scholarly journals Francis Bacon on Imperial and Colonial Warfare

2021 ◽  
Vol 83 (2) ◽  
pp. 196-218
Author(s):  
Samuel Garrett Zeitlin
Keyword(s):  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Historical Reconstruction ◽  
State Expansion ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
Colonial Warfare ◽  
Ius Gentium ◽  
Surplus Population ◽  
Imperial State ◽  
Internal Order

AbstractThis article offers a textual and historical reconstruction of Francis Bacon's thought on imperial and colonial warfare. Bacon holds that conquest, acquisition of peoples and territory through force, followed by subjugation, confers a legal right and title. Imperial expansion is justified both by arguments concerning the interstate balance of power and by arguments related to internal order and stability. On Bacon's view, a successful state must be expansionist, for two key reasons: first, as long as its rivals are expansionist, a state must keep up and even try to outpace them, and, second, a surplus population will foment civil war unless this “surcharge of people” is farmed out to colonies. These arguments for imperial state expansion are held to justify both internal and external colonization and empire. Paradoxically, Bacon holds that the internally colonized may be treated with greater severity, as suppressed rebels, than the externally colonized, who are more fitly a subject of the ius gentium. Bacon holds that toleration offers both an imperial stratagem and a comparative justification for why English and British imperial expansion is more desirable than Spanish imperial expansion. The article concludes with reflections about how one might understand the place of imperial and colonial projects in Bacon's thought, contending that these projects are central to an understanding of Bacon's political aims and thought more broadly.

Imperial Conquest, Violent Encounters, and Changing Gender Relations in Colonial Warfare, 1830s–1910s

2020 ◽  
pp. 308-327
Author(s):  
Angela Woollacott
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Rapid Expansion ◽  
British India ◽  
Indigenous Resistance ◽  
East Indies ◽  
Netherlands East Indies ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
Colonial Warfare

The period between the 1830s and the 1910s is significant for the rapid expansion of the British and French Empires in particular and fierce interimperial rivalries, as well as the late rise of non-European empires. The warfare that characterized imperial expansion and indigenous resistance, as sparked by imperial invasions and gradual conquests of colonial territories, including the suppression of uprisings, was often diffuse and chaotic. This chapter considers how the contact zones of aggressively expanding colonialism were structured by violence, in places ranging from the British settler colonies of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to Crown colonies of various European empires, including British India, the Netherlands East Indies, and French Indochina. It assesses the intersections of gender and militarized violence on frontiers and in the daily life of colonial societies.

scholarly journals Francisco de Vitoria and Alberico Gentili on the Juridical Status of Native American Polities

2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 910-952
Author(s):  
Daragh Grant
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
European Society ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Law Of Peoples ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
The Law ◽  
Ius Gentium ◽  
Francisco De Vitoria

Over the course of the sixteenth century, Europeans writing about the ius gentium went from treating indigenous American rulers as the juridical equals of Europe's princes to depicting them as little more than savage brutes, incapable of bearing dominium and ineligible for the protections of the law of peoples. This essay examines the writings of Francisco de Vitoria and Alberico Gentili to show how this transformation in European perceptions of Native Americans resulted from fundamental changes in European society. The emergence of a novel conception of sovereignty amid the upheavals of the Protestant Reformation was central to this shift and provided a new foundation for Europe's continued imperial expansion into the Americas.

The Thucydidean Tragic View: The Moral Implications

Ramus ◽  
1985 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael C. Mittelstadt
Keyword(s):  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Fair Play ◽  
Common Cause ◽  
Moral Standards ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
The Common

