Oxford University Press is
publishing a new book on the Italian Renaissance scholar Carlo Sigonio
(1522/3-1584) and colonial discourse.
ABOUT THE BOOK
The colonization policies of
Ancient Rome followed a range of legal arrangements concerning property
distribution and state formation, documented in fragmented textual and
epigraphic sources. When antiquarian scholars rediscovered and scrutinized
these sources in the Renaissance, their analysis of the Roman colonial model
formed the intellectual background for modern visions of empire. What does it
mean to exercise power at and over distance?
This book foregrounds the
pioneering contribution to this debate of the great Italian Renaissance scholar
Carlo Sigonio (1522/3-84). His comprehensive legal interpretation of Roman
society and Roman colonization, which for more than two centuries remained the
leading account of Roman history, has been of immense (but long disregarded)
significance for the modern understanding of Roman colonial practices and of
the legal organization and implications of empire.
Bringing together experts on
Roman history, the history of classical scholarship, and the history of
international law, this book analyzes the context, making, and impact of
Sigonio's reconstruction of the Roman colonial model. It shows how his legal
interpretation of Roman colonization originated and how it informed the
development of legal colonial discourse, from imperial reform and colonial
independence in the nascent United States of America to Enlightenment accounts
of property distribution. Through a detailed analysis of scholarly and
political visions of Roman colonization from the Renaissance to today, this
book shows the enduring relevance of legal interpretations of the Roman
colonial model for modern experiences of empire.
ABOUT THE EDITORS
Jeremia Pelgrom is an assistant
professor at Groningen University. His research focuses on Roman Republican
colonialism and Italian landscape archaeology. He has co-directed two research
projects funded by the Dutch research council (NWO): Landscapes of Early Roman
Colonization (with Tesse D. Stek) and Mapping the via Appia (with Stephan Mols
and Eric Moormann), and he is co-editor of Roman Republican Colonization. New
perspectives from Archaeology and Ancient History (2014).
Arthur Weststeijn is an assistant professor at Utrecht University. He
specializes in intellectual history and the history of political thought, with
a particular focus on early-modern republicanism and imperialism. He is the
author of Commercial Republicanism in the Dutch Golden Age (2012) and co-editor
of Ancient Models in the Early Modern Republican Imagination (2017) and The
Dutch Empire between Ideas and Practice, 1600-2000 (2019).
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction: Settler Colonies
Between Roman Colonial Utopia and Modern Colonial Practice, Jeremia Pelgrom and
Arthur Weststeijn
2. Roman Colonies and the
Distribution of Land before Sigonio, William Stenhouse
3. The Mommsen of the
Renaissance: Sigonio, the De antiquo iure populi Romani, and Roman Republican
Colonization, John Rich
4. Sigonio in Anglo-American
Projects to Reform the Imperial Constitution, 1751-1777, Mark Somos
5. Roman Colonization and Land
Division between Enlightenment and Romanticism: Beaufort and Niebuhr, Mattia
Balbo
6. Roman Colonization in Twentieth-Century
Historiography, Luigi Capogrossi Colognesi
7. Epilogue: Reflections on the
Past and Future of the Roman Colonial Discourse, Christopher Smith
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