Hugo Grotius and the Century of Revolution, 1613-1718 Transnational Reception in English Political Thought

Hugo Grotius and the Century of Revolution, 1613-1718 is a reconstruction of the way Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) was read and used by English political and religious writers in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Engaging with the reception of all of Grotius's key works and a wide range of topics, the volume has much to say about the search for peace in an age of religious conflict and about the cultural roots of the Enlightenment. Most of all, Marco Barducci aims to deepen our understanding of the connections that made English political thought part of the history of European thought. To this end, it brings together a succinct account of Grotius's own thinking on key topics, mapping these accounts within English debates, to show why his ideas were seen to be relevant at key moments; shows awareness of the possibilities for the misappropriation inherent in reception; and adds something new to our understanding of why seventeenth-century Englishmen argued in the ways that they did.

1 - Contract, Allegiance, and Protection
2 - War, Resistance, Revolution
3 - Republicanism and Ancient Constitutionalism
4 - State and Church
5 - Church Government
6 - Property
7 - Empire

After a few years spent teaching and researching at the University of Florence, Marco Barducci has held fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, NJ), the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the Luigi Firpo Centre for Research on Political Thought. His research focuses on the exchange and reception of political ideas between England, the Netherlands, and Italy in the seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries. In 2015, he published a monograph, Order and Conflict: Anthony Ascham and English Political Thought, 1648-50.