No Greek of any calibre, at least in the fifth century, could remain intellectually or spiritually altogether unconditioned by a conscious feeling for, or awareness of, the tragic in human affairs. His poetry and his art, indeed his history, were saturated with the idea of the tragic. Thucydides is certainly no exception, and the most uninformed reader of his History will come away from the work with a keen sense of the immediately perceptible tragic coloration with which it is permeated. Interpreted from any leading, unifying thematic idea the explanation of Thucydides' work must include as central and dominant the tragic deterioration of Athens from the Periclean ideals so well expressed in the Funeral Oration, through the nadir of cynicism and moral decline of the Melian Dialogue, to the utter demoralization expressed through the catastrophe of the Sicilian campaign and its aftermath. One has merely to examine the obvious and purposefully wrought antitheses throughout the History to determine the dramatic nature of Thucydides' work. The drastic metamorphosis in Athenian character that occurs between Books One and Five, for instance, points up such a tragic contrast. The Athenians of the first assembly at Sparta claim that they more than any others were the saviors of Hellas (1.74.2), fearless and self-sacrificing in the common cause of all allies, that they acted with sagacity of judgement (1.75.1), that the empire had not been acquired by force (1.75.2) but by necessity of circumstances, that they had been more observant of justice than actually required, the overwhelming balance of power being in their favor (1.76.3), that in the courts in Athens suits of allies are judged under the same laws (1.77.1). If we compare these same Athenians with the Athenians of the Melian Dialogue it becomes abundantly clear that a deterioration of character and moral standards has taken place and that Thucydides has linked the moral with the tragic. The earlier Athenians, in spite of their desire for imperial expansion, were at least concerned with a minimum of justice and fair play in their international dealings. The Athenians of the Melian Dialogue do not even make a pretence of upholding the commonly accepted nomoi which had from time immemorial been established among men to protect the weaker. Thucydides' strong editorial statements on the effects of anomia (‘lawlessness’) during and following the plague (2.52-53), and during the stasis on Corcyra (3.81ff.) also make firm the link between the moral and the tragic.

Structural Realism/Offensive and Defensive Realism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven E. Lobell
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International System ◽  
Structural Realism ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Primary Objective ◽  
State Expansion ◽  
Offensive Realism ◽  
International Structure ◽  
Defensive Realism ◽  
The One

Structural realism, or neorealism, is a theory of international relations that says power is the most important factor in international relations. First outlined by Kenneth Waltz in his 1979 book Theory of International Politics, structural realism is subdivided into two factions: offensive realism and defensive realism. Structural realism holds that the nature of the international structure is defined by its ordering principle, anarchy, and by the distribution of capabilities (measured by the number of great powers within the international system). The anarchic ordering principle of the international structure is decentralized, meaning there is no formal central authority. On the one hand, offensive realism seeks power and influence to achieve security through domination and hegemony. On the other hand, defensive realism argues that the anarchical structure of the international system encourages states to maintain moderate and reserved policies to attain security. Defensive realism asserts that aggressive expansion as promoted by offensive realists upsets the tendency of states to conform to the balance of power theory, thereby decreasing the primary objective of the state, which they argue is ensuring its security. While defensive realism does not deny the reality of interstate conflict, nor that incentives for state expansion do exist, it contends that these incentives are sporadic rather than endemic. Defensive realism points towards “structural modifiers” such as the security dilemma and geography, and elite beliefs and perceptions to explain the outbreak of conflict.

The balance of power and the power struggles of the polis

2020 ◽  
pp. 175508822094287
Author(s):  
Kevin Blachford
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Constitutive Relationship ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Political Liberty ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
Historical Contextualization ◽  
Distinct Approach

The balance of power is fundamental to the discipline of international relations, but its accuracy in explaining the historical record has been disputed. For international relations, balance of power theory represents a distinct approach which details the behaviour of states to counter hegemonic threats within an anarchic system. This article reimagines the balance of power tradition by highlighting its early modern foundations. Through providing a historical contextualization of the balance of power, this article shows how republican thinkers sought to balance against concentrations of power in order to safeguard political liberty. Early modern republics grappled with the challenge of maintaining a division of power within the polis in a co-constitutive relationship with the international. A republican polis could not secure liberty if under external domination or if the polis itself expanded to imperial proportions. Imperial expansion and the martial politics this entailed have traditionally been understood as incompatible to the safeguarding of political liberty. Recognizing this republican influence can uncover the co-constitutive connections between the internal power dynamics of the polis and the international sphere.

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