Rachel Hammersley, the author of two monographs on the reception of English republicanism in eighteenth-century France, has now written another important book on the well-known figure of the first English Revolution, James Harrington (1611–1677). Taking stock of the possibilities offered by digitized archives and recent research, Hammersley revisits the standard version of Harrington's life, which has come down to us from his contemporaries and sometimes friends (John Aubrey, John Toland) with a personal or political bias. What is at stake in this nuanced and energetic narrative is to reassess his thinking “beyond the republican paradigm” (22). Hammersley thus starts James Harrington: An Intellectual Biography with a puzzle: how to reconcile Harrington's royalist connections with the fact he wrote an influential republican text? Another of her ambition's for the book is to give importance to the literary form of Harrington's works and to the method used to convey his political message.

The book, organized into five sections according to a chronological pattern, successfully contextualizes Harrington's texts mainly published in the 1650s. The introduction offers a panorama of the historiography on Harrington and a perspective on key moments of his reception in Britain and abroad.

Section 1 explores Harrington's family connections with the Stuart dynasty, going back to the generation of his great-uncle and grandfather, two distant cousins of James I. From there Hammersley shows how during the Civil War Harrington became a supporter of Parliament and an “agent” of monarchy. This term was used to refer to Harrington's action as an informer on the Committee of Both Kingdoms on the prince elector's behalf. In 1647, when the peace negotiations resumed between the king and Parliament, Harrington came to serve Charles I in captivity. Hammersley analyzes the reasons for Harrington's choice (his support to Parliament and his royalist connections), and enhances the relation of mutual friendship between the gentleman and the king, which, according to her, invites us to reconsider Harrington's republicanism.

Section 2 provides an account of Harrington's republican ideas ending on what the author calls “the limits of Harrington's republicanism” (81). On the one hand, his preference for a neo-Roman form of liberty and vision of an “equal commonwealth” based on agrarian law, rotation of office, and a form of ballot inspired by the Venetian Republic; on the other, his affiliation with the royal family, his rejection of the previous republican regimes in England (the Commonwealth and Protectorate), his insistence on the need for a sole legislator and, above all, the possibility of a “single figurehead at the apex of government” (91). Such elements do not square with the understanding of the English republican tradition defined as anti-monarchical and exclusivist. For Hammersley the label “republican” may obscure the true nature of his ideal constitution, which should rather be seen as “a middle way between traditional monarchy and kingless republicanism” (93).

Section 3 focuses on the innovative character of Harrington's ideas: his economic theory linking land and power and his embrace of the notion of democracy at a time when it was infamous among his contemporaries, sometimes even among republicans. Hammersley also deals with his generic and linguistic experiments.

Section 4 examines the political, historical, and philosophical controversies in which Harrington became involved. Hammersley thus draws a more complete picture of his intellectual role in the debates of the mid-century and casts light on Harrington's natural philosophy underpinning his political theory.

The final section is devoted to Harrington's political activities: the influence he had on parliamentary debates via Henry Neville and Adam Baines, his participation in the pamphlet war of 1659, and his creation of the broad-based Rota Club, located in one of the new coffee houses, which implemented “the kind of inclusive political nation that he advocated in Oceana” (257).

This book contains a wealth of archival work and historical knowledge. It offers a portrait of James Harrington in a new light. In this respect, James Harrington: An Intellectual Biography is a pathbreaking book. In the wake of Hans Baron, John Pocock, Quentin Skinner, and others who unearthed a republican tradition born in the Italian city-states of the Renaissance, and disseminated in early modern Europe, some historians like Jonathan Scott have called for a reconceptualization of English republicanism (Commonwealth Principles: Republican Writing of the English Revolution, 2014). There is no denial that Harrington was an “atypical” commonwealthman (20), with his emphasis on stability inherited from Hobbes and the political architecture to achieve it. However, his central tenets that the people are sovereign and that popular sovereignty should be performed through civic rituals place him firmly in the republican camp.

As Hammersley acknowledges, the difficulty is with the definition of the term “republicanism,” a concept that in the early modern era was “in the midst of a transformation and flux” (66). In seventeenth-century England, a commonwealthman or republican designated a person who aspired to a free state rather than a specific regime. The same idea held into the eighteenth century until the American and French Revolutions, when the term became more tightly connected to the partisan of a kingless regime. Therefore, assimilating the whole English republican tradition to an anti-monarchical tendency would indeed be inaccurate. It encompassed many shades, as republicans differed on such questions as the institution of a national church; the extent of democratic participation; and, last but not least, the form that popular representation should take (one assembly or two, elected or not?). The last question pervaded the American and French Revolutions.

Thus recognizing the pluralism of English republicanism does not seem consistent with delineating the “limits of Harrington's republicanism” (81). The ultimate test of Harrington's republicanism may lie in his contemporary reception: none of his supporters or critics seem to have perceived the royalist streak in him. Across the political spectrum they were prone to underline the utopian character of his model and the great inconveniences of implementing civic participation at all levels. What about his relative loyalty to the prince elector and cordial relations with the king? Harrington's social condition and education predisposed him to attend the king: it is understandable he accepted to perform his duty and engaged in an intellectual relation with Charles the man, while opposing Charles the king. As for the first point, the breakdown of the relations between Parliament and the king, the subsequent collapse of the Ancient Constitution and the regicide created a new historical situation in which he started constructing his model. Harrington, who may have envisaged a mixed monarchy in 1644, when acting as an intermediary between the prince elector and Parliament, no longer saw it as a viable option for England ten years on.

Altogether, even if some of its central arguments can be debated, Hammersley's monograph on James Harrington is and will remain an important contribution to the history of modern political thought.