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I•CON 11 (2013), 818–834
the two books reviewed here. Both are
worthwhile reading and, despite considerable
differences in their methodology and
courses of argumentation, they also share
some shortcomings and achievements.
While Kleinlein’s approach is driven by
the motive to cover every single subject in
detail, which makes the book somewhat
lengthy, Schwöbel is short and concise, yet
at the price of some oversimplification. More
importantly, however, both authors deserve
credit for their sharp arguments, intellectual
approach, and their courage to take a more
reflexive point of view on the process of global
constitutionalization.
Petra Dobner
Institute of Political Science,
Martin-Luther-University at
Halle-Wittenberg
Email: [email protected]
doi:10.1093/icon/mot030
David Armitage, Foundations of Modern
International Thought. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Pp. xii + 300. £17.99. ISBN:
9780521001694.
With Foundations of Modern International
Thought Harvard historian David Armitage
presents the main outcomes of his research
in “international intellectual history” he has
undertaken since the acclaimed The Ideological Origins of the British Empire, published in
2000. Foundations consists of a collection of
essays principally dealing, from the perspective
of contextual history, with the international
law and relations theories of classical political
writers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke,
Edmund Burke and Jeremy Bentham. While
these authors are mostly remembered for their
work on domestic law and politics, Armitage
focuses on demonstrating their importance for
the history of international thought, thereby
rejecting any neat separation between internal
and international affairs.
The book does not entirely meet the expectations of readers accustomed to the brilliant
and coordinated historical narrative of Armitage’s previous writings. While it is a piece of
well-argued scholarship and reasserts powerful claims, notably the call for internationalizing and globalizing history, it does not
represent a newly designed, sweeping, provoking or methodologically engaging history of
the international. Rather, as Armitage himself
states in the opening lines, Foundations stands
“as a partial record” of the recent developments of international intellectual history
and as “an inspiration for international intellectual historians in the future” (p. 1).
The word Foundations that stands out in
the title should not mislead the reader into
comparing Armitage’s book with Quentin
Skinner’s wide-ranging work on the history
of political thought.1 Armitage himself warns
against any such comparison and makes
“no implicit claim exhaustively or comprehensively to excavate all the basic elements
which went into the making of modern international thought” (p. 8). In the same vein
he states that his book “does not attempt to
replace earlier narratives with any one point
of origin or single continuous, unfolding tradition of discussion” (p. 13). Rather, Armitage
submits, without further elaborating, that his
central aim is to “question conventional narratives” by means of a “critical” examination
of canonical early-modern scholarship (ibid.).
That he is not searching for the “beginning” of
the international is confirmed by the fact that
his exposition of early-modern international
thought does not go as far as to make a case
for Hobbes, Locke, Burke and Bentham as providers of founding principles of modern international thought. Armitage only proves that
some of those writers’ reflections have been
relevant, some more some less, for the history
of the international. If this is the case, though,
it is not clear why the term Foundations had to
appear in the title, especially in times in which
it is undergoing critical scrutiny by its former
users themselves. Talking about Foundations
Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern
Political Thought (2 vols, 1978).
1
Book Reviews
today is premised on a specific methodological
orientation and conception of history which
the reader might have wished to be clarified in
the introduction.
As indicated by the idea of the Foundations
as a “record”, Armitage in the introduction
and the first chapter offers a detailed
account of the recent trends of international
intellectual history, attesting to a broad
and increasing interest in the field. Sure, if
under international intellectual history one
understands a “global” intellectual history,
then the current state of research may appear
sketchy and disappointing. This ‘global’
history is intended as a truly world history
accounting for both particular and general
contexts, but, aside from a few exceptions, it
still looks like a patchwork of former national
histories. It lacks detailed analysis as well as
criteria to decide which national historical
events or trends are globally relevant.2
The outlook, however, is brighter if international intellectual history is viewed as a
narrower, historically contextualized study
of early doctrines of the international. This
understanding, prevailing in Armitage’s
Foundations too, is now recognized as characterizing one of the main areas of historical
investigation. As Armitage observes, it has
been on the rise at least since the 1990s, as
the primacy of foreign policy was re-affirmed
in many countries, and a growing number
of scholars began to address issues such as
globalization, Empire and alleged clashes of
civilizations in historical perspective (p. 4).
