By James Harrington.
Harrington's 'The Commonwealth of Oceana'
Wikipedia
This text was copied from Wikipedia on 25 November 2024 at 6:10AM.
| Part of the Politics series |
| Republicanism |
|---|
 Politics portal |
The Commonwealth of Oceana (/oʊˈsiːənə/ oh-SEE-ə-nə), published 1656, is a work of political philosophy by the English politician and essayist James Harrington (1611–1677). The unsuccessful first attempt to publish Oceana was officially censored by Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658). It was eventually published, with a dedication to Cromwell.[1]
Summary
Harrington's magnum opus, Oceana is an exposition on an ideal constitution, designed to allow for the existence of a utopian republic. Oceana was read contemporaneously as a metaphor for interregnum England, with its beneficent lawgiver Olphaus Megaletor representing Cromwell. The details of this ideal governing document are set out, from the rights of the state to the salaries of low officials. Its strategies were not implemented at the time.
The first constituent in Harrington's theoretical argument states that the determining element of power in a state is property, particularly property in land. The second is that the executive power ought not to be vested for any considerable time in the same man, men, or class of men. In accordance with the first of these, Harrington recommends an agrarian law, limiting holdings of land to the amount yielding a revenue of £2000, and consequently insisting on particular modes of distributing landed property. As a practical issue of the second he lays down the rule of rotation by ballot. A third part of the executive or senate are voted out by ballot every year, and may not be elected again for three years. Harrington explains very carefully how the state and its governing parts are to be constituted by his scheme.
Publication
The Commonwealth of Oceana was published in two first editions, the "Pakeman" and the "Chapman" (first names Daniel and Livewell, respectively) by the London printer John Streater,[2] between September and November 1656. Their contents are nearly identical. The Chapman edition was listed in the Stationers' Register of 19 Sep, and was first advertised during the week of 6 Nov in the serial Mercurius Politicus, a "quasi-official" organ of the Commonwealth. The first edition of the book was seized while at the printer and taken to Whitehall. Harrington appealed to Elizabeth Claypole, Cromwell's favourite daughter; she agreed to intervene with the Lord Protector.[3] The book went on to be published, was widely read and attacked by Henry Ferne, later Bishop of Chester, and by Matthew Wren. In 1659, an abridged version in three volumes, entitled The Art of Lawgiving, was published.
Harrington's first editor was John Toland (1670–1722), who in 1700 published The Oceana and other Works of James Harrington, with an Account of his Life. It was first reprinted in Dublin in 1737 and 1758 in a super-edition (as it were), containing a version of Henry Neville's Plato Redivivus and an appendix of miscellaneous Harrington works compiled by the Rev. Thomas Birch (1705–1766). This same appeared in London in 1747 and again in 1771.[4]
Oceana was reprinted in Morley's Universal Library in 1883; S. B. Liljegren reissued a fastidiously prepared Pakeman edition in 1924. Much of the remaining Harrington canon consists of papers, pamphlets, aphorisms, even treatises, in steadfast defence of the controversial tract.
Modern readers might have difficulty understanding the prose. Harrington's modern editor J. G. A. Pocock considered the prose marred by what he described as an undisciplined work habit and a conspicuous "lack of sophistication." He "wrote hastily, in a baroque and periodic style in which he more than once lost his way," thereby becoming "...productive of confusion." According to Pocock, Harrington certainly never attained the level of "a great literary stylist."[5]
See also
- Milton Malsor, where Oceana was written
Notes
- ^ "...to his highnes[sic] the Lord Protector of the Comonwealth[sic] of England, Scotland, and Ireland"; Pocock, "Intro," p. 6, note 1. on Harrington as a classical republican, he was "England's premier civic humanist and Machiavellian. He was not the first to think about English politics in these terms..., but he was the first to achieve a paradigmatic restatement of English political understanding in the language and world-view inherited through Machiavelli." Pocock, "Intro," p. 15.
- ^ Streater was a former New Model Army officer stationed in Ireland who returned to England in 1653 to protest the dissolutions of the Rump and Little parliaments. He was subsequently arrested for seditious libel, apparently acquitted, and by April 1654 had set up his print shop. Pocock, "Intro," 9–10.
- ^ for an important qualification of the Lady Claypoole story, see note 2 in the Harrington article.
