European Illusions: Political Economy and War From Rousseau to the French Revolution

Abstract

This dissertation is about the impact on Enlightenment political thought of the elimination of Poland from the map of Europe. It is about how the partitions of Poland (1772-95) affected the thinking of every major European political theorist, from Rousseau to Kant and beyond, because Poland's destruction raised questions about how states could achieve the prosperity necessary to retain their independence while also respecting the independence of others. The dissertation surveys the different theoretical approaches that were brought to bear on debates about how to implement reform in Poland and Russia. These ideas shaped subsequent discourses about the problems of international economic competition and constitutional government during the American and French Revolutions and into the nineteenth century. Rousseau's Considerations on the Government of Poland in particular had an important impact on later thinkers. The book represented a scaling-up of the Social Contract for a large state along lines that Rousseau planned to develop in his unfinished treatise, the Political Institutions.