In 1759, at the height of the Seven Years' War, when Great Britain was suffering a series of military reversals, Montagu considered his country's plight in an historical context formed by the study of five ancient republics: Sparta, Athens, Thebes, Carthage, and Rome. Montagu's focus on the ancient republics gives his contribution a distinctive twist to the chorus of voices lamenting Britain's decline, and his analysis exerted influence in three momentous eighteenth-century crises: the Seven Years' War, the American (...) War of Independence, and the French Revolution. This is the first modern edition of Montagu's work. Edward Wortley Montagu (1713 -1776) was the son of a wealthy British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire and of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. He was a student of oriental languages at the University of Leiden, which apparently proved useful during the peace negotiations at Aix-la-Chapelle which concluded the War of the Austrian Succession in 1748. David Womersley is the Thomas Warton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. He has published widely on English literature from the early sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries. He is the editor of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (2012) for Cambridge University Press. (shrink)

During a smallpox epidemic in April 1721, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu asked Dr. Charles Maitland to "engraft" her daughter, thus instigating the first documented inoculation for smallpox (_Variola_ virus) in England. Engrafting, or variolation, was a means of conferring immunity to smallpox by placing pus taken from a smallpox pustule under the skin of an uninfected person to create a local infection. The introduction of infectious viral matter, however, could trigger fullblown smallpox, and the practice was controversial for (...) both this reason and the pervasive conviction that it was immoral to intentionally infect a human body. Eventually, engrafting was phased out altogether in favor of vaccination, a much safer procedure established by Edward Jenner in the late eighteenth century. Montagu's decision was influenced by her experiences in Constantinople, where she had spent a year, and where engrafting was commonplace. As a smallpox survivor herself, Montagu had taken an interest in Turkish inoculation practices, and had had her son Edward engrafted while in Turkey. She was not the first person to import the idea of smallpox inoculation to England, nor the first English person to have their child inoculated (other English children had been inoculated while visiting Turkey), yet she quickly became known for importing and popularizing smallpox inoculation. At the request of her acquaintances, she took her inoculated daughter with her on a round of visits into elite households to demonstrate the safety of the procedure. The reputation she gained was both positive and negative: monuments were erected in her honor, encomiastic poems were published, and Voltaire declared her "a woman of as fine a genius, and endued with as great a strength of mind as any of her sex in the British Kingdoms"; however, anti-inoculationists ridiculed her, some society figures regarded her warily, and Alexander Pope satirized her in his poetry.

Montagu’s pioneering role in the smallpox debate is undoubtedly significant: she instigated the first smallpox inoculation on English soil, and she was largely responsible for making the practice acceptable in elite circles. My interest in this essay is in the nature and significance of Montagu’s reputation as an inoculation pioneer. I will argue that her reputation was based on the particular combination of her social position as a Whig and an aristocratic woman; her interest in progressive and enlightened forms of social, political, and scientific thought; her standing in influential literary circles; and, not least, the force of her own personality. In broad terms, I offer Montagu’s involvement in the smallpox debate as a case study in a new kind of public role becoming available to elite women in the early eighteenth century — a role that caused considerable discomfort among her peers and in the medical community, and one that stimulated a widespread controversy in print publications of the day. (shrink)

Despite being an aristocrat and a woman, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu made herself a writer. Hard-hitting, eloquent, and often funny, this is a revised edition of her non-epistolary writings.

In this paper, the work of Cynthia Lowenthal, Barbara Taylor, and others is adduced to support the notion that Lady Mary Wortley Montagu accomplished something remarkably progressive in her Turkish letters and her British “Spectatress” letters; part of the conclusion is that feminist work may proceed by metaphor as well as by argument and debate. Some of the innovation of her work is signaled by her use of comparison and contrast in describing her travels: she does not hesitate (...) to juxtapose unusual items and situations. In addition, Lady Mary's work is briefly contrasted with that of Mary Astell and Mary Wollstonecraft. (shrink)

