The Present State of Germany. Samuel Pufendorf

publication of Edmund Bohun’s (1645–99) On the State of the German Empire in 1690 (and 1696) is an indication of the growing familiarity with Pufendorf’s work in England from the 1680s onward.⁴¹ Unlike Tyrrell and Locke, however, who were interested in Pufendorf’s natural law philosophy, Bohun’s attention was drawn to the anonymous author’s detailed account of the German empire.⁴² (Since the posthumous edition had not yet appeared and Bohun was probably unaware of the Monzambano controversy in Germany, he could not know that the work was by Pufendorf.) As he explains in his preface, England’s participation in Germany’s ongoing wars against France and the Turks made it useful to publish an account that would better acquaint his countrymen with their continental ally. Indeed, one might conclude from his remarks that if England had been allied with China he would have sought an account of Chinese institutions to translate. As in the case of some of his other occasional publications, Bohun had no obvious stake in Monzambano other than impact on the domestic scene and revenue. The work is not mentioned in his autobiography, whose nineteenth-century editor lists only the anonymous 1690 edition and not the acknowledged 1696 publication.⁴³

      This incidental relationship between translator and author does make for some ironies, and it certainly affected the translation itself (see below). For though he came into the world a Dissenter (through his father), Bohun became a determined Anglican and a Tory propagandist. He was close to Archbishop Sheldon, William Sancroft, and Samuel Parker, and he participated actively in the Filmer renaissance they engineered in the late 1670s and early 1680s. Thus his first published work, Address to the Freemen and Freeholders of the Nation (1682–83), advocated a hereditary monarchy and opposed active resistance. His second, A Defence of Sir Robert Filmer (1684), was directed against Algernon Sidney, whose contractualist resistance theory, along with the attempt to implement it in the Rye House Plot, led to his execution for treason in 1683. Bohun crowned his contribution to the Tory cause in 1685 with an edition of Filmer’s Patriarcha, whose preface attacked Tyrrell’s critique of Filmer.

      Like other Anglicans and Tories, Bohun disliked James II’s avid Catholicism as much as Dissent or Whiggery. Therefore, in 1689, after the invasion, he chose the lesser evil and acknowledged William’s legitimacy as monarch, thereby turning potential disaster into opportunity. In 1692 he was appointed licenser of the press within the new government. It was an inconvenient post in view of his past publications,⁴⁴ and after only five months he was dismissed and briefly imprisoned, the inconsistency between his situation and his views catching up with him. He had rationalized his new allegiance to William not in defactoist terms but by appeal to the theory of conquest developed by Grotius. This allowed him to maintain his support of divine right, hereditary monarchy, and nonresistance and to reject any kind of contractualism or popular sovereignty.⁴⁵ While conquest theory was not unusual at the time and Bohun hardly its only proponent, it was deemed unflattering to the king and dangerous because of the associated baggage that often came with it, as in Bohun’s case. So when he unwittingly approved a tract by Charles Blount espousing that interpretation, Whigs accused him of Jacobitism and engineered his dismissal (in 1693), probably using him as the sacrificial lamb for this kind of argument. Still, after retreating to the country for a while, Bohun managed to obtain (in 1698) the post of chief justice of South Carolina, where his son was engaged in business. Since the colony’s constitution had been written by Locke and Shaftesbury in 1669, this final post neatly compounded the ironies of his life.

      Bohun probably did not know enough about Pufendorf’s views to be guided by them in his translation of Monzambano. Therefore, he followed his own royalist leanings instead, particularly when not adhering literally to the Latin text. However, even direct renditions were affected. For instance, though Bohun sometimes translates “citizen” appropriately, often he resorts to “member” or “subject” instead. Likewise, “emperor” sometimes becomes “king”; “empire,” “kingdom”; and there are “princes” everywhere, even when the text refers more generally to “estates” (which included the free cities of the empire). As single instances, such substitutions may seem innocuous and unimportant, but repetitively and collectively they can flavor a text and distort its meaning.⁴⁶ Pufendorf thought a regular monarchy the best form of government, but he was not an exclusive or absolute royalist; rather, he advocated limited sovereignty, whatever form it took. Moreover, he vigorously rejected divine right justifications, based the origin and legitimacy of political power on contract (two contracts, in fact: association and subjection, and an intervening decree), and allowed that there might be justified resistance in extremis; even conquest theory did not legitimize without the eventual implied consent of the conquered. In sum, Pufendorf was far less conservative than Bohun, and it is important to keep this in mind. For while the translator did not consciously distort his author, he was so avidly committed to his own views that, in all likelihood, he did not worry greatly about the risk of doing so.

      Significance of the Work

      There has been much discussion about the so-called post-Westphalian order of sovereign states and its continued viability in today’s shrinking world. Indeed, the notion of sovereignty as such, as both an internal and external characteristic of states, is being reexamined in view of increasingly complex human dependencies and vulnerabilities. As Pufendorf continues to be historically rehabilitated, he is also gradually being reintroduced into these discussions.⁴⁷ A better understanding of the Monzambano in the context of Pufendorf’s other works can only contribute to this perceived relevance. Indeed, the complexities of the empire, which it theorized, may appear to equal or surpass those of the contemporary world. Thus, our debates about the role of the United Nations, the European Union, and other hemispheric or regional associations, as well as the importance of state systems or alliances—for defense or other purposes—may all benefit from what seems at first an antiquated discussion about an impossible reality. Voltaire is reported to have quipped that the German Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire.⁴⁸ Pufendorf himself said as much, but he nonetheless thought it important to examine why others would adopt such a self-interpretation and how it might or might not be conducive to their interests. His recommendations for the problems he diagnosed in the empire were decidedly modest, but in both his world and ours, which confront so many extremes, that very fact may be their most exemplary virtue.

      Michael J. Seidler

A NOTE ON THE TEXT

      Edmund Bohun’s translation of Pufendorf’s De statu Imperii Germanici was issued twice: first by an anonymous “person of quality” in 1690 and then with Bohun’s name in 1696.¹ Except for their title pages, the two versions appear exactly the same. The 1696 version, which is reissued here, repeats the licensure page of the earlier printing, with its date of January 31, 1689/90, as well as the prefatory “To the Reader” dated January 24, 1689. Moreover, the table of contents, shoulder (margin) titles and notes, pagination, first and last words on each page, the lack of an index—even Bohun’s textual insertions (especially in chapters VII and VIII), which update, expand, or comment on (thus, “continue”) Pufendorf’s account—all are the same. Neither printing indicates which of the numerous Latin “first” editions since 1667 Bohun used as the basis of his translation. In checking its accuracy, I have consulted one of the 1667 printings (viz., the fourth “Geneva” edition) and also the text issued by Fritz Salomon in 1910, which is based on the very first “Geneva” edition.²

      When Pufendorf prepared the second edition, which was finished in the early 1690s shortly before his death, he made significant changes in the text. This posthumous edition (editio posthuma, or e.p.) was not published until 1706 by J. P. Gundling³ and was therefore unavailable to Bohun. However, because of the importance of these emendations for an understanding of Pufendorf’s development, I have included them in this Liberty Fund edition, thus complementing Bohun’s translation with my own renditions of the new material. Indeed, the editio posthuma’s many excisions, additions, and revisions (some quite lengthy) made it a thorough reworking of the original text rather than a mere republication with touch-ups. This complicates the identification of variants by requiring judgments of significance. For these I have also relied on Salomon,