 A striking element common to most of these nineteenth-century natural law theorists is that they were concerned wholly or in part with international law. Clearly, the positivists’ arguments against natural law were more persuasive where positive law prevailed, namely, under sovereignty. Austin had rejected international law on much the same grounds that he rejected natural law (neither system was legislated by a sovereign power). There was, of course, a positive response to Austin, namely, that international laws were recognized by sovereign powers.68 But any theorist who did not accept Austin’s dismissal of international law as law, particularly anyone with internationalist sympathies, would almost inevitably be inclined to return to natural law principles in order to provide a foundation for international law. The Internationalism of Natural Law This internationalism brings us to a distinguishing feature of Twiss’s work, namely, that it is not particularly British. Twiss did not perceive himself to be working in a British environment. He developed his views on international law in a vigorous and constant dialogue with European contemporaries. Importantly, Twiss, as he himself noted, shared the natural law foundations of his theory of international law with a host of European writers throughout the century, including the Germans Auguste-William Heffter and Johann Ludwig Klüber in the first half of the century; numerous French international lawyers of the second half, including Henry Bonfils, Frantz Despagnet, Gaston Jèze, Edouard Tartarin, and Charles Salomon; Italians, notably Pasquale Fiore; and also Americans such as Henry Wheaton and Francis Lieber. All these writers shared Twiss’s insistence on the compatibility of natural and positive law. British writing on international law in this period must be understood as a branch of this larger movement. Indeed, we cannot understand the persistence of the natural law tradition in Britain without placing it in the larger context of the flourishing of natural and international law on the continent and in America in the nineteenth century. Like Twiss, the majority of continental and American natural law theorists saw no conflict between the aims of positivism and natural law. Twiss pursued his internationalism institutionally as well as discursively. He was a regular contributor to the Revue de droit international and the Annuaire de l’ institut de droit international. He was an active and prominent member of the Institut de droit international, the first professional organization of international law. He was three times vice president of the Institut and helped to reform its constitution.69 He was absent from the list

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of founding members of the Institut, although this fact is less surprising when we remember that 1872, the year in which Gustave Moynier, Gustave Rolin-Jaequemyns, and Francis Lieber, among others, began talks to establish the institute, was the year in which Twiss was in court defending his wife.70 In 1873, Twiss did manage, however, to attend the foundation in Brussels of the Association for the Reform and Codification of the Law of Nations (subsequently the International Law Association) for which he was the English vice president. He also acted as an unofficial advisor to the British government at Otto von Bismarck’s Berlin Conference of 1884–1885.71 The conference had been called to determine the rules governing European colonial powers engaged in the colonization of Africa as colonial competition increasingly posed the possibility of conflict. It was Twiss; the permanent under-secretary, Sir Julian Pauncefote; and the lord chancellor, Roundell Palmer, who largely determined British policy at the conference.72 The resolutions from the conference echoed Twiss’s argument that the Congo rivers should be open to free navigation and that free trade should prevail throughout the Congo basin while at the same time the region should come under an international protectorate rather than being neutral (a recipe, according to Twiss, for chaos).73 Thus, Twiss helped at the birth of the colonial “monstrosity,” as William Roger Louis puts it, which grew into the Congo Free State.74 Indeed, Twiss was the member of the British delegation most positively disposed to King Leopold, and his influence appears to have been crucial in bringing colleagues to favor the Belgian position. Twiss acted not only for the British government on questions of international law (albeit unofficially after 1872) but also for other states, notably Belgium or, rather, Leopold. He drafted the constitution of the Congo Free State, and in 1887, he was rewarded by King Leopold with an Order of Leopold. Leopold had earlier used Twiss’s 1883 publications on the free navigation of the Congo to support his own argument for an international association for the region. In this discursive and institutional internationalism, Twiss was joined by his British contemporaries. James Reddie believed himself to be continuing the work of German legal scholarship, notably Friedrich Carl von Savigny, which in turn he perceived as a continuation of the ideals of the Scottish Enlightenment.75 Savigny had identified and edited Gaius’s Institutes which, as Travers Twiss recounted in his Epitome of Barthold Georg Niebuhr’s History of Rome, had been discovered by Niebuhr as a palimpsest in the Verona chapter library in 1816.76 Gaius’s work was one of the principal sources of Roman law, but it had previously only been known through references in other texts. The historical context that Gaius added to laws treated abstractly in Justinian’s Institutes, the great Roman law compendium, complemented Savigny’s development of the German historical school of

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jurisprudence. But although Savigny was an historicist, he remained deeply committed to the Roman law unlike some of his colleagues, and he was accordingly greatly admired by contemporary natural and civil lawyers who, at the same time, usually saw no conflict between their universalist principles and an historical approach to their subject.77 George Bowyer studied Roman law in Genoa. Lorimer studied in Geneva and Italy. He then studied law in Berlin and there met Savigny. In 1873, Lorimer was one of the 11 founding members of the Institut de droit international.78 Westlake, another admirer of Savigny, like Twiss became vice president of the Institut and editor of the Revue de droit international. Lorimer worked more closely with the prolific Belgian, Ernest Nys, than with any of his British contemporaries.79 He acquired a “European reputation” as his former student John Kirkpatrick put it in the introduction to Nys’s French translation of Lorimer’s Institutes of Law that was published, significantly, with the title Principes de droit naturel. Lorimer, Phillimore, and Westlake were regular contributors to the pages of the Revue de droit international and the Annuaire de l’ institut de droit international. International Law and Empire Although British international lawyers shared the internationalism of their European counterparts, they were generally more comfortable with empire. Many European international lawyers expressed grave skepticism about the justice of colonization and empire from Auguste-William Heffter writing in 1844 at the outset of Twiss’s career to Charles Salomon and Gaston Jèze writing in his twilight years in 1880s. Significantly, many of these authors based their skepticism of empire on their shared attachment to natural law. These skeptics of empire used natural law to argue for the existence of rights that prevailed beyond the nation-states of Europe. For some, this meant the minimalist modern natural law rights of self-preservation. But for others, these rights derived from natural sociability, and they accordingly valorized Francesco de Vitoria in their histories of natural law.80 In Le droit international public de l’Europe, published in 1844, Heffter declared, “No power on earth has the right to impose its laws upon wandering or even savage peoples.”81 He added, “Nature, it is true, does not forbid nations to extend their empire on earth. But nature does not give the right to only one of them to establish its domination everywhere its suits that nation. Propaganda about civilization, the development of commercial and industrial interests . . . do not justify it either.”82 Similarly, Charles Salomon argued in L’occupation de territoire sans maitre in 1889, “No word is vaguer and has been used to commit greater iniquities than the word civilization.”83 Jèze concluded, “We

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decide in favor of the absolute right of the indigenous peoples. We believe the opposite theory does nothing but establish, on the pretext of civilization, the maxim ‘might is right’ and violates, under the appearance of legality, the fundamental rule of racial equality.”84 By contrast, Twiss furnished a highly ambivalent dialogue in his Law of Nations on the justice of colonizing the territories of “erratic Nations” with “scanty populations.” This was the kind of ambivalence that assuaged philanthropic consciences at the same time that it did not expressly condemn colonial dispossessions in the manner of Heffter, Salomon, or Jèze. In addition to his services for King Leopold in the Congo, he wrote two reports for the Institut de droit international in 1878 and 1880. One concerned the internationalization and protection of the Suez Canal and the other the application of the law of nations to oriental nations.85 Throughout these reports, Twiss outlined a theory of international law that was consistent with the aims of European colonizing powers. In particular, he argued for a hierarchy within international law in which only the “civilized” nations could be free from outside interference in their affairs and could deal with other states as equals. He concluded that certain “oriental” nations, however, might be subject to the law of nations. Importantly, Twiss made his apology for empire using the same natural law instruments that many of his contemporaries saw as the source of skepticism on the same subject. James Lorimer expanded on this hierarchical theory of international relations using the same natural law tools, and one of his lectures on the subject was translated into French by Ernest Nys and published in the Revue de droit international in 1778.86 By contrast, a number of theorists had opposed even Bentham’s term international law or droit international for precisely the reason that it could exclude some peoples. As Heffter argued, the idea of international law did not sufficiently express the spirit of the Roman jus gentium, which applied to all peoples, all of whom were entitled to the right of selfprotection regardless of their level of civilization or whether they belonged to the community of states.87 We must be careful, however, in regarding Twiss and his British colleagues’ hierarchical attitudes as particularly British, just as many or more Continental and American international lawyers argued for the rights of colonizers as those who opposed them and a clear majority sought to restrict the law of nations to European nations. The disputes within the Institut de droit international over this question, particularly after the Berlin conference of 1884–1885, bear testimony to that tension. Similarly, there were many critics of imperial practices within Britain, including Herbert Spencer, another exponent of natural law as well as a “synthetic” approach to philosophy.88 The difference between Britain and the continent may be seen in

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terms simply of anti-imperial sentiment not being expressed as strongly and widely as it was in Europe. Over the past 30 years, numerous studies have revealed the close ties between the foundations of liberalism and the inspiration and justification for the expansion of European empires. One of the more contentious and widely repeated claims has been that liberalism had an inherent disposition to empire. Max Weber claimed that overseas expansion was one of the unique preconditions for the development of freedom and democracy in European states.89 This argument has been endorsed in various forms by a diverse range of historians.90 It may be that these studies have reached this conclusion because they have taken their lead from British thinkers such as John Locke and John Stuart Mill or by selectively and anachronistically reading philosophers such as Vitoria.91 They have certainly elided the strident anti-imperial sentiment of many thinkers, including Twiss’s continental contemporaries, who should be included in any account of the liberal tradition. Bringing those writers back into a consideration of the relationship between liberalism and empire will produce an image of liberalism that was deeply ambivalent about empire rather than built upon it. Conclusions Positivism has been emphasized in the intellectual history of the nineteenth century in order to fit our understanding of nineteenth-century nationalism. Various accounts have suggested that rights were increasingly defined in terms of the rights of citizens of nations. The development of positivism complemented this increasing nationalization of rights because positivism could identify something that had been defined by legal institutions, whereas it could say nothing about rights that may or may not exist outside the legal framework of the state. Natural law, on the other hand, would be uncomfortable with the rise of nationalism because it is inclined to an understanding of rights that stem not from the state but from nature. Even the modern natural law tradition, in emphasizing the right of self-preservation that preexisted the state—while all other rights came from the creation of the state—was exceeding what could be conceded by the positive lawyers. Twiss’s and his contemporaries’ understanding of natural law was not a static and antiquarian revival of the natural law theories of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These nineteenth-century writers adapted natural law to the critiques of the positivists and the historical school at the same time that they drew on both the modern and ancient traditions of natural law. This was what might be described, with a little irony, as synthetic

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natural law (without wishing to confuse it with Spencer’s philosophy). Twiss was not the first exponent of this hybrid, or synthetic, form of natural law. It had its own genealogy starting with late eighteenth-century writers such as Georg Friedrich von Martens, who had embarked on the positivist project of compiling the treaties of international law that they sought to put into a natural law theoretical framework. Von Martens was followed in Germany by Heffter and Klüber, by Wheaton and Francis Lieber in the United States, and in Britain, in the mid-nineteenth century, by writers such as James Reddie, Manning, Phillimore, and Twiss. Synthetic natural law flourished through to the end of nineteenth century and into the twentieth, through the efforts of writers such as Lorimer in Britain and Salomon, Nys, and Jèze on the Continent. All these writers saw themselves in terms of Twiss’s genealogy for synthetic natural law: that is, engaged in a project to bring positivism into a framework established by natural law principles. In establishing this project, they successfully created one of the most important schools of thinking about international law in the nineteenth century. The crucial question raised by Twiss’s and his contemporaries’ adherence to natural law is whether, therefore, it troubles our rather neat image of nineteenth-century nationalism. The inescapable conclusion is that it does. Not only do the natural law theories of Twiss and his contemporaries suggest a basis for rights that were not derived from the nation, but their deep involvement in international discourses and institutions reveal that they were looking beyond the nation for the solutions to the problems of their time, many of which were provoked by nationalism. The first consequence of this commitment to natural law was a faith in the possibility of international law, given that states were believed to possess much the same qualities that individuals held in nature. But international lawyers of Twiss’s generation drew their conclusions about rights from beyond the realm of states to include individuals. On an even larger canvas, we must also question the narrative whereby ideas of universal rights have been said to have peaked in the Enlightenment only to be buried by nineteenth-century nationalism and recovered following the mid-twentieth-century reaction against genocide and two world wars. Clearly, the rights theorists of the second half of the twentieth century and the declaration of human rights itself were drawing on a tradition of universal human rights that had been kept alive throughout the nineteenth century by international lawyers such as Twiss and his numerous British and European contemporaries. Nineteenth-century natural law writers generally subscribed to a common ideal of an international community with laws to which all peoples should conform, and in this sense, they can be described as liberal internationalists.

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But they nevertheless used their natural law tools to develop a broad variety of conclusions about the nature of that community, what its laws were, and what rights various peoples held within that regime. In this sense, the natural law discourse within liberal internationalism made it possible to develop widely divergent conclusions, for example, about the civilizing mission or the rights of non-European peoples. This malleability of natural law arguments regarding empire, running from Vitoria through Locke to the nineteenthcentury international lawyers, manifestly demonstrates that just as liberalism could not be seen as fundamentally enlightening neither could it be regarded as inherently disposed to empire. Rather, like the natural law tradition that runs deeply through it, liberalism was a tool that served its wielder. Notes 1. Metternich lived for a short time in retirement in London. For correspondence between Twiss and Metternich, see Simon Szyszman, Correspondance entre Metternich et Sir Travers Twiss (Paris: 1983). Twiss shared his attachment to the theory of the balance of great powers: see, Travers Twiss, The Doctrine of Continuous Voyage: as applied to Contraband of War and Blockade: Contrasted with the Declaration of Paris of 1856 (London: 1877), 3. Twiss’s writings are peppered with references to meetings of this nature, for example, he writes of having met President Joseph Jenkins Roberts, the first president of Liberia, at a dinner party at the home of Édouard Drouyn de Louys, the French statesman and minister of foreign affairs, in Paris: see Travers Twiss, The Law of Nations Considered as Independent Political Communities, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press,, 1884), xii. 2. “A Pitiless Persecutor,” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 27, 1882, 3. 3. “A Pitiless Persecutor,” 3. Holborn Casino, or “Casino de Venise,” was a popular location for prostitutes: see William Acton, Prostitution, Considered in its Moral, Social and Sanitary Aspects in London and other Large Cities (London: John Churchill 1857), 102. Acton judged that, when he visited for the purposes of his study, a third of the crowd dancing at Holborn Casino were prostitutes. 4. Archbishop A.C. Tait to Twiss, November 10 1871, Tait MS 176ff., Lambeth Palace Library: “I think under the circumstances you have no course open to you, but to prosecute the man for libel.” 5. For Chaffers’s affidavit see: “FOREIGN,” Chicago Tribune (1860–1872), March 16, 1872. He added, “In the summer of 1859 I frequently saw Maria in Cremorne Gardens, sometimes alone sometimes in company with another foreign prostitute.” By the middle of the nineteenth century, Cremorne Gardens in Chelsea were, like Holborn Casino, a well known haunt for prostitutes. See Acton, Prostitution, 103. Believing the newspaper editors to be against him, and seeking vindication, Chaffers printed his own account of the case: Alexander Chaffers, The Twiss Libel Case (London: Alexander Chaffers, 1873).

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In this account, he omitted to include his affidavit and he denied the charge of blackmail. “A Pitiless Persecutor,” 3. “On the 8th of August, 1859, Maria Gelas informed me of her intimacy with Travers Twiss, and on the 27th of August, 1859, informed me that Travers Twiss had agreed to keep her as his mistress and allowed her £5 a week,” “FOREIGN,” Chicago Tribune (1860–1872), March 16, 1872. Twiss to Tait, no date, Tait MS 184ff. 92–93, Lambeth Palace Library. See Report of the Royal Commission on the Laws of Marriage (London: 1868). See The Annual Register . . . for the year 1872 (London: Rivingtons, 1873), 14–16. Twiss to Tait, no date, Tait MS 184ff. 92–93, Lambeth Palace Library. April 11, 1871, Jackson MS 33 ff.140–141, Lambeth Palace Library. Among his other appointments, Twiss was chancellor of the Diocese of London and so, in that role, directly answerable to Jackson. Twiss believed that Coke had unfairly pitted the common law against the civil law and that subsequent English law followed his example. Twiss therefore sought to recover Bracton as an authority on the common law who was guided by the Roman law: see Travers Twiss A Letter to the Vice Chancellor of the University of Oxford on the Law Studies of the University (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1856), 16. His efforts as a translator were almost as unhappy, however, as the events that inspired his reclusion. Sir Frederick Pollock described the translation of Bracton as “a reproach to the learning of this country and a misfortune to the study of its history” (Saturday Review, 46, 1879, 154), and F. W. Maitland scathingly condemned it as “six volumes of rubbish”: see Michael Lobban, “Travers Twiss,” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Indeed, this was also the verdict of the Chicago Tribune at the time which argued that the story of Twiss’s fall was reminiscent of Charles Dickens’s novels and of Bleak House in particular, with Marie Gelas playing the role of Lady Dedlock (albeit that Lady Dedlock never walked the streets of London): “The Twiss-Chaffers Case,” Chicago Tribune, April 1, 1872, 4. The best biography is Michael Lobban, “Travers Twiss,” in ODNB. The nineteenth century demise of natural law and natural rights theories in the face of a hostile positivism has been assumed by a wide spectrum of historians and philosophers. See, for example: Anthony Pagden, “Human Rights, Natural Rights, and Europe’s Imperial Legacy,” Political Theory 31:2 (April 2003), 171–199; J.B. Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern Moral Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998); Sankar Muthu, Enlightenment Against Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003); T.J. Hochstrasser, Natural Law Theories in the Early Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Some early twentieth century histories of natural law, while also pointing to the decline in natural law in the nineteenth century, remained aware of the continuity of the tradition throughout that century: see, for example, Heinrich Rommen, The

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17.

18.

19.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

25. 26. 27.

28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

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Natural Law: A Study in Legal and Social History and Philosophy, trans. Thomas R. Hanley, introduction by Russell Hittinger (1936; repr., Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1998). Martti Koskenniemi, The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 4, see also 48. Jennifer Pitts, “Boundaries of Victorian International Law,” in Victorian Visions of Global Order, ed. Duncan Bell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 69. Casper Sylvest, “The Foundations of Victorian International Law,” in Victorian Visions, 59. See also Sandra den Otter, “ ‘A Legislating Empire’: Victorian Political Theorists, Codes of Law, and Empire,” in Victorian Visions, 95–96. Travers Twiss, Two Introductory Lectures on the Science of International Law (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1856), 31. Ibid., 30. Ibid., 31–32. Ibid., 40. Dale K. Van Kley, “Piety and Politics in the Century of Lights,” in The Cambridge History of Eighteenth Century Political Thought, eds. Mark Goldie and Robert Wokler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 136. Twiss, Lectures, 49. Ibid., 49. The exception is Koskennniemi who argues that our image of nineteenth century international law is “focused on a deviation,” Koskenniemi, Gentle Civilizer, 48. David Ritchie, Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at the University of St Andrews, writing at the end of the century, said he initially hesitated to write his attack on natural rights theories because he might be viewed as engaged in “slaying the already slain.” See David G. Ritchie, Natural Rights, A Criticism of Some Political and Ethical Conceptions (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1895), ix. But, Ritchie hastened to add, he discovered that natural law theory had been thriving in political discourse ever since the attack by Bentham, that it maintained “enormous influence,” and he then devoted an entire treatise in the attempt to put it down once and for all. Twiss, Lectures, 49. Ibid., 58. Ibid., 58. Travers Twiss, The Law of Nations Considered as Independent Communities (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1861), 118–119. Twiss, Law of Nations (1861), 119–120. Ibid., 119. See, for example, Hochstrasser, Natural Law, 6. Twiss, Law of Nations (1861), 110. Ibid., 114. Ibid., 111. Pitts, “Boundaries,” 70.

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39. Travers Twiss, The Law of Nations Considered as Independent Communities, 2nd ed. (Oxford: 1884), v–vi. 40. Ibid., vi. 41. Ibid., viii, see also 110–111. 42. Anon., A plain and candid statement of facts, respecting the natural and civil rights of man (Norwich: 1820), 14. 43. John Reddie, A Letter to the Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain on the Expediency of a Proposal to Form a New Civil Code for England (London: J. and W.T. Clarke, 1828), 10. 44. James Reddie, Inquiries in International Law, Public and Private, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1851), 132. On Reddie, see: Koskenniemi, Gentle Civilizer, 23, 71–72; and Otter, “A Legislating Empire,” 94–96. 45. Reddie, Inquiries in International Law, 80. 46. William Oke Manning, Commentaries on the Law of Nations (London: S. Sweet, 1939), v, for the claim to originality and 3 for his preference for the term “law of nations.” 47. Ibid., 3. 48. Ibid., 58–59. 49. Ibid., 57–58. 50. Charles James Foster, Natural Law, (London: Taylor, Walter and Maberly, 1851), 4. My thanks are due to Graham Costello for alerting me to Foster’s work. 51. Robert Joseph Phillimore, Commentaries upon International Law (Philadelphia: T.and J.W. Johnson, 1854–1861), 1:v. 52. See, Twiss, A Letter to the Vice Chancellor of the University of Oxford. 53. The best account of the Doctors’ Common is G.D. Squibb, Doctors’ Commons: A History of the College of Advocates and Doctors of Law (1977: Oxford University Press, Oxford). 54. Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (New York: 2000), 326–327. 55. Roundell Palmer, Earl of Selborne, Memorials: Family and Personal 1766–1865, (London: 1896), 2:377–81. 56. MS DC2 “The Minute Book,” Lambeth Palace Library. 57. MS DC2 ff.217–220, Lambeth Palace Library. 58. See the correspondence between Twiss and Lee, in the Lee Papers, MS 2876, Lambeth Palace Library, particularly MS 2876ff.148–149, 153, 156. The reference to “most stormed discussions” is in Twiss to Lee, November 10 1857, MS 2876ff.156. Writing to Lee, who was absent from most meetings, Twiss declared, “I voted in our meetings in the negative about our property and the dissolution of the College,” Twiss to Lee, March 17 1854, MS 2876 ff.148–149. 59. See “Travers Twiss,” in ODNB. 60. George Bowyer, Commentaries on the Modern Civil Law (London: V. and R. Stevens and G.S. Norton, 1851), iv. See also George Bowyer, Readings Delivered before the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple in the Year 1850 (London: V. and R. Stevens and G.S. Norton, 1851) in which Bowyer explored

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63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71.

72.

73.

74. 75. 76. 77. 78.

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the common law debt to civil law at a time when the Inns of Court were still responsible for the training of common lawyers (that function would cease in 1852). George Bowyer, Introduction to the Study and Use of the Civil Law (London: Stevens and Sons, 1874), 1. Bowyer’s use of such terminology and the distinctions made between the different epochs of natural law thinking should lead us to question Richard Tuck’s claim, in his seminal essay on the subject, that the distinction between the “modern” and “ancient” natural law traditions had been swept away after 1800 with the rewriting of the history of moral philosophy with the Enlightenment, and particularly Kant, as the pivot. See Richard Tuck, “The ‘modern’ Theory of Natural Law,” in The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe, ed. Anthony Pagden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 100–1. Bowyer, Commentaries, 20. Ibid., v. Manning, Commentaries, vi. James Lorimer, Principes de droit naturel, trans. Ernest Nys, with an introduction by John Kirkpatrick (Brussels: P. Weissenbruch, 1890), 1:vii–viii. John Westlake, Chapters on the Principles of International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge, University Press, 1895), 4. See Sylvest, “Foundations,” 51. See, for example: RDI, 1878, 381–383. See Koskenniemi, Gentle Civilizer, 39–40 on the foundation of the Institut. On Twiss’s role, see: William Roger Louis, Ends of British Imperialism: The Scramble for Empire, Suez and Decolonization (London: Palgrave, 2006), 105–115; S.E. Crowe, The Berlin West Africa Conference, 1884–85 (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1942), 99, 134, 144, 147, 188. Palmer was born in 1812 just three years after Twiss. His and Twiss’s paths crossed many times for over 50 years. They both attended University College, Oxford at the same moment in the 1830s. They had also both sat on the Royal Commission into the Laws of Marriage as well as the Royal Commission on Neutrality Laws (1867–1868). Travers Twiss, “Le libre navigation de Congo,” RDI, 1883, 436–32, 547–63; Travers Twiss, An International Protectorate of the Congo River (London: Pewtress and Co., 1883). Louis, Ends, 104. Although Louis cautions that the Berlin conference did not formally sanction the existence of the new state. See, for example, Reddie, Inquiries, 6 and 88. Travers Twiss, An Epitome of Niebuhr’s History of Rome (Oxford: D.A. Talboys, 1936), xv. On Savigny’s refusal to abandon Roman law, see Koskenniemi, Gentle Civilizer, 43–45. “Documents relatifs a l’institut de droit international,” RDI, 1873, 707.

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79. Lorimer was educated not only in Edinburgh but in Bonn, Berlin and Geneva: Principes de droit naturel, v. 80. See, for example: Ernest Nys, Les origines du droit international (Brussels: 1894), 154–155; Charles Salomon, L’occupation des territoires sans maître (Paris: 1889), 44; Gaston Jèze, Etude théorique et pratique sur l’occupation (Paris: 1896), 103; Despagnet, Essai sur les protectorats (Paris: 1896), 242. It was on the foundation of these efforts that Nys edited the Carnegie Endowment edition of Vitoria’s De indis et de Iure belli relectiones (Washington: Carnegie Institution, 1917). 81. Auguste-Guillaume Heffter, Le droit international public de l’Europe (Paris: Cottilon, 1866), 141. My translation. 82. Heffter, Droit international, 141. 83. Salomon, Occupation, 194–195. My translation. 84. Jèze, Etude, 112. My translation. 85. Annuaire de l’ institut de droit international, 1878, 130–131. See also Pitts, “Boundaries,” 75–76. 86. James Lorimer, “Prolegomenes d’un system raisonne de droit international,” RDI, 1878, 339–356. See Pitts, “Boundaries,” 71–5 for the comparison of Lorimer and Twiss on this issue. 87. Henry Wheaton discussed this question in Wheaton, Elements of International Law (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1855), 15. 88. On Spencer’s critique of empire, see Duncan Bell and Casper Sylvest, “International Society and Victorian Political Thought: Herbert Spencer, T. H. Green and Henry Sidgwick,” Modern Intellectual History 3:2 (2006), 207–238. At the other end of the political spectrum, a number of socialist and Marxist authors also opposed the British empire, see: Gregory Claeys, “The ‘Left’ and the Critique of Empire c.1865–1900: the Roots of Humanitarian Foreign Policy,” in Victorian Visions, ed. Bell, 239–266; Bernard Porter, Critics of Empire: British Radical Attitudes towards Colonialism in Africa, 1895–1914 (London: Macmillan, 1968). 89. Richard Tuck, The Rights of War and Peace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 14–15 and 234. 90. See, for example: Tuck, Rights of War and Peace; James Tully, An Approach to Political Philosophy: Locke in Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Bhikhu Parekh, “Liberalism and Colonialism: A Critique of Locke and Mill,” in Nederveen Pieterse and Bhikhu Perekh, eds., The Decolonization of Imagination: Culture, Knowledge and Power, (London: Zed Books, 1995); Barbara Arneil, John Locke and America: The Defence of English Colonialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Pagden, “Human Rights”; Anthony Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Robert A. Williams, The American Indian in Western Legal Thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). Jennifer Pitts, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005) attempts

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a more supple analysis, arguing that eighteenth century political thought was profoundly ambivalent toward colonization but that pro-colonial attitudes hardened during the nineteenth century. 91. Duncan Bell makes a similar observation in his “Introduction” to Victorian Visions, ed. Bell, 10.

