The State and Early Modernity

The centrality of the early modern period to broader histories of sovereignty and state formation is a theme running through the work of some of the most influential political theorists of the past century, from Weber, Schmitt, Arendt, and Kantorowicz to Habermas, Foucault, Derrida, Negri, Balibar, and Agamben, among others. The recurring emphasis on the formation of the modern state in the period reflects the extent to which histories of the state often rely on narrative frameworks of origin, emergence, and transition. This not only reflects our inevitably modern temporal consciousness, ever prone to charting time like a forward movement through space, but also— more cynically—the habit of early modernists to locate these most crucial historical moments conveniently in the period that we study.

But too often ignored are the multiple, divergent theoretical frames through which the modern state can be conceptualized. As Kathleen Davis points out in her provocative study Periodization and Sovereignty, in an argument that builds on the work of Dipesh Chakrabarty and other postcolonial scholars, the resurgent critical interest in the history of sovereignty risks reinscribing narratives of colonial modernity, as colonialism and slavery become the implicit templates and insidious preconditions for the advent of the modern. Although a fuller discussion lies outside the purview of this brief essay, I would also add that a related critical oversight stems from the extent to which histories of sovereignty and state formation are generally analyzed solely in reference to the territorial state. As a result, we assume that the history of the state is confined to the nation, thereby eliding the historical impact of extraterritorial contexts, from the complex position of diplomacy, and the elusive status of international law, to the varied forms of agency, travel, and service that pervaded the early modern period and intersected with emerging forms of global commerce.¹

As Davis cogently argues, the dominance of new and innovative theorizations of sovereignty was established in the early modern period through a marginalization of rival narratives of political history: absolutist political theories were able to consign customary legal practices or competing political affiliations to the past, as residues of a feudal age superseded by the administrative modernity of the absolutist state.² Ironically, the power moves of early modern absolutism threaten to become naturalized in accounts of early modern political theory that focus solely on monistic models of sovereignty. "Sovereignty," in other words, all too often loses the quotation marks surrounding it, and instead becomes the default mode for our analysis. As a result, we lose sight of the historical, cultural, and political conditions that led to the formation of this theoretical construct, and thereby implicitly situate a partial, contested object at the center of our analyses.

As a way to offset the central role conferred on sovereignty in contemporary work, it is productive to historicize the concept itself and return to the specific contexts in which it was formulated and initially gained currency. A particularly important text in this process is Jean Bodin's monumental work Les six livres de la République (Six Books of the Commonwealth; 1576). Bodin's innovativeness stems from the ways that he transforms the idea of sovereignty through his emphasis on its intrinsic marks of unity, indivisibility, and indestructibility. Prior to Bodin's formulation, the concept of sovereignty had a far more specific point of reference: it was a term used primarily for describing higher ranking authorities rather than a more abstract principle denoting absolute or exclusive power.³ Sovereignty was therefore a relational term, not a designation of essence. Moreover, it was a characteristic associated with office and function, one that applied not only to individuals but also more generally to associations or organizational bodies. Sovereignty was therefore a contested space: a contingent, provisional designation conferred as a means for negotiating overlapping, potentially competing obligations to a variety of political bodies and relations, from those of kinship, alliance, and service, to corporate, civic, and professional affiliations, as well as the transnational loyalties and enmities of confessional identities. But subsequent discussions of the history of sovereignty have overlooked the contexts in which it was initially formulated...