Person:

Armitage, David

This paper argues that the English idea of empire in the reign of Elizabeth I was derivative, belated and incoherent. Its sources were classical and continental rather than indigenous. It arose more than a century after the Scottish monarchy had elaborated its own conception of empire. Moreover, it expressed a sense of backwardness, isolation and anxiety that mirrored the English failure to establish any permanent settlements in the Atlantic world. As a result, any balance sheet of empire drawn up on Elizabeth's death in 1603 would have valued prospects in the Mediterranean and the East Indies more highly than possibilities in the Americas.

The Trustees and Director of the National Maritime Museum have done me a double honour by asking me to deliver the Caird Lecture and to mark the opening of the Museum's new Research Centre for Imperial and Maritime Studies. With a double honour comes a double duty. I must both attempt to continue a distinguished tradition of Caird lectures and also seek to inaugurate what will surely become an equally great tradition emanating from this timely new Centre. The theme of my lecture will therefore be a double one: to reflect – and to reflect upon – the two fields covered by the Centre, imperial history and maritime history, their relationships and their differences.

Quentin Skinner concluded The Foundations of Modern Political Thought (1978) with the claim that '[b]y the beginning of the seventeenth century, the concept of the State -- its nature, its powers, its right to command obedience had come to be regarded as the most important object of analysis in European political thought.' For confirmation of this, he quoted Thomas Hobbes who, in the preface to De Cive (1642), declared that 'the aim of "civil science" is "to make a more curious search into the rights of states and duties of subjects".' The Foundations was dedicated to the historical examination of just how the state became the central analytical object of political thought and how the groundwork for a recognisably modern concept of the state had been laid. Fundamental to this concept was the state's independence from 'any external or superior power.' Yet, save for a brief but suggestive account of neo-Scholastic conceptions of the law of nations, the Foundations included no treatment of the state in its nature, its powers or its rights as an international actor. The concept of the state traced by Skinner defined it almost entirely in terms of its internal, domestic or municipal capacities. The relations between states had apparently not yet become an important object of political or historical analysis.

Somos todos atlanticistas agora – ou assim parece ser diante da explosão do interesse pelo Atlântico e pelo mundo atlântico como objeto de estudos entre historiadores da América do sul e do norte, do Caribe, África e Europa ocidental. O Atlântico começa inclusive a moldar estudos de literatura, economia e sociologia sobre tópicos tão diversos quanto performance teatral, a história da primeira globalização e a sociologia de raça. Contudo, nenhum campo parece ter levado o Atlântico mais a sério e com mais entusiasmo do que a história. De fato, a história Atlântica foi considerada “um dos desenvolvimentos historiográficos mais importantes dos últimos anos”. A história Atlântica influencia o ensino de história em todos os níveis, especialmente nos Estados Unidos. Atualmente possui suas próprias conferências, seminários e programas de graduação; prêmios estão sendo distribuídos para os melhores livros escritos; e os primeiros livros didáticos começam a ser planejados. Este pode ser, portanto, um bom momento para se questionar justamente sobre o que é a história Atlântica e para onde ela caminha, antes que esta se torne entrincheirada e inflexível.