The author examines the differences between the general intensional logic defined in his recent book and Montague's intensional logic. Whereas Montague assigned extensions and intensions to expressions (and employed set theory to construct these values as certain sets), the author assigns denotations to terms and relies upon an axiomatic theory of intensional entities that covers properties, relations, propositions, worlds, and other abstract objects. It is then shown that the puzzles for Montague's analyses of modality and descriptions, propositional attitudes, and directedness (...) towards nonexistents can be solved using the author's logic. (shrink)

This was the best-selling poetry anthology of the eighteenth century, edited by the most celebrated publisher of the era, Alexander Pope's protege, Robert Dodsley. It includes poems by Samuel Johnson, Thomas Gray, David Garrick, Lady Mary Wortley Montague, Horace Walpole, Joseph and Thomas Warton, James Thomson, Elizabeth Carter, Pope himself, and many others. The Collection of Poems is an invaluable index of literary culture in the eighteenth century, and yet despite its great popularity and influence, it has not been (...) in print for more than two hundred years. (shrink)

This article considers the ways in which eighteenth-century womens travel narratives function as autobiographical texts, examining the process by which a travellers dislocation from home can enable exploration of the self through the observation and description of place. It also, however, highlights the complexity of the relationship between two forms of writing which a contemporary readership viewed as in many ways distinctly different. The travel accounts considered, composed in manuscript form, in many ways contest the assumption that manuscript travelogues will (...) somehow be more self-revelatory than printed accounts. Focusing upon the travel writing of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Katherine Plymley, Caroline Lybbe Powys and Dorothy Richardson, the article argues for a more historically nuanced approach to the reading of womens travel writing and demonstrates that the narration of travel does not always equate to a desired or successful narration of the self. (shrink)

