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Commerce, Power and Justice: Montesquieu on International Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Stephen J. Rosow
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Extract

In this essay Montesquieu's reflections on international politics are interpreted as a more-or-less coherent whole rooted in his understanding of the structural changes in European history from antiquity to the eighteenth century. Montesquieu's study of history led him to recognize a new context for European politics—a regular system of relations among independent states dependent upon the development of commerce. The expansion of commerce engendered a mutual dependence among European states which opened new possibilities for international politics. A cosmopolitan vision of mutuality, embodied in principles of international law and justice, could replace the power politics of drives for universal monarchy. Furthermore, commerce implied the possibility of a revival of republics, although based not on the political virtue of classical republics (unattainable by modern Europeans in Montesquieu's view), but on the formal justice of fairness and contract.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 46 , Issue 3 , July 1984 , pp. 346 - 366
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1984

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References

* All references to Montesquieu's writings are to the Pléiade edition of his works: Oeuvres Complètes, 2 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1949–1951)Google Scholar. All translations are the author's.

1 The most prominent neo-Grotian is Hedley Bull. See especially The Anarchical Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977).Google Scholar Also, Michael Walzer's work on international politics seems within this orientation. See especially Just and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1977)Google Scholar but also see his article “The Distribution of Membership,” in Boundaries: National Autonomy and Its Limits, eds. Brown, Peter G. and Shue, Henry (Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981), pp. 1–35.Google Scholar

2 See especially Keohane, Robert O. and Nye, Joseph S. Jr., Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition (Boston: Little Brown, 1977)Google Scholar and their edited volume, Transnational Relations and World Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972).Google Scholar For a good collection of articles suggesting that the liberal emphasis on interdependence constitutes the formation of a more-or-less unified approach to world politics see Maghroori, Ray and Ramberg, Bennett, eds., Globalism vs. Realism: International Relations' Third Debate (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1982).Google Scholar

3 See Beitz, Charles, Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979),Google Scholar and Amdur, Robert, “Rawls’ Theory of Justice: Domestic and International Perspectives,” World Politics, 29, no. 3 (1977), 438–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Hirschman, Albert O., The Passions and the Interests (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977).Google Scholar

5 I use the term capitalism to refer to a general orientation towards economic activity. In this I follow Braudel, Fernand, Capitalism and Material Life, 1400–1800, trans, by Kochan, Miriam (New York: Harper and Row, 1973),Google Scholar especially the “Introduction.”

6 “Considérations sur les richesses de l'Espagne,” Pléiade, 2:10.Google Scholar Hereafter cited in the text as “Richesses.”

7 Montesquieu argues that the Spanish were caught in an inflationary cycle, that the profits from the mines were necessarily reduced by the proportion of the augmentation of the amount of gold and silver extracted from the mines and brought to Europe. Had the colonies been able to provide commodities which the Spanish could trade for them their wealth would be increased. The Spanish failed to realize that the more silver and gold they mined in surplus to the expenses of extracting it and shipping it to Europe, the less effective the metals became as mediums of exchange. See Lois, XXI: pp. 22–23.Google Scholar

8 The “positive” value of money consists of four elements: (1) a proportion between a quantity of metal and the same quantity of money; (2) the proportion between the various metals; (3) the weight and standard of every piece of money; (4) the “ideal” value—i.e., the level of debasement of coinage (Lois, XXII: 10Google Scholar).

9 Lois, XXII: 2, p. 651.Google Scholar See Schumpeter, Joseph, History of Economic Analysis, ed. Schumpeter, Elizabeth Boody (New York: Oxford University Press, 1954), especially pp. 235–37;Google Scholar and Deuletoglou, N. E., “Montesquieu and the Wealth of Nations,” The Canadian Journal of Economic and Political Science, 29, no. 1 (02 1963).Google Scholar

10 Montesquieu's strongest denunciation of Law's system is in book 2, chapter 4, p. 248, where he says that the system threatened to plunge the French monarchy into despotism. In book 22, chapter 10 he also criticizes it for creating severe imbalances in trade, threatening the value of French money (p. 666).

11 See especially Hirschman, , Passions and Interests.Google Scholar

12 See Grotius, , The Law of War and Peace,Google Scholar bk. 2, chap. 1, sections 16–18, where he argues that the right to self-defense of sovereign states must be interpreted more broadly than the right of self-defense for individuals.

13 This is the same fundamental insight that Rousseau develops in his maxim that governments, not people, make war. Important modern laws of warfare, such as the immunity of noncombatants (already enunciated in Grotius) can be derived from this principle.