Historians of political thought shifted the
focus of their research away from the now
provincialized domestic sphere to the promising and multidisciplinary field of the international.3
One of these noteworthy exceptions is Jürgen
Osterhammel, Die Verwandlung der Welt. Eine
Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts (2009).
3
Among the leading figures in this move towards
international history were Anthony Pagden
with Lords of All the World : Ideologies of Empire in
Spain, Britain and France c. 1500­– c. 1800 (1995)
and J. G. A. Pocock, whose work culminated in
Barbarism and Religion (5 vols, 1999–2011).
2
827
International intellectual history then
functioned as a crossroad where historians
met with like-minded international lawyers
and international relations theorists, who on
their part were taking a historiographical turn
to question dogmatic realist and idealist conceptions of the world order. This convergence
of history and international law and relations
led to an interdisciplinary revival of international intellectual history–a revival that may
be regarded as an utterly new birth given the
peculiarity of contemporary accounts of the
discipline. Instead of providing hagiographies of the founding fathers of international
thought as was common in the past, scholars
in international intellectual history now tend
to dismantle traditional myths and to consider
authoritative writings as texts to be interpreted in light of broader discursive practices
in which the agency of the author no longer
occupies centre stage. Emphasis on historical and linguistic context and critical method
has given rise to several cutting-edge works in
international intellectual history by scholars
such as Richard Tuck, Annabel Brett, Martti
Koskenniemi, James Tully and David Armitage himself, among others.
Expanding on Armitage’s report on recent
scholarship, it may be noted that mounting
interest in the history of international thought
can be spotted also in editorial trends. A number
of new editions of the classics of international
thought, especially from the early-modern ius
naturae et gentium, are coming out along with
translations of seminal secondary sources. This
is occurring at a pace unparalleled since the
heyday of apologetic international legal history
in the early twentieth century, when the series
The Classics of International Law started under
the auspices of James Brown Scott and the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Among recent publications in international
intellectual history, mention may be made of
Benedict Kingsbury, Benjamin Straumann
and David Lupher’s recent translation of
Alberico Gentili’s De armis Romanis, or of the
forthcoming English version of Emmanuelle
Jouannet’s monograph Emer de Vattel et
l’émergence du droit international classique. The
rising interest and availability of sources in
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I•CON 11 (2013), 818–834
international intellectual history is further
indicated by the increasing number of
re-editions of Enlightenment treatises by the
Liberty Fund. Meanwhile, the internet allows
scholars immediate and free access to
thousands of early-modern writings, including
less renowned ones.
There are, of course, limits to these apparent signs of academic advance in international intellectual history. Only a few relevant
works in foreign languages are translated into
English and spread beyond national borders.
Online consultation, though potentially beneficial, may imply selective and less thorough
reading of sources. While older volumes formerly consigned to oblivion on the dusty
shelves of a handful of libraries are now readily available on the internet, this is of little
help if Western scholars no longer read Latin,
and sometimes not even French or German as
foreign languages. At present there are several
specialists who laudably devote themselves to
the study of non-European languages and
sources instead, but, comparatively, they do
not appear more numerous than the polyglots who filled the ranks of seventeenth or
eighteenth century academia. In terms of
accessing sources in foreign languages, international intellectual history is less “international” now than it was in the whole of the
modern age. This state of affairs runs clearly
counter to Armitage’s optimistic vision of the
progressive internationalization and globalization of historical research.
Both the merits and limits of Armitage’s
narrative are best exemplified by the three
Lockean essays constituting the main body
of the book. Therein, Armitage carries out a
painstaking textual analysis based on accurate
archival research. He thus expounds Locke’s
notorious involvement in the slave trade and
in the drafting of the racially discriminating
Constitutions of Carolina, which equipped
freemen with the right of life and death over
their slaves. Armitage’s reconstruction of
those facts is precise, but the reader may
find problematic the manner in which they
are interpreted. For Armitage views Locke’s
endorsement of slavery as a purely pragmatic
move and denies its being in any way related to
Lockean liberal philosophical theory, the latter
being non-hierarchical and inclusive (p. 129).