- ^ (London: T. Becket, Thomas Cadell, T. Evans, 1771). until Pocock's, more than two centuries later in 1977, the only complete edition of political Harringtoniana.
- ^ this and the preceding two paragraphs are adapted from Pocock, "Intro," p. xv.
References
- J.G.A. Pocock, "Editorial and Historical Introductions," The Political Works of James Harrington (Cambridge: 1977), xi–xviii; 1–152. cited as 'Pocock, "Intro"'.
Further reading
- Pocock, J.G.A., ed. The Commonwealth of Oceana and A System of Politics (Cambridge: 1992). these two works only with a slimmed down introduction.
- Sharp, R.A. "The Manuscript Versions of Harrington's Oceana," Historical Journal 16,2(1973), 227–39.
- Worden, Blair. "James Harrington and The Commonwealth of Oceana, 1656" and "Harrington's Oceana: origins and aftermath, 1651–1660," in David Wootton, ed. Republicanism, liberty, and commercial society, 1649–1776 (Stanford: 1994).
- James Harrington page: Further Reading.
- The Work of J.G.A. Pocock: Harrington section.
External links
Log in to post an annotation.
If you don't have an account, then register here.
References
Chart showing the number of references in each month of the diary’s entries.
3 Annotations
First Reading
Michael Robinson • Link
[Harrington, James 1611-1677]
The commonwealth of Oceana.
London : printed for D[aniel]. Pakeman, and are to be sold at his shop at the Rainbow in Fleet-street, 1656.
fo., [12], 239, [1], 255-286, 189-210, [2] p.
Title page in red and black; Harrington signs the dedication (pi2r).
Wing (CD-ROM, 1996), H809A (variant of the edition with "printed by J. Streater, for Livewell Chapman" in imprint.) Pforzheimer, 449 (for Livewell Chapman variant)
PL 2114
Purchased by Pepys on December 26 1667, with a volume of 13 Harrington's pamphlets, PL 1297, and another unidentified work for £4.
Other editions: 1658 (re-issue), 1700, 37, 47, 71.
cum salis grano • Link
also available for your portable book reader "epub"
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/28…
Second Reading
San Diego Sarah • Link
This site has four biographies of James Harrington, author and philsopher, 1611 - 1677. He was well educated, well travelled (and much influenced by the Republic of Venice), a courtier to King Charles I, possibly an MP under Cromwell, and I'm guessing he had read Machiavelli.
https://www.encyclopedia.com/peop…
After King Charles' execution, James Harrington turned his attention to designing the best possible government system for England, and started work on The Commonwealth of Oceana.
In it he proposed:
A society in which all men of property would have a share; property was to be balanced by laws which limited the extent of individual wealth.
A senate (drawn from historical examples) was to be elected by all men of property and was to propose laws.
Once the laws had been ratified by the people, they were to be executed by an elected magistracy.
All officials were to serve for limited terms to ensure the maximum participation on the part of the citizens of the Commonwealth.
A community of interest served to hold the society together.
Harrington's work reflected conditions in England, but the reflection was all too clear. "Olphaus Megaletor" was so obviously Oliver Cromwell that the government seized the manuscript.
With great difficulty Harrington convince Cromwell of his good intentions, so his work was eventually restored to him.
The Commonwealth of Oceana was finally published in 1656.
Once in print, Oceana was violently attacked by monarchists and republicans alike. These attacks led James Harrington to pen a defense called The Prerogative of Popular Government, to abridge his work for a wider audience under the title The Art of Law Giving, and to further develop his views in a series of essays which were printed in 1659, the last year of the Commonwealth. (Pepys got these companion essays at the same time as the book.)
Machiavelli and Harrington were influential in Thomas Hobbes' work ... in turn, they were reflected by Spinoza, Locke, Bayle, Montesquieu, and Rousseau who came to see that religion poses a decisive political problem, and were determined to seek out a variety of strategies for domesticating religion politically.
There are now books on civil religion, which essentially means that religion is too dangerous to be left in the hands of churches and priests, and since it cannot be simply conjured away, it ought to be deposited in the hands of the state (which would put religion to good civic purposes and guarantee religious toleration among all citizens).
Both Cromwell and Charles II furthered the seculariation of power, but would not have gone so far as to distribute their land and power. But the conversaton was out there.
See also https://www.academia.edu/12512290…