State of Nature: Histories of an Idea

Mark Somos, Ph.D. (2007 Harvard, 2014 Leiden), holds the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft’s Heisenberg position. He wrote Secularisation and the Leiden Circle (Brill, 2011) and American States of Nature: The Origins of Independence, 1761–1775 (Oxford, 2019). Anne Peters, Ph.D. (1994 Freiburg), is Director at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg, a Professor at Heidelberg, Freie Universität Berlin, and Basel, and L. Bates Lea Global Law Professor at the University of Michigan.

"Somos and Peters have managed to offer a collection of essays which both deepens and challenges our knowledge of these authors by setting them in new contexts and juxtaposing their work to that of their contemporaries, antecedents, and followers. […] The chapters in this collection show that state of nature as a multi-faceted and versatile concept, whose origins can be traced back much further than the early modern period. […] informative, highly readable and generally concise, the chapters in this book can be studied individually or as a whole as useful introductions to new research". Gaby Mahlberg inEuropean Review of History, 30 (2), 2023.

• List of IllustrationsNotes on ContributorsIntroductionMark Somos and Anne Peters1 Thucydides, Hobbes, and the Melian DialogueBenjamin Straumann2 Missing Terms in English Geographical Thinking, 1550–1600Mary C. Fuller3 Do Shepherds Live in a State of Nature? From Peculium to CivilizationFrancesca Iurlaro4 After Vitoria Natural Law and the Spanish Ideology of EmpireDaniel S. Allemann5 Fleeing “Polyphemus’s Den” Locke’s State of Nature as SanctuaryIoannis Evrigenis6 Invisible People The State of Nature in Hugo Grotius’ Account of Global Legal OrderEmile Simpson7 From the State of Nature to the State of Economy Pufendorf on Commerce and Natural LawDavid Singh Grewal8 The State of Nature, the Family and the StateSimone Zurbuchen9 Written in the Hearts of People? Natural and International Law during the Age of EnlightenmentEdward J. Kolla10 From Natural Equality to Frankpledge The State of Nature, Ancient Constitutionalism, and the Rupture of the Social Contract in Eighteenth-Century Antislavery WritingsSarah Winter11 From the State of Nature to the Natural State Transforming the Foundations of Science and Civil Progress in Eighteenth-Century British Political ThoughtPamela Edwards12 Their Own State(s) of Nature The Enlightenment Social Imaginary and the Invention of Hungarian Ethnic OriginsLászló Kontler13 The Place of the Environment in State of Nature Discourses Reassessing Nature, Property and Sovereignty in the AnthropoceneTom Sparks14 The State of Nature, Prehistory, and MythmakingKarl Widerquist and Grant S. McCallIndex