Thesis (Doctoral)--Histoire. Université de Rennes II Haute Bretagne, Centre de recherches historiques sur les sociétés et cultures de l'Ouest européen, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references and index.

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This thesis examines how Friedrich Hayek’s concern with free market action led him to adopt a neo-roman concept of liberty and it traces how this development informed his view of the relationship between government, democracy and the economy. For Hayek, liberalism that made freedom in economic life its core concern was the ‘true’ liberalism, and he distinguished this from a ‘false’ liberalism that advocated government action as a means of enabling ‘self-development’. Influenced by Carl Schmitt, Hayek viewed the democratic process as encouraging false liberalism. Recognising the contested nature of liberalism, over the course of the 1940s and ‘50s he set out to decontest it: to win acceptance of his definition of the tradition. He sought to demonstrate the legitimacy of his true liberalism with reference to intellectual history and the work of Whig authors. It was in their work that Hayek came into contact with the neo-roman concept of liberty. Theirs however was a partial interpretation of Roman liberty. The generally privileged status of the Whig authors, combined with a genuine fear of government, resulted in a focus on the danger of public power, or imperium, to the exclusion of private power, or dominium. This complemented Hayek’s own opposition to government economic activity. This thesis contends that arriving at a concept of liberty was the pivotal point in Hayek’s intellectual career. From then on his work ceased to be defensive. Instead, despondent at the growing appeal of social justice in the 1960s and alarmed at union influence and inflation in the ‘70s, he actively promoted an alternative free market vision. This culminated in his intellectual emergency equipment: the ‘denationalisation of money’ and ‘a model constitution’. Informed by his partial version of the neo-roman concept, he advocated a weak state and a curtailment of democratic power. Despite his strong focus on imperium there are points in Hayek’s thought at which he recognises that private power can also pose a threat to free market action. This thesis concludes with the suggestion that integrating a more comprehensive version of the neo-roman concept of liberty into Hayek’s thought results in a very different vision of the appropriate relationship between government, democracy and the economy to the one he developed.

This dissertation examines Ulysses S. Grant’s Reconstruction policy, both the domestic and foreign policies, as an integrated whole. He focused on the broad application of citizenship rights, not only for African Americans in the South, but for all peoples in the United States’ sphere of influence. The centerpiece of Grant’s Reconstruction policy was the “Grant Doctrine,” articulated in his 1869 memorandum considering whether to annex the Dominican Republic to the United States. In it, Grant delineated his determination to export the republican policies of Reconstruction to the Caribbean by the acquisition of the island territory. Grant envisioned exporting the ideals of Reconstruction, the rights of citizenship, and the republican values of the Reconstruction Amendments, to people never previously considered for full membership in the body politic of the United States. Grant’s decisions to annex the Dominican Republic and grant the Dominicans citizenship reflect the responsibilities Grant had to enforce equal rights for those seeking to join the Union. Grant’s desire to provide a path to citizenship for Native Americans (whether they wanted it or not) and his effort to withhold citizenship from Mormons due to the immorality of their practice of polygamy, added to the changing views of citizenship in this era. Grant’s Reconstruction policy also included his desire to help Chinese immigrants break the bonds of forced labor, though that ultimately led to their eventual exclusion. This dissertation examines all of these initiatives as well as the position of African American leaders who questioned the president’s decision-making and argued against his policies, while never wavering in their political support of him or his party. Together, Grant’s foreign and domestic policies represented a singular Reconstruction effort centered on the question of citizenship. The Grant administration sought to export Reconstruction beyond the borders of the American South, restoring and strengthening the Union while, at the same time, offering republicanism, liberty, equality, and free labor, to peoples of the Western Hemisphere writ large and the peoples of the world migrating to the United States.