"Margaret L. King has put together a highly representative selection of readings from most of the more significant—but by no means the most obvious—texts by the authors who made up the movement we have come to call the 'Enlightenment.' They range across much of Europe and the Americas, and from the early seventeenth century until the end of the eighteenth. In the originality of the choice of texts, in its range and depth, this collection offers both wide coverage and striking (...) insights into the intellectual transformation which has done more than any other to shape the world in which we live today. It is _simply the best introduction to the subject now available_."_ —Anthony Pagden, UCLA, and author of _The Enlightenment and Why It Still Matters_ Contents:_ Chronology, Introduction _Chapter One - Casting Out Idols: 1620–1697_ _Idols, or false notions: _Francis Bacon, _The New Instrument_ _I think, therefore I am: _René Descartes, Discourse on Method _God, or Nature: _Baruch Spinoza, _Ethics_ _The system of the world: _Isaac Newton, _Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy_ _He searched for truth throughout his life: _Pierre Bayle, _Historical and Critical Dictionary_ _Chapter Two - _The Learned Maid: 1638–1740 _A face raised toward heaven:_ Anna Maria van Schurman, _Whether the Study of Letters Befits a Christian Woman_ _The worlds I have made:_ Margaret Cavendish, _The Blazing World_ _A finer sort of cattle:_ Bathsua Makin, _An Essay to Revive the Ancient Education of Gentlewomen_ _I warn you of the world:_ Madame de Maintenon, _Letter: On the Education of the Demoiselles of Saint-Cyr_, and _Instruction: On the World_ _The daybreak of your reason:_ Émilie Du Châtelet, _Fundamentals of Physics_ _Chapter Three - _A State of Perfect Freedom: 1689–1695 _The chief criterion of the True Church:_ John Locke, _Letter on Toleration_ _Freedom from any superior power on earth:_ John Locke, _Second Treatise on Civil Government_ _A white paper, with nothing written on it:_ John Locke, _Essay Concerning Human Understanding_ _Let your rules be as few as possible:_ John Locke, _Some Thoughts Concerning Education_ _From death, Jesus Christ restores all to life:_ John Locke, _The Reasonableness of Christianity, as Delivered in the Scriptures_ _Chapter Four - All Things Made New: 1725–1784_ _In the wilderness, they are reborn:_ Giambattista Vico, _The New Science_ _Without these Names, nothing can be known,_ Carl Linnaeus, _System of Nature_ _All the clouds at last are lifted:_ Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, _The Successive Advancement of the Human Mind_ _A genealogical or encyclopedic tree of knowledge:_ Jean le Rond d’Alembert, _Preliminary Discourse_ _Dare to know! :_ Immanuel Kant, _What Is Enlightenment?_ _Chapter Five - Mind, Soul, and God: 1740–1779_ _The narrow limits of human understanding:_ David Hume, _Anof a Book Lately Published_ _The soul is but an empty word:_ Julien Offray de La Mettrie, _Man a Machine_ _All is reduced to sensation:_ Claude Adrien Helvétius, _On the Mind_ _An endless web of fantasies and falsehoods:_ Paul-Henri Thiry, baron d’Holbach, _Common Sense_ _Let each believe that his own ring is real:_ Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, _Nathan the Wise_ _Chapter Six - Crush That Infamous Thing: 1733–1764_ _This is the country of sects:_ Voltaire, _Philosophical Letters_ _Disfigured by myth, until enlightenment comes:_ Voltaire, _The Culture and Spirit of Nations_ _The best of all possible worlds:_ Voltaire, _Candide_ _Are we not all children of the same God?:_ Voltaire, _Treatise on Tolerance_ _If a book displeases you, refute it! :_ Voltaire, _Philosophical Dictionary_ _Chapter Seven - Toward the Greater Good: 1748–1776_ _Things must be so ordered that power checks power,_ Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, _The Spirit of the Laws_ _Complete freedom of trade must be ensured:_ François Quesnay, _General Maxims for the Economic Management of an Agricultural Kingdom_ _The nation's war against the citizen: Cesare_ Beccaria, _On Crimes and Punishments_ _There is no peace in the absence of justice:_ Adam Ferguson, _An Essay on the History of Civil Society_ _Led by an invisible hand:_ Adam Smith, _An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations_ _Chapter Eight - Encountering Others: 1688–1785_ _Thus died this great man:_ Aphra Behn, _Oroonoko: or The Royal Slave_ _Not one sins the less for not being Christian: _Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, _Embassy Letters_ _Do you not restore to them their liberty?:_ Guillaume-Thomas Raynal, _Philosophical and Political History of European Colonies and Commerce in the Two Indies_ _Some things which are rather interesting:_ Captain James Cook, _Voyage towards the South Pole, and Round the World_ _The inner genius of my being:_ Johann Gottfried von Herder, _Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Humankind_ _Chapter - Nine Citizen of Geneva: 1755–1782_ _The most cunning project ever to enter the human mind: _Jean-Jacques Rousseau, _Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Human Inequality_ _The supreme direction of the General Will:_ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract _Two lovers from a small town at the foot of the Alps,_ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, _Julie, or the New Heloise_ _Build a fence around your child’s soul:_ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, _Emile, or On Education_ _This man will be myself:_ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, _Confessions_ _Chapter Ten - Vindications of Women: 1685–1792_ _No higher design than to get her a husband:_ Mary Astell, _Reflections on Marriage_ _The days of my bondage begin:_ Anna Stanisławska, _Orphan Girl_ _A dying victim dragged to the altar:_ Denis Diderot, _The Nun_ _Created to be the toy of man:_ Mary Wollstonecraft, _Vindication of the Rights of Woman_ _Man, are you capable of being just?:_ Olympe de Gouges, _Declaration of the Rights of Woman as Citizen_ _Chapter Eleven - American Reverberations: 1771–1792_ _I took upon me to assert my freedom:_ Benjamin Franklin, _Autobiography_ _Freedom has been hunted round the globe:_ Thomas Paine, _Common Sense_ _Endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights:_ Thomas Jefferson and Others, _Declaration of Independence_ _A safeguard against faction and insurrection:_ James Madison, _Federalist No. 10_ _An end to government by force and fraud:_ Thomas Paine, _The Rights of Man_ _Chapter Twelve - Enlightenment's End: 1790–1794_ _A partnership of the living, the dead, and those unborn:_ Edmund Burke, _Reflections on the Revolution in France_ _The future destiny of the human species:_ Nicolas de Condorcet, _A Sketch of a Historical Portrait of the Progress of the Human Mind_ Texts and Studies, Index. 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This paper focuses on the English philosopher Mary Astell’s marginalia in Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s personal copy of the 1704 edition of Pierre Bayle’s Pensées diverses sur le comète (first published in 1682). I argue that Astell’s annotations provide good reasons for thinking that Bayle is biased toward atheism in this work. Recent scholars maintain that Bayle can be interpreted as an Academic Sceptic: as someone who honestly and impartially follows a dialectical method of argument in order to (...) obtain the goal of intellectual integrity. In her commentary, however, Astell suggests that: (i) if Bayle were honest and impartial in his inquiries, then he would not have pretended to attack popular superstition, only to undermine generally-held religious beliefs; and (ii) if Bayle valued intellectual integrity, then his argument for a society of virtuous atheists would not have relied upon a deceptive equivocation in terms. I conclude that the rediscovery of this marginalia is valuable for enhancing our appreciation of Astell as an astute reader of one of her most enigmatic contemporaries. (shrink)

