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1 • Introduction

It seems that ‘cosmopolitanism’ is the new buzzword of a new century. Several factors are usually mentioned which might have contributed to the reactivating of the concept: the end of the Cold War, a growing awareness of global risks such as climate change which cannot be dealt with at a national level, economic and cultural globalization, the new global terrorism, and the US ‘war on terror’ during the presidency of George W. Bush Jr. (2001–9). Others have stressed cultural or intellectual factors such as the rise of ethnocentric nationalism and liberal and/or leftist attempts to counter it, or a broad disappointment with theories of multiculturalism, universalism, economic globalization or pluralism.¹

In particular, cosmopolitanism has been linked with the expansion and deepening of the European Union and Europeanization. Authors have expressed hopes of a ‘post-national, cosmopolitan form of loyalty’, or see the European Union as a transnational institution which might realize the principles of cosmopolitan democracy.²

The new buzzword has begun to mean or denote almost anything: the frequent traveller who is ‘critical’ towards her own country, the white Western male who considers nation-states outdated and nationalists retarded, the intellectual who has come to disdain the former buzzword ‘globalization’.³ John Cameron has found nine possible interpretations, from the global citizen to the cultural explorer.⁴ Others have added a range of adjectives to give an apparently flaky concept more substance or to refine it. We can read, among others, about ‘exclusionary cosmopolitanism’, ‘oppositional cosmopolitanism’, ‘eccentric cosmopolitanism’, ‘consumer cosmopolitanism’, ‘banal cosmopolitanism’ or ‘emancipatory cosmopolitanism’.⁵ Sometimes cosmopolitanism is just a perspective or a point of view, sometimes it is an activity. Cosmopolitanism may coincide with universalism, or might just be a negative concept, ‘the critique of a nationalist Weltanschauung’.⁶ If we consider all this confusion, and if we keep in mind that cosmopolitanism might turn into an ideology, it is not surprising that several authors have recently opted to keep the concept open and indeterminate, ‘precisely because specifying cosmopolitanism positively and definitely is an uncosmopolitan thing to do’.⁷ Alas, this reasoning is a bit unfortunate, because the adjective ‘uncosmopolitan’ already implies – or begs for – a definition.

Contemporary debates

Conceptual confusion could not stop a boom of publications on cosmopolitanism in recent years. In particular philosophers, political scientists and sociologists have joined a fascinating debate.⁸ David Held made a start and developed the theory of a cosmopolitan democratic law in 1995, acknowledging the origin of the concept in Kant’s political philosophy (see Chapter 4 below). Noting the ‘democratic deficit’ of international organizations, Held claimed that democratic practices have to cross territorial boundaries if a commitment to democracy, representation, and accountability should be retained. Held’s normative ideal is a cosmopolitan system where people ‘would come … to enjoy multiple citizenships – political membership in the diverse political communities which significantly affected them’.⁹

In a hotly debated essay entitled ‘Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism’ (1996), Martha Nussbaum argued for our primary allegiance ‘to the worldwide community of human beings’, and for cosmopolitan education.¹⁰ Her provocative theses led to a string of essays which discussed her use of the concept of ‘world citizenship’, the problem of normative universalism, and the relationship between nationalism, patriotism and cosmopolitanism(s). In a more recent publication, Frontiers of Justice (2006), Nussbaum criticizes the limitation of the social contract tradition, arguing that Rawlsian liberalism excludes those who cannot take part in such a contract.

Two other US scholars also deserve to be mentioned. Taking neo-Kantian and Rawlsian theories of international justice as a starting point, Seyla Benhabib develops a post-metaphysical ‘vision of just membership’ on a global scale, tackling issues of migration, immigration, hospitality and democratic iteration, which mediates ‘between universal norms and the will of democratic majorities’. She argues for a weak juridical cosmopolitanism and a ‘dialogic universalism’ which avoids the pitfalls of natural law-universalism and normative relativism.¹¹ Ghanaian philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah has developed what he calls ‘rooted cosmopolitanism’, with people identifying with the local and the embedded, while also conceiving themselves in terms of universal norms and global identities. Cosmopolitanism is, in a nutshell, ‘universality plus difference’, and therefore combines two aspects: universal obligations towards others and a deeply felt respect for ‘legitimate difference’. The task of philosophy is to spell out the details of the relationship between these two aspects, especially when they (seem to) clash. Like Nussbaum and Benhabib, Appiah disdains the idea of a world government.¹²

