Slingsby Bethel's Analysis of State Interests

History of European Ideas 41 (4):489-506 (2015)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

SummarySeventeenth-century thinking on the relationship between trade and state power was routinely conducted using the concept of state interests, which enabled users to conceive a Europe of competing states that managed the balance of power through trade and war. Poor interest management could arise from ignorance, error, or the divergence between the private interests of rulers and a state's true interests. The stakes of pursuing or neglecting true interest were high: the survival and prosperity of the state. The dominance of ‘mercantilism’ as a historiographical category has obscured the role of interest in early modern thought. This paper examines the work of one of England's most prolific interest writers, Slingsby Bethel, to demonstrate the importance of reading interest writings without recourse to mercantilism. The two focuses are, first, how the rhetoric of counsel was used to defend an ordinary subject's presumption to comment on state affairs and, second, the capacity for interest writers to construe the rise and fall of state power in terms of good laws and statesmanship.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,593

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

The Autonomy of the Democratic State: Rejoinder to Carpenter, Ginsberg, and Shefter.Samuel DeCanio - 2007 - Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 19 (1):187-196.
Bethel et Beth Awen.J. Briend - 1981 - Salmanticensis 28 (1):65-70.
Habermas vs. Weber on democracy.Reihan Salam - 2001 - Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society 15 (1-2):59-85.
Henry Levinson.Bethel L. Eddy - 2011 - Overheard in Seville 29 (29):33-33.
A small country versus the global power.Svetozar D. Stojanović - 2002 - Filozofija I Društvo 2002 (19):39-50.
On State, Identity and Rights: Putting Identity First.Jovan Babić - 2012 - International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue Internationale de Sémiotique Juridique 25 (2):197-209.
Independence Without Interests?Victor Tadros - 2011 - Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 31 (1):193-213.

Analytics

Added to PP
2015-09-01

Downloads
9 (#1,079,720)

6 months
1 (#1,040,386)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?