Montesquieu on the History and Geography of Political Liberty Author: Rebecca Clark Persistent link: http://hdl.handle.net/2345/bc-ir:103616 This work is posted on eScholarship@BC, Boston College University Libraries. Boston College Electronic Thesis or Dissertation, 2012 Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. Boston College Graduate School of Arts & Sciences Department of Political Science MONTESQUIEU ON THE HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY OF POLITICAL LIBERTY A dissertation by REBECCA RUDMAN CLARK submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2012 © Copyright by REBECCA RUDMAN CLARK 2012 Abstract Montesquieu on the History and Geography of Political Liberty Rebecca R. Clark Dissertation Advisor: Christopher Kelly Montesquieu famously presents climate and terrain as enabling servitude in hot, fertile climes and on the exposed steppes of central Asia. He also traces England’s exemplary constitution, with its balanced constitution, independent judiciary, and gentle criminal practices, to the unique conditions of early medieval northern Europe. The English “found” their government “in the forests” of Germany. There, the marginal, variegated terrain favored the dispersion of political power, and a pastoral way of life until well into the Middle Ages. In pursuing a primitive honor unrelated to political liberty as such, the barbaric Franks accidentally established the rudiments of the most “well-tempered” government. His turn to these causes accidental to human purposes in Parts 3-6 begins with his analysis of the problem of unintended consequences in the history of political reform in Parts 1-2. While the idea of balancing political powers in order to prevent any one individual or group from dominating the rest has ancient roots, he shows that it has taken many centuries to understand just what needs to be balanced, and to learn to balance against one threat without inviting another. Knowledge of the administration of criminal justice has proven the most important to liberty, as well as the most difficult to acquire and put into practice. Montesquieu’s attention to accidental causes sheds light on the contradictions within human nature, and the complex relationship between humans and their physical and conventional environments. He shows how nature provides support for both political liberty and for despotism. The wisdom of organizing government with a view to political liberty, as well as the means for doing so, does not follow from human nature in the abstract, but has required reflection on experiences with the consequences of actual governments. By highlighting the dependence of free politics on conditions outside the legislator’s immediate control, he encourages reformers to attend to the non-legal supports of political liberty, the limits of human ingenuity, and the risks of unintended consequences. His attention to forces beyond human control provides the occasion to clarify the character of liberal legislative prudence, the art of leading by “inviting without constraining.” i Montesquieu on the History and Geography of Political Liberty Table of Contents Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 1 Section 1: Liberty of the constitution and unintended consequences .............................. 20 Chapter 1: An introduction to political liberty through despotism ..................................... 22 Chapter 2: Locke, Montesquieu, and the early history of political balancing .................... 35 Chapter 3: Why the ancients did not understand monarchy ............................................... 53 Chapter 4: The characteristically democratic misunderstanding of liberty as independence and people power ........................................................................ 64 Chapter 5: The historical abuses of criminal justice native to republics ............................ 70 Chapter 6: The abuse of criminal justice under imperial and inquisitorial monarchies ... 100 Section 2: Gothic government and the history of French laws ....................................... 124 Chapter 7: Modern England .............................................................................................. 124 Chapter 8: Montesquieu’s approach to historical analysis ............................................... 134 Chapter 9: Gothic government .......................................................................................... 150 Chapter 10: The development of the Frankish monarchy ................................................. 172 Chapter 11: The age of judicial combat ............................................................................ 189 Chapter 12: Saint Louis’ juridical statesmanship ............................................................. 211 Chapter 13: Reflections on the intellectual and political context of Montesquieu’s analysis of Gothic and Frankish government................................................................. 233 Section 3: The Geography of Liberty and Despotism...................................................... 249 Chapter 14: Introduction to Montesquieu’s analysis of climate and terrain ..................... 255 Chapter 15: Physical and moral causes ............................................................................. 285 Chapter 16: North and South, Hot and Cold ..................................................................... 306 Chapter 17: Montesquieu’s case against slavery and the “natural reason” for it.............. 334 Chapter 18: The terrains of liberty and servitude ............................................................. 359 Chapter 19: Legislating to counter the vices of climate ................................................... 405 Chapter 20: Evaluating Montesquieu’s science of environmental influence.................... 425 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 437 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................ 454 ii Acknowledgements Thanks to all of my teachers, beginning with my family, Madelon, Scott, and Joshua Clark, for their unfaltering support in all ways. Thanks to my teachers at Boston College, Bowdoin College, and Wyoming High School, as much for challenging as for encouraging me. Thanks especially to my advisor Christopher Kelly and committee members Robert Faulkner, Nasser Behnegar, and Susan Shell for carefully reading these excessively long sections, offering such thoughtful comments and advice, and pushing me to address the implications of, and counterarguments to, my analysis. Thanks to Brenna Strauss and Chaim Katz for providing invaluable feedback on drafts since the very beginning, and for supporting my morals throughout the process. iii If a man strikes many coins from one mold, they all resemble one another, but the Supreme King of Kings…fashioned every man in the stamp of the first man, and yet not one of them resembles his fellow. Babylonian Talmud, Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5 1 Introduction My dissertation examines Montesquieu's contributions to liberalism through a unique angle: his account of the influence of physical, environmental conditions, as well as historical contingencies on the course of political history. In The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu depicts individuals and communities as profoundly shaped by climate and terrain—their physical environment1—as well as by laws, mores, manners, religion, their way of life, economic conditions, and their conventional environment. Among the “various things” to which the laws of any people must relate, he lists “the physical aspect of the country” (physique du pays) second only to the nature and principle of the given government. The physical aspect, he explains, includes “the climate, be it freezing (glacé), torrid (brûlant), or temperate (tempéré)…[and] the properties of the terrain, its location and extent” (1.3.9, emphasis in original). In sum, these factors amount to what we would call the physical environment or geography of a place. After the physique du pays, Montesquieu cites “the way of life of the peoples, be they plowmen, hunters, or herdsmen…the religion of the inhabitants, their inclinations, their wealth, their number, their commerce, their mores, and their manners” as additional key variables to which l’esprit de lois should relate (1.3.9). In particular, he emphasizes the role of these environmental conditions, broadly speaking, in shaping the prospects for political liberty, both for better and for worse. He famously presents hot climate and fertile terrain as posing major constraints on the 1 Montesquieu considers the importance of territorial size as it relates to the various forms of government in Book 8, and to foreign policy in Books 9-10. Climate and terrain also figure in Books 20-21 on commerce, in Book 22 on population, and in passing throughout the entire text (for example 28.2.545). Edition cited, unless otherwise noted, is Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, trans. Anne Cohler, Basia Miller, and Harold Stone (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989). I will note the book number followed by the chapter and then page numbers within the text. 2 geographic scope for liberty in Part 3. He also traces his exemplary models of political liberty to particular times and places.