Research
Book Project
The Territorial Revolution in Political Thought: Building Bordered States Pufendorf to Vattel
It is easy to take for granted that the Earth is naturally divided into territories belonging to different human communities. To be politically autonomous, it is often assumed, means to have sole possession of a piece of the Earth’s surface. But it was not always seen that way. Political order was not always identified with a ‘state,’ much less a territorial one. My book returns us to moments in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-centuries that saw the emergence of the state as a basic unit of modern international relations, and asks how international law and political philosophy adapted to the territorialization of politics. Out of the pluralistic and non-congruent dynastic fiefdoms, hardly more than collections of family lands, emerged territorial states claiming exclusive lordship over geographic space. What ensued was an explosion of attempts in law, philosophy, and history, to invent a coherent unity out of lands that were anything but. As the first in-depth study of the transformation of theories of territory, the book argues that between 1648 and 1758, a patrimonial view, which reduced rulership to personal property, was replaced by a new orthodoxy which I call ‘territorialism’: that territorial sovereignty was imminent to a political community and the land it occupied. The book examines this development through four authors in the law of nations and natural law tradition: the seventeenth-century Saxon jurist, Samuel von Pufendorf, who reformulated natural law; the English philosopher and colonial administrator, John Locke; the Prussian philosopher Christian Wolff; and the Swiss jurist Emer de Vattel. Synthesizing the philosophies of territory before him, Vattel offered the ideal-typical doctrine of the state that relied on the 'nation' as an independent legal personality. By 1758, the 'territory' of the territorial state had been transformed from an arbitrary landscape into a 'native country.'
Articles
2018. 'The Nation and Property in Vattel's Theory of Territory,' Global Intellectual History (3) 2, 137-155.
Republished as Ch. 1 of Conceptions of Space in Intellectual History, 2019, D. Allemann, A. Jäger, V. Mann, eds., (Routledge).
Under Review & Works in Progress
2021. 'Why Westphalia Still Matters: Rethinking Territory Before 1648,' under review with International Organization.
Abstract: Research on the history of international relations has diverged in two directions. Scholarship on European state formation has focused on its medieval roots, while analyses of the emergence of a system of states has looked to the nineteenth century. Both approaches reject the old Westphalian thesis that a system of sovereign states emerged in 1648. However, in criticizing 1648 for inaugurating neither the modern state nor a system of states, scholars have missed what actually mattered about Westphalia. I argue that the institutional development of Westphalia was the consolidation of territorial rights. Territorial rights were not sovereignty and applied to dynastic families, not states, but they were a key step in the territorialization of European politics. I argue that territorialization grew out of constitutional developments within the Holy Roman Empire from the fifteenth until seventeenth century through attempts to stabilize conflict. Pluralistic dynastic fiefdoms transformed into concentrated spatial entities claiming ‘territorial supremacy’ over their titles, which they labeled ‘fatherlands.’ While claiming territorial authority, dynastic fiefdoms were not sovereign and always operated within the larger empire. Drawing on new historiography, I identify institutional and ideational factors in this development. Understanding the consolidation of territories within the Holy Roman Empire as a development of territorial governance helps explain the territorial foundations upon which the Liberal International Order unsteadily rests today.
2021. 'Reclaiming Land: Locke and Levellers on Conquest and Native Rights,' under review with History of Political Thought
Abstract: This article argues that John Locke engaged more deeply with the problem of conquest than has previously been appreciated. Locke not only offered answers to several contemporary arguments for conquest, but gave arguments posed specifically against the Norman Yoke. He invoked the doctrine of ‘native rights,’ which were inheritable and inalienable rights against foreign conquerors, but has received little attention in scholarly literature. For his theory, Locke drew upon a strand of Leveller ideology from John Lilburne, contesting the Norman Yoke as depriving Englishmen of their rights. However, in doing so, Locke also rejected the most radical approach to the Norman Yoke and native rights discourse, which argued for a native right to cultivate common and enclosed lands.