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CHAPTER NINE

James Bryce and the Two Faces of Nationalism Casper Sylvest

O

f Scottish Presbyterian background, James Bryce (1838–1922) was educated at Oxford, where he fought vigorously and successfully against Anglican privileges. He began his academic career as a historian, but in 1870 he was appointed Regius Professor of Civil Law at Oxford, a position he held until 1893. Bryce was a well-known intellectual, a prominent Home Ruler, and a steadfast liberal politician, serving in several liberal governments during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As a scholar and politician, he took a strong interest in education and foreign affairs. He became a renowned expert on American politics, a development reflected in his political life when he was appointed ambassador to Washington (1907–1913). Bryce wrote extensively on history, law, politics, and geography. His most important works are The Holy Roman Empire (1864), The American Commonwealth (1888), Studies in History and Jurisprudence (1901), and Modern Democracies (1921). Introduction This chapter provides an interpretation of the political thought of James Bryce that places nationalism at center stage. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the liberal view of nationalism was shot through with ambivalence. Liberals praised the virtues of self-determination and national sentiment, while watching the forces unleashed by nationalism

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with increasing anxiety. In attempting to reach a better understanding of the continuity and the metamorphosis of the dilemma that nationalism came to represent in British liberal political thought, Bryce provides a valuable prism. Moreover, approaching Bryce’s entire oeuvre from this angle is illuminating because it supplies coherence to a long intellectual life that straddled many turbulent decades and a wide range of subjects, including medieval and modern history, jurisprudence, constitutional law, U.S. politics, geography, and international politics. This chapter scrutinizes Bryce’s complex view of nationalism as both a peaceful and nearly natural marker of modernity and as an ideology of destruction and carnage in international affairs. I argue that while Bryce’s interest in the relationships of nations— historically, politically, and legally—remained constant throughout his long intellectual and public career, his view of nationality or nationalism, always ambiguous terms in the liberal vocabulary, shifted markedly, symbolizing increasing disquiet with modern nationalism and its potential congruity with liberal internationalism. The main contribution is to present a novel perspective on Bryce’s political thought that also adds to our understanding of the wider liberal internationalist ideology to which he subscribed and contributed. But the chapter also adds to the history of the idea of nationalism more broadly. In the large literature on nationalism, it is often argued that while a more or less stable modus vivendi between nationalism and liberalism existed during the nineteenth century, the two are, at bottom, antithetical. However, the details of this relationship, its development, and the forms of liberalism and nationalism involved are rarely specified.1 The argument proceeds in three steps. The second section briefly discusses the liberal problem with nationalism and places Bryce in context by sketching the contours of the ideologies of liberalism and internationalism to which he subscribed. The third and fourth sections analyze Bryce’s writings on nationality in different vocabularies or genres. The third section deals with the more scholarly works in history and law, while the fourth section focuses on writings aimed at broader audiences. A short conclusion summarizes the argument. Liberalism, Nationality, and Internationalism If nationalism is understood as a sentiment or an ideology that springs from emotional or political attachment to a nation-state, the period spanning the second half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century is pivotal for understanding the attractions and perils of this political phenomenon. In the third quarter of the nineteenth century, nationalism flourished and was seen, particularly among liberals, as an inevitable and progressive

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development. Yet nationalism always embodied a tension between integration, order, and self-government on the one side and exclusive homogeneity, chauvinism, and belligerence on the other. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that nationalism evolved into a distinctively liberal dilemma. Focused on order, liberty, and self-government and determined to battle autocracy, militarism, and intolerance within Europe, if not always beyond, liberals repeatedly had to wrestle with the social allegiances that humans felt or ought to feel. The liberal vocabulary used to make sense of these relations was rich, volatile, and conveniently unclear. It is possible, however, to identify a common pattern in liberal political thought during this period. From John Stuart Mill’s writings of the mid-nineteenth century to the First World War and its aftermath, liberals frequently distinguished the virtues of the principle of nationality from the vices of nationalism—or what Alfred E. Zimmern in 1915 was to call “true and false nationalism.”2 A certain amount of self-congratulation was involved when British liberals made this distinction. In effect, they equated enlightened or civilized variants of national allegiance with Britain’s special capacity for combining liberty, political order, and an impartial, moral view of international affairs. Conversely, political fervor and instability became a trait of the Continent. The politics of national identity was an important arena for liberals, which has led one prominent historian to stress “the nationalism, rather than the internationalism, of the Liberal tradition.”3 For most intellectuals of liberal persuasion, the Englishness of their “nationalism” was unmistakable but also fairly muted. A more orderly and peaceful world could only be reached by promulgating a nonexclusionary and enlightened form of national attachment that facilitated order, sympathy, and civic spirit, while allowing a disinterested assessment of different nations’ contributions to European civilization and a deep-felt attachment to humanity at large.4 Asserting continuity among liberal thinkers in this fashion is correct but also bloodless and potentially distorting. Speaking in two-tongued ways about nationalism was in large part the product of the liberal encounter with nationalism in practice. The life and political thought of James Bryce is instructive in attempting to understand the fate of nationalism in the liberal imagination. Throughout an intellectual and political career that spanned much of nationalism’s heyday, Bryce took a special interest in the relationship between nations.5 This interest reflected his experiences and influences as a student at Oxford in the 1850s and 1860s. Bryce was a token member of the group of university liberals who combined individualism in economic and social affairs with communal and moral concerns at home as well as abroad. In particular, Italian unification raised questions about the preconditions of democracy, about the role of minorities within larger

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political structures, and about the positive products of nationality, while allowing liberals to combine their liberal constitutionalism and sympathy for oppressed nationalities with opposition to autocracy and the papacy.6 The events of 1859–1860 therefore strengthened liberal optimism. Bryce later recalled how, in the late 1850s: Many an active and sanguine mind in Europe and America was aflame with what then began to be called the Principle of Nationality . . . Men hoped that so soon as each people, delivered from a foreign yoke, became master of its own destinies, all would go well for the world. The two sacred principles of Liberty and Nationality would, like twin-guardian angels, lead into the paths of tranquil happiness, a Mazzinian paradise of moral dignity and liberty, a Cobdenian paradise of commercial prosperity and international peace.7 Although the British (or English) national character was often held up as a model, events abroad also provided lessons and aspirations about the successes and failures of nations.8 This cyclical “rise-and-fall” logic, clearly present in Bryce’s writings, was reminiscent of liberal Anglicanism,9 but Bryce’s mentors in the Oxford school of history, particularly E. A. Freeman and Goldwin Smith, were more direct influences.10 In his writings on politics and history, Bryce examined the apparent cycles and convulsions in modern history, but he did so to locate fundamental continuities in human political and social life. Both Bryce’s scholarly interests and his politics were to a large extent garnered from Freeman and Smith. The former centered on questions of nationalism, federalism, and imperialism, whereas the latter included the beliefs that “the Teuton was superior to the Latin or the Celt, that French Imperialism was to be profoundly distrusted, that the national movements of Italians and the Magyars deserved the warmest sympathy, that the Austrian Empire was an injurious, tyrannical and anomalous structure, and that the political boundaries of Europe should be drawn on the principle of nationality.”11 The rise and fall of nations, the role of nationality in the formation of well-functioning political orders, and the negotiation of unity and diversity in federal and imperial systems were themes that had inescapably international implications. As a natural extension of his liberalism, Bryce subscribed to an ideology of liberal internationalism.12 Although the motors of this project—including free trade, international law, arbitration, education, the general progress of man, and the creation of political institutions— were many and experienced shifting popularities both over time and among different kinds of liberals, the ideological aims remained fairly constant,

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namely, the creation of order and the development of a public morality in international politics. Bryce’s description of the internationalist problem from a legal perspective captured this nicely. “The sphere in which no Sovereignty de iure exists, that of international relations, where all power is de facto only, is also the sphere in which morality has made least progress, and in which justice and honour are least regarded.”13 James Bryce’s prolific writings in history, law, and “political science” display a marked coherence when seen in the light of his internationalist ideology and his enduring concern with nationality and the preconditions and problems of democratic governance. In the remainder of this chapter, I pursue two general arguments about Bryce’s writings on this theme. First, I demonstrate how the question of nationality was a pervasive theme in Bryce’s political thought broadly conceived. For analytical purposes, it is helpful to distinguish between a scholarly and a popular genre in Bryce’s writings on history, law, and politics. Whereas the former mainly covers writings often of more abstract or theoretical character, the latter includes a greater proportion of shorter pieces aimed at broader audiences. Although these categories are obviously artificial constructions, they are heuristically helpful for uncovering how a liberal intellectual approached the problem of nationalism and the vocabularies he deployed. Second, I illustrate that Bryce’s view of the principle of nationality veered from a generally positive attitude derived, in part, from an acceptance of its historical inevitability to a much darker, almost fatalistic, analysis of the perils of nationalism. Bryce never engaged in starry-eyed, unqualified enthusiasm for the principle of nationality. Indeed, his early writings are ripe with warnings. Nevertheless, his outlook grew darker and his rhetoric more furious during the early twentieth century, a development that reached its zenith (or nadir) during and immediately after the First World War. Bryce and Nationality: Scholarly Perspectives The book that secured James Bryce’s reputation was his first. The Holy Roman Empire (1864) was based on an Oxford prize essay that had as a persistent theme the negotiation of unity and diversity within the empire during its volatile history. Bryce presented the empire (that Voltaire had mockingly declared neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire) in a deeply ambivalent fashion by painstakingly narrating its archaic history while, at the same time, trying to breathe new life into its grand underlying idea of a universal brotherhood. Despite its flaws and unreal fantasies, what Bryce called the theory of medieval empire proclaiming the interdependence of pope and emperor was fundamentally noble in that it expressed a Christian European

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order “whose sublime unity transcended every minor distinction.”14 Read from the perspective of nationality and internationalism, two things stand out. First, the development of the principle of nationality is described as natural or inevitable and is generally associated with industry, progress, and order. Second, Bryce was well aware of the need to negotiate some form of coherence or universal brotherhood above and across nationalities, and this led him, albeit implicitly, to a vintage liberal distinction between different kinds of nationality, which would emerge with greater clarity in his later writings. For Bryce, a crucial period in the narrative of the Holy Roman Empire from its inception at the fall of the republic to its abolition at the hands of Napoleon in the early nineteenth century was when Europe developed some fundamental traits of its distinctive civilization, including the development of nationalities “distinguished by a peculiar language and character, and by steadily increasing differences of habits and institutions.”15 This development took place from the twelfth to the fifteenth century and was described as both inexorable and beneficial to free government by virtue of its local patriotism and emphasis on political liberty. It was also, to some extent, what made the Holy Roman Empire look archaic and fantastic: local loyalties made the theory of the medieval empire, postulating the perfect interdependence of pope and emperor, an aspiration at best and a fiction at worst. Throughout Bryce’s oeuvre, but particularly in the early writings, definitions of nationality were tentative and imprecise, and it was only in two new chapters included in the 1874 edition and written against the background of German unification that Bryce ventured something resembling a definition.16 Nationality was treated not as a principle but as an instinct or a passion conveying “the desire of a people already conscious of moral and social unity, to see such unity expressed and realized under a single government, which shall give it place and name among civilized states.”17 In terms of the congruity of this principle or passion with the wider universalistic goals of the Holy Roman Empire and Bryce’s advanced liberalism, the tone was generally positive. The medieval empire had been constructive and self-destructive—it had “fostered, while seeming to oppose, the nationalities that were destined to replace it.”18 In the nineteenth century, increased international intercourse and “the progress of thought” further dispelled prejudices and facilitated mutual understanding. Bryce was clearly aware of the dangers that nationality involved, but his warnings were muted and implicit. Only in later editions did he explicitly warn against nationalism’s illiberal, perverted forms by arguing that “the racial or commercial antagonisms of democracies are as fertile in menaces to peace as were ever the dynastic interests of princes.”19

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The style and conception of The Holy Roman Empire allowed Bryce to shift between a narrative of events and a kind of political theoretical commentary that identified defects and extrapolated enduring, “proto-liberal” values from the constitutional ideas governing the empire. Among the prescriptions and longings in the latter category, we find Bryce’s repeated insistence on the need to negotiate the particular and the universal, the national and the international. He did not seek to revive the anachronistic institutional structure of the old empire, but one of its most important underlying ideas was particularly urgent for mid- and late-nineteenth century Europe: the idea of a universal brotherhood of humankind. It was, therefore, natural for Bryce’s subdued warnings against vulgar nationalism to be channeled through a longing for a spirit of universalism compatible with true nationalism, as inspired by the Holy Roman Empire: In times of violence and oppression, it [the medieval Empire] set before its subjects the duty of rational obedience to an authority whose watchwords were peace and religion. It kept alive, when national hatreds were most bitter, the notion of a great European commonwealth. And by doing all this, it was in effect abolishing the need for an all-absorbing autocratic power like itself: it was making men capable of using national independence aright; it was enabling them to rise to the conception of a spontaneous activity, and of a freedom which is above the law but not against it, to which national independence itself, if it is to be a blessing, ought to be a means.20 It is worth repeating that it was the spirit of universalism and not its institutional expression in the empire that Bryce thought was relevant for civilized Europe. Throughout his politically active life, he was emphatic that the idea of a universal monarchy was retrograde. The seeds of universalism were located in interdependence, but it was an interdependence of commerce, communication, and progressive ideas rather than of religious and secular authority. In 1871, Bryce argued in his inaugural lecture as Regius Professor of Civil Law at Oxford that Europe, owing to increased intercourse, improved communications, and the growth of liberal ideas, had become “much more of a single intellectual commonwealth than it has been at any time since the Reformation, indeed perhaps, since the fall of the Roman Empire.”21 For a liberal, such beliefs invited frustration in the years to come. The benevolent, progressive face of nationalism was not its only, nor perhaps its most significant, manifestation. Before turning to Bryce’s other scholarly writings, it should be stressed that these musings on nationality were inserted into a spatiotemporal order

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that for most Victorians were symbolized in the popular distinction between civilization and barbarism. At mid-century, this distinction was, in principle, open to the progress of all peoples. However, for Bryce as for many others, it appeared increasingly rigid as the century drew to a close.22 Although Bryce did modify his notion of race in environmentalist directions, which partly at least reflected his interest in the influence of material context on the social and political life of human communities, it is true that many of Bryce’s writings are “shot through with racist stereotypes masquerading as analysis of ‘national character.’ ”23 This was so in relation to Bryce’s discussion of “the Negro Problem” in America,24 “blacks and whites” in South Africa,25 or the Indians that Britain ruled.26 Bryce might have described what he saw as the “social incompatibility” of races as unfortunate, but in his acceptance of such prejudices, the problem was not only complacency. He openly acknowledged that there were few, if any, facts available to support his views. One would have thought that would instill caution in a historian who worshipped facts, but Bryce continued to speculate on the subject.27 At any rate, this racism—apparently based less on a biological theory of race than on cultural stereotyping phrased in a language of race—meant, first, that Bryce persistently conflated race and nation (he often used the two terms interchangeably),28 and second, that he naturalized and condoned imperialism and the subjection of peoples considered inferior that followed in its wake.29 With this qualification in mind, we can turn to Bryce’s analyses of constitutional law and America, which were also informed by the ideal of diversity in unity that Bryce had recovered from European history. I cannot do justice to these aspects of Bryce’s legal and political thought here, but a few examples can illustrate how the concerns of the Holy Roman Empire lived on. In his writings on civil and constitutional law, always stressing the importance of a historical perspective, we find a plethora of characteristic Brycean themes, including the advantages of English law, Anglo-American political and cultural unity, and the benefits and rationale of the British Empire in India, to name but a few. Yet, Bryce’s legal writings are also weaved through with discussions of nationality and the problem of diversity in unity. Thus, in discussing “The Action of Centripetal and Centrifugal Forces on Political Constitutions,” Bryce was concerned with the ability of constitutions to provide order, liberty, and government by harnessing the forces of unity and preventing disruptive tendencies, for example, through mechanisms like federalism and devolution.30 An important element in this puzzle, however, was the fellow-feeling or sympathy derived from national or religious allegiance. In particular, the sentiment of nationality—defined as “that complex feeling, based upon affinities of race, of speech, of literature, of historic

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memories, of ideas”—had grown in importance since the American and French revolutions, and Bryce duly warned that this force was both “aggregative and segregative.” Thus, Bryce argued that fragmentation was most prevalent in “rude times and in hilly or mountainous countries,” whereas the forces working for unity were (or ought to be) “comparatively advanced in civilization.”31 Despite their differences, America and Britain were the living symbols of the healthy, civilized polity. Bryce’s monumental and most lasting work, The American Commonwealth (1888), exuded admiration of the American polity: careful construction, custom, and fortune meant that federalism in America fostered a “double patriotism,” where allegiances of Americans to two governments and two sets of laws (federal and state) produced strength and stability. The book was successful and influential because it, like Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, brought to Americans an outside view of their society. In a British context, The American Commonwealth provided an introduction to American politics and a vindication of federalism, while highlighting the cultural-historical unity and continuity between Britain and America. The analysis also had clear implications for the Irish question. However, what Bryce found in the American republic of republics—a modern variant of the double allegiance that characterized the European Christian commonwealth—also carried a lesson for European and international politics more widely.32 The Brycean analysis of nationality, its perils and potential, betrayed two common assumptions. First, it was widely believed that a general aggregative movement toward larger units, mostly unchecked by nationality and democracy, was natural and ongoing. This assumption was partly based on recent political developments like the successful American state and the unifications of Italy and Germany—developments that in turn inspired calls for a global British polity—but also found expression in political and sociological theory, for example, in the work of Herbert Spencer.33 Second, it was assumed that the importance of nationality outside Europe as both fact and ethicopolitical criterion was marginal. The complacency involved in this assumption is startling. Bryce barely mentioned the legal or moral status of “uncivilized” subject peoples, but found refuge in the prediction that conquest would play a lesser role in the future. Meanwhile, he offered a new version of his liberal ideal of diversity in unity in which a reasonable attachment to country could flourish within a universal, peaceful order based on liberal internationalist principles. Imagine a world in which all the hitherto unappropriated territories had been allotted to one or other of the few strongest States. Imagine

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tariffs abolished and the principle of equality of trade-facilities among States established. Imagine a system of international arbitration created under which the risks of war were so greatly reduced that the prospect of war did not occupy men’s minds and give a military and aggressive tinge to their patriotism. The present relations of centripetal and centrifugal forces would under such conditions be greatly altered, as respects both the wide theatre of the world and the internal conditions of each particular state.34 Political order—a robust structure of institutions, law, and morality—was a cardinal value for liberals like Bryce. In international affairs, this order was deficient. Domestically, only a gradually developed political order could secure liberal values from the potential aberrations of democracy, an ambivalent prospect for Victorian liberals. Moreover, domestic and international order was interrelated in important ways. Bryce oscillated on thorny issues involving the future of democracy and representative government. In an essay on “Obedience,” he argued that the democratic ideal was noble but, for the moment, unrealizable. And for those about to get their hopes up, his supply of cold water was plenty: humankind and its societies did not possess the qualities of reason, conscience, and will necessary for the democratic ideal to work, and the achievement was “not within the horizon of the next few centuries, perhaps of all the centuries that may elapse before we are covered by the ice-fields again descending from the Pole or are ultimately engulfed in the sun.”35 On the back of this glum forecast, Bryce set up a debate between an optimist and a pessimist that represents his own plural voices on deeply entangled matters like democracy, nationalism, and peace. The reasonable optimist anticipates that the masses would reach “a level of intelligence, public spirit and probity which will enable them to select the right leaders, will make the demagogue repulsive.”36 The retort of the pessimist is straightforward. Recent history did not validate optimism; indeed, it invalidated it. The development was toward less love for liberty, the right of man to express unpopular opinions was less valued. Homogeneity bred natural egotism, and by virtue of its susceptibility to demagogy, there was also the risk of an ugly fusion of nationalism and jingoism: “There is less sympathy in each country for the struggles which are maintained for freedom in other countries. National antagonisms are as strong as they ever were, and nations seem quite as willing as in the old days of tyranny to forgo domestic progress for the sake of strengthening their militant force against their rivals.”37 For Bryce, this was the result of the rejection of laissez-faire and of an increasingly belligerent press. The future of liberalism, democracy, nationalism, and peace were inseparable. They

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were all related to Bryce’s main intellectual interest: the progress of human civilization in its widest sense, which included the development of morals, of law and ordered societies, and of their interrelationships, which were in large part determined by the strength and character of men’s particular and universal allegiances. Bryce and Nationality: Liberal Politics in Practice I turn now to those of Bryce’s writings that were aimed at broader audiences, including shorter essays, popular books, and a large number of lectures delivered in Britain and America. During the late nineteenth century, Bryce became increasingly involved in Westminster politics, in particular due to his close association with Gladstonian liberalism and his unwavering support for Irish Home Rule, a project that exuded English character and liberal progress toward self-government. Bryce also supported the aspiring nationalities of southeastern Europe to the extent that he became known in parliament as the member for Armenia.38 Perhaps this politicization and the clarity of his diagnosis of the political predicament of modern Europe made it inevitable that the response Bryce offered essentially consisted of promoting a good (or true) nationalism and correspondingly lamenting, and increasingly attacking, false nationalism. The prophets of liberal internationalism, Cobden and Bright, had been overly sanguine, even if there was a fundamental truth in their creed. “Yet we find that to-day most nations are still deluded by the notion that their gain is necessarily another’s loss, and another’s loss their own gain . . . Liberty and reason have as yet failed to dispel an error which is a fertile source of national animosities, as well as, in nearly every case, injurious to national prosperity.”39 It was this liberty and reason that Bryce tried to reinstill, and the strategies he employed included turning to the language of patriotism. In an address to the London Association of Headmasters of Public Elementary Schools that Bryce delivered in 1892, he attempted to set out how civic duty and the patriotism informing this duty should be taught. The basic argument was about enlightenment and its positive effects on political order, social cohesion, and the workings of representative government. The ideal was taken from Switzerland where the citizen truly loved his country and was willing to contribute and ultimately sacrifice his life for it. Bryce insisted, however, that the love of country that teachers should instill in British children through the teaching of geography, history, and politics had to be an enlightened patriotism. Pride in the achievements of the British Empire—including the spread of its language and commerce—was to be promoted, but the imperial spirit should emphatically not be one of vainglory and aggression.40

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During the late 1890s, Bryce thus felt a need to encourage an enlightened, republican patriotism in Britain. Fifteen years later at the beginning of the twentieth century, the emphasis (if not the argument) had shifted. Undoubtedly the outburst of jingoism during the Boer War, which Bryce opposed, and increasing antagonism between the European states were instrumental in his open acknowledgment that national feeling had gone overboard. Instead of promoting one form of patriotism or national allegiance, Bryce directly attacked its perverted forms by stressing that “our country is not the only thing to which we owe our allegiance. It is owed also to the justice and to humanity, owed to our fellow-men in other countries as well as in our own.” This did not mean that the citizen’s duty was not first and foremost to his fellow citizen, but “true patriotism, consists not in waving a flag, not in shouting ‘our country, right or wrong,’ but in so valuing our country and respecting its best traditions as to desire and to strive that our country shall be righteous as well as strong.”41 For Bryce, the fight against vulgar nationalism and jingoistic, flag-waving patriotism reached Manichean proportion during the First World War, when the elderly statesman (he was in his mid-70s when the war broke out) emerged as one of the most aggressive and vehement critics of German nationalism and its political ideals. In light of this experience, he revisited his earlier views on local and universal allegiance. The desperation that Bryce increasingly felt over the perverted course of modern nationalism issued in three interconnected strategies. The first strategy consisted of yet another attempt to clear up matters and supply a thorough discussion and definition of nationality, which in turn allowed Bryce to set out a true, benevolent nationalism. Somewhat surprisingly, this led Bryce to retreat on his views on race. Previously, he had been satisfied with stereotypical generalizations about various races or nations, without distinguishing between the two concepts, and had calmly accepted that reconciliation of races was well-nigh impossible. In 1915, however, he distinguished race feeling from the sentiment of nationality by arguing that the former was rudimentary, instinctive, and undeveloped whereas the latter was, or ought to be, more advanced. The catastrophe that had befallen Europe was that the sentiment of nationality had been disproportionately contaminated by “the racial constituent in national character. Something is due to it, but much more is due to the conditions physical and economic and social under which the nation has been developed.”42 Bryce occasionally lapsed into the confusions that characterized his earlier writings on race and nation, but the stress on environmental, social, and cultural factors aided his quest for a nondestructive and realizable form of nationalism. In hindsight, what Bryce thought of as the true sentiment of nationality encompassed

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republican duties toward the patria, a self-confident national posture that mirrored classic Victorian individual values of manliness and character, a good measure of humility in international politics, and an awareness of the allegiances owed to a common humanity. This sort of nationalism, compatible with Bryce’s liberal internationalism, was natural for some yet, in principle, attainable for all “civilized” nations. The second Brycean strategy was highly polemical and consisted of a series of attacks on a debased form of nationalism that was distinctly nonliberal. The character of German nationalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was a triple insult to Bryce in that it violated the basic tenets of the liberal internationalist agenda, contradicted his early belief in the peaceful effects of German unification, and sprung from the heart of what was once the Holy Roman Empire. In Bismarckian and Wilhelmine Germany, nationalism had been carried “to an extravagant excess,” and it had become particularly dangerous to the world after being “united to the doctrine of an omnipotent and non-moral state.”43 Like other internationalists engaged in such attacks, Bryce found the mainsprings of this phenomenon in the doctrines advanced by General von Bernhardi and Heinrich von Treitschke. This militarist and nationalist doctrine set a vile worship of passion, selfishness, force, and discipline against liberal beliefs in reason, justice, righteousness, and faith in man. Although Bryce prided himself on maintaining a sober distance to events, the liberal elements in his approach to the war—for example, his insistence on the futility of a punitive peace— were occasionally overshadowed by his sweeping combative indictment of Germany and the German people for accepting the spirit of Prussian militarism.44 The outbursts against German nationalism culminated in his involvement in the investigation of German atrocities in Belgium that had been widely reported in the press. In hindsight, the influential report of the committee, which Bryce chaired, appears dubious.45 The third strategy was more positive and had a specific, constructive purpose: Bryce was deeply involved in the intellectual and political process of devising alternative ways of organizing international politics, a process that in Britain issued in a succession of calls for a system of pooled security or what later became known as a league of nations.46 In the formation of these ideas, Bryce was an incredibly influential figure, who managed to soothe the more wildly optimistic ideas amounting to the erection of a European or world state advanced by radicals like J. A. Hobson and H. N. Brailsford. At this time, most liberals shared the notion that moral internationalism could no longer stand alone and institutional devices were necessary to further the project. Bryce agreed, but also stressed the difficulties ahead as well as the necessary interdependence of moral and institutional elements.47

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The ideology that these strategies were to serve had barely changed. Warnings issued during the Great War, widely interpreted as caused by German nationalist ideology run amok, were naturally clearer and more urgent in tone than the cautions supplied in The Holy Roman Empire five decades earlier. But the substance was remarkably similar: if the principle of nationality was “restrained and purified by the higher sentiment of an allegiance to mankind,” there was still hope.48 Despite glimpses of optimism, the essentially unchanged nature of this ideal and its failure to have the remotest influence on political developments dampened Bryce’s expectations for the postwar world. He appeared skeptical and occasionally defeatist in comparison with the exuberance of younger liberal internationalists, like Zimmern, G. L. Dickinson, Leonard Woolf, J. A. Hobson, and G. P. Gooch. For these figures, it is true, pessimism about the state of the world was often rhetorically required to make their optimistic plans for a reformed world of tomorrow appear necessary and feasible. But Bryce’s pessimism ran deeper: he reluctantly looked to the future, while longing for a world gone by. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Bryce’s last book, a series of eight lectures delivered in the United States and published in the early 1920s under the title International Relations (1922). The problem was swiftly diagnosed: international relations had not yet been subjected to progress. The pivotal characteristics of domestic politics, including order and a measured justice, were only present in rudimentary form in the international domain. Institutional arrangements were needed to alleviate this situation, but their success in turn depended on the moral progress of the individuals that collectively constituted modern states. In an era of propaganda, people were often misled by leaders exploiting the emotional appeal of national feelings. Bryce’s cure was shot through with the disappointment of a longstanding internationalist: it was romantic and hesitant. Indeed, Bryce came close to repudiating the sentiment of nationality that had seemed so obvious, even natural, six decades earlier. Having achieved political expression, it had become infected by vanity: “that which was supposed to be a means to peace, and indeed a guarantee of peace, once the just claims of each nationality has been satisfied, has now become a source of war, a force making in some quarters for revolt and dissolution and in some even for aggression upon neighbours.”49 In combination with the habitual dismissal of alliances and a world state as organizing principles of international politics, this left Bryce with few options. He routinely appealed to enlightened forms of nationalism and described its crucial role in sustaining the larger liberal-democratic project, a task that flavored Bryce’s last major work, Modern Democracies (1921).50 But Bryce admitted that democracy had brought “no nearer friendly feeling and

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the sense of human brotherhood among the peoples of the world towards one another” and once again pointed to the dangers that came with a spirit of nationality “accentuated as we see it by rivalry and hatred.”51 It was almost inevitable, therefore, that Bryce’s journey should end where it began. Returning to the Holy Roman Empire, Bryce illustrated how, in the Middle Ages, the aristocracy, men of learning, and common folk had not been separated by national feeling, whereas the church had been a source of unity transcending all boundaries, racial, linguistic, and national. “In this respect Europe has gone backwards rather than forwards since the Middle Ages.”52 Such harking back to the impossible unity radiating from the Holy Roman Empire appropriately symbolized how nationalism had turned Bryce’s liberal internationalism into a dutiful but ultimately unconvincing system of beliefs. Conclusions For a devoted liberal and liberal internationalist like Bryce, European political developments between the mid-nineteenth century and the 1920s had provided an alternating succession of enthusiasm and disappointment that mainly concerned the character and strength of individuals’ particular allegiances and their potential (in)compatibility with allegiances to humanity as a whole, and the importance of these factors for the progress of civilization. At the beginning of this period, Mill had warned that there were two faces of nationality (or nationalism), and at its end, a new generation of liberals advanced a similar argument. In his essay on “True and False Nationalism” (1915), Alfred Zimmern argued that there was no contradiction between nationalism (rightly understood!) and internationalism. In fact, The road to Internationalism lies through Nationalism; and no theory or ideal of Internationalism can be helpful in our thinking or effective in practice unless it is based on a right understanding of the place which national sentiment occupies and must always occupy in the life of mankind. If we believe . . . in the brotherhood of man: if we feel, more than ever at a time like this, that we are all Children of one Father, and that men, women, and children, to whatever race they belong and whatever colour of their faces, are lovable simply in virtue of their mere humanity, yet we must also admit that “it takes all sorts to make one world.”53 The tone here was both more modern and defiantly optimistic, and the universalism it espoused was not to the same extent circumscribed by a cultural understanding of race—yet this was also Bryce’s ideal. Throughout the entire

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period, he subjected the problem of local versus universal allegiance to continuous discussion. Indeed, as I have argued, questions of nationality, nationalism, patriotism, and race, and their potential incorporation into a wider brotherhood of humankind, made up a central, unifying theme in Bryce’s intellectual and political career. In his eventual failure to come to grips with the two faces of nationalism, he fittingly represents the liberal internationalist ideology dominating British international thought at the time.