This thesis examines the role of theatre in promoting and perpetuating the early American republican and liberal ideals during the pre-Revolutionary and Revolutionary periods. The investigation begins with the idea of the use of theatre as utilized by nations to oppress a populace to maintain the status quo and reinforce the societal structure of the community. Augusto Boal’s theory of theatre as a tool for oppression is used to demonstrate the point beginning with Ancient Greece. To understand the idea of revolutionary theatre, the author examines how theatre has been historically used to satirize and rebel against the social order. The historical ideals of republicanism, liberalism, virtue, and natural rights as developed from the Magna Carta to the American Revolutionary War are dissected. Authors and orators such as John Wycliffe, Jan Hus, Martin Luther, and John Locke are studied. The paper then moves into the introduction of theatre as brought to the Americas from England followed by the rhetoric of the revolutionary propaganda in place at the time. The author then continues this line of inquiry into the period of the Revolutionary War itself. The use of theatre by both the British military and the Continental Army is discussed with the main focus on General Howe’s meschianza and the production of Joseph Addison’s Cato at Valley Forge. It is concluded that theatre played a significant role in the creation of the United States of America and American identity by using the rhetoric of republicanism, egalitarianism, and patriotism.

In the following thesis, I argue that to contextualize Machiavelli’s republican thought in his Italian humanist heritage permits us to understand how Machiavelli reaches back not only to an Italian pre-humanist inheritance of liberty as freedom from servitude, but to a Stoic conception of agency which he inherits and shapes in that concept of liberty. While my analysis of Machiavelli and his humanist heritage is in fundamental agreement with that of Quentin Skinner in The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, it develops however the implications of two theses that Paul O. Kristeller outlines in his works on Italian humanism: the eclectic nature of humanist ideas and their rhetorical focus. From this I draw a slightly different picture of the humanist heritage and its polemics with Augustine, and from these an understanding about Stoic agency and how it is inherited and shaped in Machiavelli’s conception of the citizen and civic duties.

In the following thesis, I argue that to contextualize Machiavelli’s republican thought in his Italian humanist heritage permits us to understand how Machiavelli reaches back not only to an Italian pre-humanist inheritance of liberty as freedom from servitude, but to a Stoic conception of agency which he inherits and shapes in that concept of liberty. While my analysis of Machiavelli and his humanist heritage is in fundamental agreement with that of Quentin Skinner in The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, it develops however the implications of two theses that Paul O. Kristeller outlines in his works on Italian humanism: the eclectic nature of humanist ideas and their rhetorical focus. From this I draw a slightly different picture of the humanist heritage and its polemics with Augustine, and from these an understanding about Stoic agency and how it is inherited and shaped in Machiavelli’s conception of the citizen and civic duties.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 490-544). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

In the following thesis, I argue that to contextualize Machiavelli’s republican thought in his Italian humanist heritage permits us to understand how Machiavelli reaches back not only to an Italian pre-humanist inheritance of liberty as freedom from servitude, but to a Stoic conception of agency which he inherits and shapes in that concept of liberty. While my analysis of Machiavelli and his humanist heritage is in fundamental agreement with that of Quentin Skinner in The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, it develops however the implications of two theses that Paul O. Kristeller outlines in his works on Italian humanism: the eclectic nature of humanist ideas and their rhetorical focus. From this I draw a slightly different picture of the humanist heritage and its polemics with Augustine, and from these an understanding about Stoic agency and how it is inherited and shaped in Machiavelli’s conception of the citizen and civic duties.

Paul Bonnetain (1858-1899) is a French author whose work has been largely forgotten. While the literary merit of much of his output is another matter, this thesis will show that the value of Bonnetains work is of considerable historical significance as a record of the ways in which the apparently contradictory notions of republican universalism and racial hierarchy were combined to form the French mission civilisatrice. The focus will be on Bonnetains two books gleaned from his time spent in Indochina as a correspondent for Le Figaro during 1884-1885, the compiled journalism of Au Tonkin (1884) and the Naturalist colonial novel LOpium. Both books exemplify the historical interest of Bonnetains work, which lies in its Naturalist quest for scientifically accurate literature and in its belief in the phenomenon of racial degeneration. This belief is coupled with a strongly implied materialist adherence to polygenism the belief that human races represent different species with distinct origins. However, these aspects of his work are brought into even greater relief by their juxtaposition with Bonnetains strongly leftist, anti-clerical, and materialist republican universalism. This thesis describes how his enthusiasm for miscegenation and métissage, as expressed in Au Tonkin and LOpium, allowed him to maintain a belief in racial hierarchy while also enthusiastically subscribing to republican universalism. In this way, métissage served as a framework in which these two seemingly contradictory positions could be held together.