In this second issue of volume one, a welcome feature are those articles that bring to our readers, new historical information about women philosophers, new analyses of important positions supported by and questions addressed by select women philosophers, as well as articles that compare and contrast the views of several women philosophers on particular topics. This issue reflects on the context of women’s theoretical contributions, with articles that address the question of women’s agency and the historical account through which women (...) were acknowledged (or not) as originators of or contributors to important theoretical developments within the mentioned disciplines. In recent decades an overwhelming amount of philosophical works by women has been made available by historians of philosophy. This issue reflects those strides towards recovering philosophical writings by women. Issue 2 of this volume is organized chronologically and starts with a paper from Jonathan Head: “Anne Conway on Heaven and Hell”. Conway’s The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy (1690) offers representations of heaven and hell, revising our conventional image of hell. Conway presents hell in a way that she believes is more consistent with the postulate of a loving and just God. In part, Conway denies the possibility of eternal torment and emphasizes the benefits that suffering brings to a living being. Conway describes heaven as a realm of “perfect rest” where creatures enjoy unity and harmony with Christ and other heavenly spirits. This state involves an increasing understanding of the world, a continual process of perfection and harmony with other heavenly spirits. The article concludes with a description of Conway’s eschatology in the broader intellectual context of the revival of Origenist theology in its intellectual setting and in the changing framework of eschatological thought in the early Quaker community. Monica M. Mastrantonio discusses in her paper, “Lady Mary Wortley Montagu – a philosopher? The epistolary woman, because women could not be called Philosophers, Scientists, Entrepreneurs” aspects of a different and new transcultural worldview that reflects diversity and knowledge combined with philosophy in a new way. In the past, there were two roles with which Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was associated. One was her experience at the Turkish Embassy, where she highlighted cultural diversity. A second role she was associated with was international travel. Mastrantonio argues that Montagu was more than a literary aristocrat who could describe customs and traditions from abroad. Using Montagu’s complete letters, the author brings into discussion the fact that Montagu was also a vaccine entrepreneur and a journalist on political and urban issues, paving the way for discussions on philosophical questions. Many letter writers of the 16th and 17th centuries were already feminists who were politically and artistically active in their time and wrote letters with precision and expertise. The letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu are an important aspect in building a transcultural worldview in which diversity and knowledge combine with philosophy differently than it was before. In this short but engaging article, “American Women in the Transcendental and Pragmatist Movements”, Carol Bensick provides an overview of two important philosophical movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Transcendentalism and the Pragmatism that emerged in part from that movement. In the course of identifying numerous women who contributed to both movements, Bensick examines how some of them were included in the early history of American philosophy, only to be omitted from later histories. Bensick argues that the recent designation of women philosophers as “feminist pragmatists” is historically an inaccurate identification and one that pragmatists did not use to describe themselves. The French philosopher Simone Weil, the Swiss Jeanne Hersch and the Spanish Maria Zambrano each examined how bodily elements function in the rational search for truth. In his paper Oblique Paths to Truth: Myth and Bodily Elements in Simone Weil, Jeanne Hersch and Maria Zambrano, Piergiacomo Severini examines popular “body” myths referred to by these philosophers and analyses the language they use to express that bodily elements precede consciousness and reason. Through these myths/stories we learn that truth cannot be known directly through objects. Instead, the “knowing subject” necessarily elaborates indirect paths to transcendent truth. Severini argues that the effort to reintegrate the human attachment to the marginal world is peculiar to women philosophers in the history of philosophy and thus points to an alternative path to the human search for meaning that differs from the mainstream of Western male philosophy. As a philosopher, Hedwig Conrad-Martius has been intensively engaged throughout her life in researching the question of what reality is and has contrasted her reflections with those of Husserl and others. In her contribution “Conrad-Martius: the ´Real-Reality of the World – in Dialogue with Aristotle, Aquinas and Husserl”, author Irene Breuer deals with Conrad-Martius’ concepts of reality as “real reality”, with being, existence and essence and relates them to the concepts in Aristotle, Aquinas and Husserl. She discusses once again the questions of the hypostasis of being – by which the author claims that this is about the noema itself, and about the emergence of being in particular. The author’s thesis is that although Conrad-Martius rejects transcendental reduction, Conrad-Martius does accept eidetic reduction and the positing of a sphere of primordial and given facts. Driving this sphere back into a transphysical realm, it can provide a ground for Husserl’s sphere of original facts, which itself remains beyond the reach of phenomenological enquiries. Consequently, the author concludes, Conrad-Martius and Husserl meet here in their investigations, and yes, they complement each other, at a point where “the real bursts into reality”. Join us in unveiling this universe of women’s ideas. We are happy to welcome our contributors and readers, as we improve our understanding of the history of philosophical ideas by adding new perspectives and new insights. We enter a new universe of praiseworthy ideas by women theorists, one that will doubtlessly contribute to a world description that is more accurate than a narrative written without these voices. Philosophy starts here. (shrink)