Notes I thank Duncan Bell, Ian Hall, Rens van Munster, Søren Hviid Pedersen, Mogens N. Pedersen, and Peter Wilson for helpful comments on earlier versions. 1. See, for example, Ernest Gellner, Nationalism (London: Phoenix, 1995), ch. 5; E.J. Hobsbawn, Nations and Nationalism since 1780 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), ch. 1; Anthony D.S. Smith, Nationalism in the Twentieth Century (London: Martin Robertson, 1979), Introduction. 2. Alfred E. Zimmern, “True and False Nationalism” [1915], in Zimmern, Nationality and Government (London: Chatto &Windus, 1918), 61–86. For Mill’s writings on nationality, see for example John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government [1861], in Collected Works of John Stuart Mill , ed. J.M. Robson, 33 vols (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963–1991), XIX, 371–577 [hereafter CW ]; Mill, “Coleridge” [1840], in CW, X, 117–163; and the analysis in Georgios Varouxakis, Mill on Nationality (London: Routledge, 2002). See also Varouxakis, “ ‘Patriotism,’ ‘Cosmopolitanism’ and ‘Humanity’ in Victorian Political Thought,” European Journal of Political Theory 5 (2006): 100–118. 3. See Jonathan Parry, The Politics of Patriotism: English Liberalism, National Identity and Europe, 1830–1886 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 387; and also Peter Mandler, The English National Character: The History of an Idea from Edmund Burke to Tony Blair (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), esp. 60. 4. The English ideal also ran through the young Acton’s liberal critique of nationalism, which although critical of liberal enthusiasm for Italian unification distinguished between a French, “unitarian” and an English, pluralist nationalism. See John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, “Nationality” [1862], in Selected Writings of Lord Acton, ed. J. Rufus Fears, 3 vols (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1985–1988), I, 409–433; Timothy Lang, “Lord Acton and ‘the Insanity of Nationality,’ ” Journal of the History of Ideas 63 (2002), 129–149. 5. For biographical treatments, see H. A. L. Fisher, James Bryce, 2 vols (London: Macmillan, 1927); Edmund Ions, James Bryce and American Democracy, 1870–1922 (London: Macmillan, 1968); Thomas Kleinknecht, Imperiale und internationale Ordnung. Eine Untersuchung zum anglo-amerikanischen Gelehrtenliberalismus am Beispiel von James Bryce (1838–1922) (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,

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6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

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1985); John T. Seaman Jr., Citizen of the World: The Life of James Bryce (London: Tauris, 2006). Parry, The Politics of Patriotism, ch. 5. James Bryce, “The Principle of Nationality and Its Applications,” in Bryce, Essays and Addresses in Wartime (London: Macmillan, 1918), 126–157, at 126. Christopher Harvie, The Lights of Liberalism: University Liberals and the Challenge of Democracy 1860–86 (London: Allen Lane, 1976). See Kleinknecht, Imperiale und internationale Ordnung, 232. Among the figures that influenced him the most, Bryce included Goldwin Smith, Sir Henry Maine, T. H. Green, and E. A. Freeman. See James Bryce, “Legal Studies in the University of Oxford, Valedictory Lecture,” [1893] in Bryce, Studies in History and Jurisprudence, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901), II, 504–525. Fisher, Bryce, II, 309. On liberal internationalism, see Casper Sylvest, British Liberal Internationalism 1880–1930: Making Progress? (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009). James Bryce, “The Nature of Sovereignty,” in Bryce, Studies, II, 49–111, at 110. James Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire, hereafter HRE, (Oxford: Shrimpton, 1964), 166 (new ed. [London: Macmillan, 1910], 433). Ibid., 105 (new ed., 252). As a sign of his political romance with Italy, Bryce found the first rudiments of Italian nationality under Otto the Great’s rule in the tenth century. Bryce had studied in Heidelberg in the early 1860s and supported German unification, which reflected, inter alia, his hatred of Napoleon III and the influence of Goldwin Smith and Freeman (who were both violently pro-German). In 1874, Bryce described Germany as “in a moral and intellectual sense, the offspring of the old Empire.” Bryce, HRE, new ed., 441. Ibid., new ed., 489. Ibid., 167 (new ed., 436). Ibid., new ed., 435. Ibid., 167–168 (new ed., 437). James Bryce, “The Academical Study of the Civil Law, Inaugural Lecture,” [1871] reprinted in Studies, II, 475–503, at 478. See Peter Mandler, “ ’Race’ and ‘Nation’ in Mid-Victorian Thought,” in Stefan Collini, Richard Whatmore and Bryan Young, eds., History, Religion, and Culture. British Intellectual History 1750–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 224–244. Bart Schultz, “Sidgwick’s Racism,” in Bart Schultz and Georgios Varouxakis, eds., Utilitarianism and Empire (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005), 211–250, at 224. For an early example of an environmentalist analysis of race, see James Bryce, The American Commonwealth, 2 vols (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1995 [1888]), 1168–9, 1179. In this new chapter—entitled “Further thoughts on the negro problem”—Bryce pondered the progress made by this section of the American population. On Bryce’s interest in geography, see James

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28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33.

34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

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Bryce, “The Relations of History and Geography,” The Contemporary Review 49 (1886) 426–443; Bryce, “The Importance of Education in Geography I” and “The Importance of Education in Geography II,” Journal of Geography 1 (1902), 145–151 and 206–213, respectively; James Bryce, “Introductory Essay,” [1901] in The World’s History, 8 vols (London: Heinemann, 1901–1907), I, xv–lx. Bryce, The American Commonwealth, esp. 1143–1167. James Bryce, Impressions of South Africa, 3rd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1899 [1897]), 345–369. James Bryce, “The Roman Empire and the British Empire in India,” in Studies, I, 1–84. James Bryce, The Relations of the Advanced and the Backward Races of Mankind: The Romanes Lecture 1902 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902), 26n, 35; Bryce, Race Sentiment as a Factor in History: The Creighton Lecture, 1915 (London: University of London Press, 1915), 4. See e.g. James Bryce, “Prefatory Note,” English Historical Review 1 (1886), 1–6 and Bryce, “Flexible and Rigid Constitutions,” in Studies, I, 145–254, esp. 252. On the relationship between liberalism and imperialism in the nineteenth century, see Uday Singh Mehta, Liberalism and Empire (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1999); Jennifer Pitts, A Turn to Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005); and Duncan Bell, “Empire and International Relations in Victorian Political Thought,” Historical Journal 49 (2006), 281–298. James Bryce, “The Action of Centripetal and Centrifugal Forces on Political Constitutions,” in Studies, I, 255–311. Bryce, “Centripetal and Centrifugal Forces,” 268, 300. Bryce, American Commonwealth, e.g. 13, 237, 378, 1499–1500. For discussions of the scale of polities and the problem of “small nations” during this period, see the essays by Georgios Varouxakis and Duncan Bell in Bell, ed., Victorian Visions of Global Order: Empire and International Relations in Nineteenth-Century Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); and also Duncan Bell and Casper Sylvest, “International Society in Victorian Political Thought: T. H. Green, Herbert Spencer, and Henry Sidgwick,” Modern Intellectual History 3 (2006), 207–238. Bryce, “Centripetal and Centrifugal Forces,” 310. James Bryce, “Obedience,” in Studies, II, 1–48, at p. 31. Ibid., 31. Ibid., 34. Fisher, Bryce, I, 183. See also 300–303. James Bryce, “An Age of Discontent,” Contemporary Review 49 (1891), 14–29, at 22–23. James Bryce, “The Teaching of Civic Duty,” Contemporary Review 64 (1893): 14–28. James Bryce, “Allegiance to Humanity,” [1909] in Bryce, University and Historical Addresses (London; Macmillan, 1913), 247–263, at 260–261. Bryce, “Race Sentiment as a Factor in History,” 5.

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43. Bryce, “The Principle of Nationality,” 157. 44. E.g. Bryce, Essays and Addresses in Wartime, 1–2; Bryce, “Opening Address” in The International Crisis: The Theory of the State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1916), 1–8. 45. See Trevor Wilson, “Lord Bryce’s Investigation into Alleged German Atrocities in Belgium, 1914–15,” Journal of Contemporary History 14 (1979), 369–83; Tulloch, James Bryce’s American Commonwealth, 225–233. See also Bryce, “The War State: Its Mind and Methods,” in Bryce, Essays and Addresses, 39–64. 46. Henry R. Winkler, “The Development of the League of Nations Idea in Great Britain, 1914–1919,” Journal of Modern History 20 (1948), 95–112. On Bryce’s involvement, see particularly Fisher, Bryce, II, 121–260; K.G. Robbins, “Lord Bryce and the First World War,” Historical Journal 10 (1967), 255–277 47. See Bryce, “Concerning a League of Nations for Peace,” in Essays and Addresses in Wartime, 158–183. 48. Bryce, “The Principle of Nationality,” 157. 49. James Bryce, International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1922), 123. 50. Among the most important conditions for the development of a well-functioning democracy, Bryce pointed to national unity, national character as developed through traditions and habits, and an intelligent public opinion. See James Bryce, Modern Democracies, 2 vols (London: Macmillan, 1921), II, 660. 51. Bryce, Modern Democracies, II, 584 and 662. 52. Bryce, International Relations, 137–138. 53. Zimmern, “True and False Nationalism,” 61.

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CHAPTER TEN

Democracy and Empire: J. A. Hobson, Leonard Hobhouse, and the Crisis of Liberalism Duncan Bell

“W

hat would the new century bring?” At the close of the nineteenth century, according to Jay Winter, most European and American writers, politicians, and artists were sanguine about the coming era: “imaginings of the twentieth century celebrated progress on a global scale and projected it optimistically into the foreseeable future.” Although dark prognostications were penned by H. G. Wells and Joseph Conrad, among others, it was confidence that triumphed.1 Winter may be correct about the general tenor of literary and artistic life, but many of those in Britain concerned with the future of geopolitics were deeply anxious. Threats appeared to emanate from multiple directions, at home and abroad. British global power was being challenged: foreboding abounded.2 Thinkers across the political spectrum grappled incessantly with questions about the past, present, and future of world order. In this chapter, I explore how two of the leading social and political thinkers in fin de siècle Britain—J. A. Hobson (1858–1940) and L. T. Hobhouse (1864–1929)—viewed the prospects for international affairs in the decade and a half before the outbreak of the First World War. A self-described “economic heretic,” Hobson was and is best known as the author of Imperialism: A Study (1902), arguably one of the most influential political tracts of the twentieth century.3 Hobhouse, meanwhile, was trained as a philosopher, held

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the first chair in sociology in Britain at the London School of Economics, and quickly made a name for himself as an innovative political theorist. Both men were political radicals, pivotal in the emergence of the “new liberalism.”4 Both were “public moralists,” combining scholarship with prolific political campaigning and popular writing.5 And both wrote widely on international and imperial affairs. Their writings provide a revealing insight into how reflective liberals thought about the future of world order as a new century dawned. Hobson and Hobhouse have drawn considerable scholarly interest, and in what follows I do not attempt an exhaustive analysis of their political thought.6 Rather, I outline some of the key issues shaping political thought at the time (in “Confronting Modernity”), and then explore how Hobhouse and Hobson conceived of the relationship between democracy, empire, and international politics (in “Hobhouse and the Ironies of Liberal History” and “J. A. Hobson and the Crisis of Liberalism”). I focus on two main themes, neither of which has received sufficient attention. First, I highlight how they figured themselves within narratives charting the evolution of liberal thought and practice, allowing them simultaneously to pay homage to their predecessors while carving out a space for the new liberal project. Second, I discuss their writings about the settler colonies in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Their accounts of colonialism undermine neat distinctions between “domestic,” “international,” and “imperial” politics or political theory. For Hobson and Hobhouse, as well as for many of their contemporaries, the colonies exhibited characteristics of all three: constitutive elements of the empire, they were nevertheless semiautonomous states purportedly composed of people of the same “nationality” and “race” as the inhabitants of the United Kingdom. The British colonial empire, according to this perspective, could be viewed as an embryonic intermediary institution occupying the space between the territorially delimited modern state and an all-encompassing world state. Grounded in and bound by the cultural singularity of the “British race,” it promised, if understood properly, to unite colonial communities scattered across the planet, creating a vast polity that would maintain or expand British geopolitical strength while acting simultaneously as an agent of global progress. This was the apotheosis of British imperial ambition. Confronting Modernity British international thought at the turn of the twentieth century was structured by a wide variety of assumptions and preoccupations, some old, others new. Elsewhere I have argued that it is productive to interpret many of the

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thinkers in this period as wrestling with the politics of modernity—as confronting, that is, a world that seemed to be undergoing a period of intense and rapid transition in which many of the existing categories and concerns of politics were being transformed, even revolutionized.7 In this section, I will outline six of these interlinked developments. First, technology was radically altering the way in which individuals perceived the physical world. New sociopolitical possibilities—new horizons of expectation—were opened up as a result.8 From the 1860s onward, the electrical telegraph, which promised instantaneous global communication, spawned fantasies about the elimination of geographical distance, the “annihilation of time and space,” that prefigure late twentieth century accounts of globalization.9 Vast ocean liners, the motorcar, and the airplane all reinforced this belief during the two decades straddling 1900.10 Yet the political conclusions drawn from these changes were indeterminate. Many saw technological developments as facilitating, even necessitating, construction of institutions and modes of politics that in the past would have seemed the stuff of dreams. But to others, they were potentially threatening, intensifying the dangers of brutal competition and violent conflict.11 This cognitive shift reinforced the sense that Britain’s global position was under threat. The dominance of the mid-Victorian years, when the country was thought of as the “workshop of the world,” was superseded by a period of anxiety and tension, especially from the 1880s onward. The “age of equipoise,” of stability, prosperity, and untrammelled optimism, had come to an end.12 An economic depression bit deeply. The post-Civil War dynamism of the United States, the rise of Germany at the heart of Europe and of Russia at the periphery, and, in the early Edwardian years, the emergence of Japan as a formidable force in Asia, seemed to augur the end of British hegemony. A new geopolitical constellation was materializing. This was felt keenly throughout the British intellectual and political elite. Political thought in Britain, meanwhile, was in a state of transitional flux. Liberalism was being revised and reformulated by a new generation of thinkers, Hobson and Hobhouse prominent among them. The emergence of the “new liberalism,” initially under the influence of the idealist philosopher T. H. Green, pointed many liberals in a social democratic direction, eschewing the perceived atomism of an older generation of reformers and focusing instead on the value of an interventionist state and on questions of social justice. In this their arguments overlapped, and sometimes fused, with those made by socialists, who since the 1880s had become an increasingly significant force in British political culture, terrifying many conservatives while expanding the space of political debate. British international thought was dominated, though far from exhausted, by forms of liberal

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internationalism. Liberal internationalists insisted on both the possibility and the moral necessity of progressive change in the structures and norms of world order. They sought to tame, even to eliminate, conflict while intensifying cooperation between “civilized” states, chiefly through the powers of international commerce and international law.13 The question of empire, however, divided the new liberals as it had the old. It was also a point of contention among socialist writers.14 Although some thinkers argued that empire was inimical to progress, for others it was, if enacted properly, a virtuous agent of it. The contest for the souls of liberalism and socialism was mirrored in a diverse array of visions of global order.15 During the closing decades of the century, democracy came to play a central role in debates over domestic and global politics. For much of the nineteenth century, mass democracy in Britain was a liberal aspiration and a conservative nightmare, its possible impact predicted but not yet felt. America acted as a model—often mediated through the writings of Alexis de Tocqueville—for this new form of politics, but it was far from clear how it would function in a European context. The Reform Bills of 1867, and above all 1886, were seen by many, despite their manifold limitations—not least the failure to enfranchise women—to initiate a democratic age. Yet a general sense of disillusionment with the realization of democracy and its failure to live up to expectations soon set in. The relationship between democracy and empire, which came to a head during the South African War (1899–1902), became a touchstone for debates over the future of liberalism and world order. In light of these various challenges, many commentators came to regard federalism as an answer to the political perplexities of the modern age. (Federalism can be understood broadly as a system of governance in which distinct polities were conjoined under a central authority, while maintaining a significant degree of autonomy over their internal affairs.) In a world undergoing profound changes, political technologies that could reconcile unity with difference were eminently desirable. Federalism seemed to fit the bill. It was prescribed for local, regional, imperial, and global politics. Although federalism had often been floated as a possible answer to the internecine warfare of European politics, it had rarely been considered a realistic option for governing on a global scale. At the end of the nineteenth century, as the world itself seemed to shrink, this skepticism receded. In Britain, debate raged about the potential unification of the settler colonies into an “imperial federation,” a vast polity stretching around the face of the earth.16 The possibilities for international organization were reshaped. Federalism joined democracy as an object of desire, perplexity, and debate. All of this helped to fuel an ever-increasing fascination with the past, present, and future of the United States.

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Finally, this was a period marked by a growing tension between specialist and expert knowledge.17 Intellectuals increasingly had to negotiate between appealing to an ever-expanding public hungry for information (and entertainment) and the imperatives of a rapidly professionalizing academic world. At the same time, universities were being transformed by the development of new disciplinary fields constituted by professional norms that derided, and institutional structures that hampered, existing models of scholarly production.18 These pressures were reinforced by the emergence of a global news service that helped to expand the geographical scope of the “public.”19 These shifts complicated the role of the “public moralist,” for it became progressively more difficult to satisfy the conflicting demands of multiple audiences. Some managed to navigate the terrain, including Hobhouse and Hobson, but it was treacherously difficult. Hobson and Hobhouse were both contributors to, and shaped by, these various political and intellectual trends. They addressed questions that many of their contemporaries were puzzling over, and in doing so they drew on a wide range of existing intellectual resources. But they were also important agents in structuring the terms of those debates, outlining arguments that were to play a significant role in fashioning the political thinking of their age. Hobhouse and the Ironies of Liberal History In 1901–1902, Hobhouse published a series of hard-hitting essays in the liberal weekly The Speaker. These were republished, in amended form, as Democracy and Reaction (1904). His central message was clear: in recent years, Britain had entered a period of “reaction” that infected most aspects of public life and threatened to undermine the progress that had characterized the previous century. “The nineteenth century,” Hobhouse wrote later, “might be called the age of Liberalism, yet its close saw the fortunes of that great movement brought to their lowest ebb.”20 This reaction, which manifested itself most obviously in the war in South Africa, demanded a reconsideration of the limits of and opportunities for progressive politics. In his writings between the South African war and the First World War, Hobhouse meditated on the ironies of history, the unintended effects of success, and the failures of judgment that had befallen him and his colleagues. Hobhouse identified two main problems besetting British political life. First, the victorious march of liberalism had helped to spawn its nemesis. Its very success had paved the way for its supersession. In this dialectical movement, progress was potentially, although not necessarily, self-undermining. The key to this historical tragedy could be found in the recent history of the

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empire, and in particular the settlement colonies. Second, the historical selfunderstanding of the new liberals had contributed to the growth of reaction by failing to grasp the similarities between the old and the new liberalism. Liberals, Hobhouse observed, were only very rarely opposed to all aspects of empire. Historically, they had denigrated the “old colonial system,” but this was often conjoined with support for the establishment of settler colonies, which were seen as pioneer outposts of civilization. Indeed, the phenomenal growth of the settler colonies during the nineteenth century from minor appendages of the old colonial system to large self-governing political communities was attributable chiefly to the ideas and energy of the Benthamite radicals. “Paradoxical as it may seem,” Hobhouse argued, “the new conception of empire had its roots, politically speaking, in the older Liberalism.” Cloaked in the language of progress and freedom, the new imperialism was thus powerfully “seductive” to the “modern liberal.”21 Looking to the settler colonies, they thought that “the problem of reconciling Empire with liberty had been solved.” Under this mild sway each component State of the Empire enjoyed full internal self-government, and yet the whole had advantages which small free States cannot claim. Over a great area of the world there was, it seemed, peace; there was the machinery for adjusting disputes between different parts, should such disputes arise; and there was the consciousness of a wider fraternity, of a vaster common heritage, than the citizens of any small community, however proud, could enjoy. In all of this, taken in full sincerity, there was much to appeal to Liberals, little to repel them.22 Yet the seduction was dangerous. Some liberals, he observed later, were becoming “imperialists in their sleep.” Falling for the rhetoric, they ignored the squalid reality. This was an acute failure of moral and political judgment, for a political theory “must be judged not only by its profession but by its fruits.”23 And the fruits of the new imperialism were strange indeed. “Under the reign of Imperialism the temple of Janus is never closed. Blood never ceases to run. The voice of the mourner is never hushed.”24 Imperialism, for Hobhouse, was antithetical to liberalism. The “central principle” of the former was self-government; that of the latter, the “subordination of selfgovernment to Empire.” They were impossible to reconcile. Those liberals who had supported imperialism, above all in South Africa, had fallen into a trap. “The trap laid for Liberals in particular consisted in this—that they were asked to give in their adhesion to Imperialism as representing admiration for an Empire which more and more has been shaped upon Liberal

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lines. Having given their assent, they were insensibly led on to the other meaning of Imperialism—a meaning which, for all practical purposes, these principles set aside.”25 Liberal success in reshaping the colonial empire in the second half of the century, then, had dulled the senses of many liberals, anesthetizing them against the profoundly antiliberal character of modern imperialism. The second problem was a function of the historical understanding, and intellectual self-fashioning, of the new liberals. Hobhouse argued that they had traduced their immediate predecessors, ignoring their strengths while exaggerating their weaknesses. To mark their distance from the laissez-faire liberals of the mid-Victorian years, the new generation had glossed over the points of similarity, the connections in “spirit and intention” that linked them. “The old individualism was standing in our way and we were for cutting it down.”26 The consequences were deeply regrettable, for in their rush to fell the old liberalism, the new liberals had inadvertently aided their reactionary adversaries. “The socialist development of Liberalism paved the way for Imperialism by diminishing the credit of the school which had stood most for the doctrines of liberty, fair dealing, and forbearance in international affairs.”27 In Democracy and Reaction, Hobhouse lavished praise on Cobden for his assiduous defense of freedom and his sustained anti-imperialism. In his classic volume Liberalism (1911), he went much further, sketching an historical narrative that charted, albeit briefly and in rather vague terms, the origins and trajectory of liberalism. This account identified the “old liberalism” as a necessary step in the evolution of liberal political thought and practice.28 Liberal history, on this view, had largely comprised a “negative” account in which liberals fought against the excessive and unjust powers of state and church. Thus Liberalism appears first as a criticism, sometimes even as a destructive and revolutionary criticism. Its negative aspect is for centuries foremost. Its business seems not to be so much to build up as to tear down, to remove obstacles which block human progress, rather than to point out the positive goal of endeavour or fashion the fabric of civilization. It finds humanity oppressed, and would set it free. It finds a people groaning under arbitrary rule, a nation in bondage to a conquering race, industrial enterprise obstructed by social privileges or crippled by taxation, and it offers relief.29 The end of the century had seen a switch to a more constructive liberalism, which shifted to questions of economic inequality, social justice, and the positive role of state intervention. It is arguable that Hobhouse’s narration of

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liberal history was, at least in part, a belated response to his perception of the failures of liberals to recognize the continuities in their own tradition. Hobhouse viewed the relationship between old and new liberal views on international affairs through the same prism. Whereas the old liberalism had prescribed strict adherence to the doctrine of nonintervention and skepticism about international entanglements, the “positive” dimension of the new liberalism, adapted for a democratic age, necessitated instead the creation of powerful international institutions.30 Although the means differed, the ends remained the same: peace and cooperation in world politics. And the enemies of this vision remained the same also: the imperialists. The tragedy of the situation was palpable. Although Hobhouse deplored the greed and violence found throughout the British empire—he focused repeatedly on the issue of racial injustice, without escaping many of the racialized assumptions of his age—he was primarily concerned with the destruction wrought on British society and politics. In this, he followed in a long line of radical critics of empire, from Bentham and Constant through to Cobden, Spencer, and beyond. Above all, he feared that the imperialist reaction “paralysed democratic effort at home.”31 Imperialism, that is, threatened to undermine Britain from within, infecting both political institutions and public morality. Like Constant, writing nearly a century beforehand, Hobhouse worried that the corruption of political discourse—triggered above all by the disingenuous recourse to justifying imperial aggression in terms of honor, glory, and national defense—was as dangerous as imperial policy itself. It was, Hobhouse averred, perhaps more corrupting than “the unblushing denial of right.”32 The spirit of conquest was malevolently intoxicating. Democracy had failed to live up to its promise. The period of reaction had confounded the commonplaces of political prophecy. “Both the friends and enemies of democracy,” he noted, had previously “inclined to the belief that when the people came into power there would be a time of rapid and radical domestic change combined in all probability with peace abroad.” Democracy was supposed to usher in a new world order, yet the democratic state had been slow to reform, and its people had been enthusiastic supporters of the war in South Africa. Moreover, the “humanitarian sentiment” that had shaped much of nineteenth-century British politics was being eroded. Humanitarianism was concerned “not merely with the direct alleviation of suffering and prevention of cruelty, but with the removal of fetters, the opening of opportunity to individual and national self-development, the utilisation of vastly increased material resources for the common benefit, the bringing in of the humblest to the banquet of civilisation.”33 It was a constituent element of the emergent liberalism. The corrosion of humanitarianism

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was caused by a number of factors, but above all Hobhouse emphasized the role played by mistaken understandings of evolutionary biology and the rise of philosophical idealism, both of which he thought justified a potentially authoritarian account of the state. This latter worry became an increasing fixation, reaching its peak in his polemical attack on The Metaphysical Theory of the State (1918). The combination of German metaphysics and notions of the “survival of the fittest” meant the naturalization of might over right, the validation of selfishness and aggression in politics. Yet rather than dismiss evolution and democracy as fatally flawed, Hobhouse defended specific articulations of each of them. His general philosophy was grounded in an account of “orthogenic” evolution.34 As an essentially ethical process, he affirmed, evolution was capable of rational human control; its end result and index was cooperation, not conflict. It served as an antidote to brute competition, not its justification. The political implications of this vision were obvious. Progress was defined by increasing cooperation between individuals in society and between different societies. The logical conclusion was a form of global institution that simultaneously entrenched political and economic interdependence while protecting particularity, and especially nationality, which Hobhouse, in common with many liberals, regarded as a progressive force in world politics.35 Imperial federation, as we shall see, offered a microcosmic variant of this ambitious project. Democracy, properly understood, was both an agent and a telos of progress. Democracy and imperialism, he argued, were opposed in principle: “Democracy is government of the people by itself. Imperialism is government of one people by another.” But although the theory of democracy was clear on the matter, Hobhouse wondered whether modern political and economic developments had rendered it obsolete. He focused in particular on the issue of scale.36 Was democracy impossible in a world of vast states? To answer this question, he delineated two conceptions of democracy: direct participation and popular sovereignty. Democracy, in the former view, implied “a direct participation of the masses of ordinary citizens in the public life of the commonwealth.” This was an ideal that had nearly been realized in “the great assemblies and large popular juries” of ancient Athens. It meant that ordinary citizens were entrusted with complex public functions, despite having little appropriate training or expertise. The modern way to neutralize this tendency was the creation of a bureaucracy, a disinterested technocratic civil service. Popular sovereignty, on the other hand, implied that the people constituted the only legitimate source of authority. This was achieved in practice through representative government and through free and full public discussion.37 “Given these conditions, on the one hand the recognised supremacy of the law which it makes, on the other hand perfect

