John Hobson argues that sport plays an important part in British imperialism for all classes and that the “spirit of adventure” is now played out in the colonies (1902)
John A. Hobson (1858-1940) was a supporter of the free trade and anti-imperialist ideas of Richard Cobden (1804-1865) and bitterly opposed the Boer War in South Africa (1899-1902). He argued that there was a strong connection between sport and empire in England:
This “spirit of adventure,” especially in the Anglo-Saxon, has taken the shape of “sport,” which in its stronger or “more adventurous” forms involves a direct appeal to the lust of slaughter and the crude struggle for life involved in pursuit. The animal lust of struggle, once a necessity, survives in the blood, and just in proportion as a nation or a class has a margin of energy and leisure from the activities of peaceful industry, it craves satisfaction through “sport,” in which hunting and the physical satisfaction of striking a blow are vital ingredients. The leisured classes in Great Britain, having most of their energy liberated from the necessity of work, naturally specialise on “sport,” the hygienic necessity of a substitute for work helping to support or coalescing with the survival of a savage instinct. As the milder expressions of this passion are alone permissible in the sham or artificial encounters of domestic sports, where wild game disappears and human conflicts more mortal than football are prohibited, there is an ever stronger pressure to the frontiers of civilisation in order that the thwarted “spirit of adventure” may have strong, free play.
Wealth, Commerce, & Corruption in Hume, Smith, & Ferguson
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Emer
de Vattel, The Law of
Nations, Or, Principles of the Law of Nature,
Applied to the Conduct and Affairs of Nations
and Sovereigns (1797)
The great eighteenth-century
theorist of international law Emer
de Vattel (1714–1767) was a key figure in sustaining
the practical and theoretical influence of
natural jurisprudence through the Revolutionary
and Napoleonic eras. Coming toward the end
of the period when the discourse of natural
law was dominant in European political theory,
Vattel’s contribution is cited as a major
source of contemporary wisdom on questions
of international law in the American Revolution
and even by opponents of revolution, such as
Cardinal Consalvi, at the Congress of Vienna
of 1815. Vattel broadly accepted the early-modern
natural law theorists from Grotius onward but
placed himself in the tradition of Leibniz
and Christian Wolff. This becomes particularly
clear in two valuable early essays that have
never before been translated and are included
in the present volume. On this philosophical
basis he established what the proper relationship
should be between natural law as it is applied
to individuals and natural law as it is applied
to states. The significance of The
Law of Nations resides in its distillation from natural law
of an apt model for international conduct of
state affairs that carried conviction in both
the Old Regime and the new political order
of 1789–1815. The Liberty Fund edition
is based on the anonymous English translation
of 1797, which includes Vattel’s notes
for the second French edition (posthumous,
1773).
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