Most modern commentators have conversely
pictured Locke’s liberal theory as essentially
discriminating against those human beings
whom he assumed to be lacking rationality,
such as slaves and Native Americans.4 Armitage strongly contests this opinion and argues
that Locke, while a racist in practice, never
really thought of African and American peoples as irrational in the strict sense. Armitage
then proceeds to postulate that Locke cannot
be labeled as a theorist of “empire” proper
insofar as he did not squarely theorise a hierarchy of rationalities and cultures.
What emerges here is the question of
Europe’s colonial guilt, a question that
historians inevitably get entangled in despite
any programmatic statements to the contrary.
Armitage seems to take a modernist stance
on it. He suggests that Locke, and European
Enlightenment thinkers more generally,
were not responsible for building inherently
discriminating theories, but rather (and
perhaps “only”?) for not applying liberal
and emancipatory theories properly to the
rest of the world. If Armitage really pursued
this line of argument, his conclusion would
be controversial. Whilst Locke occasionally
acknowledged the “rationality of the savage”
in the name of the purported universality of
Reason, it is hard not to see this as a strategy
he merely deployed to buttress some of his
parochial claims relating to British and
European interests. That Locke never truly
recognized the “savage” as rational subjects is
patent as he did not infer from the “rationality
of the savage” any rights, duties or other
practical consequences. What is more,
rationality alone was not a casting criterion
for Locke to establish rights and duties. In his
opinion, human beings’ legal status depended
For a “colonial” reading of Locke, Armitage for
instance refers, at pp. 92 and 114, to James Tully,
‘Rediscovering America: The Two Treatises and
Aboriginal Rights’, in James Tully, An Approach
to Political Philosophy: Locke in Contexts (1993)
137–76; Barbara Arneil, John Locke and America:
The Defence of English Colonialism (1996).
4
Book Reviews
not on the sheer possession of rationality,
but on the concrete modes by which they
put rationality, quite literally, to work. In
Locke’s labour theory of appropriation, which
fully vindicated European colonialism, the
inferiority of the “savage” precisely lay in
their failure to make proper use of God-given
rationality.5 This is the core question when
it comes down to illustrating, as Armitage
wishes, Locke’s attitude towards Empire.
There is no point in redirecting attention away
from Locke’s clearly pro-imperialist political
and legal activity towards the potential
egalitarianism of his liberal theory because,
as often happens with law and politics, the
way principles are applied is more crucial than
principles themselves.
In successive essays, Armitage leaves aside
political theory to contest the domestic/
international dichotomy on other planes,
by examining the international operation of
domestic institutions and the international
function of domestic legal documents. In the
piece “Parliament and international law in
eighteenth-century Britain”, Armitage deals
with the British parliament’s move towards
the international through gradual takeover
of foreign affairs in the final phases of the
First Empire. Such parliamentarization of
foreign policy in Britain, he argues, consolidated the peculiar characterization of the
law of nations as a part of the law of England, and resulted in substantial transformations in the British approach to international
law. This conclusion may be particularly
valuable as a framework for further research.
It may be helpful, for instance, to contextualize nineteenth century Britain’s leading role
in the suppression of international crimes, in
particular to grasp British efforts to assimilate slave trade with piracy, and piracy under
the law of nations with piracy under English law.
Armitage turns to the international impact
of domestic official documents in the two final
chapters of the book, where he discusses Declarations of Independence, notably those made
5
John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, Second
Treatise, V, 37 (Laslett ed., 1988).
829
on the American continent since 1776. Armitage posits that such texts were not drafted for
merely constitutional purposes, to assert the
legal and moral principles of nascent polities.