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freedom to inform itself and make itself heard, democracy in the sense of ultimate popular sovereignty, is not necessarily incompatible with vastness of territory or complexity of interests.” But this alone did not eliminate the conjoined problems of scale and complexity, for local differences threatened to undermine the unity, and thus the viability, of modern political communities. Centrifugal forces challenged their “democratic character.”38 The best answer lay in the political technology of federalism. Although the United States presented the world with the main example of “strict federalism,” there were other forms available. For example, the British colonial empire was linked by what Hobhouse characterized as a “loose, informal, quasi-Federalism,” in which the “development of internal autonomy for each separate part is the means of reconciling democracy with empire.” Although he recognized the potential friction that might arise between the claims of a united colonial empire and the nationalist aspirations of the individual colonies, he nevertheless argued that democracy, federalism, and empire (not imperialism) were theoretically compatible, and that this compound was partly, if precariously, realized in the British colonial system. “Democracy,” he argued, “may be compatible with Empire in the sense of a great aggregation of territories enjoying internal independence while united by some common bond, but it is necessarily hostile to Empire in the sense of a system wherein one community imposes its will on others no less entitled by race, education, and capacity to govern themselves.” This was to distinguish between progressive and reactionary forms of imperial government, that is, those that were on the right side of history from those that sought to hold it back. He concluded by arguing that whatever its fate in the British colonial context, federalism, “as the natural means whereby over large areas unity can be reconciled with the conditions of popular government,” had a bright future.39 This argument aligned Hobhouse with the numerous proponents of imperial federation, who had been campaigning actively on behalf of the ideal since the late 1870s. Imperial federation was a vague term, identifying plans that ranged from the moderate—simply reinforcing existing ties between Britain and its colonies—to the truly audacious—including the creation of a globe-spanning racial-national state ruled by directly elected representatives sitting in a new imperial senate in London. However, the very vagueness of the project, or at least its elasticity, was also part of its strength, for it allowed individuals and groups, often with different agendas, to form a broad coalition to pressure the government over the direction of British foreign and imperial policy.40 In an earlier article reviewing Imperialism, Hobhouse praised the imperial federal project outlined by Hobson—to which I will return later—although his endorsement was qualified. “It is true,” he wrote, “that a democratic

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Empire, or let us say a democratic world State, might be conceived as a possibility,” but, he continued, such a “State could only be built up by Federation, probably by a complex system of Federation within Federation, and it would rest not on the annihilation, but in the peaceful development of nationality.”41 Once again, and more forcefully than Hobson, Hobhouse insisted on the need to reconcile nationality and imperial federation. If the correct balance could be struck between demands for national autonomy and the centralizing tendencies of an overarching political structure, then imperial federation would be a normatively desirable objective. Returning to the issue in Liberalism, Hobhouse offered a powerful, albeit highly abstract, argument for the viability, even necessity, of imperial federation. A united British colonial empire could act as both a model for the future and a possible agent of global transformation. Modes of international organization had to adapt to a changing world. “Physically the world is rapidly becoming one,” he argued, “and its unity must ultimately be reflected in political institutions.” In this quasideterminist account, new technologies were modifying the conditions of both political possibility and of necessity. These developments were both generated by, and further helped to generate, the orthogenic evolution of mind. The result was the simultaneous growth of support for the principle of nationality and a challenge to traditional conceptions of state sovereignty. The “old doctrine” of “absolute sovereignty” was “absolutely dead.” The largest modern states, continued Hobhouse, “exhibit a complex system of government within government, authority limited by authority, and the world-state of the not-impossible future must be based on a free national self-direction as full and satisfying as that enjoyed by Canada and Australia within the British Empire at this moment.”42 Here the British colonies acted as the vanguard of a democratic future, harbingers of a global polity to come. Although liberalism was antithetical to the “imperial idea,” it was fully alive to the forces that bound the colonies together, that is, “to the sentiment of unity pervading its white population, to all the possibilities involved in the bare fact that a fourth part of the human race recognizes one flag and one supreme authority.”43 This raised an important challenge for the new liberals. Because the colonial communities were the most democratic in the world, their union with Britain was a force for progress. As such, the empire could not be left to the reactionary imperialists. It was therefore vital “to devise means for the more concrete and living expression of this sentiment without impairing the rights of self-government on which it depends.”44 This was a difficult balancing act. As a first step, he proposed the creation of an imperial council to coordinate relationships between the colonial states, although he failed to offer any details about how it might work. This move

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would constitute, he implied, an initial step toward a deeper union, a union that would help to bind together, and give institutional expression to, the “sentiments” of the English-speaking peoples. “Such a union is no menace to the world’s peace or to the cause of freedom. On the contrary, as a natural outgrowth of a common sentiment, it is one of the steps towards a wider unity which involves no backstroke against the ideal of self-government. It is a model, and that on no mean scale, of the International State.”45 Like many thinkers of his generation, Hobhouse saw a dual challenge. Not only was it vital to calibrate relationships with the colonies, it was simultaneously important to deepen the connection with “the other great commonwealth of the English-speaking people,” namely, the United States. If the democratic peoples of the Anglo-Saxon race could be aligned, then progress could be secured. For Hobhouse, then, imperialism, understood broadly as the aggressive foreign expansion of the state, offered a profound challenge to the progressive development of humanity. It was the ultimate manifestation of reaction, antithetical to democratic theory and practice. But empire, if regarded as a political vehicle uniting the colonial communities, was not only compatible with democracy, it could help to bring about the democratization of the international system through strengthening the bonds, moral and political, that linked the various Anglo-Saxon communities scattered across the earth. History had come full circle. Although the success of liberalism had helped to spawn the period of reaction, the rise of imperialism in turn triggered the revival of liberalism, waking many—though not all—liberals from their slumber. In the preface to the second edition of Democracy and Reaction, published in 1909, Hobhouse identified the span of the period of reaction as 1880 to 1902, although it had antecedents and “some currents” were “still flowing.”46 In Liberalism, published two years later, he identified the key turning point as Campbell-Bannerman’s famous speech delivered in 1901 on the “methods of barbarism” employed by the British in South Africa.47 “Liberalism,” he concluded, “has passed through its Slough of Despond, and in the give and take of ideas with Socialism, has learnt, and taught, more than one lesson.”48 It seemed that Minerva’s owl had flown and that the period of reaction could only be comprehended at the moment it drew to a close. J. A. Hobson and the Crisis of Liberalism When Hobson came to reflect on The Crisis of Liberalism in 1909, his analysis dovetailed neatly with that of Hobhouse.49 He sketched, albeit in less detail and with less finesse, a grim account of recent political and intellectual developments. Liberals, he argued, had “shown defects of vision and of

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purpose,” with the result that for “over a quarter of a century Liberalism has wandered in this valley of indecision, halting, weak, vacillating, divided, and concessive.” Hobson sought to anatomize and correct this drift. Like Hobhouse, Hobson thought that liberals were engaged in a bitter conflict with the forces of reaction. He maintained that the Tories controlled the press, the political machinery, the city, the church, the armed services, and even the sporting establishment.50 Yet he remained optimistic, interpreting the intensity of the conservative reaction as a sign of the popularity and power of new liberal ideas. In characteristic radical style, he distinguished the people from the elites who ruled (and manipulated) them, placing his hope in the progressive potential of the former. The vitality of the new liberalism was demonstrated above all by the fact that the “vested interests” defended their class privileges by appeals to reason and justice; they were forced, that is, to use the terms of their opponents. This appeal took two main forms. First, they denied the existence of (structural) social and economic problems, focusing instead on “individual moralization” as the engine of progress. This was an attempt to neutralize demands for systemic social reform. Second, they tried to “foster the combative competitive instincts of the lower nature of man by urging the necessity and utility of industrial competition with other States.” They legitimated brutal competition through a combination of misapplied biological arguments, which led to politics being conceived of as a “struggle for life,” and the “authoritative conservatism of Hegelian dogmas.”51 The overlap with Hobhouse is clear. The Crisis of Liberalism was Hobson’s call to arms, an attempt to inject fighting spirit into the liberals by reorienting their priorities. The new liberalism, he argued, stood for an assault on monopolies and “unearned property.” To achieve this, it demanded a “new conception of the functions of the State,”52 and a reinterpretation of the meaning of, and the conditions necessary for securing, individual liberty. Like Hobhouse, Hobson also sought to embed the new liberalism in a developmental history of liberal thought and practice. This historical emplotment allowed him to argue that although the older individualist liberalism was in many respects obsolete, it nevertheless contained important truths that should not be jettisoned. Principles always needed to be adapted to contemporary conditions. “Each new generation of liberals will be required to translate a new set of needs and aspirations into facts.” It also meant that time was of the essence; reaction had to be defeated before it was too late. “This is the last chance for English Liberalism.”53 Hobson stressed two points. First, that the older liberalism had never been as etiolated as both its critics and its heirs proclaimed. “The negative conception of liberalism, as a definite mission for the removal of certain political and economic shackles upon personal liberty, is not merely philosophically

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defective,” he contended, “but historically false.” Liberals had never been committed to a radically atomistic individualism. Although he sought to save the older liberals from the condescension of posterity, he nevertheless criticized their arguments, maintaining that the “old Radicalism” had been “crippled” by “positive hostility to public methods of cooperation,” and had placed “an excessive emphasis upon the aspect of liberty which consists in the absence of restraint, as compared with the other aspect which consists in presence of opportunity.”54 Second, he identified the continuities between the old and the new, which centered on the role assigned to individual liberty. The new liberals, in seeking the “fuller realization of individual liberty contained in the provision of equal opportunities for self-development,”55 could be seen as completing the historical mission inaugurated by their predecessors. Again like Hobhouse, he argued that liberal weakness and indecision had encouraged the enemies of liberalism, facilitating their assaults on its core achievements in politics and social policy. Above all, he lamented that imperialism, the “great arch-enemy of the age,” had “found a too facile entrance among the ranks of her dejected followers.” Imperialism, he continued, had been exploited by the conservatives to derail projects for reform, and it served as a natural ally for economic protectionism.56 Few of Hobson’s readers were likely to be surprised by this diagnosis. He was, after all, well known as the author of Imperialism: A Study (1902), a coruscating attack on the “new imperialism” being practiced by the United States, Germany, France, and, above all, the United Kingdom. This volume had followed in quick succession from two earlier books, both based on his experiences as a correspondent for the Manchester Guardian during the South African War.57 During the first few years of his career, Hobson had been a fairly conventional supporter of the liberal imperial mission to civilize, only transmuting into a new liberal thinker, and avowed enemy of imperialism, in the early 1890s. Yet this transition was never complete, and pronounced traces of his earlier views remained. His political thinking selectively combined elements of Fabian thought, Spencer’s political sociology of industrial modernization, utilitarianism, positivism ultimately derived from the writings of August Comte, and Ruskin’s conception of organic economic society.58 By the late 1890s, he became convinced that the “new” imperialism, unfolding mainly in Africa and Asia, represented an overriding danger to British democracy. It threatened “peace, economy, reform, and popular self-government,” catalyzing instead militarism, reaction, and jingoism.59 Imperialism offered a multicausal explanation for the emergence, since roughly 1870, of the “earth hunger” that had gripped Britain, Germany, France, and the United States. Its “leading characteristic” was competition between great capitalist empires.60

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Its main stimulus was investment. Oversaving among capitalists and underconsumption by the masses meant that the rich could not invest their money profitably in the domestic market. In search of a high rate of return, they pushed for the opening of foreign markets, which in turn required territorial acquisitions. This system benefitted the few—chiefly financiers and their allies in the political establishment—at the expense of the many. The “business interests of the nation as a whole are subordinated to those of certain sectional interests that usurp control of the national resources and use them for their private gain.”61 Employing a common radical trope, he argued that imperialism was “irrational from the standpoint of the whole nation,” although “it is rational enough from the standpoint of certain classes in the nation.” Using various forms of manipulation and misleading propaganda, this profit-driven imperialism was disguised as necessary government policy; it was a “calculating, greedy type of Machiavellianism” wrapped in the evocative language of “national destiny” and the spread of “civilization.”62 He too feared the corrupting effects of disingenuous language. Empire was not the problem, only its malignant forms. Hobson never gave up on the idea that higher civilization bestowed rights on some states or peoples to override the claims to self-determination of others. He also offered a strong defense of the value of settler colonization, insisting on the “radical distinction between genuine colonialism and Imperialism.”63 An advocate of imperial federation, he once sketched out an ambitious outline of the future of international organization in which vast federations, each rooted in “common blood, language, and institutions,” dominated, and helped to pacify, world politics. Holding, as we must, that any reasonable security for good order and civilization in the world implies the growing application of the federation principle in international politics, it will appear only natural that the earlier steps in such a process should take the form of unions of States most closely related by ties of common blood, language, and institutions, and that a phase of federated Britain or Anglo-Saxondom, PanTeutonism, Pan-Slavism, and Pan-Latinism might supervene upon the phase already reached . . . Christendom thus laid out in a few great federal empires, each with a retinue of uncivilized dependencies, seems to me the most legitimate development of present tendencies and one which would offer the best hope of permanent peace on an assured basis of inter-Imperialism.64 Imperial federation would also derail the aggressive ambitions of the rapidly expanding colonies. Hobson worried that the colonies were in danger

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of turning into semiautonomous imperial powers, seeking to dominate the “lower races” in their regions and dragging Britain into hazardous entanglements with other powerful states. The dangers were the same as in the “mother country”: the influence of local cohorts of financiers pushing for market expansion and plotting the “subversion of honest, self-developing democracy.”65 In a book long remembered as a model of anti-imperialism, Hobson unambiguously defended the benefits of imperial federation and the civilizing potential of global Anglo-Saxon power. However, over the course of the next few years, his views on imperial federation shifted, and by the time he came to publish The Crisis of Liberalism, he had lost his earlier enthusiasm for the project. Indeed, he poured scorn on those who supported it—while never mentioning his earlier advocacy. “Those British imperialists who, with the events of the last few years before their eyes, still imagine a closer Imperial federation in any shape or form practicable, are merely the dupes of a Kiplingesque sentimentalism.”66 What spurred his change of heart? Part of the answer lies in Hobson’s changing views on the practical effects of federalism and the dynamics of colonial development. When he turned to discussing the postwar situation in South Africa, he noted that much support for the union of South Africa, which was to be achieved in 1910, emanated from those (notably Carnarvon and Chamberlain) who had long sought a “larger federation, or other reconstitution of the self-governing sections of the British Empire.” They had assumed that the federation of South Africa would be a step on the road to imperial federation. Hobson challenged this logic, arguing that federation and state consolidation in Australia, Canada, and South Africa made imperial federation less feasible, for as the colonies have “grown in size and strength, they have increasingly asserted their larger rights of independent government.” National federation acted as a centrifugal force, reducing the likelihood of a wider imperial federal project acquiring sufficient support among the newly emboldened colonists. The leaders of the colonies would not think it in the national interest to federate with the “mother country.” Moreover, contrary to popular belief, the links between the colonies and Britain were growing weaker despite the “greater physical accessibility” facilitated by new communications and transport technologies and that space-eliminating instrument of modern capitalism, the “great machinery of modern investment.”67 These were outweighed by countervailing tendencies demanding increased national autonomy. Such skepticism about the transformative powers of technology highlights the political indeterminacy of technological change. In the movement of Joseph Chamberlain’s ideas, Hobson divined the direction of imperial federalist discourse, and above all the shift from

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arguments propounding political federation to those focusing on economic unity. “Mr Chamberlain,” he wrote, “soon saw that the front-door of political federation was shut, bolted and barred. He thereupon sought the tradesman’s entrance, claiming to knit the colonies and the mother country into an indissoluble union by means of a set of preferences which he hoped might eventually give free trade within the Empire.” But, Hobson continued, this new project was also doomed to fail—it was “futile”68 —and for the same reasons: the perceived national interests of the colonial states. As such, the only possible mechanism for drawing the empire together was imperial defense. Here too he was skeptical. In particular, he turned his attention to the hollowness of imperial rhetoric: “It might well appear a profitable and glorious task to co-operate in the protection of a ‘free, tolerant, unaggressive Empire.’ But it is not equally glorious or profitable to enter a confederation under which a necessarily dominant partner can claim his blood and money to help hold down India, to quell some struggles for liberty in Egypt, or to procure some further step in the tropical aggrandisement at the bidding of some mining or rubber syndicate.”69 Although this was a powerful critique from the perspective of a metropolitan new liberal, it was not convincing in its own terms. As Hobson lamented in Imperialism, the colonies themselves claimed a right to engage in their own imperial activities. Indeed, one of the reasons that he had originally defended imperial federation was that he thought it would limit their expansionist ambitions. He concluded his dissection of imperial federation with the summary claim that “no abiding unity can be found for an Empire half autocratic and half self-governing.” 70 A further reason for the unacknowledged switch lies in Hobson’s interpretation of the nefarious role of Chamberlain. Although in the 1890s Hobson had been a cautious admirer of Chamberlain, he soon came to associate him with the forces of imperialist reaction, above all in South Africa.71 This was made all the worse by Chamberlain’s radical origins; his subsequent trajectory was an act of betrayal. His tariff reform campaign launched in 1903 was, most likely, the final nail in the coffin for Hobson.72 He was also confronted with empirical evidence that challenged the feasibility of any constitutional scheme for imperial federation. During 1905, he traveled around Canada, writing reports for the Daily Chronicle, which he soon turned into a short book. Two main themes ran through it: the increasing “Americanization” of Canada and the failings of protectionism as an economic policy. Canada, he argued, was undergoing a profound transformation. Following the lead of its southern neighbor, its people were displaying boundless optimism; the country was “conscious, vocally, uproariously conscious, that her day has come.” Despite the professed anti-Americanism he discerned among

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many of its elite, Canada was also becoming more American. The food, the architecture, the economic infrastructure, even the accents and physical dispositions of the people: all were more American than British. Average Canadians, he proclaimed, “are American through and through.” But they were not quite there yet. “In fact,” Hobson concluded, “Canada presents as yet a sub-American variety of civilization, though in some ways rapidly assimilating to the States.”73 He maintained that Canada’s destiny was bound up with increasing economic interaction with the United States. Imperial federation, which was based on an assumption about the cultural unity of the global British diaspora, would find it extremely difficult to flower in this environment. Canada was also gaining a sense of national unity, drawing the distinct interests and peoples of the country together. “Every visitor to Canada is powerfully impressed by a growing conscious spirit of nationality,” a spirit that was bound to “find expression in demands for even larger liberty than is enjoyed now.” This further undermined schemes for imperial federation. Despite widespread sentimental attachment to the British empire—Hobson discerned little enthusiasm for complete independence—he contended that “it would not be possible to devise, even in general terms, any scheme of Imperial federation to which the most pro-British group of Canadians would assent when they understood what it implied.” This was a consequence of both national consciousness and democratic development. Canadians were not prepared to lose “one jot of the power of self-government” or shut themselves off from “any further degree of independence to which they may aspire in the future.” Yet this is exactly what any serious federal scheme would involve. “For, either an Imperial Council would be an amiable farce, or it would be a real political body, capable of committing the peoples of the Colonies to some course of action, involving pecuniary and military obligations, and directing, at any rate, their foreign policy.” The idea that a “democratic country” like Canada would “hand powers over to some Privy Council committee” was, he thought, “preposterous.” Democratic sentiment heralded the death knell for federalist dreams. The future for Canada lay elsewhere: “Canada is not staying as she was: both in sentiment and in practical policy she is moving along the road towards national independence, either within or outside the Empire.”74 Whereas imperial federation had once seemed an appealing prospect— and there is no reason to think that he changed his mind on the abstract arguments in its favor—it had now been rendered obsolete by a combination of political developments. Not only was it less feasible than before, it had also been hijacked by the forces of reaction. Hobson clearly agreed with Hobhouse’s injunction to take the “fruits” as well as the intentions of political theories seriously.

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Yet despite his disavowal of formal schemes for imperial federation, Hobson did not give up on the civilizing potential of empire. The problem with contemporary imperialism, he argued, was its lack of accountability and the fact that it was often pursued for self-interested motives. The “radical moral defect of Imperialism,” he contended, “is due to lack of any true sanction from a society of nations to the interference of an imperialist nation with the life of a lower people.” This implied that if such sanctions could be enacted, then it would be possible to distinguish morally corrupt from just forms of imperial governance. Indeed, he looked forward to a paternalist form of multilateral imperialism, the legitimacy of which could be secured through the collaboration of a variety of “civilized” states. “If there existed a fairly developed form of international society, in which all peoples, great and small, were in some sense represented, and such a society delegated England or France in the interests of civilisation to take under her tutelage some backward or degraded people which lay on their borders, maintaining order, developing the natural resources of the country, and helping to teach the arts of civilisation, this would afford some moral basis for Imperialism. Actual imperialism differs widely from this condition.”75 In a move that prefigures the arguments of many late twentieth century liberal imperialists, and arguably some of the most powerful norms of the post-1945 international order, Hobson defended a vision of a benevolent multinational civilizing imperialism. Conclusions In the wake of the war in South Africa, a war that divided British liberals like no other, Hobson and Hobhouse set out a penetrating autocritique of the recent failings of liberalism and offered an alternative vision for the future. They focused their critical energies on the purported enemies of liberalism: neo-Hegelian philosophy, misapplied notions of evolution, and vested class interests. But they also addressed the failings of liberalism in general, and the new liberals in particular. These failings were both practical and cognitive. Liberalism had been a successful force during the nineteenth century, but it had grown weak and divided, hamstrung by the moral and political limits of the older liberalism and by the failure of the new liberals to recognize the powerful intellectual resources bequeathed by their predecessors. Liberalism, in this view, had been partially undermined by the careless way in which its history had been narrated by the new liberals. Hobson and Hobhouse sought to rectify this failure of historical judgment by offering an alternative account of development, one that simultaneously allowed them to praise the virtues and the foresight of the earlier liberals while insisting

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that new conditions meant that it was essential to adopt new arguments. In doing so, they provide an early example of what would become common practice as the twentieth century wore on: the writing and rewriting of the “liberal tradition,” with a canon of great thinkers at its core. This had been largely absent in prominent nineteenth-century constructions of liberalism. Empire played a central, although ambivalent, role in their political projects. Initially they both supported the federation of the British colonies, arguing that it could harness unity and diversity within a single political organization and provide an institutional foundation for further progress in international politics. It had the potential to become a democratic new liberal polity stretched across the globe. During the Edwardian years, however, Hobson changed his mind. He came to regard imperial federation as both impractical and reactionary. Hobhouse, meanwhile, appeared to strengthen his support for the idea, although he rarely engaged with concrete details. Their shifting arguments about empire exemplified the ambiguity of liberal visions of global order at the turn of the twentieth century. Notes 1. Winter, Dreams of Peace and Freedom: Utopian Moments in the Twentieth Century (London: Yale University Press, 2006), 11. 2. This sense of foreboding found literary expression in a genre of fiction imaging future wars: I. F. Clarke, Voices Prophesizing War: Future Wars, 1763–3749, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); Charles Gannon, Rumors of War and Infernal Machines: Technomilitary Agenda-Setting in American and British Speculative Fiction (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2005), chs. 1–4. Some of the stories are reprinted in I. F. Clarke, ed., The Tale of the Next Great War, 1871–1914: Fictions of Future Warfare and of Battles Still-to-Come (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1995). 3. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study (London: James Nisbet, 1902) His autobiography was entitled Confessions of an Economic Heretic (London: Allen & Unwin, 1938). 4. See, for example, Peter Clarke, Liberals and Social Democrats (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978); Michael Freeden, The New Liberalism: An Ideology of Social Reform (Oxford: Clarendon, 1978); Avital Simhony and David Weinstein, eds., The New Liberalism: Reconciling Liberty and Community (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 5. Stefan Collini, Public Moralists: Political Thought and Intellectual Life in Britain 1850–1930 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991). 6. Stefan Collini, Liberalism and Sociology: L. T. Hobhouse and Political Argument in England, 1880–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Peter Cain, Hobson and Imperialism: Radicalism, New Liberalism, and Finance 1887–1938 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Michael Freeden, ed.,

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7.

8.

9.

10. 11.

12.

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14. 15.

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Reappraising J. A. Hobson: Humanism and Welfare (London: Unwin, 1990); Jules Townshend, J. A. Hobson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990); David Long, Towards a New Liberal Internationalism: The International Theory of J. A. Hobson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); David Weinstein, “Consequentialist Cosmopolitanism,” in Duncan Bell, ed., Victorian Visions of Global Order, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 267–291. Bell, “Dreaming the Future: Anglo-America as Utopia, c.1880–1914,” in Ella Dzelzainis and Ruth Livesey, eds., The American Experiment and the Idea of Democracy in British Culture, 1776–1914. (Aupdated: Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010) See also Martin Daunton and Bernhard Rieger, eds., Meanings of Modernity: Britain in the Age of Imperialism and World Wars (Oxford: Berg, 2001). On “horizons of expectation,” see Reinhard Koselleck, Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, trans. Keith Tribe (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985). In general, see Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 1880–1914 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983); on how this affected views of global order, see Duncan Bell, The Idea of Greater Britain: Empire and the Future of World Order, 1860–1900 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), ch. 3; Jo-Ann Pemberton, Global Metaphors: Modernity and the Quest for One World (London: Pluto, 2001). Bernhard Rieger, Technology and the Culture of Modernity in Britain and Germany, 1890–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). The language of competition was also fueled by the popularity of evolutionary arguments, although they too were politically indeterminate. Mike Hawkins, Social Darwinism in European and American Thought, 1860–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Paul Crook, Darwinism, War and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). W. L. Burn, The Age of Equipoise: A Study of the Mid-Victorian Generation (London: Allen & Unwin, 1964); Martin Hewitt, ed., An Age of Equipoise? Reassessing Mid-Victorian Britain (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000). Casper Sylvest, British Liberal Internationalism, 1880–1930: Making Progress? (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009); Duncan Bell and Casper Sylvest, “International Society in Victorian Political Thought: T. H. Green, Herbert Spencer, and Henry Sidgwick,” Modern Intellectual History 3 (2006), 1–32. Gregory Claeys, Imperial Agnostics: British Critics of Empire, 1850–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming), ch. 3. Duncan Bell, “Empire and Imperialism,” in Gregory Claeys and Gareth Stedman Jones, eds., The Cambridge History of Nineteenth Century Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Bell, The Idea of Greater Britain. See also Casper Sylvest’s chapter in this volume for Bryce’s attempt to reconcile nationalism and federalism.

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17. See, in general, Martin Daunton, ed., The Organisation of Knowledge in Victorian Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Amanda Anderson and Joseph Valente, eds., Disciplinarity at the Fin de Siècle (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002). 18. John Burrow, Stefan Collini, and Donald Winch, That Noble Science of Politics: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Intellectual History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Robert Adcock, Mark Bevir, and Shannon Stimson, eds., Modern Political Science: Anglo-American Exchanges Since 1880 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), chs. 1–6. 19. See, for example, Simon Potter, News and the British World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). On the perceived shift in the scope of the public, see Duncan Bell, “Home or Away? Territoriality, Nationality, and Borders in the Victorian Empire, 1860–1914,” in William Mulligan and Brendan Simms, eds., The Primacy of Foreign Policy in British History, (Basingstoke: Palgrave, forthcoming 2010). ). 20. Hobhouse, Liberalism, ed., James Meadowcroft (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994 [1911]), 103. 21. Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction, ed., Peter Clarke (Brighton: Harvester, 1972 (1904)), 18. On Bentham’s views, see Philip Schofield, Utility and Democracy: The Political Thought of Jeremy Bentham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), ch. 7; Jennifer Pitts, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), ch. 4. On utilitarianism, see Bart Schultz and Georgios Varouaxakis, eds., Utilitarianism and Empire (Oxford: Lexington, 2005). 22. Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction, 24–25. 23. Ibid., 107, 28. 24. Ibid., 28. 25. Ibid., 48. One definition of imperialism that he offered was “the doctrine of racial ascendency and territorial aggression.” Hobhouse, “The Growth of Imperialism,” Speaker, 25 January 1902, 474. This conception of the empire spawned the view, upheld by “Lord Milner and Mr Rhodes,” that it comprised a “great gold-producing machine.” 26. Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction, 11, 210. 27. Ibid., 12. For a spirited defense of classical liberalism against the charges leveled by the new liberals (among others), see Goldwin Smith, “The Manchester School,” Contemporary Review 67 (1895), 377–90. 28. Liberalism was once described by C. Wright Mills as the “best twentieth-century statement of Liberal ideals.” Mills, The Marxists (Harmondswoth: Penguin, 1963), 25n. On Cobden, see Peter Cain, “Capitalism, War, and Internationalism in the Thought of Richard Cobden,” British Journal of International Studies 5 (1979), 229–45; Claeys, Imperial Agnostics, ch. 2. 29. Hobhouse, Liberalism, 8. 30. See Sylvest, British Liberal Internationalism on the difference between “moral” and “institutional” conceptions of progress. 31. Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction, 49.

