This work is useful to British historians. It reminds us that British ideas connected with the natural rights of the people developed within a European-wide context. Chapters were contributed by historians of political thought specializing in areas throughout the continent, from Muscovy to the Iberian Peninsula, from Scandinavia to the Ottoman Empire. It also, therefore, instructs us as to common themes in early modern political philosophy, with writers from every corner of Europe confronting similar questions aimed at making clear the features of what constitutes a just government. Not surprisingly, societies experiencing crisis, be it Civil War England, Holland in revolt against Spain, or France during her religious wars, produced the most treatises dissecting the body politic in print, as authors urgently sought solutions leading to a lasting settlement. Even so, taken as a whole, this encyclopedic volume shows that writings on political theory ranked among the leading topics taken up by the printing trade, from its inception in the late 1400s, almost everywhere in Europe. Like the English, continental Europeans invested a considerable amount of time in thinking about the virtues and flaws inherent in their political arrangements, aware that they were based on shared principles as well as on historical legacies.
One concept common to many European countries was the belief in an ancient constitution, containing precedents that present governors were expected to respect. The sort of myth, adopted by Edward Coke and many others, celebrating the common law traditions that had seeped like mist out of the Anglo-Saxon forests, permeating the land and its people, was far from unique to England. In the German states, for example, the ancient constitution was perceived as an aristocratic republic, one that upheld the old Germanic customs and kept the fatherland safe from a grasping imperial tyrant. The Hungarians tied it to their national identity, as they asserted the independence and preservation of their unique culture in the face of being gobbled up by two giant neighbors. Similarly, the Dutch invoked their ancient constitution, forged by venerable ancestors, as a primary justification for breaking away from Spain. And in France during her religious wars, the Catholic League borrowed from the works of Francois Hotman, who had replayed an old story about King Clovis. League members were secure in the knowledge that the early medieval Franks had freed the people from Roman bonds, making violent resistance to the renewal of similar bonds not just an option but a duty.
Thus, as in England, resistance theory was tied to both commonplace folk narratives and religious beliefs. Both Martin Luther and John Calvin famously asserted that physical resistance was sometimes justified to counter the actions of a tyrant who had discarded traditional restraints on government. From time to time in early modern Europe, Protestants invoked the ideal of freedom of conscience, making the resister ultimately accountable to God instead of the temporal ruler. But even in places like Denmark, where the right of active resistance was not typically acknowledged, princes were restrained by coronation oaths and their own consciences, which, it was hoped, would prevent a monarch from breaking his or her word to God. Regardless of the form of government, from hereditary monarch to republic to elected monarch, Europeans expected their leaders to respect traditional restraints. And, given the range of political systems in place, students of English history should be reminded that the dichotomy we often invoke comparing emerging parliamentary constitutionalism with developing continental absolutism is too neat a contrast.
In 1603, Johannes Althusius, a Herborn law teacher turned Emden politician, published his Politics, describing a natural rights theory based on a social contract between the government and the governed. Samuel Pufendorf, another German publishing in the 1660s and ’70s, like Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, explored how the people in the distant past solved problems associated with living in a state of nature by devising a contractual political system. Sales of his Monzambano and of his On the State of the German Empire were brisk in England. The Spanish debate, occurring decades prior to Althusius and Pufendorf, over how the American Indians should be treated, led to an assertion by Francisco de Vitoria that, since humans had formed governments prior to the birth of Christ, the property rights of the indigenous peoples encountered by conquistadores must be recognized and respected. One does not necessarily drift into Whiggish teleology to note that concern for the rule of law, the rights customary to the people, and the limits of political power cropped up so frequently in various parts of Europe during various times in the fifteenth througeir particular societies. It should, therefore, also go without saying that any brief summary of this large volume must leave out a lot. Thus, this piece will close with a discussion of periodization as it is typically applied to Western civilization in general during the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries.
The label “early modern” emphasizes the period as a transitional one, from medieval to modern. This paradigm crops up time and again throughout this work. Although the role of religious convictions is certainly not downplayed by the contributors, there are many indicators in the writings of early modern political theorists that Europe was embracing individualism to a much greater extent than before. The old story of Renaissance humanism paving the way, in much of Europe, for a more secular society is reinforced by this book. The editors, all three from the University of Hull, bring in the reduction of Aristotle's sway over political thought as part of this process. Glenn Burgess, in his excellent chapter on England and Scotland, describes the “anti-Aristotelian forms of thought” (362) that were employed as a means to build depictions of political systems as human inventions. Howell Lloyd ends his conclusion to the volume with an account of the “transformation in perceptions about the nature of the political community,” as Europe turned from “Aristotelian conceptions” (508). Elsewhere in the volume, contributors report similar findings. For example, Robert Von Friedeburg and Michael Seidler, in their chapter on the German states, note that there was an “abrupt end suffered by political Aristotelianism around 1700” (166).
Thus, this book repeats observations made in some texts on the history of political thought that came out in the mid-twentieth century. The medieval corporate view of society gave way to the atomic or atomistic view. The body politic came to be perceived more and more as a construction forged by the interests or wills of individual cells rather than as an organism whose harmonious functioning depended on healthy organs or groups of tissue. The old division of estates or status groups, made up of those who fight, those who work, and those who pray, came to make less sense to Europeans moving in a new direction. The editors’ claim that modern political science was born during this period of time is well founded.
This comprehensive volume should be acquired by all libraries seeking to maintain respectable holdings in European history, political thought, or legal history. It will surely serve, for a good while to come, as a valuable reference source for students and scholars.