More importantly, Declarations of Independence qualified as international statements
made by freedom fighters to obtain recognition
of a de facto independent state as an international legal subject, and of themselves as legitimate government officials. Recognition in turn
enabled the nascent nation to seek military
and financial assist­ance from foreign powers
while discouraging intervention in support
of reactionary forces. The question of recognition is not novel and has been at the center
of endless doctrinal debates in international
law, but the historical function of Declarations of Independence has remained underresearched. Armitage’s re-conceptualization
of Declarations as speech acts performed on
the international stage will hopefully inspire
fresh research on the subject.
Still, not all Declarations of Independence
have targeted an international public. For
example, as Armitage himself recalled in his
2007 work The Declaration of Independence:
A Global History, the “Haitian declaration
of independence [of 1 January 1804] was
directed to a domestic audience rather
than to the candid world,” in particular to
proclaim the end of slavery.6 The declaration
came as foreign powers like France, Britain
and Spain, far from acting as potential
rescuers to be appealed to, were already
heavily involved in the Haiti revolution and
opposed or interfered with the local struggle
for liberty. Later on, France recognized Haiti
only after being granted enormous monetary
compensations which crushed the Haitian
economy in the long term. Meanwhile the
neighboring United States, Armitage noted
in The Declaration, aggravated Haiti’s position
by refusing recognition until 1862 out of
fear of spreading slave revolts. Perhaps,
Armitage might have briefly mentioned the
Haiti case in Foundations as well. This would
have been appropriate both to complexify
David Armitage, The Declaration of Independence:
A Global History (2007), p. 116.
6
830
I•CON 11 (2013), 818–834
the overall designation of the Declarations
of Independence as international documents
and to avoid giving the impression that
the history of such Declarations is one of
“modernity” and progress.
Considering the book as a whole, Armitage deserves considerable credit for proposing the exploration of the domestic from the
viewpoint of the international as a means to
widen the traditional domain of the history
of international thought. This may benefit
in particular the subfield of international
legal history, which, despite a few remarkable exceptions, is still primarily made up
of commentaries on the traditional VitoriaGentili-Grotius-Pufendorf-Vattel canon. In
this regard, Armitage’s call for broadening
the horizon of the history of international
thought by a reappraisal of the classics of
political theory and of domestically conceived legal and political texts is highly welcome.
Yet one might wonder if Armitage’s choice
of selecting Hobbes, Locke, Burke and Bentham as the doctrinal nucleus of the Foundations really means broadening the horizon of
“international” thought. All of these authors
were fellow countrymen giving expression to
the concerns of a specific national tradition,
the British, and none of them, except for Bentham, were much of cosmopolitans. It is baffling to see that no place in the book is reserved
for non-British writers. And even more baffling is that Armitage fails to provide a reason for such return of him to the pattern of
national history. Indeed, the current trend–to
which he has contributed, for example in The
Declaration of Independence–is to look beyond
the national towards the pan-European and
the global. Had Armitage wished to draw specific attention to British scholarship in Foundations, an explanatory statement would have
been appreciated.
Also, the reader may query why Hobbes,
Locke, Burke and Bentham should be characterized as any more “foundational” authors
than other political writers like, say, Machiavelli or Bodin, who had inaugurated a modern
and influential concept of the law of nations
earlier on. Hobbes, and partly Locke, certainly
matched their achievement, but the same
cannot be said of Burke and Bentham. This is
not to argue that Armitage’s inquiry should
have actually covered Machiavelli and Bodin
too, since it would have thus turned into one
of those old-fashioned grand narratives unacceptable under the aesthetic standard of the
age. The point is simply that if Machiavelli
or Bodin might well have deserved to occupy
Burke’s and Bentham’s places in Armitage’s story, and if Armitage nowhere in the
book takes the trouble to justify why writers
like Burke and Bentham may be regarded as
“foundational”, then it may be questioned
whether this is indeed a book on Foundations
of international thought.
