Changes of State: Nature and the Limits of the City in Early Modern Natural Law
This
is a book about the theory of the city or commonwealth, what would come
to be called the state, in early modern natural law discourse. Annabel
Brett takes a fresh approach by looking at this political entity from
the perspective of its boundaries and those who crossed them. She begins
with a classic debate from the Spanish sixteenth century over the
political treatment of mendicants, showing how cosmopolitan ideals of
porous boundaries could simultaneously justify the freedoms of itinerant
beggars and the activities of European colonists in the Indies. She
goes on to examine the boundaries of the state in multiple senses,
including the fundamental barrier between human beings and animals and
the limits of the state in the face of the natural lives of its
subjects, as well as territorial frontiers. Drawing on a wide range of
authors, Brett reveals how early modern political space was constructed
from a complex dynamic of inclusion and exclusion. Throughout, she shows
that early modern debates about political boundaries displayed
unheralded creativity and virtuosity but were nevertheless vulnerable to
innumerable paradoxes, contradictions, and loose ends.Changes of State is a major work of intellectual history that resonates with modern debates about globalization and the transformation of the nation-state.