This is an analysis of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Turkish Embassy Letters, first written in the early eighteenth century when she travelled to the Ottoman Empire, and finally ‘published’ in 1763. As well as producing ‘the very first example of a secular work by a woman about the Muslim Orient’, Montagu is a pioneer in introducing the Turkish women's practice of inoculation against smallpox into England. This article sets out the long-standing critical debate over the rights and (...) wrongs of the Letters, particularly focusing on the period since the 1970s when feminist and post-colonial readings have presented or questioned Montagu's credentials with respect to the politics of sex, sexuality, race, religion and class. It concludes that Montagu describes how she is received with considerable, if conditional, hospitality by Turkish women in their bagnio and ‘harems’, and that her writing is, in turn, conditionally hospitable towards them. She is explicitly concerned not to fall into the Orientalizing clichés of Early Modern men's travel writing, which typically represents Muslim women as imprisoned in harems, enslaved, starved of sex and sexually voracious. By careful consideration of the historical, political and social context of the societies which Montagu knew, and could make comparison between, a modern reader too can act hospitably in taking Montagu's narrative into her own. (shrink)

This article presents a commentary by James Steuart on David Hume’s History of the Tudors, written in the early 1760s. In doing so, the article sketches new aspects of Steuart’s political and historical thought at a time when he was hopeful about returning to Scotland from his long continental exile, following his leading role in the 1745 Jacobite rising. After providing a short biographical context, it establishes that the text was written whilst Steuart was working on his Political Oeconomy, and (...) when the ‘Marian controversy’ dominated Scottish historical debate. It goes on to explore the influence of Steuart’s friend Mary Wortley Montagu on his criticism of Hume’s misogynistic representation of Mary, Queen of Scots. It then reconstructs Steuart’s central argument about the failures of monarchs to adapt from feudal to commercial society, resulting in untrammelled liberties that harmed the lower classes. Concerned with the history of industry and commerce, political judgment, and the spirit of the people, Steuart’s hitherto unpublished commentary is a key source for understanding the ‘late Jacobite’ system of thought which influenced the reign of George III and inspired radicals later in the century. (shrink)