Jürgen Habermas is one of the few contemporary philosophers who argue for a world federation, where nation states have voluntarily ceded substantial portions of their sovereignty. He claims that we live in a post-Westphalian world and that a global civil society has become reality, while lacking adequate theorization. He believes in the universal nature of human rights and rationality, while urging governments to put neoliberal market economy under political control, exercised by a reformed and strengthened United Nations.¹³ German sociologist Ulrich Beck proposes a new methodology in the social sciences and calls it the ‘cosmopolitan perspective’, which overcomes the allegedly monologic national perspective and manages to include ‘the otherness of the other’.¹⁴ Critics have complained that Beck constructs a vision of sociology that is a caricature of the actual state of the art, and that existing sociology is actually much more cosmopolitan than Beck wants to admit.¹⁵

This short overview cannot do justice to all contributions. French philosophers Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas deserve to be mentioned. Some authors have contributed one article or book, some are not noticed because they do not publish in English or in one of the major journals. Kok-Chor Tan, Massimo La Torre, Robert Fine, Toni Erskine have recently joined in, but lists of this sort can only be selective.¹⁶ At any rate, they show a clear predominance of Anglo-American and English-speaking scholars: the current cosmopolitan discourse has, in spite of its noble aspirations, not yet become truly global.

The blind spot: the current cosmopolitan discourse and history

Many attempts to revitalize the concept of cosmopolitanism are historically uninformed. We may come across unwarranted assumptions, myths, clichés, glaring mistakes or the occasional inaccuracy. The envisioned recollection is often very selective or reductive.¹⁷ Here are some examples.

Political scientists and philosophers like to refer to the ‘Westphalian order’, and sometimes claim that our world has entered a post-Westphalian, cosmopolitan order beyond the nation state and based on a global civil society. Robert Frith, for instance, picks up the term ‘Westphalian cartography’ from Richard Devetak and Richard Higgott.¹⁸ Historians have countered that the notion of a ‘Westphalian order’ is rather misleading and should be used sparingly, if at all, and with the knowledge that it is nothing but a convenient shorthand. None of the key concepts of modern international law – which are associated with this notion – namely state sovereignty, the balance of power or legal equality, can be found in the Westphalian Peace Treaties, ‘at least not as principles of international law’.¹⁹ In Heiner Steiger’s division of the epochs of international law, the magic year of 1648 is completely dropped. He suggests separating the international law of Christianity (from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century) from the international law of the civilized states in the nineteenth century. In the thirteenth century, Steiger claims, the law of nations as law among sovereign princes (rather than states) of equal standing was fully developed, in practice as well as theoretically.²⁰ The concept of a ‘Westphalian order’ also tends to obscure the differences between eighteenth and nineteenth-century international law and legal theories – and differences abound (see Chapters 5 and 6 below).

Another convenient, but misleading concept is the so-called ‘Enlightenment project’, sometimes identified with the ‘project of modernity’. Research of the last decades has shown that the plurality and diversity of eighteenth-century Enlightenments render the notion of a ‘project’ virtually meaningless. As Robert Wokler put it: ‘Genuine scholars of the period characteristically disaggregate such global terms, so as to situate the ideas and discourses they study only in specific and local contexts, with reference to all their rich particularity and texture.’²¹ According to another widespread assumption, the Enlightenment was cosmopolitan, so we get the phrase ‘cosmopolitan Enlightenment’.²² Upon close scrutiny we have every reason to challenge this entrenched belief, as I will try to show in some chapters (see especially Chapters 3 and 5). Here, let me just briefly mention three outstanding examples.