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32. Ibid., 29. Constant, “The Spirit of Conquest and Usurpation and their Relation to European Civilization,” [1814] in Constant, Political Writings, ed., Biancamaria Fontana (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 51–81. 33. Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction, 49–50, 58–59. 34. See especially, Hobhouse, Mind in Evolution (London: Macmillan, 1901); Morals in Evolution: A Study in Comparative Ethics, 2 vols. (London: Chapman & Hall, 1906); Social Evolution and Political Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1911); Development and Purpose: An Essay Towards a Philosophy of Evolution (London: Macmillan, 1913). 35. On liberal conceptions of nationality, see H. S. Jones, “The Idea of the National in Victorian Political Thought,” European Journal of Political Theory 5 (2006), 12–21. 36. On debates over scale, see Bell, The Idea of Greater Britain, chs. 3 and 9. 37. Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction, 147, 148–149, 151. Hobhouse also argued, without providing details, that the idea of “direct participation” was “held by observers to have materially influenced American public life, and not to have influenced it for the good,” 149. 38. Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction, 152, 153. 39. Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction, 154, 156–157, 155. 40. On the debates over imperial federation, see Bell, The Idea of Greater Britain. 41. Hobhouse, “Democracy and Empire,” Speaker, 18 October 1902, 75. He concluded that “Mr Hobson’s book will become one of the text-books of reviving Liberalism—the Liberalism which is finding itself again in opposition to Imperialism, and is recognising that a choice must be made between Democracy and Empire.” Hobhouse was far from alone in thinking that the end result of imperial federation was better characterized as a “world state” than an empire: Bell, The Idea of Greater Britain, ch. 4. 42. Hobhouse, Liberalism, 105, 115. 43. Hobhouse, Liberalism, 115–116. Note the conflation here between the “white” settler colonies and the remainder of the empire. 44. Hobhouse, Liberalism, 116. 45. Ibid., 116. 46. Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction, 247, 250. 1886 saw the rejection of Gladstone’s Home Rule Bill while 1902 was marked by the Peace of Vereeniging, bringing hostilities in South Africa to a close. 47. See here C. C. Eldridge, Victorian Imperialism (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1978), 13; John S. Ellis, “ ‘The Methods of Barbarism’ and the ‘Rights of Small Nations’: War Propaganda and British Pluralism,” Albion 30 (1998), 49–75. 48. Hobhouse, Liberalism, 107, 109. 49. Hobson, The Crisis of Liberalism (London: King, 1909). This volume, like Democracy and Reaction, was composed of a series of previously published articles. 50. Hobson, The Crisis of Liberalism, x. All of this “thrown together by the class instinct of self-preservation,” 188.

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51. Ibid., 183–184, 185, 187. Like Hobhouse, Hobson thought that evolution, properly understood, generated “mutual aid or conscious co-operation,” 185. 52. Ibid., xi. The American progressive scholar Charles Beard observed that “At Albany or Harrisburg, Mr Hobson’s philosophy would be instantly branded as ‘rank socialism’ and dangerous utopianism, but at Westminster things are different.” Beard, Political Science Quarterly 25:3 (1910), 530. 53. Ibid. 135. 54. Ibid., 92–94. Yet he painted liberalism with a very broad brush, for, as Michael Freeden notes, he expended little effort in engaging with past thinkers, even Mill, and preferred to discuss his contemporaries. Freeden, Liberal Languages: Ideological Imaginations and Twentieth-Century Progressive Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 94. 55. Ibid., xii. This was a “more constructive and evolutionary idea of liberty,” 93. 56. Ibid., viii. 57. Hobson, The War in South Africa: Its Causes and Effects (London: Nisbet, 1901); Hobson, The Psychology of Jingoism (London: Richards, 1901). 58. On Ruskin and Spencer, see Cain, Hobson and Imperialism; on the links to positivism, see Claeys, Imperial Agnostics, ch. 4; and on utilitarian themes, see David Weinstein, Utilitarianism and the New Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), ch. 6. 59. Hobson, Imperialism, 126. 60. Ibid., 13, 19. 61. Ibid., 46. Like many contemporary critiques of finance capitalism, Hobson’s views were tainted with anti-Semitism (Cain, Hobson and Imperialism, 84, 92–3). On earlier socialist and radical accounts of finance imperialism, see Claeys, Imperial Agnostics. 62. Hobson, Imperialism, 47, 12–13. Claeys (Imperial Agnostics, ch. 4) highlights that this was grounded in, among other things, a Vattelian argument about the rights of occupation of under-utilised land. See also the discussion in Andrew Fitzmaurice’s chapter in this volume. 63. Hobson, Imperialism, 36. 64. Ibid., 332. 65. Ibid., 345. 66. Hobson, The Crisis of Liberalism, 238. 67. Ibid., 236, 237, 239, 237. 68. Ibid., 239. On Chamberlain’s own change of heart, see Bell, The Idea of Greater Britain, 56–58. 69. Hobson, The Crisis of Liberalism, 241. 70. Ibid., 242. 71. On his early support for and respect of Chamberlain, see Cain, Hobson and Imperialism, 53, 61. 72. On the debates around tariff reform, see, inter alia, Anthony Howe, Free Trade and Liberal England, 1846–1946 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998);

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Frank Trentmann, Free Trade Nation: Commerce, Consumption, and Civil Society in Modern Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 73. Hobson, Canada To-Day (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1906), 3, 50–51. Although it had long been in use, the term “Americanization” was popularized by W. T. Stead, The Americanization of the World; Or, the Trend of the Twentieth Century (London: Horace Markley, 1902). 74. Hobson, Canada To-Day, 99–101, 103. 75. Hobson, The Crisis of Liberalism, 259.

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CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Never-Satisfied Idealism of Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson Jeanne Morefield

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he international relations theory of G. Lowes Dickinson has long puzzled both critics and admirers alike because of what appears to be its complicated amalgam of “idealist” and “realist” sensibilities. For decades, International Relations (IR) scholars have attempted to identify Dickinson as one or the other. Thus, for E. H. Carr, Dickinson represented all that was most willfully ignorant about those League of Nations reformers he associated with the “utopian edifice.”1 Other realists such as Kenneth Waltz, by contrast, embraced Dickinson as a fellow realist and sympathetically tut-tutted the manner in which Dickinson was “blasted by liberals and socialists alike for reversing the dominant inside-out explanation,” that is, the idea that the behavior of states is best understood by looking at their form rather than at the power arrangements of international politics.2 More recently, Mearsheimer, has resuscitated Dickinson’s work as an embryonic form of “offensive realism.”3 Scholars of the history of international thought, while taking a slightly more nuanced approach to Dickinson, continue to locate his notion of “international anarchy” along some point on the idealist/realist continuum. David Long, for instance, argues that Dickinson’s understanding of the current system of armed states best resembles an unalloyed form of “Hobbesian idealism.”4 Andreas Osiander, however, argues that aside from the “overtones of moralism and voluntarism” implicit in Dickinson’s analysis, there is little there that characterizes it as “IR Idealist if that label is to denote a specific type of IR

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theory.”5 Dickinson might have used “idealist” sounding terms, Osiander maintains, but his overall approach simply reflected “the strong presence of Realist ideas” on international discourse at the time. Brian Schmidt is likewise interested in emphasizing what he understands to be the largely realist impulses of Dickinson’s work on international relations, impulses that he maintains were entirely distinct from Dickinson’s earlier writings on “morals and religion.”6 For Schmidt, Dickinson, the Cambridge don and classics scholar, “completely changed intellectual directions” when he embraced the study of international relations during the war, ostensibly leaving his earlier engagement with philosophical idealism behind. I argue in this chapter, however, that the IR terms realist and idealist developed by Carr and others during the First Debate of the interwar period simply do not adequately describe the contours of Dickinson’s approach, an approach developed before that bifurcating rhetoric so central to the emerging discipline had taken hold. Thus, rather than reading Dickinson as more or less of a IR realist and rather than thinking about his work in terms of a clean break between his early philosophical idealism and his international relations scholarship, I maintain that we need to understand his notion of international anarchy as continually informed by all of the sensibilities of both his earlier and later works on classics and idealist philosophy. Dickinson’s work was “idealist” in the philosophical sense but also complicated by a particular reading of human nature that rendered it deeply and critically observant of international power politics, so much so that it often took on the sheen of a Mearsheimer-like, systems-oriented view of state relations. I argue that Dickinson’s critical understanding of “the ideal” as “the never satisfied” compelled him toward a critique of precisely the false dichotomy between “brutal realism and a blind idealism” into which scholars try to force his work to this day. Dickinson’s approach, I suggest, continues to be instructive for anyone wishing to challenge that polarized and parochial vision of much contemporary IR scholarship. The chapter begins by first examining the connection between Dickinson’s idealism and his understanding of human beings as makers or crafters of the ideal. I then explore how this approach influenced Dickinson’s complex thought on the relationship between human nature, sovereignty, and history. I argue that this approach enabled him to interrogate the self-reinforcing logic of realist attacks on the movement for international peace by questioning their historical assumptions. Finally, I offer a few thoughts on Dickinson’s somewhat embattled legacy and the way his humanist, critical idealism continues to offer a fascinating analytical challenge to the rhetorical move that declares war a “necessity of nature,” a “fate to which men must passively bow.” 7 By looking to the past not to justify

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the present world order but to disrupt it, Dickinson’s work furnished what Edward Said has called an intellectual “countermemory” that pushed up against the horizons of what the skeptics of his time, and today, declare possible. Dickinson on Human Nature and Idealism Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson was born in 1862 and died in Cambridge in 1935. While a young man at Cambridge, Dickinson joined the Apostles, an exclusive club for university intellectuals, and fell under the spell (as his friend and biographer E. M. Forster later recounted) of Plato, Goethe, and Shelley. After an unsuccessful stint at Craig Farm, the utopian cooperative later lampooned by Dickinson as “Cranky Farm,” and an aborted attempt at medical school, Dickinson returned to Cambridge, wrote a never-published dissertation on Plotinus, and won a fellowship at King’s College in 1887. A true example of an academic life lived before the ossification of disciplinary boundaries, Dickinson has been described as a classicist, historian, and political scientist.8 His early works ranged over a variety of historical, philosophical, and contemporary topics and include Revolution and Reaction in Modern France (1892), The Greek View of Life (1896), The Meaning of Good (1901), and the boldly conceived (and stunningly Orientalist) 1901 book Letter from John Chinaman, written from the perspective of a Chinese official living in London and in which one can see some of Dickinson’s earliest articulations of his critique of European state sovereignty.9 Shortly before the First World War, Dickinson expanded his intellectual purview to include analyses of international politics, culminating in perhaps his most famous work, The International Anarchy, in 1926. Indeed, Dickinson is perhaps best known for inventing the term international anarchy, the influence of which, according to Ian Hall, “is perhaps without parallel,” adopted “by political realists and reiterated by every generation of international relations theorists since.”10 Despite his fame as a scholar of international politics, however, Dickinson continued to dwell for the rest of his life on the questions that had most influenced him since his early days at Cambridge, idealistinflected questions that primarily probed the relationship between human life and the idea of “the good.” One sees this form of inquiry rearticulated in both his IR texts, in such later works as 1930’s After Two Thousand Years: A Dialogue between Plato and a Modern Young Man, and in his published and unpublished writings on Goethe.11 Central to what Forster identified as Dickinson’s lifelong idealism was his belief in the creative qualities of human beings as “seekers” of the ideal. What differentiated Dickinson’s idealism from the neo-Hegelianism of many

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of his Oxford contemporaries like Bernard Bosanquet and D. W. Ritchie as well as from Cambridge’s own resident metaphysician J.M.E. McTaggart was the intensity of its philosophical remoteness. In other words, there was always something rather fuzzy around the edges of Dickinson’s idealism and, in the end, the ideal made its presence known in his work not so much as a categorical imperative demanding right action but rather as a catalyst for historical critique and reflection.12 For instance, in his work, Dickinson often expressed what looked like a deeply materialist reluctance to illustrate his notion of “the good” in practice, a tendency that no doubt contributed to his erstwhile characterization as a “realist.” But whereas Marx’s discomfort with utopias arose from his dislike of theories that “descend from heaven to earth,” Dickinson’s unwillingness to limn the contours of the ideal sprang not from a disbelief in its existence but rather from an appreciation for the dialectical qualities of the process involved in seeking it out. Reflecting later on his state of mind while writing The Meaning of Good, Dickinson observed: “What I believe to be true in my own book, is the tension of experience, the quest of Good, the perpetual dissatisfaction, and the knowledge therefrom derived . . . It is perhaps worth noticing that while I was still influenced by McTaggart’s idea of an eternal love, I also suspected that this might be an illusion, or perhaps I should say an imperfect parable. For my myth, though it does not go beyond that conception yet suggests that there is a beyond.”13 Dickinson’s rejection of McTaggart in this letter is enlightening for several reasons. Although McTaggart was a friend and both of them entered Cambridge fired, in Forster’s words, by “the belief that philosophy explains the universe,” Dickinson was never entirely comfortable with what he saw as the inherent conservatism of McTaggart’s unflagging commitment to the ideal of eternal love.14 Later, in fact, Dickinson went on to connect McTaggart’s discovery of Hegel with the onset of his conservative worldview, suggesting rather snarkily that “he has been, ever since, an imperialist, a believer in public schools (of the older type), a lover of all ceremonies and traditions, of feasts, port wine, gorgeous robes, professorships, mayors and corporations, bishops, the House of Lords, and in fact everything English except for the House of Commons.”15 In general, Dickinson found the whole project rather conveniently self-justifying and noted wryly in his biography of McTaggart that “McTaggart’s intellectual life consisted in an attempt to work out a dialectic of pure thought which should establish incontrovertibly his own idealistic position.”16 Dickinson himself, as his observations on The Meaning of Good illustrate, was less interested in the end result of this “working out” than he was in the “tension of experience” and the “perpetual dissatisfaction” engendered by the “quest for the Good.”

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Thus, while others would describe him as a “Cambridge Platonist” and while Dickinson would refer to himself rather wearily as a “Platonist born,” his embrace of Plato was in some ways more stylistic than substantive.17 Forster began to get at this in his discussion of Dickinson’s love of the dialogic form and, by this, Forster argued, “dialogue with Dickinson does not merely mean the ‘Modern Symposium’ and ‘Justice and Liberty,’ but all the unprinted and sometimes unprintable occasions on which he talked.”18 Forster went on to argue that Dickinson’s commitment to dialogue did not spring from a desire to “establish incontrovertibly” his notion of “he ideal as true but rather from a real love of the search for truth (and the perennial “dissatisfaction” this search entailed) carried out as a discussion between friends.19 Dickinson explained his own affinity for the form in terms of its ability to convey “controversial and confused” issues in both a reasonable and “passionate” manner.20 In any case, for anyone interested in a tightly wrought, philosophically intricate, unfolding of the ideal, Dickinson’s dialogues will never satisfy. By the end of 1900’s The Meaning of Good, one is still not entirely clear what the good actually is. The same is true of Dickinson’s 1908 dialogue, Justice and Liberty, in which, after nearly 250 pages, both concepts remain perfectly opaque; 1928’s “On the Discovery of Good” does not “discover” the good so much as lay open the possibility of it being discovered. At the same time, this text none too subtly suggests that scholarly claims to have discovered the “Absolute” once and for all are in some ways deeply escapist, originating in the desire to flee the howling “storm winds” of a complicated world.21 What seems to have mattered most for Dickinson was not the explicit meaning of the ideal so much as the way the search for it gestured “toward the beyond,” toward the possibility of change. In Dickinson’s work, ideas of justice, liberty, and later “international peace” seem largely motivational—both in terms of the way they generate reflection and as a spur to political action—but their actual definitions remain always just on the edge of the reader’s peripheral vision. This somewhat indeterminate attitude toward metaphysical inquiry frustrated many of his friends and critics alike. George Santayana, for instance, once observed that Dickinson “prayed, watched, and labored to redeem human life, and began by refusing to understand what human life is.”22 This may be true insofar as Dickinson never wrote a treatise that specifically theorized human nature in relation to a philosophical working through of “the good.” But Santayana’s observation does not adequately grasp the extent to which Dickinson developed his understanding of “human life” out of the practice of both seeking the ideal and making the ideal. As Henry Martin, the professor and Dickinson stand-in in Justice and Liberty, declared, “I find in men a real fact, the impulse to create the ideal.”23 But, because we are

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human, according to Dickinson seven years earlier in The Meaning of Good, and our ability to grasp the ideal is incomplete, “the experience of any one person, or set of persons, about Good is limited and imperfect.”24 So, argued Dickinson, “the position in which we do actually find ourselves” is one in which human beings “who have a real, though imperfect perception of a real Good . . . are endeavoring, by practice, to perfect that perception.”25 And it is through this practice, Dickinson would eventually go on to argue, that “limited and imperfect” social and political institutions, such as the flawed interstate system, are built. As with so many of his contemporaries, World War I affected Dickinson in profound and lingering ways. As he bemoaned in 1921, “Everyone around me, all my best friends even, seem to have settled down to live as before, pleasantly, cynically, or whatever may be their attitude. I, almost alone, rise and go to bed with the constant obsession, is there to be a continuance of the old, to the new war, or a radical transformation?”26 But the war not only infused Dickinson with a deep sense of urgency, it also changed his mind on the generally positive trajectory of the human search for good. After the war, he was much more willing to allow that, in the process of looking for the good, people created not only imperfect institutions but, collectively, real evil. Thus, Dickinson noted in some unpublished reflections on Goethe in 1922 that “Evil is Real. Good is also real. What is unreal is the assertion that both are unreal. This is my present creed; that is, the thing I am compelled to believe. . . . The war has stripped away all disguises and illusions once and for all.”27 But no matter how embittered, Dickinson never considered evil a fundamentally preexistent condition or set of forces that rational humans would be forced to rail against for eternity but never transcend. Rather, evil was made real by flawed human endeavor. The war might have changed Dickinson’s belief in the capacity of human beings to create evil but it never affected his baseline understanding of individuals as seekers of the ideal, limited by their experience, creating flawed, but always potentially perfectible, institutions.28 Dickinson thus never “completely changed intellectual direction” after the war; he simply expanded his peculiarly critical and humanist approach to idealism into a critique of international power. Dickinson’s Idealist Critique and the International Anarchy Dickinson began to delve into the international political implication of this understanding of human nature in his wartime and postwar writings, particularly in his 1920 book Causes of International War, which served as a general sociological or theoretical prelude to 1926’s more influential International Anarchy, which was itself an extension of the historical ideas he first developed

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in The European Anarchy in 1916. In the very first pages, Dickinson dismissed the idea of locating a fundamentally violent impulse in human nature that drove people to kill each other, much less binding such an impulse to war. War was unique, Dickinson maintained, in its ability to bring violence out of the realm of the personal and to fix it upon an object in which none of the combatants had a close stake. “Millions of men, for four and a half years,” he argued, “were engaged in killing one another, with every circumstance of cruelty, yet broadly speaking, none of them in any way disliked the others.”29 The question for Dickinson then became not “why do people fight?” but “how do organized political communities (specifically states) enable fighting?” In choosing to frame the question in these terms, Dickinson also avoided making any fixed proclamations about why people tend to form political communities in the first place. We could be “social animals,” he mused, we could even be driven by a “herd” instinct arising from some residual, primitive sense of family. That, however, was a question “for biologists to settle.” All we know, according to Dickinson, is that people have always created communities and that these communities then “shape” people into not always entirely savory forms. It was virtually impossible, Dickinson argued, to untie the knots of “customs, traditions, and history” that engendered what he termed the “community sense,” the desire to rush off “to the rescue of ‘my’ group in danger.”30 War, argued Dickinson, “is not a fatal product of human nature. It is an effect of that nature when put under certain conditions.”31 The political “condition” that most intrigued Dickinson and compelled his most impassioned works of political analysis in the wake of the First World War was the ideology of statehood, or what he referred to early on as the “governmental mind.”32 Dickinson defined the “governmental mind” in 1914 thus: Very briefly, and therefore crudely expressed, the theory is this; The world is divided politically into States. These States are a kind of abstract being, distinct from the men, women, and children who inhabit them. They are in perpetual and inevitable antagonism to one another; and though they may group themselves in alliances, that can be only for temporary purposes to meet some other alliance or single power. For states are bound by a moral and physical obligation to expand indefinitely each at the cost of the other. They are natural enemies, they always have been so, and they always will be; and force is the only arbiter between them. That being so, war is an eternal necessity.33 The obvious problem with this approach, for Dickinson, was that it assumed a continuity between the interests of the state and the people that was purely

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illusionary. Rather, Dickinson identified a massive disconnect between the ministers, diplomats, and capitalists who, he argued, controlled the state and “the ordinary attitude of the plain men and women who inhabit these States, and who have to bear the burden of the wars in which the theory involves them.”34 Dickinson thus began 1916’s The European Anarchy, which he described as a less “serious and labored book” than The International Anarchy, by locating the decidedly negative “turning point” of Europe’s “great and tragic history” in “the emergence of the sovereign State at the end of the fifteenth century.”35 Dickinson’s analysis of sovereignty here is, admittedly, not nearly as rich as his pluralist contemporaries G. D. H. Cole and Harold Laski. Laski, in particular, spent a good deal of time interrogating the rhetorical move that allowed states to create and foster group identity. Thus, his work dwelled on the way notions of liberal equality, nationhood, and sovereignty worked together to transform the “complex of interests which struggle among themselves for survival” within political society into one smooth projection of a national “unity.”36 By contrast, Dickinson’s descriptions of this process were much thinner and at times outright inconsistent. Although, throughout much of his writing, he asserted that human nature was neither inherently violent nor selfish, when speaking of sovereignty, Dickinson sometimes lapsed into the presumption that human communities were prone to a kind of mass selfishness that the state both restrained and channeled. Thus, he argued in The Causes of International War that sovereign states ordered life within their boundaries by repressing internal conflicts between individuals and then propelling this conflict outward into a kind of “armed egotism.”37 In an extended and lovely passage, Dickinson described this process thus: All that an ordered society inhibits. . . . comes back a million-fold enhanced when one state deals with another. The duel is forbidden. How much the more delightful, when one’s state has been insulted, to send a challenge! Theft is forbidden. How much the more satisfying to steal with impunity from the foreigner! Power over one’s fellow citizens is limited by law. How much the more intoxicating its unrestricted use against the members of another society! And all this, not merely without a bad conscience, but with a good one; approved by oneself, approved by one’s whole people! States, for Dickinson, organized and legitimated bad behavior, arming and compelling the more general xenophobia and violence of the “community sense,” thus leading to “what Hobbes truly asserted to be the essence of such a situation, a chronic state of war, open or veiled.”38

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Dickinson’s reference to Hobbes here makes philosophical sense given that his thinking was tending toward an understanding of contemporary international politics as a standoff between hostile states in a permanent “state of nature” with each other. But it is also rather odd given Dickinson’s larger philosophical interests. Dickinson simply never wrote anything else, of any length, on Hobbes. It is unclear from either his published writings or his papers that he ever thought about Hobbes except in this instance to describe an anarchical international environment. The picture gets even murkier when we look at it from the perspective of intellectual influences. On the one hand, as argued by Brian Schmidt, Dickinson might merely have been imitating a language of Hobbes already brought into circulation in America during this time by scholars such as Stephen Leacock who in 1906 argued that “nations, as individuals” existed in uneasy relationship with one like that of the “state of nature” in which “Hobbes, Rousseau, and the other natural law writers first placed primitive man.”39 Likewise, in a 1923 lecture, John Dewey used Hobbes to describe a “type of moral doctrine that for the convenience of having a single name was called Hegelian” but which went back “in its cruder form to Machiavelli and Hobbes.”40 On the other hand, there is no clear evidence to suggest that British scholars were engaged in any explicit use of an international Hobbes until well into the 1940s with the emergence of the “English School.” Under this classic schematization as articulated by Martin Wight in a series of lectures given in the 1950s and later collected in International Theory: The Three Traditions, Hobbes embodied the “realist” perspective on international politics whereas Grotius reflected the “rationalist” and Kant the “revolutionist” approaches.41 The enduring question for scholars of intellectual history and political theory, notes David Armitage, is how a theorist of international thought considered so essential to the emerging “tradition” of realism in the 1940s could have been “overlooked for so long.”42 In this context, Dickinson’s use of Hobbes is even more of a mystery and suggests that he might have been truly innovative in a manner not appreciated by future architects of the English School. However Dickinson came to stumble upon Hobbes, there is an undeniably Hobbesian element to his understanding of human behavior in this particular portion of The Causes of International War, an understanding that also contradicts his equally emphatic insistence on the unknowability of human nature in most of his published work. Dickinson’s insistence in this moment that people are naturally self-serving and prone to violence—a tendency repressed by individual states and then turned outward into unregulated aggression in relation to other states—stands in marked contrast to the bulk of his writings, including the first chapter of this book. For the most part, Dickinson maintained that human behavior in communities is

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constantly conditioned by the historical, cultural, and social practices of these communities. The density of this history means that one can never, Dickinson insisted, judge human nature by the current configuration of human institutions. Thus, despite the appearance of a Hobbesian attitude toward human nature when describing the ability of the state to channel violence, the bulk of his writings avoided Hobbes’s theory of the individual and never identified a single point of origin out of which we can correctly discern the tendency of humans toward violence. For this reason, Dickinson’s rare lapse in The European Anarchy into a formulaic Hobbesianism comes across as a bit jarring and out of character. At the same time, I argue, the very abrupt, unsettled nature of Dickinson’s flirtation with Hobbes can also be read as a straining impatience with the theoretical details of sovereignty. In other words, Dickinson, in contrast to Laski, simply was not as interested in the how of the state’s rhetorical and material ability to transform the interests of millions into the single interest of a warring class. What compelled his writing and activism was the fact of this transfiguration and the looming disconnect it created between “the supposed interest of the State and the real interests of men and women,” between the warring violence of massed communities and the everyday interactions of individuals, between the clunky, violent grasping of foreign policy and the beauty of singular human striving.43 Hobbes, in this sense, served as a convenient signifier for the ugliness of armed state aggression, an ugliness that could itself transform the human condition. In the introduction to The International Anarchy, Dickinson turned to a brief excerpt from the Life of Salisbury to illustrate precisely this point. In it, Salisbury described a moment during the 1877 Constantinople Conference when the smooth-talking Russian Ambassador Nicholas Ignatieff (Michael Ignatieff’s great-grandfather) had blatantly redrawn the frontier lines on a contested map, evidently hoping that his last-minute manipulation would go unnoticed. An embarrassed Salisbury confronted Ignatieff, assuming that he would react in anger or denial. The ambassador merely smiled, however, and with a shrug responded, “The Marquee is very sharp—you can’t hide anything from him.”44 For Dickinson, Ignatieff’s reaction demonstrated not the inherent “duplicity of the Russians” but the “kind of dishonesty” forced upon diplomats “by the international situation.” In other words, it was precisely the perversity of the international anarchy that ultimately made perfectly reasonable people behave badly in the name of their country.45 At root, then, Dickinson saw human beings as both creators of ideas, communities, and institutions and, at the same time, as profoundly malleable, the complex products of the very “conditions” their creative natures made real. Dickinson likened his interpretation to what he described as the basic

