Commerce and Peace in the Enlightenment

For many Enlightenment thinkers, discerning the relationship between commerce and peace was the central issue of modern politics. The logic of commerce seemed to require European states and empires to learn how to behave in more peaceful, self-limiting ways. However, as the fate of nations came to depend on the flux of markets, it became difficult to see how their race for prosperity could ever be fully disentangled from their struggle for power. On the contrary, it became easy to see how this entanglement could produce catastrophic results. This volume showcases the variety and the depth of approaches to economic rivalry and the rise of public finance that characterized Enlightenment discussions of international politics. It presents a fundamental reassessment of these debates about 'perpetual peace' and their legacy in the history of political thought.

Introduction: power, prosperity and peace in Enlightenment thought Béla Kapossy, Isaac Nakhimovsky and Richard Whatmore; 1. Harrington's project: the balance on money, a republican constitution for Europe, and England's patronage of the world Mark Somos; 2. The enlightened prince and the future of Europe: Voltaire and Frederick the Great's anti-Machiavel of 1740 Isaac Nakhimovsky; 3. From jealousy of trade to the neutrality of finance: Isaac de Pinto's 'system' of luxury and perpetual peace Koen Stapelbroek; 4. Eighteenth-century Carthage Christopher Brooke; 5. Enlightenment socialism: Cesare Beccaria and his critics Sophus A. Reinert; 6. State-machines, commerce and the progress of Humanität in Europe: Herder's response to Kant in Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind Eva Piirimäe; 7. Peace, commerce and cosmopolitan republicanism: the legacy of Andrew Fletcher in late-eighteeth-century Scotland Iain McDaniel; 8. Liberty, war and empire: overcoming the rich state-poor state problem, 1789–1815 Richard Whatmore; 9. Karl Ludwig von Haller's critique of liberal peace Béla Kapossy; 10. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's War and Peace: the right of force revisited Edward Castleton; 11. From king's prerogative to constitutional dictatorship as reason of state Duncan Kelly; 12. Afterword: peace, politics and the division of labour Michael Sonenscher.

Béla Kapossy is Professor of History at Université de Lausanne, Switzerland. He has been involved in a number of research projects on enlightenment political and economic thought and has written widely on Swiss, French and British intellectual history.
Isaac Nakhimovsky is Assistant Professor of History and the Humanities at Yale University, Connecticut.
Richard Whatmore is Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, where he is also the Director of the St Andrews Institute of Intellectual History. He has written a number of books and published articles in many of the major academic journals in intellectual history.