At first sight, Welsh philosopher Richard Price (1723–91) seems to be a typical representative of ‘Enlightenment cosmopolitanism’. In a key passage, he asserts:

Foreign trade has, in some respects, the most useful tendency. By creating an intercourse between distant kingdoms it extends benevolence, removes local prejudices, leads every man to consider himself more as a citizen of the world than of any particular state, and, consequently, checks the excesses of that love of country which has been applauded as one of the noblest, but which, really, is one of the most destructive principles in human nature.²³

The passage summarizes stock themes and arguments of the cosmopolitan discourses in the eighteenth century: the possibly beneficial moral effects of international trade and commerce, the reference to a metaphorical world citizenship, and the tension between patriotism and moral cosmopolitanism. We could argue that Price defends a weak form of moral cosmopolitanism, that he even alludes to political cosmopolitanism (in a passage on the US articles of confederation), and that he presents a unique version of cosmopolitanism that combines Christian and liberal elements.²⁴ However, upon closer analysis, there is this nagging doubt about Price’s cosmopolitan disposition. While he criticizes excessive patriotic feelings and our tendency to partial reasoning, Price is clearly prejudiced against Native Americans and Arabs (who are inclined to ‘plunder and massacre’), Jews (who are full of ‘proud contempt’ towards other nations), and Spaniards, Turks and Russians (who love the slavery they are subject to). While most parts of the world are in a ‘state of humiliation’ and exposed to ‘darkness’ or ‘barbarity’, Price praises the British constitution as a unique guarantee of political and religious freedom.²⁵ In short, we have every reason to doubt whether Price deserves the label ‘cosmopolitan’. The passages which support the claim are counterbalanced by ‘uncosmopolitan’ statements.

Another interesting example is Fougeret de Monbron, who published his travel memories under the title Le Cosmopolite ou le Citoyen du Monde (London, 1753). Again, appearances are deceptive. His cosmopolitan attitude is aesthetic and individualistic rather than reflective. He does not offer a theory, but resembles the contemporary frequent traveller or tourist who is prejudiced and uncritical of himself. ‘Some would perhaps not call him a cosmopolitan at all, because he permanently uses his own subject as the norm, and notes what is different from his habits without reflecting on himself.’²⁶

Finally, there is the confusing example of Kant. He is usually considered to be a cosmopolitan, because of his moral universalism, his scathing criticism of European colonialism and his advocacy of a world government. On the other hand, there are openly racist statements, which simply do not go together with Kant’s cosmopolitan ‘disposition’ or Gesinnung elsewhere.²⁷ These examples suggest that a pluralistic model of cosmopolitanisms is more appropriate. There is no ‘typical form’ of cosmopolitanism, the ‘cosmopolitan Enlightenment’ is most likely a myth, and the diverse forms of cosmopolitanisms have different functions in the discourses as well.²⁸

I want to continue with two glaring examples of historical distortion. Arguing that the United States is on the way to become a worldwide empire, Massimo La Torre ends his essay on ‘Global citizenship’ (2005) with a suggestion how it could preserve its republican tradition. The solution is to ‘take the Ancient Romans’ great example and grant American nationality to all members of the globalized world community’. This way the US could buy the world’s ‘everlasting gratitude’.²⁹ If we leave aside the political aspect of the demand and focus on its historical dimension, we quickly find that the reference to the Constitutio Antoniania of 212 is completely mistaken. It is true that the Antonine Constitution of Emperor Caracalla granted all free inhabitants of the Roman Empire full citizenship. However, it is hard to see what was ‘great’ about this law, and it is even more difficult to detect any cosmopolitan dimension. In the first place, the law conveniently widened the circle of subjects who had to pay inheritance tax (applicable only to full citizens). By the beginning of the third century, the status of Roman citizenship had already been devalued by constantly extending the number of recipients. On top of that, the distinction between Roman citizens and free non-citizens had been eroded, while new class distinctions had been set up.³⁰ It is hard to see how the Antonine Constitution should serve as an example or point of reference for contemporary conceptions of world citizenship espoused by David Held and others.

I am highly critical of cleansing operations which seem to be at work in several contemporary cosmopolitan discourses. There is a certain tendency to distinguish ‘true’ cosmopolitanism from allegedly ‘degenerated’ forms, or inconvenient evidence is simply ignored. This brings me to my second example. For a long time, Hugo Grotius has been revered as the founding father of modern international law and, implicitly, as a cosmopolitan pacifist. This might be the main reason why Martha Nussbaum has offered a surprisingly rose-tinted view on Grotius. Her reference to Grotian ‘international society’ is reminiscent of Hersch Lauterpacht. Grotius is the knight in shining armour. As a moral philosopher, he developed a progressive theory of ‘humanitarian intervention’, influenced Kant, and even turned into a forerunner of Nussbaum’s own capabilities approach. As a cosmopolitan, he believed ‘that all human beings form part of a single moral community’.³¹ The context of the article was Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003. While I am sympathetic to the view that the invasion violated the UN Charter and international law, I believe that Nussbaum simply picked the wrong author. Recent scholarship has convincingly shown that Grotius is an emperor who has no clothes. Nussbaum ignores the pragmatic, bellicose and imperialist dimension of Grotius’ legal thinking (see the following chapter). It is mistaken to refer to ‘the Grotian/Kantian vision’, since Grotian and Kantian international legal theories have little in common (Chapter 4).