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assumption at the heart of Plato’s “uncompromising idealism”; the “assumption of the indefinite plasticity of human nature.”46 It is this assumption of plasticity, this belief that human character could be shaped in good and bad ways by institutions created by human beings in search of the ideal, that remained essential to Dickinson’s own idealism (before and after the war) and tinged it with a restless, critical, “perpetually dissatisfied” quality. In contrast to the Hellenism of his contemporaries, such as Gilbert Murray and Lionel Curtis, who were caught up in a nostalgic desire to replicate the exact form of the Athenian polis writ large, Dickinson associated the Greeks, and Plato in particular, with an intellectual and political engagement driven by “dissatisfaction with the world in which we live and determination to realize one that shall be better.”47 The ideal, for Dickinson, expressed itself as a critical restlessness in an age of poverty, revolution, and mass warfare. As the Martin character argued in Justice and Liberty, the “ideal” was the “leavening” agent of the whole, the “sap” that remains “flowing through wood that seems so lead,” and always “even in times called peace, it is gnawing at the roots of society. For it is the never satisfied.”48 Even before the war, Dickinson was acutely aware, in his philosophical and political writings, that his idealism of the “never satisfied” would be interpreted by skeptics as hopelessly utopian. In Justice and Liberty, he worked out his response to such a critique via the dialogue between Charles Stuart (a banker) and Martin. Stuart observed that the perennially violent and imperfect state of the world rendered idealist plans for social change impractical. Martin responded by acknowledging that the facts of war, destruction, and poverty made it “very difficult to avoid, if one is sensitive, a constant oscillation between a brutal realism and a blind idealism.” Things had gotten so bad, argued Martin, that circumstances simply overpowered the desire to make them better and, “in such a mood and under such an obsession, it is impossible not to believe that the ideal is but an idea and that to attribute power to it is as idle as to suppose that it is the love of perfection that holds the stars constant in their courses.”49 Through Martin, Dickinson went on counter Stuart’s observation by arguing that “the Ideal is not utopian in the sense in which the word is commonly used.” Rather, he maintained, “it is always in reference to contemporary fact” and always emerging out of the spirit of a critique engaged with the world. “Though it appear in heaven it is not an unapproachable star,” he maintained, but “is the light struck from the friction of the contest.”50 The gentle sparring between Stuart and Martin in Justice and Liberty, however, never amounted to a full-scale critique of Stuart’s skepticism as anything other than a kind of understandable, although ultimately ignorant, resignation in the face of overwhelming brutality and violence. After

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the war, however, Dickinson was much less tolerant of so-called realist dismissals and much more willing to see critics of the movement for international peace as complicit in creating precisely the circumstances that made war appear ineradicable or “unalterable.”51 Thus, Dickinson ended the introduction to The International Anarchy with a quote from Conrad von Hötzendorf: “Possibly in the future great coalitions of Powers will be able to keep the peace for long epochs and to avoid conflict with arms; but this will not be possible in permanence. The life of man is unbroken combat in every form; eternal peace, unfortunately, a Utopia in which only philanthropists ignorant of the world believe. A nation which lays down its arms thereby seals its fate.”52 Dickinson responded to von Hötzendorf by arguing that “those who hold this philosophy also devote their lives to making sure that is shall come true; for it is impossible to hold any view about life without thereby contributing to its realization.”53 This final sentence illustrates particularly clearly Dickinson’s understanding of the relationship between creative human endeavor and the realization of historical circumstance. In other words, things never just happened in history for Dickinson, the ideal did not unfold in a parallel line, and the “slaughter bench” itself was not unalterable. People made history, for Dickinson, and thus people could make it differently. He thus objected to the way realist critics shut off the possibility of change simply by declaring the current condition of the world—conditions that they continually reinstantiated through words and actions—fixed and unalterable and all alternative visions “utopian.” The result of such discursive fixing, for Dickinson, was a widespread sense of “fatalistic skepticism” among the people of the world. By contrast, Dickinson’s approach in The International Anarchy suggested that as both the authors and subjects of the current international order, human beings were capable both of critiquing and revising its substance. Dickinson’s primary goal in The International Anarchy then was to challenge both the skeptical notion that war was inevitable and the nationalist conviction that blame for the war fell squarely and solely with the Germans by writing a densely detailed and critical account of the diplomatic events leading up to the war. Dickinson never made the claim that his version of history was in any way complete or impartial and, in fact, dismissed the very possibility of writing impartial history. “History may be written in many ways and with many objects,” he thus noted in the preface, and it “is no part of my present purpose to discuss the merits or demerits of these; but I think it will be useful to state at the outset what my own object is in this book. I have written consciously and deliberately, to point a moral.”54 This moral (that the international system must be reformed if war was to be avoided in the future) was hardly unique, and Dickinson was hardly alone in making

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it. As Paul Kennedy has noted, Dickinson was one among a whole cadre of “radical historiographers” associated with the Union of Democratic Control, including John Hobson, Leonard Woolf, and Henry Noel Brailsford, who wrote histories dedicated to a “radical interpretation of imperialism and the origins of war.”55 What made Dickinson’s approach to writing history somewhat different from his contemporaries (and what I would argue continues to make it so compelling) is not necessarily the story it told or the moral it endorsed but rather the way it gestured methodologically beyond the moral itself. In other words, by systematically exposing the complicity of sovereign states in “secret diplomacy,” in the breaking of promises, in the expansion of the arms industry, and in the general and constant creation and re-creation of the international anarchy, Dickinson’s historical methodology functioned not just as an alternative memory (for example, replacing a conservative memory with a radical one) but as what Said would call a critical countermemory. The idea of countermemory, for Said, entails unsettling hegemonic narratives of history by locating what has been obscured by these narratives and “placing that missing actuality back in the center of things.”56 One sees this in Dickinson’s critical examination of the way nationalist histories both occluded the systemic causes of war and then declared war and the international anarchy of states to be governed by “natural laws,” as fixed and inevitable as the movement of the cosmos. During the war, Dickinson termed this approach to history “mystical fatalism” and argued that its primary promoters believed history to be “governed by ‘laws’ ” that “operate from outside upon men who are passive instruments under their power.” This is the same error, Dickinson argued, “that sees in the ‘laws’ of nature commands, instead of descriptions of behavior” and assumes that the “motions of humanity” are governed by “ineluctable fate.”57 Dickinson’s point in recounting the years of secret diplomacy leading up to the war was, therefore, not only to explain how the international anarchy functioned but also to denaturalize the fatalism that transformed it into a permanent state of being. Conclusions In the end, the legacy of Dickinson’s critical idealism has been muted for two primary reasons, the first being the inconsistency of Dickinson’s own politics. Despite the transformative potential of his international thought, Dickinson’s proposed solutions for countering the problems engendered by international anarchy were much less radical than his analysis might have suggested. Although he remained a critic of the state system throughout the First World War, he tempered his suggestions with regard to the creation

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of a League of Nations (a term, some have argued, he originally coined) as the war progressed.58 Thus, in 1914, Dickinson’s analysis of international politics as “armed egotism” led him to the conclusion that to “secure the peace of Europe the peoples of Europe must hand over their armament and the use of them, for any purpose except internal policy, to an international authority.”59 One year later, after he had joined the hugely influential Bryce Group, many of whose ideas would serve as foundational principles for the League of Nations, Dickinson seems to have become much more jaded about the possibility of disarmament, arguing that “given a league of peace, a limitation and reduction of armaments might follow.”60 As Martin Ceadel describes him in Semi-Detached Idealists, Dickinson was one of the first members of the Bryce group to toe a liberal line with regard to the League. He thus accepted, according to Ceadel, the idea that the League should “have no executive power, only the power to recommend the best solutions” and became almost abusively dismissive of anyone who pushed for closer federation.61 The jury is still out on why Dickinson backtracked in this important regard, although we can assume that he felt compelled, like many of his generation, to enact some kind of international change and saw a powerless League of Nations as better than no League at all. Second, and more importantly, over the years the term that Dickinson first coined—international anarchy—took on a very different mien in the hands of IR realists. Ironically, the vast majority of these thinkers drew precisely the opposite conclusion from Dickinson’s notion of the term than what he intended. Whether or not they saw or continue to see the anarchy of states as a reflection of the human lust for power or a product of the international “system” itself, most realists continue to approach it as an immutable feature of international life, precisely the kind of “law of nature” that Dickinson would immediately have rejected.62 In fact, I think Dickinson would have found something deeply and frantically tautological in contemporary realist explorations of the term he invented. For example, Mearsheimer, who again regards Dickinson as the first “offensive realist,” has argued that the profoundly anarchic character of the state system leads to the emergence of Great Powers, which then leads to Great Power war, which then sustains the generally anarchic nature of the system. There is then no beginning or end to this cycle, no history other than that which confirms the fixedly aggressive nature of states, no intervention by activists, only mitigation by the powerful. Dickinson’s approach, by contrast, saw international anarchy as a human creation and thus never accepted it as inevitable. Change would not be easy, he maintained, given the extent to which we have all been so thoroughly conditioned by the “governmental mind” to accept its precepts as inevitable.

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But in the end, Dickinson’s approach suggested that change was possible although not because “the idea” of world peace was more real, in a philosophical sense, than international anarchy. His idealism thus never approximated Carr’s caricature of the “utopian edifice” as a wall of petulant idealists solemnly declaring the world to be one way when it actually looked another. Rather, Dickinson’s belief in the possibility of change emerged out of his sense of idealism as a never-satisfied form of critique that was itself engendered by an understanding of human beings as the agents of history rather than the “passive instruments” of power. In this way, Dickinson challenged the ideological assumptions of what we might still safely call the “skeptical edifice” erected by realists who peckishly continue to insist that the world looks the way it does because this is how the world has always looked. I will end then by suggesting that the interpretive or methodological power of Dickinson’s idealism lies in his critical writing, rather than in his politics. Dickinson’s forthright challenge of the idealism/realism divide allowed him to expose the mainstream realist discourse of his time as tautological in its reasoning, constructive in its practice (where it pretended to merely describe), and perennially skeptical in the breadth of its vision. His analysis of history refused to accept that human beings were simply the passive victims of immutable laws but, at the same time, acknowledged the extent to which political institutions and systemic webs of power shaped behaviors. Dickinson’s “idealism” resembled neither of the stereotypical poles of the IR canon. It was, rather, its own breed of critical inquiry, one that contemporary humanists and IR scholars alike would do well to reexamine. Notes 1. See Andrew Williams’s take on Carr and Dickinson in Failed Imagination? New World Orders of the Twentieth Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), 178. 2. Kenneth Waltz, Man the State and War (Columbia University Press, 2001 [1959]), 10. 3. John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: Norton and Company, 2001), 21–22. 4. Although, as Long points out, Dickinson’s plans for this reconfiguring never went as far as David Davies’s proposal for an international force to, in a sense, “over awe” individual states. See David Long and Peter Wilson, Thinkers of the Twenty Years Crisis (Oxford, Clarendon Press 1995), 314–315. 5. Osiander locates his definition of “IR Idealism” in the “shared paradigm” of a belief in the “inescapable, directional historical process.” See Andreas Osiander, “Re-Reading Early Twentieth Century IR Theory: Idealism Revisited,” International Studies Quarterly 42:3 (September 1998), 413.

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6. Brian Schmidt, The Political Discourse of Anarchy (Albany: SUNY Press, 1998), 160. 7. Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, “War and the Way Out,” The New York Times, December 20, 1914, 4. 8. R. M. Douglas calls Dickinson a “Cambridge classicist.” See The Labour Party, Nationalism and Internationalism, 1939–51 (London: Routledge, 2004), 18. William Outhwaite refers to him as an historian. See The Blackwell Dictionary of Modern Social Thought (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 47, while Martin Ceadel designates him a “Cambridge political scientist.” See Martin Ceadel, “Gilbert Murray and International Politics,” in Gilbert Murray Reassessed, ed. Christopher Stray (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 226. 9. As the fictional Chinese official observes about the West, “Your poor, your drunk, your incompetent, your sick, your aged, ride you like a nightmare. You have dissolved all human and personal ties, and you endeavor, in vain, to replace them by the impersonal activity of the State.” See Lowes Dickinson, Letter from A Chinese Official (New York: McClure, Phillips and Co., 1903), 15. 10. Ian Hall, “World Government and Empire: the International Historian as Theorist,” International Affairs 82:6 (2006), 1161. 11. Dickinson edited a book with F.M. Stawell in 1928 entitled Goethe & Faust, An Interpretation, With Passages Newly Translated Into English Verse (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1928). 12. Desch is incorrect when, in the course of identifying the influences of “Perpetual Peace” on Woodrow Wilson and other league internationalists, he asserts that “the idea of forming a League emerged in England early in the war among a group of British liberals, including Lowes Dickinson and Leonard Woolf, who were influenced by Kant.” See Michael Desch, “America’s Liberal Illiberalism,” International Security 32:3 (Winter 2007), 12, footnote 19. Woolf was explicit in his debt to “Perpetual Peace” but Dickinson was not. See Casper Sylvest for more on Kant and Woolf in “Continuity and Change in British Internationalism, 1900–1930,” Review of International Studies 31 (2005), 279. 13. G. Lowes Dickinson, The Autobiography of G. Lowes Dickinson (London: Duckworth, 1973), 164. This text was published in full in 1973, although E.M. Forster quoted extensively from it in his Biography of Dickinson. 14. Forster, GLD, 67; Ibid., 72. 15. Ibid., 72. Note that Forster is quoting from Dickinson’s then unpublished Recollections, later The Autobiography of G. Lowes Dickinson (Duckworth; London, 1973). 16. G. Lowes Dickinson, J.M.E. McTaggart (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1931), 83. 17. See the publisher’s description of Dickinson in the 1962 edition of A Modern Symposium (Barnes and Noble; New York, 1962); Letter to A.J. Grant, June 5, 1931, in The Papers of Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, King’s College, Cambridge, hereafter King’s/PP/GLD/5/Correspondences, fol 9. 18. Forster, GLD, 46.

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19. Dickinson dedicated his 1909 book A Modern Symposium to the members of a fictional club known as the “Seekers,” which he actually tried to establish at Cambridge. He articulated the “philosophical doctrine” of the group in an unpublished pamphlet. King’s/PP/GLD/Bibliographia 6/7a. 20. G. Lowes Dickinson, The Autobiography of G. Lowes. Dickinson,164. 21. G. Lowes Dickinson, “On The Discovery of Good,” Journal of Philosophical Studies 3 (July 1928), 284. 22. George Santayana, My Host the World (London: Cresset Press, 1953), 31. That Dickinson’s somewhat lackadaisical approach to defining human nature would trouble Santayana makes sense given Santayana’s commitment to a naturalist metaphysics that sought to understand humans through their cognitive and social functions. 23. G. Lowes Dickinson, Justice and Liberty; A Political Dialogue (New York: Doubleday and Co.,1920), 226. 24. G. Lowes Dickinson, The Meaning of the Good (London: J.M. Dent,1907), Book 2, Intro, xii. 25. Ibid., x. 26. Lowes Dickinson, The Autobiography of G. Lowes Dickinson, 98. 27. G. Lowes Dickinson, unpublished manuscript on Goethe, April. 2, 1922, The Papers of Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, King’s College, Cambridge, King’s/ PP/GLD/1/fol.18. 28. In this sense, Dickinson’s refusal to see human beings or the world itself as fundamentally evil echoes Plotinus (the subject of his unpublished dissertation) in his condemnation of the Gnostics. Dickinson’s 1887 dissertation “Plotinus’ interpretation of Plato’s Theory of Ideas’,” remains in the King’s College archives. Plotinus himself condemned the Gnostics in Enneads II, 9. 29. G. Lowes Dickinson, Causes of International War (New York: Harcourt Brace and Howe, 1920), 9. 30. Ibid., 10. 31. Ibid., 16. 32. See “The War and the Way Out” (1914). This emphasis on “mind” also very well could reflect Dickinson’s idealist sensibilities. Other internationalist, idealist-oriented scholars of the era such as the American Nicholas Murray Butler were already beginning to compare the “governmental mind” with something he (and later Alfred Zimmern) would term the “international Mind” (intentionally capitalized.) See Murray Butler, The International Mind: An Argument for the Judicial Settlement of International Disputes (New York: Charles Scribner, 1913). 33. Ibid., 4. 34. Ibid. 4. 35. Letter to A.J. Grant, Dec. 3, 1925, King’s/PP/GLD/5/Correspondences, fol 8; G. Lowes Dickinson, The European Anarchy (New York: Macmillan Co.,1916/1920), 13. 36. Harold Laski, Foundations of Sovereignty and Other Essays (New York, 1921), 27.

224 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

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43. 44.

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46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

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Dickinson, The Causes of International War, 23. Dickinson, The European Anarchy, 16. See Brian Schmidt, The Political Discourse of Anarchy, 84. John Dewey, Characters and Events (New York: Octagon Books, 1970), 812. See Martin Wight, International Theory: The Three Traditions (London: Leicester University Press for The Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1994). David Armitage, “Foundations of Modern International Thought,” in Rethinking the Foundations of Modern Political Thought, eds. James Tully and Annabell Brett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Dickinson, “The War and the Way Out,” 8. “M. le Marquie est si fin—on ne peut lui rien cacher.” From “Life of Salisbury,” quoted in G. Lowes Dickinson, The International Anarchy (London: The Century Co., 1926), 27. Ironically, Michael Ignatieff would use this example in the life of his greatgrandfather over 60 years later to make the opposite point. Ignatieff thus begins the chapter on his great-grandfather in his family memoir The Russian Album with Salisbury’s remembrance. However, for Ignatieff, Salisbury’s exposure of the ambassador’s duplicity demonstrates not the deleterious impact of state interests on the individual but, rather, Nicholas’s savvy imperviousness to such interests. Here was a theatrical, blunt, cunning man, argues Ignatieff, whose deep self-confidence in the face of misdeeds revealed him to be a “diplomat with a policy of his own,” a rebellious egoist free from both the czar’s power and the niceties of ambassadorial protocol. For Ignatieff, Nicholas was simply playing himself on the violent stage of Balkan politics that, despite his legions of spies, he could never ultimately effect. Michael Ignatieff, The Russian Album (New York: Picador Press, 1997), 49. G. Lowes Dickinson, The Greek View of Life (New Jersey: Double Day Press,1909 [1926]), 100. Ibid., 257. Dickinson, Justice and Liberty, 229–230. Ibid., 229. Ibid., 231. Dickinson, The International Anarchy, 47. Ibid. Ibid. Dickinson, The International Anarchy, v. P.M. Kennedy, “The Decline of Nationalistic History in the West, 1900–1970,” Journal of Contemporary History 8:1 (Jan. 1973), 92. Edward Said, Humanism and Democratic Criticism (New York, Columbia University Press, 2004), 42. G. Lowes Dickinson, The Choice Before Us (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1917), 84. For an early glimpse into Dickinson’s analysis of the “international anarchy” see After the War (London: A.C. Fifield, 1915). Brian Schmidt makes the claim

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that Dickinson invented the term “League of Nations” in The Political Discourse of Anarchy, 160. Dickinson, “The War and the Way Out,” 4. Dickinson, “The Foundations of a League of Peace,” 13. Martin Ceadel, Semi-Detached Idealists (Oxford 2007 [2000]), 205. Also, see G. Lowes Dickinson, Foundations of a League of Peace (Boston: World Peace Foundation, 1915), 11. See Ceadel’s citation of Dickinson’s letter to Ponsonby in which he notes that the “worst enemies” of the league were “men like Brailsford and Hobson, who go for federation.” See Ceadel, Semi-Detached Idealists, 206. See Mearsheimer’s graph comparing “Human Nature,” “Defensive,” and “Offensive” realists in The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 22.

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CHAPTER TWELVE

The Realist as Moralist: Sir Lewis Namier’s International Thought Ian Hall

L

ewis Namier might at first appear an odd inclusion in a volume on British thinkers. He was born Ludwik Bernsztajn vel Niemirowski on June 27, 1888, to Polish parents of Jewish ancestry living under Russian rule. For much of his childhood, he lived in Austrian Poland, leaving home to study at Lwow University and then at Lausanne. It was only in 1907, at the age of 19, that Namier arrived in Britain to continue his undergraduate work at the London School of Economics. The following year, he moved again, finally finding the “congenial habitat” he desired at Balliol College, Oxford, where he read modern history and took a First in 1911.1 In his penultimate year at Oxford, he partly anglicized his name by deed poll to Lewis Bernstein Naymier and removed the “y” three years later. He became a British subject in 1913 and served, briefly, in the British Army in the First World War before his talents were transferred, for the remainder of the conflict, to the Foreign Office. During the 1920s, deserted by his first wife, Clara, and disinherited by his father, he survived by private tutoring, various business dealings in Europe and the United States, occasional grants, journalism, and work for the Zionist Organization in London. In 1931, to his surprise, he was offered a chair in modern history at the University of Manchester, a post he held until his retirement in 1953. Following the death of Clara, he married Julia de Beausobre in 1947 and converted to Anglicanism. He published some 15 books during his lifetime—the majority being collections of essays and reviews—and

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arguably recast the study of eighteenth century English history.2 He was knighted in 1952 and died in 1960.3 Despite his origins, Namier’s “Britishness” is hard to dispute.4 He enthusiastically embraced what he perceived to be the highest cultural “values” of his adopted nation, as J. H. Plumb recorded: “For him, Britain’s social structure was as near to perfection as corrupt men might get. No one could speak to him for 10 minutes without realising the depth or strength of his conservatism or his veneration for monarchy, aristocracy and tradition.”5 Namier loved the “sober, undramatised, empirical view of life” of the English, in particular, and heartily approved of their apparent loathing for “abstract principles and general theories.”6 These observations were critical to his political and international thought: he was a firm believer that such components of national character shaped the conduct of peoples and politicians both at home and abroad. They also made Namier acutely conscious of his own standing as an outsider—indeed, one doubly removed from the British by dint of being both Polish and Jewish.7 Convinced that, as Isaiah Berlin noted, “the deepest factor in modern history” was the “historically grounded sense of nationality,” Namier thus devoted himself to cultivating a vision of the British that could, in turn, ground its political and diplomatic conduct.8 In turn, this fueled his didacticism, a trait noted by many who knew him, especially on the subject of Central European politics and what the British might do about them. In his writings on twentieth-century politics and international relations, Namier hectored British audiences—ostensibly for their own good—to help them preserve the virtues he so admired, to shake them from occasional lapses into sentimental idealism, and to recall them to what he considered their “traditional” ways.9 He did so with an astringent realism, albeit one in tension from other, more romantic and moralistic aspects of his own character. Namier was admired by his contemporaries, but since his death, the reputation of his historical work has fared less well. In her perceptive biography, Linda Colley speculated that Namier brought this fate on himself, having stirred so much “hostility and envy” during his lifetime through his snobbery and “arrogance,” his unyielding book reviews, and his influence over a string of academic appointments.10 His failure to produce the major works he promised has also counted against him.11 The long-planned multivolume study of the British Empire in the age of the American Revolution and his monumental projected history of nineteenth-century Europe were never written—we are left only with disconnected collections of essays—nor was the systematic analysis of interwar international relations mooted in the late 1940s. Namier’s stock has suffered further devaluations as political moods within and outside the historical profession have changed. He studied,

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and idolized, elites. Great men, for him, made history, and what they did, owned, earned, and sometimes even thought were almost the only things that mattered. Namier’s history was thus far too conservative for later tastes. He caught the mood of the 1950s, but his histories fared badly with the turn to social and economic history in the 1960s, and his work found fewer and fewer readers beyond the few devotees of history-as-high-politics.12 Namier’s essays on twentieth-century “contemporary history,” the sources for the analysis of his international thought that follows, have arguably worn as badly as his professional reputation. Although the books into which they were collected—Conflicts (1942), Facing East (1947), Diplomatic Prelude (1948), Europe in Decay (1950), and In the Nazi Era (1952)—are impressive in terms of overall weight, their arguments were too often, as D. C. Watt complained in 1954, “slight” in “nature.”13 For his part, Watt called them “scholarly exercises in journalism” (which was literally true, because many of the essays had begun life as newspaper articles) and thought they were “partly conceived as propaganda” (which was unfair, even in the broad terms that Watt understood propaganda, as “combating or advocacy of a point of view”).14 What Watt and many others found troubling were Namier’s method and his tone. Too often he acted less as the scrupulous historian and more like the “French judge” or prosecuting magistrate, “ruthless with his witnesses,” who are treated with “sarcasm, bitterness and intolerance.”15 Watt concluded that Namier’s books had value as a “corrective” to attempts to rehabilitate appeasement and its progenitors, but that they lacked insight into the difficulties faced by politicians with hard choices or weak positions, indeed into the essential “tragedy” of politics and international relations in the 1930s.16 Namier himself treated these latter platitudes with the scorn they deserved, and this chapter suggests that he had reason to do so, for his international thought was deeper than Watt allowed. True, Namier reserved a particular ire for those who appealed to the “tragic vision of politics” generally, but it might be said that he had good reason, because it often served, in his own time, as a cover for straightforward error or unethical behavior.17 To dress the course of appeasement as Greek tragedy, for example, as some of its leading proponents later did—see Neville Henderson, in his Failure of a Mission, or John Simon, in his memoirs—was to Namier a “good deal of pseudo-artistic claptrap” designed to excuse moral and diplomatic failure.18 To actually believe that the international relations of the 1930s as a whole were in some sense “tragic” was even worse, he thought, demonstrating the kind of weak-mindedness characteristic of liberalism at its worst. And Namier despised liberalism in a way that few professed political realists of the period did, blaming it for almost all modern ills, not just an obsession

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with tragedy.19 In his Raleigh Lectures, delivered in Oxford in 1944, he traced the roots of contemporary “aggressive nationalism” to the liberal revolutions of 1848: “with 1848,” he wrote, “starts the Great European War of every nation against its neighbours.”20 Nothing good came, he implied, from the speculations of bourgeois liberal intellectuals who failed to grasp the dangers of their actions. This view infused Namier’s contemporary history, on which most of this chapter concentrates. His essays on interwar international politics, I argue, have been too easily dismissed and on grounds far shakier than once recognized. Namier moved, albeit clumsily, in influential circles and was not shy about trying to use that influence, whether bombarding former colleagues at the Foreign Office with advice or counseling his patron and publisher, Harold Macmillan. His essays cannot easily be overlooked: not only did they cause considerable controversy at the time, but they also had a lasting impact on the ways in which appeasement, in the 1930s and in general, has since been perceived.21 Moreover, they provide valuable insight into a critical period in the development of British international thought in the twentieth century. With E. H. Carr, Namier stands at the opening of that “fifty years’ rift” between intellectual history—and indeed the study of political ideas more generally—and international relations. Together, they supplied an argument from which international relations theorists then and since have found it difficult to escape, namely, that political ideas are functions of deeper processes of which their progenitors are largely unconscious. In Carr’s case, taking a cue from Karl Mannheim’s “sociology of knowledge,” an intellectual’s political ideas were “relative” to the material “circumstances and interests of the thinker” and were indeed “pragmatic,” “directed to the fulfilment of his purposes.”22 Namier rejected such deterministic materialism, but was no more convinced than Carr that declared motives, principles, or ideologies should be taken at face value to represent the wishes of those declaring them. Instead, as we shall see, he thought them expressions of unconscious psychological processes. Like Carr, but by different means, Namier thus sought to “take the mind out” of the study of international relations as well as that of history.23 This effort did not, of course, meet with universal acceptance, and for this reason too Namier’s work demands scrutiny. His international thought served and continues to serve as a provocation to others whose ideas have recently attracted far more attention. In the interwar years he stood out among his internationalist contemporaries, for whom “nationalism” was simply “political perversity,” as Arnold J. Toynbee once put it,24 in his enthusiasm for “nationality.” In the postwar period, his moralistic “realism,” his visceral dislike of all things German, and his contempt for any who tried