In this essay I will assume that all well-developed discussions of the authenticity of responsibility are metaphysical ones. But as I intend to make use of the notion of being at a number of crucial points, I will call responsibility ontic responsibility rather than metaphysical responsibility. If ontic responsibility should be authentic, both social responsibility and its most important particular instance, legal responsibility, will be qualified by it, and we shall not be able to capture their full meaning in terms (...) of de facto accountability. As for moral responsibility, its status will also depend upon whether or not ontic responsibility is authentic. Indeed, many readers might prefer to say that "ontic responsibility" is simply another name for moral responsibility--that the question whether we are so constituted in our ontological natures as to make accountability appropriate, just, and seemly is merely the question whether moral responsibility is authentic. But there are some grounds for thinking that ontic responsibility is a wider category and that, if it is authentic, moral responsibility is a special case of it--ontic responsibility exercised in certain well-defined and very important circumstances. It is clear, for instance, that ontic responsibility covers all acts whatsoever, or at least all acts that admit of degree of excellence, so that all our work in science, in the arts, and indeed in the entire practical-productive sphere comes under it. Thus, all Max Planck's work in science from his 1879 doctoral dissertation to his famous 1900 paper would exemplify it. But most of us would probably say that only some of the ontically responsible acts performed in the course of his scientific work were also instances of moral responsibility--perhaps only those which involved relations with other persons. At any rate, in this essay I will assume that, if ontic responsibility is authentic, moral responsibility is a special case of it. It will be clear, then, that we want the notion of ontic responsibility to function in many of the ways in which the notion of free will functions in other settings. We shall see that there is some advantage in thus avoiding that vexed notion in what follows. (shrink)

Liberation theology is in retreat. Once orthodox Catholics, starting with Pope John Paul II, recognized liberation theology's cultural challenge, they effectively countered it. They insisted on a traditional Catholic hierarchy of values. They undercut liberation theology's appeal by taking back key words and precepts that liberationists tried to appropriate. The Magisterium's sensus fidei included practical steps to demonstrate the weakness of liberation theology's hold, especially on poor people. Orthodox Catholics thus used the theological and practical weapons that the Church always (...) had at her disposal. The response of many liberation theologians has been to change some of liberation theology's precepts. (shrink)

Sound and Grammar: A Neo-Sapirian Theory of Language by Susan F. Schmerling offers an original overall linguistic theory based on the work of the early American linguist Edward Sapir, supplemented with ideas from the philosopher-logicians Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz and Richard Montague and the linguist Elisabeth Selkirk. The theory yields an improved understanding of interactions among different aspects of linguistic structure, resolving notorious issues directly inherited by current theory from (post- ) Bloomfieldian linguistics. In the theory presented here, syntax is a (...) filter on a phonological algebra, not a linguistic level; linguistic expressions are phonological structures, and syntax is semantically relevant relations among phonological structures. The book shows how Neo-Sapirian grammar sheds new light on syntax-phonology interactions in English, German, French, and Spanish. (shrink)

"Pioneers of Evolution" is a 1896 treatise by English Edward Clodd within which he explores the early proponents of evolution and the scientific answers to the origin of humankind. Looking at the world of such notable figures as Charles Darwin and Gerbert Spencer, this fascinating volume is not to be missed by those with an interest in evolution and the history of related ideas. Contents include: "Pioneers of Evolution From Thales to Lucretius," "The Arrest of Enquiry," "From the Early (...) Christian Period to the Time of Augustine," "From Augustine to Bacon," "The Renascence of Science," "Modern Evolution," "Darwinism and Wallace," "Herbert Spencer," "Thomas Henry Huxley," etc. Edward Clodd (1840 - 1930) was an English writer, banker, and anthropologist famous for his various and notable literary and scientific friends, including the likes of Edward Fitzgerald, Samuel Butler, Andrew Lang, and others. Other notable works by author include: "The Childhood of the World" (1872), "Jesus of Nazareth" (1880), and "Nature Studies" (1882). Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author. (shrink)

The American School of Empire considers how an American idea of empire evolved in the 1790s and would shape and be shaped by the literature and art of the early US. Hamilton's introductory essay suggests that empire was as important to the foundation of the US as concepts like democracy, freedom, nation, and republic. This book thus begins from the premise that the history of empire in the United States can be traced back to the inception of the country, if (...) not earlier. It contends that the United States was conceived as an empire, culturally, politically, and legally. Empire, as a broad theory for organizing not only the state but also the understanding of difference and the relationship to space, in other words, was a crucial conceptual frame shaping the culture of the early US"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)