In light of the themes covered by this collection, the reader might rather be tempted to
describe it as Foundations of British or AngloAmerican International Thought. But it falls
short of this description too, since Armitage
fails to explain what is foundational even to
such British or Anglo-American International
Thought or to lay out the general criteria for
selecting his references. Admittedly, raising
such concerns about the choice of the materials may sound unfair as the essays collected
here were probably not conceived as part of
a unified work originally. The lack of a unified structure in the book might equally be
excused if it were the result of the author’s
conscious departure from unitary history
towards post-modern, fragmentary histories.
On any such approach, however, the reader is
left in the dark. Be that as it may, the choice
of the topics for inclusion in Foundations cannot have been completely random, and some
elucidation would have been helpful to make
sense of the work and of the methodological
premises.
In the introduction Armitage announces
that in the following chapters he will
attempt to illustrate that international law
rested on foundations laid in ‘the period
roughly defined by the public careers of
Thomas Hobbes and Jeremy Bentham’
(p. 8). Yet he does not succeed. What he
does achieve instead is to demonstrate
how certain political and legal principles,
institutions and texts developed within
Book Reviews
domestic settings eventually informed, more
or less deliberately, international theory and
practice. Armitage provides less a history
of enduring or paradigmatic international
ideas than an exposition of how certain
domestic ideas grew international. To have
delivered this through meticulous and cogent
research is obviously a conspicuous result,
but has little to do with tracing foundations
of international legal thought.
To be sure, holding on to the language
of foundations and focusing on national
sources is perfectly legitimate. Yet it would
not be correct to characterise this attitude
as the one that current scholarship on international thought needs most. Instead of
striving to seek a glimmer of international
theory in the long perused writings of the
greatest authorities of political philosophy,
the paramount task in the field today is to
assess marginal international doctrines
which have never been incorporated into the
canon of international law and relations for
scientific and political reasons, or which are
entirely neglected these days because written
in ancient or non-European languages and
hence inaccessible to many. Plausibly, innovative research has to open up to this peripheral literature rather than crystallize around
traditional and authoritative, if scrupulously
dissected doctrines.
Walter Rech
Erik Castrén Institute of International Law
and Human Rights, University of Helsinki
Email: [email protected]
doi:10.1093/icon/mot032
Justin O. Frosini. Constitutional Preambles
at a Crossroads between Politics and Law.
Maggioli Editore, 2012. 174 pages. €19.
ISBN: 9788838765731.
One of the recurring problems plaguing
young researchers, especially doctoral students, is their fear of writing something
831
redundant, something that is seemingly “selfevident,” something that is “not complex
enough.” This fear leads many into overly
convoluted linguistic, methodological, and
conceptual constructions—a problem further exacerbated by the growing pressure to
deploy interdisciplinary approaches. Likewise,
this reviewer and his peers tended to dismiss
many of the research topics our experienced
teacher in a doctoral seminar suggested as too
obvious, too unimportant, too mainstream—
basically, as not earth-shattering enough.
To which Professor Van Evera would retort:
“Where is the footnote?” that we were going
to use in our assignments to establish scientifically that obvious, unimportant, mainstream,
earthly fact. If—as almost always happened—
we were unable to name a suitable reference,
he liked to point out that we had once again
stumbled upon one of those “Books and Art­
icles That Someone Should Write.”1 Science is
a collaborative enterprise, he kept reminding
us, not all parts of which automatically concerned investigations into ultimate questions
of life and death—providing that one footnote
to settle an ostensibly inconsequential fact is a
perfectly honorable and eminently necessary
part of our common scientific endeavor. The
book under review shows in a laudably transparent manner how something that appears
to be settled and fairly negligible can yield
surprising insights, where the data gradually
leads the reader to abandon his or her preconceived notions to almost unperceptively
realizing in the end that the author was right,
namely that in this—admittedly relatively
small—corner of comparative law his hunch
had been correct and the majority wrong.
Justin Frosini has taken a deceptively simple
question—“[Are] preambles really without
practical applicability? Are they truly nonoperative?” (p. 17)—and answered it clearly
and comprehensively, and has thereby written
one of those books that someone should write.
Quite beyond its substantive content, his book
should serve as a model for young researchers
1
Stephen Van Evera, Guide to Methods for Students
of Political Science 98 (1997).