James Harrington Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

James Harrington (1611–1677) was an English political writer most famous for The Commonwealth of Oceana (1656), considered one of the most systematic treatises to emerge from the English republican movement.

There is little reliable biographical information about Harrington’s early life; he provided loans to Parliament in the early 1640s and was politically aligned with them, but he apparently was also a companion of Charles I prior to Charles I’s execution. Unlike many of the other English Republicans, Harrington was not particularly active in terms of political service; instead, he worked on Oceana. Subsequently, Oliver Cromwell suppressed the work and imprisoned Harrington, who was not able to secure his release and the right to print Oceana until 1656. This was the first of two tenures in prison; Harrington was imprisoned again for a period after the Restoration.

In Oceana, Harrington initially establishes some basic principles of politics grounded in what he terms “ancient prudence.” He praises the ancients for employing “an empire of laws, not men,” and accuses philosopher Thomas Hobbes of advocating for the modern mode of “an empire of men, not laws.” After describing modern prudence with a mix of history and mythmaking, Harrington sets forth the model for Oceana. Assuming an agrarian or natural economy and a tribally divided society, Harrington describes a number of offices and their method of election. Over three days, the citizenry elects the magistrates to govern them. Harrington also provides methods for senatorial elections and the election of certain posts via scrutiny. Ultimately, Harrington breaks the population down into thirty orders, creating many opportunities for citizen service and activity in the commonwealth.

Because of the completeness of Oceana and its provision of new institutions for voting and distributing duties among magistrates, it has attracted a considerable amount of attention in modern scholarship. J. G. A. Pocock is considered the leading contemporary authority on Harrington’s work, and his introduction to The Political Works of James Harrington (1977) is often cited as the leading summary and treatment of Harrington’s thought. However, the work of scholars such as Jonathan Scott, who highlights the role of motion in Harrington’s work and thus focuses on similarities between Harrington and Hobbes, offers a well-developed alternative to Pocock’s study.

Pocock’s examination of Harrington in The Political Works of James Harrington places Harrington firmly in the civic republican tradition and discusses the links between Harringtonian republicanism and the classical tradition of Aristotle and (especially) Niccolò Machiavelli. Pocock pays particular attention to the importance that Harrington places on arms, and argues that adopting Machiavelli’s conception of the citizen-solider allows Harrington to level his greatest critique against the feudal monarchy of England. As quoted in Pocock’s work, the feudal system “clearly displays the subjection . . . of individuals whose capacity to be masters, citizens, and equals can be simultaneously displayed with equal clarity.” For Harrington, the citizen-soldier cannot be justly subjugated, and must be provided with the opportunity to function in a commonwealth constituted with a mind toward the ancient prudence that Harrington found neglected.

Harrington’s work influenced many important figures in the late seventeenth and eighteenth-century commonwealth movements; these in turn affected the political thought of the American colonies and the early American republic.

Bibliography:

Pocock, J. G. A. The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Republican Tradition. 3rd ed. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003.
The Political Works of James Harrington [including The Commonwealth of Oceana]. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.
Scott, Jonathan. “The Rapture of Motion: James Harrington’s Republicanism.” In Political Discourse in Early Modern England, edited by Quentin Skinner and Nicholas Phillipson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

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