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to appease, excuse, or sympathize with Germans was one of the principal stimuli that moved the Cambridge historian Herbert Butterfield to explore, together with Martin Wight, Hedley Bull, and many others, past and present theories of international politics capable of transcending such hatreds.25 What has become known as the English school was, in one sense, a reaction against Namier and all that he stood for. Namier’s dismissal of doctrine, in other words, had quite the opposite effect to that which was intended: motivating, rather than shutting down, the study of past and present international thought. Ideas and Reality The charge most frequently laid against Namier’s thought is that, as Michael Oakeshott put it, he took “account only of the manipulative side of politics,” turning “human beings (with their individual projects, ambitions and understandings of themselves) into automata, slaves of the situation.”26 But though widely shared among his contemporaries, this account of Namier’s position is not quite right. Certainly, he ridiculed those historians who wasted time, as he saw it, studying ideas or doctrines in what he considered futile attempts to understand cause or motivation. During their first meeting, Isaiah Berlin recalled that “Namier spoke . . . of the absurdity of those who attempted to account for human behaviour by invoking the influence of ideas. Ideas were mere interpretations by the mind of deep-seated drives and motives which it was too cowardly, or too conventionally brought up, to face. Historians of ideas were the least useful kind of historians.”27 To deride intellectual history, however, was not to discount the power of ideas to influence events. Namier’s anonymous Times obiturist observed that what he tried to teach in the Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III (1929) and other, later works, was that the study of past politics should be more than the study of past doctrines, but that “[h]aving started by demonstrating that high principle was not the only thing that counted in political life, he got near to implying that it did not count at all.”28 That was not Namier’s intent. Rather, what he wished to do was probe beneath ideas and doctrines to look for the deeper causes of political behavior. Following Graham Wallas and especially Sigmund Freud, Namier found those deeper causes in the subconscious. “What matters most,” he wrote in a retrospective essay on Wallas’s Human Nature in Politics, are “the underlying emotions, the music, to which ideas are a mere libretto, often of very inferior quality.”29 If history could grasp this way of thinking, it could have “a ‘psycho-analytic’ function.” For Namier, “The subject-matter of history is human affairs, men in action, things which have happened and how they

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happened; concrete events fixed in time and space, and their grounding in the thoughts and feelings of men. . . . Yet in all intelligent historical quest there is, underneath, a discreet, tentative search for the typical and recurrent in the psyche and actions of man (even in his unreason), and a search for a morphology of human affairs.”30 As such, it also had a practical political function, because history “should help man to master the past immanent both in his person and in his social setting,” providing him with the “knowledge and understanding . . . required before any reasonable endeavour can be made to direct and control.”31 It was this conviction that informed and shaped his international thought as well as his analysis of contemporary history. What Namier found in the “psyche and actions of man” made him, to use terms familiar to international relations, a “first-image” realist.32 The philosophical—or, perhaps more accurately, psychological—anthropology that he constructed for himself, informing him of the sources of human political behavior, was uncompromising and stark. It sits as comfortably as these theories might with other accounts of “what moves man,” from Hans Morgenthau’s Nietzschean notion of an animus dominandi to Reinhold Niebuhr’s construct of the “moral man”—albeit one prone to sinfulness— driven to act badly, on occasion, by an “immoral society.”33 Namier’s own realist philosophical anthropology found full expression in his history. In the opening chapter of The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III (1929), for instance, he surveyed the various reasons “why men went into Parliament.” Needless to say, idealism was not one of them. Predestination, honor, social climbing, favoritism, nepotism, ambition, wealth, and immunity from prosecution all figured in Namier’s analysis, but the desire to do good did not.34 In a later review, Harvey Mansfield rightly complained that Namier had dismissed a priori, as mere “opinions,” all the stated reasons eighteenthcentury parliamentarians had themselves offered for their vocation. Namier had, Mansfield went on, “nowhere seriously tested the appearance of eighteenth-century politics; for he knows without investigating . . . that the appearance is not the reality, that the opinions of . . . contemporaries are false.”35 This conviction, this dogma that idealisms are, ipso facto, either delusions or contrived Machiavellian cloaks covering the “real” may be traced throughout Namier’s work, as it can, for different reasons, in E. H. Carr’s. Indeed, where Mansfield went wrong was in suggesting that Namier’s object was to show up eighteenth-century politics to be particularly unscrupulous and unprincipled. What he missed is that Namier thought all ideas in all ages to be rationalizations of psychological moods, responses, or biases.36

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Carr also thought that eighteenth-century politics “were still immune from the fanaticism of ideas” and, like Mansfield, suggested that it was this nonideological quality that attracted Namier to that period rather than others. “No ideas, no revolution, no liberalism,” Carr observed. “Namier chose to give us a brilliant portrait of an age still safe—though not to remain safe for long—from all these dangers.”37 This captures the mood of Namier’s history well, but not its motivation, nor that of his realism. Namier had initially been drawn to the eighteenth century not because of the character of its politics or because it illustrated his account of “what moves man,” but rather because he was interested in why the British had failed to solve the “Imperial Problem” of reconciling the government of the United Kingdom with that of the British Empire, which he thought might have averted the American Revolution.38 The roots of Namier’s philosophical anthropology lay elsewhere, in his own experience rather than his studies. He was a troubled man, bitter from what he perceived to be a grave betrayal by his parents, who had kept his Jewish ancestry from him until he was nine years old, and resentful toward his father for that and other apparent slights. The drawn-out failure of his first marriage during the 1920s and 1930s did little to help his psychological state. He underwent repeated psychoanalysis, first in Vienna at the hands of one of Freud’s students, where he became, as Colley put it, “something of a psychoanalyst’s groupie,” and thereafter in Britain.39 His analyses convinced him that, as Berlin observed: The only reality was to be found in the individual and his basic desires— conscious and unconscious, particularly the latter, which were repressed and rationalised by a series of intellectual subterfuges, which Marxism had detected, but for which it had substituted illusions of its own. Individual psychology, not sociology, was the key. Human action—and social reality in general—could be explained only by fearless and dispassionate scientific examination of the roots of individual human behaviour—basic drives, permanent human cravings for food, shelter, power, sexual satisfaction, social recognition and so on. Nor was human history, and in particular political history, to be explained in any other way.40 This implied a complex theory of human motivation and history that Namier never fully explained, but there is enough to be able to recognize that it is quite distinct from that of the other political realists of the time. For E. H. Carr, for example, the relationship between ideas and what he considered “reality” is far more straightforward: ideas were either Machiavellian cloaks deliberately deployed to distract attention from the

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pursuit of self-interest or unconscious expressions—or, perhaps better, rationalizations of one’s material position. Thus, the ideas of the “haves” justify, and therefore demonstrate their interest in, the status quo from which they benefit; the ideas of the “have nots” will make the case for the creation of a new order in which they, in turn, might profit.41 There was no escape from the determinism of this sociology of knowledge, for, although Carr borrowed much of it from Karl Mannheim, he was unwilling to borrow it all, particularly the part where his mentor argued that a free-floating intelligentsia could transcend their material circumstances.42 Carr’s position was, of course, so cynical that it was inherently unstable—as well as being incapable of explaining why a privileged, public school- and Cambridge-educated “have” like himself was able to formulate the case for the “have nots.” Namier’s position is potentially far more subtle; at the very least, it is not strictly deterministic. He acknowledges that ideas can be genuinely felt; they are not always Machiavellian cloaks or unconscious rationalizations. Moreover, they matter and can act as motive forces, as it were, in politics, as Namier wrote in 1917: “Men matter little in politics, systems and ideas are everything. . . . In the realm of politics a man cannot act efficiently except through one faith—in a leading idea.”43 Good ideas and good acts are possible—and not merely determined by historical circumstance or, in Carr’s view, by the process of historical progress. “To react against cruelty, injustice, or oppression is one thing,” Namier argued, presupposing that all of these were eminently possible and not merely expressions of self-interest, but “to have a nostrum for securing man’s freedom or his happiness is a very different matter.”44 Political thought, in other words, needs to be balanced by “the saving wisdom of selfknowledge,” conceived in psychological or psychoanalytical terms, if one is to avoid becoming a “duplicitous and dangerous” ideologue.45 Namier’s point was that we do not always know from whence our ideas come, and that we should know, or at least try to, if we are to understand them fully and avoid the worst consequences that pursuing them might have. “A man’s relation, for instance, to his father or to his nurse”, he argued, “may determine the pattern of his later political conduct or of his intellectual preoccupations without his being in the least conscious of the connexion; and self-deception concerning the origins and character of his seemingly intellectual tenets enables him to deceive others: the intensity of his hidden passion sharpens his mental faculties and may even create the appearances of cold, clear-sighted objectivity.”46 Namier here gave the example of Talleyrand, but he subjected many others to this kind of analysis. Take, for example, his treatment of Metternich, who was emphatically not an ideologue, but still could not escape judgment. For Namier, the Austrian

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“denied having devised any ‘system’ ” for Europe, but he did admit to the realization of “eine Weltordnung . . . based on deep immutable laws which his own clear spirit had merely discerned and laid bare to the eyes of men.”47 His supposedly scientific laws, arrived at by a sham empiricism, were more mere “songs” to Namier, “in which the music mattered and not the rest.”48 Metternich’s mistake was to try to argue the case for conservatism “in a spirit of self-glorifying logic” rather than the “spirit of humility,” which would have allowed him to ground his actions, as a true conservative should, in “a proper recognition of human limitations.”49 His conservatism was thus compromised by his egoistic intellectualism. Namier warned repeatedly of the dangers of such dilettantism—the dilettante defined as “one who takes himself more seriously than his work”—and especially of those “doctrinaires enamoured of their theories and ingenious ideas [who] are dilettanti in public affairs.”50 The reason for this was obvious. “When viewed in terms of pure ideas,” Namier observed in 1927, history “becomes a record of human folly,” of failed idea after failed idea, each with its own dire consequences.51 This conviction underpins all his work on interwar international politics. None of his books offered anything like sustained, interconnected narratives of events; instead, Namier offered cross-examinations of the memoirs, diaries, and testimonies of leading protagonists, exposing their follies whenever and wherever they occurred.52 The narratives of what happened, Namier argued, could be taken for granted. “Is evidence needed to show that Hitler was a gangster”, he asked, “who broke his word whenever it suited him? that the British Government winked and blinked, and hoped against hope for appeasement? that French foreign policy was singularly timid and ineffective? that Polish calculations were too clever by half? The main facts and broad outlines of recent history are known and hardly require re-stating.”53 Nor was Namier interested in the doctrines espoused by the individual actors caught up in these events, just as he was disinterested in the stated motives of eighteenth-century politicians. Like A. J. P. Taylor, he showed a marked disregard for the content of ideologies. These were of interest only for what they suggested about what happened “below” that surface. Conflict and Character One of the strongest forces acting below the surface of both domestic and international politics was national character. Namier was a fervent believer in nations, their particular forms and substances, and their need to be secured against the depredations of others so that their character could develop unhindered. He was not, however, a believer in “nationalism” as

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it was manifested in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This view was informed by a critical distinction—central to his understanding of international relations and contemporary international history—that Namier made between “territorial” and “linguistic” nations. He approved of the former and did not approve of the latter. In his estimation, one was authentic, the product of tradition, and the other invented, the product of intellectuals. This belief in true “territorial” nations drove Namier’s desire, expressed while at the Foreign Office during and immediately after the First World War, to “pull apart the Austro-Hungarian empire” and accord political autonomy to the pieces, as well as his advocacy of the Zionist cause in the interwar years.54 His parallel prejudice against inauthentic “linguistic” nations was partly derived from and helped to fuel his hostility to Germans, whom he thought were “a deadly menace to Europe and to civilisation.”55 In espousing the virtue of political autonomy for nations, Namier emphatically did not mean to affirm the doctrine of national self-determination. That concept was too intellectual, too bound to the flawed notions of popular sovereignty and linguistic nationalism. Territorial nations and thus territorial sovereignty, by contrast, emerged slowly and organically, not abruptly and artificially. They are, Namier thought, “bound to the soil . . . [and] limited to it.”56 He continued: “Territorial sovereignty is essentially conservative, for it is the product of a long historical development; nationalisms which place the emphasis on language almost invariably seek change, since no existing satiated community singles out one principle for its basis—the demand that the State should be coextensive with linguistic nationality was an internationally revolutionary postulate which, seeing that nations are seldom linguistically segregated, proved destructive both of constitutional growth and of international peace.”57 His exemplars for territorial sovereignty, Britain and Switzerland, had coalesced as nations well before the “revolution of the intellectuals” in 1848 that brought into being concepts of “linguistic” nationalism and wedded them to the French revolutionary doctrine of popular sovereignty. Britain’s nationality was expressed in a Parliament in which representation was territorial rather than what Namier called “tribal,” members reflecting the views of people with a “share in their native land.”58 It was thus also communal and settled—“satiated,” to use Namier’s word—rather than restless or dynamic. German nationalism was quite the opposite. Its root causes ran deep, Namier argued: “The Germans, more than any other European nation, had emptied the territorial State of communal contents and converted it into sheer dynastic property; and they brought forth dynasties without roots or substance, ready to rule over any country or people. The denationalized State with an unpolitical population was the product of German political

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incapacity and deadness, and of German administrative efficiency.”59 When the Germans did awake to the nation, Namier thought, they acted entirely in character, moving from one extreme to the other. “The highest forms of communal life became the basis of West European nationalisms,” he observed, while “the myth of the barbaric horde [became] that of German nationalism.”60 Eschewing a nationalism grounded in civic liberty and selfgovernment, they embraced instead the vaguer but more potent idea of the volk, a mystical entity defined by language and race. For Namier, this was not peculiar to the Nazis—it was “no mere Nazi invention”—but rather a persistent theme in German thought from the Frankfurt Parliament of 1848 onward.61 Once this Völkerfrühling, this “passionate creed of the intellectuals,” was set free, Namier argued, it invaded “the politics of central and east central Europe, and with 1848 starts the Great European War of every nation against its neighbour.”62 This distinctiveness of this argument is readily apparent when it is set against the more commonly accepted explanations offered for the origins of the world wars. For Namier, “power politics” or “international anarchy” was not to blame, still less the machinations of secret diplomacy or captains of industry. Nor was the nation per se, as Arnold J. Toynbee and many other interwar liberals argued;63 rather, it was the spread of a particular form of nationalism, one that emphasized linguistic purity, popular sovereignty, and self-determination conceived exclusively on those two bases. Namier’s proof of this case was somewhat convoluted and was not helped by slippage in his terminology. “National sovereignty,” he argued, was well “grounded in reason and ideas, simple and convincing, but as unsuited to living organisms as chemically pure water.”64 This attempt to accelerate or to replace “organic change” was itself mistaken; an effort to do so by invoking “self-determination” was doubly so.65 “Self-determination,” Namier continued, “contests frontiers, negates the existing State and its inner development, and by civil and international strife is apt to stultify constitutional growth.”66 Popular sovereignty merely exacerbates the predicament, transferring the “proprietary claims of nations” from princes to “ ‘sovereign’ hordes,” making the “conflicts grow fiercer.”67 In the nineteenth century, for the most part, the dire consequences of these intellectual moves were not realized. As in 1848 itself, Namier pointed out, “the ultimate control of the state-machine and still more of the armies of the Great Powers on the European Continent, remained with the Conservatives; and it is this which preserved peace in Europe.”68 With their eclipse, however, matters could come to a head. There are, of course, obvious problems with Namier’s argument. It fits ill with both his apparent denial that ideas and doctrines ought to studied—how else, after all, could we understand their dangers?—and, perhaps more

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importantly, with his own enthusiasm and dedication to Zionism. The first has already been discussed in some detail, but Namier’s treatment of national character does emphasize the point, made best by Jacob Talmon, that “far from denying the potency of political and social ideologies, he was frightened of their power to disturb.” He might have wished to remove the “mind” from history, but he knew empirically that it could exercise a great influence.69 The second apparent discrepancy deserves more attention. At the outset, the oddity of Namier’s Zionism has to be acknowledged. He was not a religious Jew; indeed, with his second marriage, he became a keen practicing Anglican.70 He perceived Jewishness instead in terms of ethnicity or “race.” In later life, during the interwar years and afterward, Namier claimed that he had become a Zionist in 1907, connecting that decision to earlier arguments with his father about his family’s commitment to assimilation. At 16 or 17, he told Isaiah Berlin, he had “felt himself in a false position, and realised that the converted Jews in his circle were living in an unreal world—[they] had abandoned the traditional misery of their ancestors only to find themselves in a no man’s land between the two camps, welcome to neither.”71 It is likely, however, that these feelings did not coalesce into a concrete commitment until later. Berlin came to believe that Namier’s Zionism was the product of “sheer pride”: he “found the position of the Jews to be humiliating . . . [and] . . . wanted a free and dignified existence.” 72 Norman Rose finds the precise triggers in his experience of investigating the arguments of American Zionism for the Foreign Office in 1917, by his disappointment that Poland refused to grant Jews minority rights in 1919, and by the “escalating attacks” on Polish Jews around that time, that included the razing of his parents’ home by anti-Semitic Ukrainian irregulars.73 Consistent with his view that “states are not created or destroyed . . . by argument and majority votes” or the “application of liberty and apple-sauce,” but by “blood and iron” and “violence,” Namier began by agitating for the creation of a British-trained cadre of Jewish militia in Palestine.74 He conceived this force in deeply romantic terms: “We need ready cadres of men who would reclaim our land,” he argued, “the new Jerusalem has to be reclaimed by us ourselves. New England would never have become the moral force which it has had Negro slaves done the work for the first settlers.”75 This Jewish force was to form the core of a new “Seventh Dominion,” a Jewish settler state within the British Empire-Commonwealth—political autonomy, again, without national sovereignty.76 Namier’s Zionism was entirely secular in form; indeed, it was itself, in one sense, areligious or even antireligious. “Eighteen hundred years,” he wrote in 1927, “we Jews have waited for the Messianic miracle and the return to our

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own land.” 77 The loss of that Messianic hope, however, made a separation of the religious and the political possible, creating a space for a Jewish nationalism. For Namier, that meant the chance of attained true nationhood: “every nation must somewhere have its own territorial centre.” 78 Quite how Namier reconciled this kind of idealistic enterprise with his realistic appraisal of other movements for national self-determination is very unclear. He was deeply disappointed by the British government’s unwillingness to fulfill the terms of the Balfour Declaration and perhaps even more so when Zionists did use “blood and iron” to claim their land. Rose has noted that Namier “despised terrorism, an insidious, corrupting manifestation of the nationalism he upheld. He saw it ultimately as the crazed acts of desperate, irresponsible men; the work of a lunatic fringe who, by their insane provocations, brought the entire movement into disrepute. Above all, he regarded it as morally corrupting and politically counter-productive.”79 Namier’s Zionism, in other words, blended romanticism with Realpolitik. So too did his wider international thought. In 1949, he had a revealing exchange concerning the Second World War with the strategist Basil Liddell Hart. The latter had written to gripe about Namier’s insistence that Britain’s declaration of war on Germany on September 3, 1939, ought to be remembered with “awe and gratitude.” Liddell Hart’s view was that the decision was the product of “hot-headedness” and “bad grand strategy, and thus should be regretted.”80 On the question of strategy, Namier agreed, concurring with Liddell Hart that if it had not been for “Hitler’s mistakes,” Britain would have “perished”. But still, he declared, he was grateful to the British people, who “prevented the miserable crew of Munichers from ratting a second time.”81 Over time, the correspondence turned to Liddell Hart’s indulgent treatment (in both moral and military terms) of the Wehrmacht. Namier argued that in Liddell Hart’s work their brutality toward Jews had been downplayed, to which Liddell Hart responded: “The Nazi treatment of the Jews was appalling, but it is a bad omen for the future that so many Jews allow their judgment to be so biased by it that they cannot weigh facts dispassionately. I am more pro-Jewish than most people in this country, or anywhere else, but I have come to realise sadly that the fatal tendency of Jews [is] to bring their troubles on themselves, by vindictiveness.”82 This upset Namier, as well it might, who telephoned to say that he preferred not to discuss the subject any further, but Liddell Hart pressed on, prompting this response from Namier: It is of complete indifference to me whether Germans view Jews with favour or disfavour; and the fate of Jews who choose to continue living

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among Germans after all that has happened, is equally a matter of completest [sic] indifference to me. Altogether I have never belonged to the O. T. I. (Organisation of Trembling Israelites), deeply concerned with what anti-Semites, or in general non-Jews, might think of us. . . . And this is the reason why I worked so hard for Zionism and Israel: that we should be “like unto all nations,” neither outcasts nor the “chosen race” of our own imaginings. But, if I may say so, I think you have still to revise your attitude on that matter: I hardly think you would have written a letter like yours of March 22nd to a member of any other nation which had lost one third of its people, murdered, and most of them tortured to death, by an enemy nation.”83 For Namier, the Jews deserved what other nations had and that was the end of the matter. He had no interest in moving to Israel; he was satisfied that his role in its creation reached the “limit of my usefulness to the Jewish national cause.”84 It is with this in mind that Namier’s various anti-Germanisms need to be set in the context of his wider conviction that, whatever the failings of particular national characters, each nation had, in a strong sense, a place in the world. Take, for example, his remarkably sympathetic treatment of the Soviet government on the eve of the Second World War: The Bolsheviks had long lived out of the world, and he who leaves the walks of common men, meets ghosts. Yet with a doctrinaire dogmatism Russians at all times blend shrewd realist perception. Devoid, or free, of the Roman tradition and untainted with modern bourgeois conventions, Russia follows a path of her own and pursues a policy which is logical and clear-sighted if viewed from the angle of its own premises, devious and incomprehensible when correlated to conceptions alien to it. Nor is it easy at any time to work with the Russians: secretive and suspicious, conscious of their own strength and indifferent to the opinion of foreigners, they will not take the trouble to put their own case, being too powerful or too distracted, and invariably too distant spiritually, to argue and explain.85 To later ears, some of this will sound like stereotyping, even perhaps racism, but arguably it indicates a certain kind of cosmopolitanism that revels not in uniformity or universalism, but in difference and particularity. It sprang from the view that some nations simply cannot live intermingled with others, but that all ought to have a territory of their own. In 1934, he wrote, “The Jew is fundamentally uncongenial to the German. The German is methodical,

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crude, constructive mainly in a mechanical sense, extremely submissive to authority. . . . The Leviathan State of modern German political theory and practice is a psychological counterpart to Germany’s previous division into hundreds of petty States, and both are the expression of German political and social ineptitude. The Jew, of Oriental or Mediterranean race, is creative, pliable, individualistic, restless, and undisciplined.”86 For Namier, provided each of these nations could be secure in their own soil, there was no necessary conflict, and their “characters” could flourish. “Freedom is safest,” Namier argued, “in the self-contained community with a territorial nationality; and where this has not . . . grown up spontaneously, it might perhaps best be secured by a transfer of populations.”87 Conclusion The Namier of the uncompromising realist anthropology was also an equally unbending moralist. Berlin rightly observed that his “belief in the moral duties of historians and scholars generally was Kantian in its severity and genuineness.”88 He believed in establishing truth and demonstrating error; the coruscating footnotes of his contemporary histories, correcting this or that claim or recollection of some protagonist, are striking illustrations of these convictions.89 What is most striking, however, when one compares Namier to his “realist” peers, is his implicit but wholehearted rejection of the notion that politics is in some way “tragic” and that, as a consequence, there might be guilt on both sides in any conflict. This was the view, for example, of one of his most severe critics, Herbert Butterfield, whose own works of contemporary history are littered with oblique, anonymous references to Namier’s works.90 It is clear that Namier’s own view was quite different. For him, “The greatest danger in foreign politics lies in . . . high-sounding shams which deprive people of a sense of responsibility, in a pacifism which will not face facts, and thereby hands over all power to those who count only with facts and with a capacity to create them.”91 Namier’s moralism was wedded, in other words, to a conviction that doctrines were a distraction from the determination of the deeper material or psychological causes of political behavior. This attitude has affinities not merely to the classical realists, like E. H. Carr or Hans Morgenthau, but also to their early behavioralist cousins, like Harold Lasswell or even David Easton, who dismissed inquiry into doctrines as fruitless and sought to analyze instead what they saw as the underlying forces that shape politics.92 Unlike that other realist (of sorts) Herbert Butterfield, who strove—not always energetically or indeed successfully—to write history that reunited the surface narrative of what was said or done, when, and by whom with the

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underlying structure that trying to explain why it was said or done, Namier rejected the former as simply epiphenomenal.93 Namier’s significance to students of international thought lies in that rejection and its consequences. His arguments provide a classic statement of the view that if we are to understand the causes of wars, alliances, treaties, trade, and so on, we should discount what those involved say, write, or declaim about their motives, perceptions, and reasoning. Namier might not, if pushed, have given that view his full endorsement. He knew well that the ideas of protagonists, commentators, and theorists matter; indeed, that they can have longer lives and greater influence than the individuals themselves. Namier’s realism was itself a crafted doctrine, generated with the object of shaping events and furthering a particular cause: that of conservative resistance to liberal error and its many dire, albeit often unintended, consequences. Notes 1. John Cannon, “Namier, Sir Lewis Bernstein (1888–1960),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004–09). 2. Namier’s most important works include The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III 2 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1929), England in the Age of the American Revolution (London: Macmillan, 1930), and 1848: The Revolution of the Intellectuals (London: Oxford University Press, 1946). 3. For brief overviews of Namier’s life and career, see Lucy Sutherland, “Sir Lewis Namier,” Proceedings of the British Academy 5 (1962), 371–385. and Jacob M. Price, “Party, Purpose, and Pattern: Sir Lewis Namier and His Critics,” Journal of British Studies 1:1 (1961), 71–93, as well as Cannon, “Namier.” 4. It ought to be observed that Namier’s true interest was with England, not Scotland or Wales. 5. J. H. Plumb, “The Atomic Historian,” New Statesman, August 1, 1969, 141. On Namier’s “Idealizing” of “England,” see also Stefan Collini, English Pasts: Essays in History and Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 79–84. 6. Isaiah Berlin, “L. B. Namier,” in his Personal Impressions, 2nd ed., ed. Henry Hardy (London: Pimlico, 1998), 95. 7. Namier, as Michael Bentley has put it, “knew perfectly well that his Jewishness was an issue in the minds of his contemporaries.” He probably knew that it had influenced the decision not to award him a Fellowship of All Souls in 1911, but probably did not know that A. F. Pollard wished to hold it against him when it came to his appointment to the chair at Manchester. Bentley also (rightly) warns against overestimating the influence of Namier’s Judaism, noting that his parents were Catholics and that he converted to Anglicanism in later life. See Michael Bentley, Modernizing England’s Past: English Historiography in the Age of Modernism, 1870– 1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 175, 186–187.

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8. Ibid., 96. 9. Ibid., 175–176. 10. Linda Colley, Namier (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989), 2. This short work, concentrating mainly on Namier’s thought, should be read alongside Julia Namier’s longer study of the man, Lewis Namier: A Biography (London: Oxford University Press, 1971). 11. Ibid., 3. See also John Brooke, “Namier and Namierism,” History and Theory 3:3 (1964), 332. 12. For some suggestions as to why Namier still matters to this group, see John Vincent, An Intelligent Person’s Guide to History (London: Duckworth, 1995), 63–68, as well as Bentley, Modernising England’s Past. 13. D. C. Watt, “Sir Lewis Namier and Contemporary European History,” Cambridge Journal (July 1954), 580. 14. Ibid., 580–581. Although few today defend Namier’s essays, there are a doughty few, including John Vincent, who has argued that his work “remains a source of insight into the pathology of mass politics, the pathology of intelligentsia politics . . . , the virtues of stable aristocracies, the importance of East European peasant peoples, and the arguments for rabid Germanophobia.” See Intelligent Person’s Guide to History, 68. 15. Ibid., 582. 16. Ibid., 600. 17. For the finest recent account of that worldview, albeit from someone who would emphatically oppose appeasement, see Richard Ned Lebow, The Tragic Vision of Politics: Ethics, Interests, and Orders (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 18. Namier, Diplomatic Prelude, 1938–9 (London: Macmillan, 1948), 68. For further comment on Henderson, see 127, 1n. On Simon, see 70. 19. E. H. Carr is a clear exception to that rule, but many American realists, from Walter Lippmann to Hans Morgenthau, conceived their realisms as a means to protect liberalism within the borders of the state by curbing its worst tendencies in international politics. See Nicholas Guilhot, “The Realist Gambit: Postwar American Political Science and the Birth of IR Theory,” International Political Sociology 2 (2008), 281–304. 20. Namier, 1848: The Revolution of the Intellectuals (London: Geoffrey Cumberledge & British Academy, 1944), 37. 21. D. C. Watt, “Appeasement: The Rise of a Revisionist School?”, Political Quarterly 36:2 (1964), 191–213. 22. E. H. Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919–1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1939), 91. See also Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, trans. Louis Wirth and Edward Shils (New York: Harvest, 1936). 23. The accusation that Namier sought to take the “mind out of history” came from A. J. P. Taylor, in A Personal History (London: Fontana, 1983), 113. Taylor thought “he had an excessive contempt for ideas and principles in history: a contempt all the stranger when one considers how much he sacrificed his own life

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26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

34. 35. 36.

