Although Europe deserves condemnation for the ethnocentric and racist notions and attitudes that flourished within it both before and during the era of imperialism, these were preceded, accompanied, and countered by a singular interest in and openness to other peoples and cultures. The marks of this openness were an exceptional interest in travel and writings about it, in learning non-European languages and translating and circulating texts written in them, in correcting their own forbears’ calumnies and defamations of others by exposing myths and legends for what they were, and by acknowledging the historical and cultural achievements of other peoples. The notion that Asian governments were despotic spread chiefly because those who adopted it feared the spread of autocracy in their own countries, and it drew forth harsh criticism. Images of other countries or regions, especially China and the Near East, became mirrors in which Europeans contemplated the limitations and narrow prejudices of their own way of life.

Following the argument to its logical conclusion, Chapter 7 finally considers when and how the nation did come to be understood in a political sense. It traces constitutional differences between France and England through the writings of John Fortescue and sketches the rise of the nation-state in France by examining the thoughts of Jean Bodin, Michel de L’Hopital, Francois Hotman, and a number of Huguenot thinkers. The chapter challenges theories of “English exceptionalism,” indicating that France’s nation-state status, in theory and practice, arises at about the same time as England’s. In particular, it calls attention to the different forms of “nation-state” that come into being in England and France. In England, the “nation” becomes synonymous with the populus, the people, as understood broadly in classical and medieval thought, and associated with the Parliament. In France, the “nation” becomes synonymous with and subsumed under the new modern state, represented by the King and his centralized administration. The chapter thus lays the groundwork for understanding the distinct circumstances for conceptual recovery in the present, which are discussed in the Conclusion.

Sarah Mortimer examines the impact of the Reformation on thinking about the human commonwealth within the Christian temporal and historical scheme of the Fall. From the outset Protestants sought to integrate the civil and the divine, pursuing the ideal of the godly commonwealth, while Catholics would align the commonwealth with natural law, distinct from the divine law which gave the Church its authority. With the hardening of confessional divisions, these differences were accentuated: Protestants appealed directly to Scripture for political guidance, while leading Catholics emphasised that priests and worship were essential to all forms of society. But there were also those such as Jean Bodin who sought to understand politics independently of the Christian story; others, including Francisco Suárez, began to analyse human relationships using the hypothesis of a state of nature with neither sin nor grace. These attempts to stretch and even hypothetically step outside the scheme of the Fall in turn informed the thinking of Hugo Grotius in the first half of the seventeenth century, and the chapter ends with an extended assessment of his reflections on the relation between commonwealth and churches, and his increasing acceptance of diversity in the civil sphere.

Chapter 6 continues an account of the reception of Plutarch’s work in the mid to late sixteenth century in France with reference to the translation work and political reflection of figures such as Georges de Selve (1508–1541) (now famous as one of the figures in Holbein’s famous painting “The Ambassadors”). The latter part of the chapter discusses what is perhaps the best-known moment of Plutarch reception, the French vernacular translations of the Lives (1559–1565) and Moralia (1572) by Jacques Amyot (1513–1593). I discuss how the advent of the Wars of Religion (1562–1598) in France affected the themes through which Plutarch was received and read in Renaissance France, partly through an examination of the para-text of Amyot’s translations in the late sixteenth century. I also explore briefly Jean Bodin’s discussion of ther reliability of Plutarch as a source as noted in his Method for the Easy Comprehension of History.

The purpose of this chapter is to clarify some of the disagreements that have arisen regarding Gentili’s ideas by closely examining Gentili’s use of sources in De iure belli (DIB). More specifically, through this focus on sources, the chapter seeks to resituate Gentili’s DIB beyond the immediate legal debates that have conventionally framed its analysis, and to place the text within the broader political thought of the period. Gentili’s text, the chapter claims, is particularly noteworthy in its attempt to straddle the legal and political debates of its epoch, looking beyond legal sources and turning to various contemporary political writers in what was quite a remarkable move at the time.

Chapter 3 traces the expansion of demographic governance from ad hoc engagements with specific multitudes to a more systematic approach to the mobility and mutability of populations across expanding imperial territory. Important to this shift was the impact of reason-of-state political thought, notably in the work of Jean Bodin and Giovanni Botero, who both treated policy as an art that could improve upon or perfect nature. Botero drew attention to the instrumental use of colonies in managing population growth, and the chapter turns to English thinking about empire (in Richard Hakluyt’s Discourse of Western Planting and other works) as a solution to the threat of overpopulation – and to early colonial settlements in Virginia and New England as sites for envisioning the transplantation and transformation of excess or idle English people into loyal and industrious colonial subjects. Closing with a consideration of themes raised in Francis Bacon’s Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral, the chapter argues that by the second quarter of the seventeenth century, demographic governance was seen as a matter of constant management of populations across England and its expanding empire.

Chapter 3 compares uses of politique in Jean Bodin’s Six livres de la République and the paratexts of Loys Le Roy’s translation and commentary of Aristotle’s Politiques. It shows that politics was rising as a discipline in the 1560s and 1570s. It considers the place of Aristotle in the politique problem, and the influences of authorities ancient and modern (including Machaivelli), as well as associations between politics and prudence, and the importance of law and history for Bodin and Le Roy. The second half of the analysis deals with the politique character that emerges in these texts: a powerful, even clairvoyant incarnation of political knowledge. The end of the chapter addresses the ways in which this characterisation is exclusive and excluding in terms of social hierarchy, global geography, and gender.

ChapterSeven situates Jean Bodin’s political thought in his Six Livres de la République (1576) in the League context. It builds on the concept of the politique Leaguer considered in earlier chapters, focussing on concepts of sovereignty and the commonwealth. This invites an analysis of the relationship between Bodin’s political thought and that produced by members of the League. The problem of Bodin’s membership of the League is considered, as is his friendship with René Choppin, and the League reception of his République. The relationship between the commonwealth and the king’s regalian rights is positioned in this discussion as a key consideration in arguments for legitimate resistance to tyranny, which were framed in terms of obedience to the higher authorities of natural and divine law.

From the world of the Italian city states this chapter now turns to the political thought conceived in the French polity of the late sixteenth century, encountering a Renaissance commonwealth that differs in many ways from those we have seen envisioned in previous chapters. The questions that were raised to make sense of this French commonwealth, however, were similar to those asked by earlier Italian thinkers, and the intellectual context in which these questions were answered was a continuation of the tradition encountered earlier in this book. Our focus in this as well as in the next chapters will be on Jean Bodin’s major work Les Six livres de la République and its context. The chapter shows the importance ofprivate life and the centrality of gender in Bodin’s political thought. It is concerned with the extent to which oeconomics, thinking about the family and about marriage, shaped and marked Bodin’s thought on politics in general and his ideas on the state and sovereignty in particular.