Territory is one of the central political concepts of the modern world and, indeed, functions as the primary way the world is divided and controlled politically. Yet territory has not received the critical attention afforded to other crucial concepts such as sovereignty, rights, and justice. While territory continues to matter politically, and territorial disputes and arrangements are studied in detail, the concept of territory itself is often neglected today. Where did the idea of exclusive ownership of a portion of the earth’s surface come from, and what kinds of complexities are hidden behind that seemingly straightforward definition?
The Birth of Territory provides a detailed account of the emergence of territory within Western political thought. Looking at ancient, medieval, Renaissance, and early modern thought, Stuart Elden examines the evolution of the concept of territory from ancient Greece to the seventeenth century to determine how we arrived at our contemporary understanding. Elden addresses a range of historical, political, and literary texts and practices, as well as a number of key players—historians, poets, philosophers, theologians, and secular political theorists—and in doing so sheds new light on the way the world came to be ordered and how the earth’s surface is divided, controlled, and administered.
Blurbs and TOC after the jump.
Comments from reviewers:
“Stuart Elden has written a pathbreaking book on a foundational concept in modern political and geographical thought. Drawing together deep philosophical knowledge, historical understanding, and philological expertise, Elden’s pioneering investigation compels us fundamentally to rethink some of the basic assumptions regarding state space that have long underpinned modern political theory and social research. In so doing, Elden also opens up new horizons for understanding the transformed geographies of political life that are being produced under early twenty-first century conditions. A brilliant, provocative intervention.”—Neil Brenner, Harvard University
“This is a brilliant intellectual exegesis of the concept of territory that will be of wide interest in a range of academic fields, from international relations to historical sociology and the history of political thought.”“Stuart Elden’s The Birth of Territory is a wonderful achievement unmatched in previous writing on place, power, and politics. For it does nothing less than elucidate in remarkable detail a two-thousand-year history of the conditions for the very possibility of its own subject—the idea of territory itself. That is what makes it transcendental history of the first order.”
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I
1. The Polis and the Khora
Autochthony and the Myth of Origins
Antigone and the Polis
The Reforms of Kleisthenes
Plato’s Laws
Aristotle’s Politics
Site and Community
2. From Urbis to Imperium
Caesar and the Terrain of War
Cicero and the Res Publica
The Historians: Sallust, Livy, Tacitus
Augustus and Imperium
The Limes of the Imperium
Part II
3. The Fracturing of the West
Augustine’s Two Cities
Boethius and Isidore of Seville
The Barbarian Tribes and National Histories
Land Politics in Beowulf
4. The Reassertion of Empire
The Donation of Constantine
The Accession of Charlemagne
Cartography from Rome to Jerusalem
The Limits of Feudalism
5. The Pope’s Two Swords
John of Salisbury and the Body of the Republic
Two Swords: Spiritual and Temporal Power
The Rediscovery of Aristotle
Thomas Aquinas and the Civitas
6. Challenges to the Papacy
Unam Sanctum: Boniface VIII and Philip the Fair
Dante: Commedia and Monarchia
Marsilius of Padua and the Rights of the City
William of Ockham and the Politics of Poverty
Part III
7. The Rediscovery of Roman Law
The Labors of Justinian and the Glossators
Bartolus of Sassoferrato and the Territorium
Baldus de Ubaldis and the Civitas-Populus
Rex Imperator in Regno Suo
8. Renaissance and Reconnaissance
Machiavelli and Lo Stato
The Politics of Reformation
Bodin, République, Sovereignty
Botero and Ragione di Stato
King Lear: “Interest of Territory, Cares of State”
9. The Extension of the State
The Consolidation of the Reformation
The Geometry of the Political
The Divine Right of Kings: Hobbes, Filmer, and Locke
“Master of a Territory”
Coda: Territory as a Political Technology
Notes
Index
