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The Puritan Revolution of mid-seventeenth-century England produced an explosion of new and important political thinking. In addition to most famous thinkers, Thomas Hobbes, Sir Robert Filmer and the Levellers, there are other important figures who have been relatively neglected, of whom Anthony Ascham is one. This book is the first full-scale study of Ascham's political thought. Ascham's works were intended to convince lay Presbyterians and royalists to adhere to the policy of national pacification implemented from 1648 by the Independent 'party' within Parliament. From 1648 to 1650 Ascham's propaganda primarily dealt with the issue of the validity of oaths, and insisted on the reciprocal relation between obedience and protection. The first part of Ascham's Discourse focused on 'what things, and how farre a man may lawfully conform to the power and commands of those who hold a kingdome divided by civill warre'. Ascham adopted a twofold line of argument: in the first, he sought to demonstrate that war was consistent with natural law and scripture. Secondly, not all types of war were consistent with the Christian religion and the natural law of self-preservation, only the defensive war. Ascham's natural law theory, which he drew from Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes and John Selden, had therefore both civil and religious implications. Ascham proposed a synthesis between Grotius and Niccolò Machiavelli, underlining the priority of state order over political participation, and justifying war as a means of accessing power only to confirm the necessity of re-establishing order.
, but his ideas have not been given their proper due or been rigorously analysed. Therefore, this is the first full-scale study of Ascham’s political thought. During the crucial period between the Second Civil War and the aftermath of the abolition of monarchy and the establishment of the English Republic, when he served as official pamphleteer of Parliament and the republican government, Ascham did not
University Press, Cambridge, 1979, p. 82. Scott and Lloyd George would diverge on subsequent foreign policy crises, especially following the Great War. 4 Quoted in ibid. , p. 81. 5 Jones, Victorian Political Thought
questioning of its intertwined relationship with sovereignty, which is the founding stone of the state itself. As Michael Dillon (1999: 117) argues, in western political thought, the concept of sovereignty is ‘the apogee of secure self-presence to which this tradition aspired as the secure foundation of its understanding of truth’. Considered in this way, sovereignty has played a chief function in modernity
in Nineteenth-Century Political Thought , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007, p. 52. 4 John Westlake (1828–1913) was barrister at Lincoln’s Inn, and from 1887 Whewell Professor of International Law at Cambridge. He was a member of the British
argue that it is not particularly illuminating to characterize Islamic fundamentalist political thought as antimodern unless we are willing to call all critiques of modernity antimodern. On the contrary, both these comparisons reveal only a glimpse of the diversity of understandings of what it means to be modern within and across
) The young age at which others chose to join and the relationship between that desire to join and the activities of British soldiers was also presented. Interestingly the following quote surmises that the respondent had no political thoughts, although their motivations are influenced by a highly politicised conflict: I think I was about 11
great France and a spiritually great Germany. Winston Churchill 1 European integration as a peace project The proposition that European integration may be historically relevant to conflict resolution is not new. Integration is inseparable from the intellectual traditions of European political thought in search of new
Conscience , James Currey, London, 1989, p. 207. 10 Stefan Collini, Public Moralists: Political Thought and Intellectual Life in Britain, 1850–1930 , Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1993, pp. 84–85. 11 Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in
Title III, Public Law 480,” November 30, 1955. 39 Roel Meijer, The Quest for Modernity. Secular Liberal and Left-wing Political Thought in Egypt, 1945–1958 , London, 2002, p. 174. 40 Patrick O’Brien, The Revolution in