Early Modern Imperialism and Cosmopolitanism

chapter 5 Early Modern Imperialism and Cosmopolitanism

Francisco Bethencourt

The idea of universal empire, which inspired projects of conquest and colonial rule developed by the Iberian powers, supported by the pope, carried with it the systematic use of extreme violence that led, directly or indirectly, to the extermination of millions of people around the world, mainly in the Amer- icas. It was a top-down model of political diffusion of Christianity, in order to achieve international peace. However, this imposed rule had unintended consequences of exchange and negotiation between colonisers and colonised which did not exclude local agency and cosmopolitan stance, meaning cul- tural openness, transformation, adaptation and hybridism.1 It is this tension between the universalism of empire and (limited) cosmopolitanism at different levels that we will explore here through the case of the Portuguese empire. The discussion of the conceptual framework of our approach will be followed by five case studies related to the republic of letters, merchant republic and spiritual leadership.

Conceptual Issues

Imperialism has been rightly characterised in modern times as the subjection and exploitation of populations in acquired colonies or dependent territories.2 European expansion brought with it a debate on governance concerning overseas territories with a significant variety of peoples.3 The debate integrated medieval and early modern political thought concerning empire as rule, authority or dominion over people, the long lasting Latin notion of imperium.4 Empire in

1 The conflict between the inherent universalism of empire and unintended but limited cosmopolitan response is not explicitly tackled by Corinne Lefèvre, Ines G. Županov and Jorge Flores, eds, South Asian Cosmopolitanisms: Sources, Itineraries, Languages (16th–18th Centu- ries) (Paris: ehess, 2015), in many respects an excellent book. 2 J.A. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study (London: James Nisbett & Co., 1902), 16–18, 100, 207, 389. 3 David Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 2002). I share the author’s critique of the divide between British domestic and overseas history. 4 James Muldoon, Empire and Order. The Concept of Empire, 800–1800 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999) provides a very useful long term analysis of the notion of empire.

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Europe also meant large domains ruled over by a single prince comprehending more than one political entity. The medieval Christian (re)conquest of Iberia integrated the idea of one monarch ruling over other monarchs.5 The idea of empire as sovereignty was used in sixteenth-century European countries such as England or France.6 The notion of universal monarchy promoted by Dante, Marsilius of Padua, and Lorenzo Valla, among other authors, was projected on Charles v by his chancellor Mercurino di Gattinara, but was short-lived.7 The reflection on state-building and sovereignty in Europe, developed by Machiavelli and Bodin, was enlarged to include overseas empires by Botero, who discussed the advantages and disadvantages of both fragmented and continuous empires, as represented by the cases of Portugal and Spain.8 The notion of imperium as dominion over peoples and territories carried with it a concept of power projected from the family unit to the level of the state. Imperium defined legal obligations between father and son, husband and wife, master and slave, permeating different levels of society up to the supreme com- mand of the emperor. This vision of hierarchical (and patriarchal) rights and obligations, translated from the family to the state level, would comprehend interpersonal influence or the submission of the individual to the dominion (or empire) of emotions.9 The power to influence decisions and create emo- tional dependence was thus at stake.

5 José Antonio Maravall, El concepto de España en la Edad Media (Madrid: Instituto de Estu- dios Politicos, 1954), particularly pp. 431–486, in which are analysed the titles of imperator, rex magnus, princeps magnus and basileus used in the kingdom of Leon in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. 6 Anthony Pagden, Lords of All the World. Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France c. 1500–1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995). 7 Dante Alighieri, Monarchy (c. 1310–3), trans. and ed. Prue Shaw (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 1996); Marsilius of Padua, The Defender of the Peace (1324), trans. and ed. Anna- bel Brett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Lorenzo Valla, La falsa donazione di Costantino (1440), ed. Olga Pugliese (Milan: rcs, 1994); Rebecca Ard Boone, Mercurino di Gat- tinara and the Creation of the Spanish Empire (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2014); M. Rivero Rodriguez, Gattinara. Carlos v y el sueño del imperio (Madrid: Silex, 2005). 8 Nicollò Machiavelli, The Prince (c. 1513) trans. Russell Price, intro. Quentin Skinner (Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); idem, Discourses on Livy (c. 1517), trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1996); Jean Bodin, Les six livres de la republique (1576), ed. Christiane Frémont et alii, 6 vols (Paris: Fayard, 1986); Giovanni Botero, The Reason of State (1589), trans. D.P. Waley (London: Routledge, 1956). 9 Alain Rey, ed., Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, 3 vols (Paris: Le Robert, 1992), 1224; Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles, 5th edn (Oxford: Oxford Uni- versity Press, 2002), 816–817; António de Morais Silva, Diccionario da lingua portugueza, vol 1 (Lisbon: Officina de Simão Thaddeo Ferreira, 1789), 698. See an early example in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko, ed. Janet Todd (London: Penguin, 1992), 83: “her eternal empire over him”.