37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

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from devotion to the idea of Zionism” (“Namier the Historian,” The Observer, August 28, 1960, in Liddell Hart MS, King’s College, London. 1/539/159). Arnold J. Toynbee, “Economics versus Politics,” The Listener 4:95 (19 November 1930), 825. On Butterfield’s international thought, see Ian Hall, “History, Christianity and Diplomacy: Sir Herbert Butterfield and International Relations,” Review of International Studies 28:4 (2003), 719–736. On Butterfield’s disputes with Namier, see C. T. McIntire, Herbert Butterfield: The Historian as Dissenter (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 279–291, and on the former’s role in setting the intellectual agenda of the British Committee on the Theory of International Politics, see Tim Dunne, Inventing International Society: A History of the English School (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998). Michael Oakeshott, “Namier under Scrutiny,” review of Herbert Butterfield, George III and the Historians, The Spectator, November 22, 1957. Berlin, “L. B. Namier,” 95. Anon., “Sir Lewis Namier: Eminent Historian,” The Times, August, 1960, in Liddell Hart MS 1/539/152. Namier, “Human Nature in Politics” in his Personalities and Powers (London: Macmillan, 1955). Cf. Colley, Namier, 26. Namier, “History,” 1. Ibid., 1. See Kenneth N. Waltz, Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959). See Annette Freyberg-Inan, What Moves Man: The Realist Theory of International Relations and its Judgment of Human Nature (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2004). Namier, Structure of Politics in the Age of George III, 1–61. Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr., “Sir Lewis Namier Considered,” Journal of British Studies 2:1 (1962), 43. For a broader response to Mansfield, see Robert Walcott, “Sir Lewis Namier Considered” Journal of British Studies 3:2 (1964), 85–108 and Mansfield’s own response “Sir Lewis Namier Again Considered,” Journal of British Studies 3:2 (1964), 109–119. John Brooke has noted that it “was not the eighteenth century that particularly attracted him . . . but Parliament” (“Namier and Namierism,” 334). E. H. Carr, What is History?, 2nd ed., ed. R. W. Davies (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990 [1961]), 38–39. Namier to Kerr, 11 August 1926, Namier MS John Rylands Library, Manchester. 1/1a/1. Colley, Namier, 27. Berlin, “L. B. Namier,” 94–95. E. H. Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations 1st ed. (London: Macmillan, 1939). Carr rules this out in Twenty Years’ Crisis, 21, Quoted in Julia Namier, Lewis Namier, 138.

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44. Namier, “Human Nature in Politics,” 6. 45. Jacob Talmon, “The Ordeal of Lewis Namier: The Man, the Historian, the Jew,” Commentary 33 (1962), 244. 46. Namier, “Human Nature in Politics,” 2. Namier, of course, had troubled relations with both father and nurse, as Julia Namier’s biography discussed at some length. 47. Namier, “Metternich,” in his Vanished Supremacies, 13. 48. Ibid., 13. 49. Ibid., 13–14. 50. Namier, “History,” 4. 51. Namier, “Communities” (1927), in Skyscrapers and Other Essays (London: Macmillan, 1931), 54. 52. On this point, see also Colley, Namier, 28. 53. Namier, Diplomatic Prelude, 4. 54. On his role in the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire, see Talmon, “Ordeal of Sir Lewis Namier,” 239, and, for one example of the arguments that he put at the time, see Namier, The Czecho-Slovaks: An Oppressed Nationality (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1917). Namier thought the “Czecho-Slovaks” “two branches of a single nation” separated only by an accident of history (3–4). 55. Namier to Martin, 28 August 1942, Namier MS 1/2/12. 56. Namier, “Nationality and Liberty,” in Avenues of History, 21. 57. Ibid., 21–22. 58. Ibid., 21. 59. Ibid., 22. 60. Ibid., 23. Hans Kohn’s The Idea of Nationalism: A Study into its Origins and Background (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2005 [1946]) is cited in support. 61. Ibid., 23. 62. Namier, 1848: The Revolution of the Intellectuals, 37. 63. For Namier’s view of Toynbee more generally, see “Civilization on Trial.” in Avenues of History, 11–19. 64. Namier, 1848: The Revolution of the Intellectuals, 24. 65. Namier, “History,” 4. 66. Namier, 1848: The Revolution of the Intellectuals, 26–27. 67. Ibid., 27. 68. Ibid., 31. 69. Talmon, “Ordeal of Sir Lewis Namier,” 244. 70. Norman Rose, Lewis Namier and Zionism (Oxford: Clarendon, 1980), 4. 71. Berlin, “L. B. Namier,” 94. 72. Ibid., 97. 73. Rose, Lewis Namier and Zionism, 19–23. 74. Namier, 1848: The Revolution of the Intellectuals, 31. 75. Namier, quoted in Rose, Lewis Namier and Zionism, 22. 76. Rose, Lewis Namier and Zionism, 32–33. 77. Namier, “Zionism,” in Skyscrapers, 128.

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78. Ibid., 134. See also his comment that “a nation cannot, and must not, grow except in soil which it can call its own” (“The Jews in the Modern World,” 53). 79. Rose, Lewis Namier and Zionism, 140. See also Colley’s comment on Namier’s view of Israel’s creation: “Its real and violently anti-British genesis appalled him, not least because it seemed to symbolize the incompatibility of his own Britishness and Jewishness. This was one reason why he joined the Anglican Church in 1947, a decision which shocked his Zionist friends” (Namier, 18). 80. Liddell Hart to Namier, September 3 1949, Liddell Hart MS 1/539/24–5, King’s College, London. 81. Namier to Liddell Hart, September 12 1949, Liddell Hart MS 1/539/26. 82. Liddell Hart to Namier, March 1951 2, Liddell Hart MS 1/539/57. 83. Namier to Liddell Hart, April 4 1951, Liddell Hart MS 1/539/61. 84. Namier to Liddell Hart, April 13 1951, Liddell Hart MS 1/539/63. 85. Namier, Diplomatic Prelude, 145. 86. Namier, “The Jews in the Modern World,” in In the Margin of History, 62. 87. Namier, “Nationality and Liberty,” 53. 88. Berlin, “L. B. Namier,” 108. 89. See, for example, Namier, Diplomatic Prelude, 127. 90. For Butterfield’s views of international relations, see “The Tragic Element in Modern International Conflict,” Review of Politics 12:2 (1950), 147–164. 91. Namier, “Diplomacy, Secret and Open,” in In the Margin of History, 19. 92. See, inter alia, Harold Lasswell, The Analysis of Political Behaviour: An Empirical Approach (London: Kegan Paul, 1948) and David Easton, Political System: An Inquiry into the State of Political Science (New York: Knopf, 1953). 93. Butterfield’s attempt to set out this vision of “technical history” may be found in Christianity and History (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1949). Butterfield and Namier are compared in Bentley, Modernizing England’s Past, especially 214–215.

Index

aggression, 72, 75, 80, 84, 85, 96, 102, 171, 174, 188, 189, 202, 215, 216 America, 34, 36, 38, 39–41, 56, 81, 93, 147, 150, 161, 164, 168–9, 181, 184, 197–8, 203, 215, 238 American theory/theorists, 3, 35–6, 147, 150, 223, 243 American Revolution, 228, 233 anarchy, 46, 84, 99, 220 see also international anarchy Anglo-Dutch War, First, 37 Anglo-Dutch War, Second, 34 Annandale, Marquise of, 50 antireligion, 106 Aquinas, Thomas, 44, 48 Archbishop of Canterbury, 139 Armitage, David, 2, 4–5, 7, 8, 9, 45, 47, 48, 110, 131, 133, 215, 224 Aron, Raymond, 46, 108 atheism, 50, 98, 99, 106, 108 Austin, John, 119–23, 139, 141, 144, 146–7 balance of power, 3, 5, 36, 43, 51, 63, 82, 84, 93, 94, 99, 102, 113, 143 Beauchamp, Tom, 59 Bell, Duncan, 2, 6, 7, 133, 135, 155, 158, 159, 178, 201, 202, 203, 204 Bentham, Jeremy, 66, 79, 119, 138, 139, 141, 144, 150, 186, 188, 202 Berdell, John, 81, 88 Berlin, Isaiah, 228, 231, 238, 241 Bernard, Mountague, 125, 131

Bintinaye, Chevalier de la, 105 Bismarck, Otto, von, 148, 173 Boer War/South African War, 172, 184, 194 Bonfils, Henry, 147 Bosanquet, Bernard, 210 Bourke, Richard, 5, 110, 112, 114 Bowyer, George, 146, 149 Bracton, Henry, 138 Brailsford, Henry Noel, 173, 219, 225 Bright, John, 135, 171 British Empire, 2, 6, 168, 171, 182, 186–7, 188, 190–2, 196–8, 228, 233, 238 Brown, John, 101, 113 Bryce, James, 2, 6, 161–79, 201 Bryce Group, 220 Bull, Hedley, 1, 9, 26, 35, 231 Burke, Edmund, 5–6, 91–116, 123, 126 Burke, William, 99 Butterfield, Herbert, Sir, 7, 25, 46, 110, 131, 231, 241, 244, 246 Campbell-Bannerman, Henry, 192 capitalism, 196, 204 Carnarvon, 196 Carr, E. H., 2, 8, 25, 207, 208, 221, 230, 232–4, 241, 243, 244, 245 Cato the Elder, 104 Ceadel, Martin, 220, 222 Chaffers, Alexander, 137–8 Chamberlain, Joseph, 196–7

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Charlemont, Earl of, 95, 101, 111 civil war, 11, 100, 104, 108 American, 127, 132, 183 English, 11 Clarke, Samuel, 57 Cobden, Richard, 135, 164, 171, 187, 188 Colbert, 99 Cold War, 89 Cole, G. D. H., 214 Colley, Linda, 228, 233, 246 Collini, Stefan, 118, 177, 200, 202, 242 colonialism, 47, 132, 158, 182, 195 see also colonizing, colonies colonies, 34, 56, 83, 93, 182, 184, 186, 190, 191–2, 195–8, 200 colonizing, 150 commonwealth, the, 5, 6, 12–13, 15–17, 21–2, 37–42, 44, 56, 101–2, 167, 169, 189, 192 Comte, August, 194 conflict, 72–6, 79–81, 89, 92–3, 107, 109, 144, 147, 149, 183, 184, 189, 193, 214, 218, 237, 241 conquest, 19, 21, 89, 92, 102, 107, 109, 169, 188 Conrad, Joseph, 181 Constant, Benjamin, 92, 188 containment, 84 Cooper, Anthony Ashley, 34, 57 Earl of Shaftesbury, Lord Shaftesbury, 31, 34, 57–8, 59, 87 cosmopolitanism, 176, 201 counterintervention, 124–5 Cox, Richard, 44, 46 Craig, Campbell, 2 Crimean War, 128 Cromwell, Oliver, 37, 47, 87, 99 Curtis, Lionel, 217 democracy, 6, 26, 27, 97–9, 102, 109, 151, 163, 169–70, 174, 176, 177, 179, 181–96, 202, 203

democratic, 24, 27, 30, 96, 98, 106, 107, 109, 165, 170, 174, 183, 184, 188, 190–2, 198, 200, 219, 224 Despagnet, Frantz, 147, 158 deterrence, 78–9, 83, 84, 89 development, 76, 82, 149, 196 Dewey, John, 215 Dickinson, Goldsworthy Lowes, 6, 9, 174, 207–25 diplomacy, 34–5, 37, 42, 79, 102, 127, 218–9, 228, 229, 237 Douglas, John, 101 Dumouriez, General, 102 Duport, Adrien, 104 Easton, David, 241 empire, 2, 15, 20, 82, 84, 99, 109, 149–51, 153, 164, 181–200, 236 see also British Empire English School, 3, 7, 26, 35, 91, 215, 231 Enlightenment, 47, 65, 112, 114, 139, 152, 154, 157 see also Scottish Enlightenment ethnic, 77 ethnicity, 238 (Amer)”Indian,” 5, 36, 39, 41, 42, 47, 158 “Indian,” 110, 168 “Jewish”/”Jew,” 227, 228, 233, 238–41, 245, 246 “Negro,” 168, 177, 238 Euclid, 17 evil, 53, 72–3, 120, 127, 128, 130, 212 federalism, 164, 168–9, 184, 190, 196, 201 Ferguson, Adam (1723–1816), 77–8, 87, 139, 142 fifty years’ rift, 1, 7, 48, 131, 230 Fiore, Pasqual, 147 First World War, 2, 7, 132, 163, 165, 172, 174, 179, 181, 185, 209, 212, 213, 219, 227, 236 Fitzmaurice, Andrew, 6, 204

Index Fitzwilliam, Lord, 104, 111 Fletcher, Andrew, 77 Flood, Henry, 96 foreign policy, 5, 36, 113, 117, 121, 136, 198, 216, 235 Forster, E. M., 209–11, 222 Foster, Charles James, 144, 146 Fox, 94, 96, 98, 102 fragmentation, 169 Francis, Philip, 95 free market, 71 free trade, 37, 74, 75–6, 79, 81–3, 85, 148, 164, 197 Freeman, E. A., 164, 177 French Revolution, 91–116, 169, 236 of February 1848, 124–6, 236 Freud, Sigmund, 231, 233 Gaius, 148 General von Bernhardi, 173 Gilpin, Robert, 81 Gladstone, William, 128, 130, 137, 171, 203 globalization, 183 Glorious Revolution, the (1688–1689), 34, 95 Godolphin, Francis, 16 Godolphin, Sidney, 16 Godolphin, William, 34 Goethe, 209, 212 Gooch, G. P., 174 Green, T. H., 135, 158, 177, 178, 183, 201 Grenville, George, 94, 100, 102 Grotian, 26, 35, 51, 63, 110, 142 Grotius, Hugo, 7, 47, 60, 68, 120, 139, 140, 144, 146, 215 see also Grotian Guizot, Francois, 130 Hall, Ian, 9, 46, 109, 176, 209, 244 Hartz, Louis, 36 Hawkesbury, 102

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Heffter, Auguste-William, 147, 149–50, 152 Hegel, G. W. F., 43, 210 Hegelian, 193, 199, 215 neo-Hegelianism, 209 hegemonic/hegemony, 8, 183, 219 Helvetius, Claude Adrien, 106 Henderson, Neville, 229 Hilferding, Rudolf, 109 Hill, Lisa, 1, 109 historiographical turn, 1, 7 Hobbes, Thomas, 3, 4, 11–31, 37–8, 43, 44, 47, 51, 52–3, 57–8, 59, 139, 144, 207, 214–16 Hobhouse, L. T., 6, 181–205 Hobson, J. A., 2, 6, 109, 173, 174, 181–205, 219, 225 Holy Roman Empire, 165–7, 173, 175 Hooker, Richard, 144 Hotzendorf, Conrad von, 218 humanitarianism, 64, 126, 188 Hume, David, 3, 5, 35, 49–69, 71, 89, 108, 113 Hutcheson, Francis, 50, 54, 57–9, 66, 139 idealism, 2, 7, 84, 189, 207–12, 217, 219, 221, 228, 232 Ignatieff, Michael, 87, 216, 224 Ignatieff, Nicholas, 216, 224 imperial federation, 189–98 imperialism, 2, 6, 76, 85, 107, 109, 164, 168, 181, 186–204, 219 Institut de droit international, 147, 149, 150 interdependence, 89, 165–7, 173, 189 international anarchy, 3, 35, 82, 83, 207–8, 209, 215, 216, 219–21, 237 international law, 6, 26, 33, 36, 119–23, 125–6, 129, 139–58, 164, 184 international relations (IR), 1–7, 11–15, 17, 21, 23–4, 33–6, 51–2, 55–6, 63, 71–2, 83–4, 91, 94, 117–18,

250

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Index

international relations (IR)—Continued 126, 142, 150, 165, 207–9, 220, 221, 228–30, 232, 236 international system, 43, 192, 218 internationalism, 6, 8, 14, 28, 89, 147–9, 153, 162–4, 166, 171, 173, 175, 184, 201, 202, 222 intervention, 6, 45, 92, 93, 94, 96, 97, 104, 105, 110, 114, 123–6, 132, 187, 220 see also non-intervention, counterintervention irreligion, 98, 108 Jackson, John, Bishop of London, 138 James II, King, 42, 98 Jeffery, Renee, 2, 5, 8, 46, 89 Jeze, Gaston, 147, 149–50, 152 Johnson, Laurie, 14, 26, 30 justice, 5, 13, 16, 22–3, 42, 43, 52, 54–6, 61, 62–3, 73–5, 83, 121, 127, 149–50, 165, 172–4, 183, 187, 193, 211 injustice, 13, 14, 16, 73, 81, 83, 127, 188, 234 Justinian, 148 Kant, Immanuel, 3, 9, 25, 26, 43, 51, 141, 157, 215, 222 Kantian, 14, 15, 26, 35, 51, 79, 241 Kemp-Smith, Norman, 59, 67 Kennedy, Paul, 219 Keynes, John Maynard, 2 Kirkpatrick, John, 149, 157 Kluber, Johann Ludwig, 141, 147, 152 Knox, William, 100 Knutsen, Torbjorn, 51 Koskenniemi, Martti, 140, 155, 156, 157 laissez-faire, 170, 187 see also free market Lancaster, T. W., 120 Laski, Harold, 214, 216 Lasswell, Harold, 241

law of nations/jus gentium, 13–14, 25, 26, 37, 38, 43–4, 55, 110, 119–22, 131, 138, 140–6, 148, 150, 156 see also international law Leacock, Stephen, 215 League of Nations, 3, 173, 179, 207, 220 Lebow, Richard Ned, 3, 243 Lee, Dr. John, 145 Leechman, William, 50 legal positivism, 6 Leibnitz, G. W., 140 Leopold, King of Belgium, 148, 150 Levi, Leone, 144, 145, 146 liberalism, 2, 5, 6, 24, 36, 51, 63, 71–2, 80, 84, 89, 92, 122, 124–5, 151–3, 161–7, 169–73, 173–6, 182–8, 191–4, 197, 199–200, 220, 229–30, 233, 242 liberal internationalism, 5, 6, 153, 162, 164, 171, 173, 175 liberal realism, 51, 63 liberty, 27, 39, 42, 71, 72, 74–5, 78–9, 83, 84, 87, 92, 94, 98, 121, 124, 144, 163, 164, 166, 168, 170, 171, 186, 187, 193–4, 197, 198, 211, 237 Liddell Hart, Basil, 239, 246 Lieber, Francis, 147, 148, 152 Locke, John, 3, 4–5, 33–48, 52–3, 57–8, 83, 139, 144, 151, 153 Long, David, 201, 221 Lorimer, James, 146, 149–50 Louis, William Roger, 148, 157 machtpolitik, 84 Mackenzie, Henry, 75 Macmillan, Harold, 230 Maine, Henry Sumner, 139, 144, 177 Mandeville, Bernard, 58 Mannheim, Karl, 230, 234, 243 Manning, William Oke, 143–4, 146, 152 Mansfield, Harvey, 232–3

Index martial arts/martial glory/martial virtue, 17, 30, 73, 76–7 Marx, Karl, 43, 210 Marxism, 88, 110, 158, 202, 233 McTaggart, J. M. E., 210 Mearsheimer, John, 207, 208, 220, 225 Mehta, Uday Singh, 2, 178 Menonville, François-Louis-Thibault de, 105 mercantilism, 72, 75–6, 81, 85 Merivale, Herman, 139 militarism, 163, 173, 194 military, 61, 72–3, 76–8, 81, 84–5, 87, 89, 102, 170, 198, 239 see also martial militias, 76–8, 238 Mill, John Stuart, 3, 6, 117–36, 158, 163, 175, 204 Minowitz, Peter, 72, 81 monarchy, 22, 26, 27, 94, 98–105, 124, 167, 228 Montrond, Comtesse de, 104 Morefield, Jeanne, 2, 6–7, 8 Morgenthau, Hans J., 2, 25, 232, 241, 243 Morley, John, 128 Moser, Johann Jacob, 140 Moynier, Gustave, 148 multipolar, 84 Murray, Gilbert, 2, 217 mystical fatalism, 219 Namier, Sir Lewis, 6–7, 35, 227–46 nation, 5, 13–15, 20, 21, 36–7, 42–4, 56, 61–2, 72–85, 92, 99, 100–1, 103, 107, 120–3, 127, 128–30, 144, 149–52, 162–4, 168, 170–3, 187, 195, 199, 215, 218, 230, 235–7, 239–41, 245, 246 see also law of nations, League of Nations nationalism, 6, 126, 151–2, 161–79, 201, 222, 230, 235–7, 239, 245

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nationality, 80, 123, 126, 132, 135, 162–6, 168–9, 171, 174–6, 177, 179, 182, 189, 191, 198, 202, 228, 230, 236, 241, 245 nation-state, 71, 81–3, 84, 149, 162 natural law, 6, 16, 36–9, 44, 53–5, 60, 91, 138–59, 215, 219 law of nature, 5, 13, 14, 16, 20, 36–9, 44, 142–3, 146, 220 natural rights, 6, 40, 42, 53, 139, 142, 155 neo-realist, 26 Nicolson, Harold, 2, 9 Nicolson, J. Shield, 72 Niebuhr, Barthold Georg, 148 Niebuhr, Reinhold, 232 non-intervention, 3, 6, 117, 122–6, 132, 135, 188 norms, 33, 37, 79, 85, 91, 184, 185, 199 Nys, Ernest, 149, 150, 152, 158 Oakeshott, Michael, 231 Osiander, Andreas, 207–8 Paine, Thomas, 96–7 Palmer, Roundell, Earl of Selborne, 145, 148 Palmerston, 128, 145 Patapan, Haig, 4, 27, 31 patriotism, 72, 80, 82, 85, 98, 101, 123, 126, 127, 166, 169, 170–2, 176 peace, 7, 9, 13, 14–15, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 37, 41, 45, 46, 47, 54, 56, 61, 63, 71–89, 93, 94, 100, 103, 107, 108, 122, 127, 130, 133, 158, 162, 163, 164, 166, 167, 169, 170, 173, 174, 179, 186, 188, 191, 192, 194, 195, 200, 203, 208, 211, 217, 218, 220, 221, 222, 225, 236, 237 Peace of Paris, 100 Pauncefote, Sir Julian, 148 Philippe, Louis, 124

252

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Index

Phillimore, Robert Joseph, 144–5, 149, 152 Phillipson, Nicholas, 77 Pitt, William, 77, 94, 102 Pitts, Jennifer, 2, 86, 140, 158, 178, 202 Plato, 25, 30, 209, 211, 217, 223 Platonic, 30, 31 Plotinus, 209, 223 Plumb, J. H., 228 positivism, 6, 140–4, 147, 151–4, 194, 204 positivists, 139–42, 147, 151–2 see also legal positivism power, 5, 13–14, 16, 17–24, 36, 41–2, 44–5, 52, 77–8, 80, 83–5, 89, 93–109, 120, 124–5, 129, 141, 142–3, 146–8, 149, 153, 165, 167, 181, 184, 187–8, 196, 198, 207, 212–14, 219–21, 231, 233, 237–8, 241 see also balance of power, power politics power politics, 8, 84, 93, 96, 99, 102, 208, 221, 225, 237 see also machtpolitik progress/progressivism, 78, 80, 81, 121, 164–8, 170–1, 174–5, 181, 182, 184–6, 187, 189, 192–3, 202, 234 protectionism, 80–1, 194, 197 Pufendorf, Samuel, 120, 139, 140, 144, 146 race, 168, 172, 175–6, 177, 182, 187, 190, 192, 196, 237–41 racial, 150, 166, 172, 175, 188, 190, 202 racist, 168, 238 rationalism/reason, 5, 12, 16–17, 18, 22–4, 41, 42, 51, 52, 56–64, 82, 84, 105, 119, 123, 129, 140, 142, 167, 169–70, 171, 173, 189, 193, 195, 212, 216, 221 Rawls, John, 4, 9, 36, 43–5 realism, 2, 7, 8, 9, 14, 26, 30, 51, 52, 64, 74, 127, 207, 208, 215, 217, 221, 228, 230, 233, 242, 243

Realpolitik, 239 Reddie, James, 142, 143, 148, 152, 156 Reddie, John, 143 regime, 17, 40, 42, 84, 92, 103, 107, 108, 124, 153 religion, 29, 41, 42, 50, 51, 64, 65, 97, 108, 115, 167, 177, 208 see also irreligion, antireligion, atheism revolution, 78, 86, 95–7, 103–4, 108, 124–6, 215, 217, 233, 236 see also American Revolution, French Revolution, Glorious Revolution Richelieu, Cardinal, 99 Ritchie, D. W., 210 Rolin-Jaequemyns, Gustav, 148 Rose, Norman, 238, 239 Rousseau, 35, 43, 106, 215 Ruskin, John, 194 Said, Edward, 209, 219 Salisbury, 216 Salomon, Charles, 147, 149–50, 152 Santayana, George, 211 Savigny, Friedrich Carl, von, 148–9 Schmalz, Theodore, 141 Schmidt, Brian, 8, 208, 215, 224 Scottish Enlightenment, 49, 51, 52, 57, 65, 66, 71, 87, 148 Second World War, 108, 239, 240 security dilemma, 28, 83 self-determination, 161, 195, 236–9 self-government, 163, 171, 186, 191–2, 194, 198 Seven Years War, 35, 93, 99, 100, 101 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 209 Sheridan, Richard, 94 Simon, John, 229 Skinner, Quentin, 4, 27, 30 Smith, Adam, 2, 5, 50, 71–89 Smith, Goldwin, 164, 177, 202 socialism, 9, 88, 183–4, 187, 192, 204, 207 sovereign, the, 4, 12–17, 21–31, 38–40, 73–4, 78, 86, 88, 120, 141

Index sovereignty, 3, 5, 14–15, 17, 21–2, 35–6, 44, 72, 82, 83, 96, 131, 140, 142, 147, 165, 189–91, 208, 209, 214, 216, 219, 236–8 Spencer, Herbert, 135, 150, 152, 169, 188, 194 St. Clair, General James, 35, 50 standing armies, 76–9 state of nature, 25, 35–6, 38–40, 44, 52–3, 54, 139, 141, 144, 215 Strauss, Leo, 27, 35, 44 Sylvest, Casper, 6, 133, 134, 135, 140, 157, 158, 177, 178, 201, 202, 222

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Varouxakis, Georgios, 6, 132, 134, 135, 176, 177, 178 Vattel, Emmerich de, 120, 121, 146, 204 Victoria, Queen, 137 Vitoria, Francesco de, 149, 151, 153 Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet), 51, 87, 106, 108, 165

Union of Democratic Control, 219 United Nations, 3 universalism, 52, 167, 175, 240 utilitarianism/utility, 52, 54–6, 60, 62, 134, 144, 177, 193, 194, 202 utility, 52, 54–6, 60, 62, 144, 193, 202 utopia/utopian/utopianism, 2, 45, 141, 200, 201, 204, 207, 209, 217–18, 221, 243

Wallas, Graham, 231 Waltz, Kenneth, 8, 207, 244 Walzer, Michael, 117, 124–5, 131, 132 war/warfare, 5, 11, 13, 15, 17, 18, 21–2, 23, 37, 38–9, 41, 42–3, 52, 56, 61, 71–89, 93, 100–8, 122, 126–8, 130–1, 143, 144, 170, 173, 184, 199, 208, 212–14, 217, 220, 239 see also revolution Watt, D. C., 229, 243 Weber, Max, 25, 151 Wells, H. G., 181 Wendt, Alexander, 35 Wertz, S. K., 60, 68 Westlake, John, 146, 149 Westphalia/Westphalian, 93, 110 Wheaton, Henry, 141, 147, 152, 158 Whelan, Frederick G., 51 Wight, Martin, 7, 26, 35, 46, 51, 72, 89, 110, 117, 215, 231 William of Orange, 37, 42 Winch, Donald, 72, 86, 202 Windham, William, 95 Winter, Jay, 181 Wolff, Christian, 140 Wollaston, William, 57 Woolf, Leonard, 2, 174, 219, 222 Wyatt-Walter, Andrew, 72, 74, 76, 79, 83, 86

Valletort, Lord, 94, 111 Van de Haar, Edwin, 51 Van Kley, Dale, 140 Vane, Sir Walter, 33–4

zero-sum game, 80 Zimmern, Alfred, 2, 163, 174, 175, 223 Zionism, 238–40, 244 Zouch, Richard, 140

Tacitus, 98 Talmon, Jacob, 238, 245 Tartarin, Edouard, 147 Taylor, A. J. P., 235, 244 Thucydides, 1, 3, 11 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 107, 126, 184 Toynbee, Arnold J., 2, 230, 237 Treaty of Paris (1856), 113, 128, 131 Treaty of Versailles, 93 Treitschke, Heinrich, von, 173 Twiss, Lady, 137–8 Gelas, Marie, 137–8, 154 Twiss, Sir Travers, 6, 137–59