This chapter discusses whether empire for Montesquieu was potentially a way of containing the particularities of human life and giving expression to its normative unity. Montesquieu's epistolary novel Persian Letters already exhibits the territorial logic of despotic empire made explicit in the Laws. Montesquieu never excludes any region of the world from despotism. Asia's geography is more favorable to despotic rule. The continent possesses larger and wider plains unbroken by mountains or broad rivers. Anti-imperial sentiments are a feature of all of Montesquieu's writings. Persian Letters summarizes the indictment. In the guise of a fantasy about Descartes in Mexico, Montesquieu gives the reader a picture of a European spiritual civil war between faith and enlightenment. For Montesquieu, women are the natural agents of change. For Montesquieu, Gelon, the king of ancient Syracuse, made "the finest peace treaty mentioned in history".