I believe that Nussbaum’s distortions point to a deeper problem. She has also offered an interpretation of Cynic and Stoic cosmopolitanism which is highly dubious as well. For instance, Nussbaum repeatedly refers to the Stoic idea of a moral community of equal human beings all over the globe, or describes Cicero as a pacifist.³² This is at variance with textual evidence. Some scholars claim that there might be no positive content at all to the Cynic Diogenes’ famous and often-quoted claim: ‘I am a citizen of the cosmos.’ Sellars asserts that Diogenes aimed at an independent, personal ethic directed towards happiness or eudaimonia rather than endorsing the idea of human fellowship. Zeno’s Republic probably proposed an isolated and elitist community of intellectuals or sages, where the non-wise were considered sub-human. Finally, Roman Stoicism was definitely rather lenient towards Roman patriotism (to say the least), and formed an uneasy alliance with (not always benevolent) Roman imperialism.³³ All this suggests that it is very problematical to subscribe to Nussbaum’s approach, which she describes in one essay as follows: ‘to begin writing a different chapter in the history of our classical heritage, one from which I think we can derive lessons of direct political worth.’³⁴ Can we really ‘derive lessons’ from ancient authors whose scant texts are open to divergent interpretations? Are not the lessons we have to derive from Grotius’ work completely different from Nussbaum’s? I think we must keep this problem in mind when we start digging in the past ‘with a cosmopolitan purpose’, to use Kant’s phrase.

The concept and forms of cosmopolitanisms

I have already pointed out that the term ‘cosmopolitanism’ often remains quite vague in current debates and leads to sweeping generalizations. We can define cosmopolitanism as the belief or the theory that all humans, regardless of race, gender, religion or political affiliation, belong to, or should belong to, one single community. Cosmopolitanism’s two basic tenets are: its reach is global in scope, all humans belong to this community. Second, this commonwealth should be cultivated, for instance, by trying to understand cultures different from one’s own or – see Richard Price – by mutual trade and commerce.³⁵

We can flesh out the concept if we compare cosmopolitanism with related webs of belief, theories or its ‘enemies’. Cosmopolitanism has to be distinguished from forms of regionalism such as patriotism, nationalism or Europeanism. A pro-European attitude, for instance, is sometimes mistaken for a cosmopolitan attitude. The Abbé de Saint-Pierre and his focus on the idea of European unity is a case in point (see the beginning of Chapter 3). Cosmopolitanism is at odds with political realism and statism, and might conflict with liberalism or civic republicanism. It does not easily go together with communitarianism.³⁶

We can distinguish between different types or forms of cosmopolitanisms.³⁷ The core idea of human rights (or moral) cosmopolitanism is that there are universal rights and obligations, and these should not be limited in scope, that is, they should be applied to all human beings. For instance, moral cosmopolitans argue that we have a duty to help strangers who are in need or suffering, or that we should promote basic human rights everywhere. Moral cosmopolitanism usually includes an element of normative universalism: all humans enjoy equal moral status, and they share certain essential features. Thomas Pogge refers to the main features of normative individualism (humans are the key units of concern), universality and equality (all humans without exception are equally considered), and generality (humans should count for everyone).³⁸ Moral cosmopolitanism is an offspring of natural law cosmopolitanism (see Chapter 2), goes back to Greek and Roman Antiquity, and was reactivated, for instance, by Christoph Martin Wieland (1733–1813) in the Age of Enlightenment. Martha Nussbaum’s concept of world citizenship is meant metaphorically and denotes membership in a worldwide moral community. As moral cosmopolitanism implies normative individualism, it clashes with multicultural or postmodern normative relativism.

