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The Idea of the Territorial State: Discourses of Political Space in Renaissance Italy The Idea of the Territorial State: Discourses of Political Space in Renaissance Italy Jeremy Larkins London School of Economics and Political Science University of London A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy July 1999 1 UMI Number: U615566 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U615566 Published by ProQuest LLC 2014. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 - f ° r;.C>V Pn om^, 70^-035 Abstract This thesis, presented as a theoretical contribution to the discipline of International Relations, describes the intellectual origins of the idea of the territorial state. The idea of the territorial state has a privileged place in International Relations for it is an integral element of Realism, the discipline’s dominant intellectual tradition. Realism assumes that the primary actors in the modem international system are states, as identified by their exercise of sovereignty over a delimited space or territory. In Realist history, the territorial state and the modem territorial international order emerged together, twin products of seventeenth century political theory and practice, as signified by political settlement of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. This thesis challenges the Realist narrative of the idea of the territorial state on two counts: methodologically and historically. First, it rejects the view that it is possible to account for the idea of the territorial state exclusively in terms of political practice and knowledge. It argues that the Realist idea of the territorial state needs to be understood as one expression of a much broader and more complex matrix of narratives - social, political, philosophical and cultural - about man’s capacity to know, represent and order the spaces of modernity. Second, the thesis rejects the Realist history that dates the emergence of the territorial state to the seventeenth century. An alternative chronology is put forward that dates the origins of the idea of the territorial state to fifteenth and sixteenth century Renaissance Italy. The thesis argues that the first signs of the idea of the territorial state can be identified in various Renaissance spatial discourses: political, cosmological, artistic and cartographic. These spatial discourses and the practices they led to established the templates for thinking about and representing space in modernity, including those underlying the articulation of the idea of the modem territorial state. 2 Contents Acknowledgments...........................................................................................................4 Epigraph ..........................................................................................................................5 Introduction The Renaissance Origins of the Idea of the Territorial State ..............................................6 Part 1: Territory in Theory 1. Realism and the Territorial State ................................................................................. 16 2. Space in Theory......................................................................................................... 41 3. Histories of the Territorial State ..................................................................................64 Part II: Renaissance Territoriality 4. Machiavelli and the Territoriality of Lo Stato............................................................ 88 5. Dismantling the Hierarchical Cosmos ....................................................................... 118 6. Representing Territory in the Regime of Perspective.................................................150 Conclusion: The Territorial State From the Renaissance to Postmodemity.......................................191 Bibliography................................................................................................................209 Illustrations Index........................................................................................................ 223 3 Acknowledgments Many people have helped me to prepare this work. My greatest debt is to my supervisor Michael Banks, who has provided much invaluable advice and encouragement over the (too) many years that I have spent working on the project. Many friends and colleagues at the LSE have supported me along the way. Particular thanks must go to Dominique Jacquin-Berdal, who read several of the chapters and, more importantly, endured me rambling on for many hours. Thanks to Spyros Economides for many useful half-time talks, and to Katerina Delacoura for her extra-mural supervision. Conversations with Mark Hoffman, Chris Coker, Peter Wilson, Joao de Almeida, Bice Maiguashca, Eddie Keene, Bernice Lee, Mairi Johnson and Hayo Krombach have all been very rewarding. Early drafts of some of the chapters have been presented at various seminars and conferences. I would like to thank those who provided comments and suggested revisions at the LSE seminars ‘Modernity and International Relations’ and ‘Concepts and Methods’. Outside of the LSE, I have also benefitted from conversations and encouragement from David Campbell, Chris Brown, Nick Renegger, Rob Walker and Adam Lerner, Hidemi Suganami and Mervyn Frost. A particular thanks to James Der Derian for introducing me to Deleuze and Guattari and for inviting me to present a paper at the ISA conference in San Diego. I would like to thank the members of the Department of History at the European University Institute in Florence for granting me a visiting studentship in 1998. In particular I am indebted to Professor John Brewer, who acted as a temporary supervisor, read a draft of chapter six, and convinced me that cultural history has a future. A very special mention to Professor Valerie A. Cowie for picking up the pieces on several occasions and for listening to my ill-informed opinions on psychoanalysis and the state of the world. Finally, I dedicate the thesis to my parents, Fay and Gordon, without whose constant support and encouragement none of this would have seen the light of day. 4 ‘ In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all of the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.’1 the author must know that to classify is to embalm. Real identity is incompatible with schools and categories, except by mutilation.2 But I return to the subject of walls.3 1 Jorge Luis Borges, ‘On Exactitude in Science’ in Borges, Collected Fictions, trans. Andrew Hurley, (London, Allen Lane, 1999), p. 325. 2Mark Rothko, letter to the editor, Art News, 56:6 (December 1957), quoted in, Mark Rothko 1903-1970, Revised Edition, (London, Tate Gallery Publishing, 1999), p. 86. 3Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, trans. Joseph Rykwert, (Cambridge MA, The MIT Press, 1994), 5 The Renaissance Origins of the Idea of the Territorial State This thesis is a work of intellectual or cultural history, presented as a theoretical contribution to the discipline of International Relations. It identifies the intellectual or discursive origins of the idea of the territorial state. The idea of the territorial state has long had a privileged place in the discipline of International Relations because it is an integral element of Realist theory, which since 1945 has been the main tradition of thinking about international politics. Realism assumes that the primary actors in the modem international system are states defined as political units exercising sovereignty over a defined territory. In Realist history, both the territorial state and the modem territorial international system emerged together in the seventeenth century. This thesis challenges the Realist narrative of the idea of the territorial state by means of a double-edged critique. First, the thesis, which uses the approach of discourse analysis, rejects the view that it is possible to account for the idea of the territorial state exclusively in terms of political practice and knowledge. It argues that the Realist idea of the territorial state needs to be understood as one expression of a much broader and complex matrix of narratives - social, political, philosophical and cultural - about man’s capacity to know, represent and order the spaces of modernity. Second, the thesis rejects the traditional Realist history of the territorial state, which claims that it emerged
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