International Relations in Political Thought Texts from the Ancient Greeks to the First World War

JEAN BODIN (1530–96), French humanist, lawyer, administrator, and scholar. Bodin was one of the first to attribute rising prices in sixteenth-century Europe to the influx of gold from America and he also wrote a book on the detection and punishment of witches. He is one of several thinkers of the period who were concerned to explore the question of how competing claims to rule within the emerging territorial states of Europe might be resolved. For Bodin, it is the possession of “sovereignty” that distinguishes the ruler of a state from other authorities. Despite his erroneous conclusion that sovereign authority cannot be divided between different branches of government, his discussion of the concept constitutes an innovative and enduring contribution to the legal theory, one with momentous consequences for international relations.

From Six Books of the Commonwealth

On sovereignty

Sovereignty is the absolute and perpetual power of a commonwealth, which the Latins call maiestas; the Greeks akra exousia, kurion arche, and kurion politeuma; and the Italians segnioria, a word they use for private persons as well as for those who have full control of the state, while the Hebrews call it tomech shévet – that is, the highest power of command. We must now formulate a definition of sovereignty because no jurist or political philosopher has defined it, even though it is the chief point, and the one that needs most to be explained, in a treatise on the commonwealth.