Abstract: It is not altogether surprising that a discrete study of Godwin's international thought has been neglected as he wrote relatively little on international affairs and was even less concerned with elaborating anything that might resemble an international theory. His journal, in which he assiduously recorded his daily readings, only serves to reinforce this view in its lack of reference to the work of international jurists or specific writings on international relations, though it reveals a keen interest in logging significant international events of the day.1 Yet even his major work of political philosophy, Political Justice, contained chapters devoted to the issue of just war.2 Its wider anarchist vision, by extension, also betrayed a deeper concern with the implications of superseding the states system. Godwin also addressed international themes more specifically in two writings in particular that bookend Britain's protracted wars with revolutionary and, later, Napoleonic France—his "Essay Against Reopening the War with France" (1793) and Letters of Verax (1815).3 Indeed, the impact of the revolution and the wars that followed arguably framed the whole period in an inescapably pervasive international context where domestic concerns necessarily merged with international ones. Earlier, he had also been responsible for writing the British and Foreign History section of the New Annual Register, having been invited to take up the position by his former tutor at Hoxton, Andrew Kippis.4
Publication Year: 2012
Publication Date: 2012-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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