The Americas in Early Modern Political Theory
Title | The Americas in Early Modern Political Theory PDF eBook |
Author | Stephanie B. Martens |
Publisher | Springer |
Total Pages | 168 |
Release | 2016-05-31 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN | 1137519991 |
This book examines early modern social contract theories within European representations of the Americas in the 16th and 17th century. Despite addressing the Americas only marginally, social contract theories transformed American social imaginaries prevalent at the time into Aboriginality, allowing for the emergence of the idea of civilization and the possibility for diverse discourses of Aboriginalism leading to excluding and discriminatory forms of subjectivity, citizenship, and politics. What appears then is a form of Aboriginalism pitting the American/Aboriginal other against the nascent idea of civilization. The legacy of this political construction of difference is essential to contemporary politics in settler societies. The author shows the intellectual processes behind this assignation and its role in modern political theory, still bearing consequences today. The way one conceives of citizenship and sovereignty underlies some of the difficulties settler societies have in accommodating Indigenous claims for recognition and self-government.
Empire and Modern Political Thought
Title | Empire and Modern Political Thought PDF eBook |
Author | Sankar Muthu |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Total Pages | 419 |
Release | 2012-09-17 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0521839424 |
This collection of original essays by leading historians of political thought examines modern European thinkers' writings about conquest, colonization, and empire. The creation of vast transcontinental empires and imperial trading networks played a key role in the development of modern European political thought. The rise of modern empires raised fundamental questions about virtually the entire contested set of concepts that lay at the heart of modern political philosophy, such as property, sovereignty, international justice, war, trade, rights, transnational duties, civilization, and progress. From Renaissance republican writings about conquest and liberty to sixteenth-century writings about the Spanish conquest of the Americas through Enlightenment perspectives about conquest and global commerce and nineteenth-century writings about imperial activities both within and outside of Europe, these essays survey the central moral and political questions occasioned by the development of overseas empires and European encounters with the non-European world among theologians, historians, philosophers, diplomats, and merchants.
The Political Theory of the American Founding
Title | The Political Theory of the American Founding PDF eBook |
Author | Thomas G. West |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Total Pages | 431 |
Release | 2017-04-03 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 110714048X |
This book provides a complete overview of the Founders' natural rights theory and its policy implications.
The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe
Title | The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe PDF eBook |
Author | Daniel H. Nexon |
Publisher | Princeton University Press |
Total Pages | 372 |
Release | 2009-03-31 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 140083080X |
Scholars have long argued over whether the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which ended more than a century of religious conflict arising from the Protestant Reformations, inaugurated the modern sovereign-state system. But they largely ignore a more fundamental question: why did the emergence of new forms of religious heterodoxy during the Reformations spark such violent upheaval and nearly topple the old political order? In this book, Daniel Nexon demonstrates that the answer lies in understanding how the mobilization of transnational religious movements intersects with--and can destabilize--imperial forms of rule. Taking a fresh look at the pivotal events of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries--including the Schmalkaldic War, the Dutch Revolt, and the Thirty Years' War--Nexon argues that early modern "composite" political communities had more in common with empires than with modern states, and introduces a theory of imperial dynamics that explains how religious movements altered Europe's balance of power. He shows how the Reformations gave rise to crosscutting religious networks that undermined the ability of early modern European rulers to divide and contain local resistance to their authority. In doing so, the Reformations produced a series of crises in the European order and crippled the Habsburg bid for hegemony. Nexon's account of these processes provides a theoretical and analytic framework that not only challenges the way international relations scholars think about state formation and international change, but enables us to better understand global politics today.
America in European Consciousness, 1493-1750
Title | America in European Consciousness, 1493-1750 PDF eBook |
Author | Karen Ordahl Kupperman |
Publisher | UNC Press Books |
Total Pages | 448 |
Release | 1995 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 9780807845103 |
For review see: Stephen J. Homick, in The Hispanic Historical Review (HAHR), vol. 77, no. 1 (February 1997); p. 78-80.
A History of American Political Theories (1915)
Title | A History of American Political Theories (1915) PDF eBook |
Author | Charles Edward Merriam |
Publisher | |
Total Pages | 384 |
Release | 2008-08-01 |
Genre | |
ISBN | 9781436987806 |
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
African Kings and Black Slaves
Title | African Kings and Black Slaves PDF eBook |
Author | Herman L. Bennett |
Publisher | University of Pennsylvania Press |
Total Pages | 329 |
Release | 2018-09-10 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0812295498 |
A thought-provoking reappraisal of the first European encounters with Africa As early as 1441, and well before other European countries encountered Africa, small Portuguese and Spanish trading vessels were plying the coast of West Africa, where they conducted business with African kingdoms that possessed significant territory and power. In the process, Iberians developed an understanding of Africa's political landscape in which they recognized specific sovereigns, plotted the extent and nature of their polities, and grouped subjects according to their ruler. In African Kings and Black Slaves, Herman L. Bennett mines the historical archives of Europe and Africa to reinterpret the first century of sustained African-European interaction. These encounters were not simple economic transactions. Rather, according to Bennett, they involved clashing understandings of diplomacy, sovereignty, and politics. Bennett unearths the ways in which Africa's kings required Iberian traders to participate in elaborate diplomatic rituals, establish treaties, and negotiate trade practices with autonomous territories. And he shows how Iberians based their interpretations of African sovereignty on medieval European political precepts grounded in Roman civil and canon law. In the eyes of Iberians, the extent to which Africa's polities conformed to these norms played a significant role in determining who was, and who was not, a sovereign people—a judgment that shaped who could legitimately be enslaved. Through an examination of early modern African-European encounters, African Kings and Black Slaves offers a reappraisal of the dominant depiction of these exchanges as being solely mediated through the slave trade and racial difference. By asking in what manner did Europeans and Africans configure sovereignty, polities, and subject status, Bennett offers a new depiction of the diasporic identities that had implications for slaves' experiences in the Americas.