Natural Rights and Politics in Early Modern Europe

This edited collection examines the political use of natural rights in the early modern period, deepening our understanding of how these forerunners of contemporary human rights developed throughout Europe and its colonies. Despite the ubiquity of the idea of human rights in our political culture as well as scholarship, interest in natural rights remains sporadic and fragmentary, often taking a purely theoretical approach. By interrogating the relationship between natural rights and politics, this volume provides a new perspective, one that posits that the nature and evolution of subjective natural rights are best understood by studying the uses to which they were put. This understanding allows us to explore the implications of applying natural rights language within the political and socio-cultural landscapes of the early modern period. The authors analyse the various ways in which concepts drawn from natural rights were deployed in specific political contexts, from studies of sixteenth-century humanist jurisprudence to examinations of the French Ideologues' rejection of natural rights, and their role in the debates of the Cisalpine Republic at the end of the eighteenth century. In doing so, the collection reveals the diverse political projects that natural rights served, their relationship with republicanism, and the emergence and evolution of particular rights.