The Territorial Revolution in Political Thought: Building Bordered States Pufendorf to Vattel
It is easy to take for granted that the Earth is naturally divided into territories belonging to different human communities. To be politically autonomous, it is often assumed, means to have sole possession of a piece of the Earth’s surface. But it was not always seen that way. Political order was not always identified with a ‘state,’ much less a territorial one. My book returns us to moments in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-centuries that saw the emergence of the state as a basic unit of modern international relations, and asks how international law and political philosophy adapted to the territorialization of politics. Out of the pluralistic and non-congruent dynastic fiefdoms, hardly more than collections of family lands, emerged territorial states claiming exclusive lordship over geographic space. What ensued was an explosion of attempts in law, philosophy, and history, to invent a coherent unity out of lands that were anything but. As the first in-depth study of the transformation of theories of territory, the book argues that between 1648 and 1758, a patrimonial view, which reduced rulership to personal property, was replaced by a new orthodoxy which I call ‘territorialism’: that territorial sovereignty was imminent to a political community and the land it occupied. The book examines this development through four authors in the law of nations and natural law tradition: the seventeenth-century Saxon jurist, Samuel von Pufendorf, who reformulated natural law; the English philosopher and colonial administrator, John Locke; the Prussian philosopher Christian Wolff; and the Swiss jurist Emer de Vattel. Synthesizing the philosophies of territory before him, Vattel offered the ideal-typical doctrine of the state that relied on the 'nation' as an independent legal personality. By 1758, the 'territory' of the territorial state had been transformed from an arbitrary landscape into a 'native country.'
Articles
2018. 'The Nation and Property in Vattel's Theory of Territory,' Global Intellectual History (3) 2, 137-155.
Republished as Ch. 1 of Conceptions of Space in Intellectual History, 2019, D. Allemann, A. Jäger, V. Mann, eds., (Routledge).
Under Review & Works in Progress
2021. 'Why Westphalia Still Matters: Rethinking Territory Before 1648,' under review with International Organization.
Abstract: Research on the history of international relations has diverged in two directions. Scholarship on European state formation has focused on its medieval roots, while analyses of the emergence of a system of states has looked to the nineteenth century. Both approaches reject the old Westphalian thesis that a system of sovereign states emerged in 1648. However, in criticizing 1648 for inaugurating neither the modern state nor a system of states, scholars have missed what actually mattered about Westphalia. I argue that the institutional development of Westphalia was the consolidation of territorial rights. Territorial rights were not sovereignty and applied to dynastic families, not states, but they were a key step in the territorialization of European politics. I argue that territorialization grew out of constitutional developments within the Holy Roman Empire from the fifteenth until seventeenth century through attempts to stabilize conflict. Pluralistic dynastic fiefdoms transformed into concentrated spatial entities claiming ‘territorial supremacy’ over their titles, which they labeled ‘fatherlands.’ While claiming territorial authority, dynastic fiefdoms were not sovereign and always operated within the larger empire. Drawing on new historiography, I identify institutional and ideational factors in this development. Understanding the consolidation of territories within the Holy Roman Empire as a development of territorial governance helps explain the territorial foundations upon which the Liberal International Order unsteadily rests today.
2021. 'Reclaiming Land: Locke and Levellers on Conquest and Native Rights,' under review with History of Political Thought
Abstract: This article argues that John Locke engaged more deeply with the problem of conquest than has previously been appreciated. Locke not only offered answers to several contemporary arguments for conquest, but gave arguments posed specifically against the Norman Yoke. He invoked the doctrine of ‘native rights,’ which were inheritable and inalienable rights against foreign conquerors, but has received little attention in scholarly literature. For his theory, Locke drew upon a strand of Leveller ideology from John Lilburne, contesting the Norman Yoke as depriving Englishmen of their rights. However, in doing so, Locke also rejected the most radical approach to the Norman Yoke and native rights discourse, which argued for a native right to cultivate common and enclosed lands.