Political cosmopolitanism usually argues for some sort of global legal world order. Habermas advocates a thin version of world government with layered sovereignty, David Held has developed a theory revolving around cosmopolitan democracy and cosmopolitan democratic law, others favour a strengthening of existing international political institutions, or the evolution of a global civil society.³⁹ Habermas is close to Kant, whereas Anacharsis Cloots (1755–94) envisioned a world government where states have been absorbed (see Chapters 4 and 5).

Cultural cosmopolitanism acknowledges the diversity of cultures across the globe, and claims that ‘we should recognize different cultures in their particularity’.⁴⁰ This implies the appreciation of cultural diversity and multicultural hybridization while rejecting (strong) nationalism, but also strong moral relativism. Cultural cosmopolitans work on the scope and limits of the ‘rights to culture’, cultural self-determination, and the rights of minority cultures. Georg Forster (1754–94) is a good example of an eighteenth-century cultural cosmopolitan, and in contrast to the superficial Fougeret de Monbron, he realized that it is difficult to free oneself from prejudice completely and admitted that he himself did not always succeed, while he was in fact rather successful in the enterprise (by challenging Eurocentric racist assumptions, for instance).⁴¹

In the eighteenth century, economic or commercial cosmopolitanism held ‘that the economic market should become a single global sphere of free trade’.⁴² Major representatives were Adam Smith and other intellectuals of the Scottish Enlightenment (see Chapter 3), but also the German Dietrich Hermann Hegewisch (1746–1812). In recent years, economic exchange unrestricted by state intervention has been attacked as neoliberalism, and economic cosmopolitanism has been reformulated by some philosophers in a way that includes elements of moral and political cosmopolitanism.⁴³ Epistemological cosmopolitanism is a way of thinking (‘global thinking’, according to Ulrich Beck), a cognitive orientation with the key feature of impartiality. It is a disposition which entails openness towards others, and an appreciation of diversity.⁴⁴

This taxonomy of cosmopolitanisms can be further refined. I will briefly mention romantic cosmopolitanism, patriotic cosmopolitanism and the cosmopolitisme littéraire towards the end of the eighteenth century in a later chapter. Cloots could be described as a representative of revolutionary or republican cosmopolitanism (see the end of Chapter 5). Francisco de Vitoria or John Locke (Chapter 2), William Penn and John Bellers (Chapter 3) are Christian cosmopolitans (just like today’s German theologian Hans Küng). We even find a ‘Christianized Ciceronian tradition of cosmopolis’ in sixteenth-century neo-Stoicism.⁴⁵ Thomas Paine or Kant might deserve the label early liberal cosmopolitans (or cosmopolitan liberals). Some equate legal or judicial cosmopolitanism with political cosmopolitanism, whereas others distinguish between them.⁴⁶ The various forms of cosmopolitanisms are quite different from each other, might clash, but could also overlap. At any rate, they can still be subsumed under the heading of ‘cosmopolitanisms’. As Charles Jones puts it: ‘Cosmopolitanism is actually a range of views – moral, political, and cultural – affirming the importance and value of the community of all human beings.’⁴⁷

We should not only distinguish among forms of cosmopolitanism. There is another dimension: all forms can come in thin (moderate, weak) or thick (strong, extreme) versions. Strong moral cosmopolitanism, for instance, claims that loyalties, affiliations and preferences at the local level can only be justified ‘by reference to the interests of all human beings considered as equals’. Thin moral cosmopolitanism, on the other hand, claims that the moral ideal of world citizenship is not the ultimate source of legitimization. This type of cosmopolitanism simply insists ‘that one’s local attachments and affiliations must always be balanced and constrained by considerations of the interests of other people’.⁴⁸ Here, local duties are not derived from duties to humanity as a whole. In the 1990s, Nussbaum started off as a strong moral cosmopolitan, now she seems to have moved towards a moderate version, endorsing openminded patriotism.⁴⁹ Appiah’s rooted cosmopolitanism is another form of weak moral cosmopolitanism. We will see that most authors in the following chapters favoured this thin or moderate version.

Cosmopolitans, especially adherents of moral cosmopolitanism, usually defend a form of moral or normative universalism. This leads us to the familiar debates with moral relativists, and attempts to mediate between these positions, or develop an alternative approach. I do not want to go into this any further. Suffice it to say that this problem will be with us in all the following chapters.⁵⁰

The state of the art and the aims of the book

The current interest in cosmopolitanism has led to publications which usually follow conventional academic disciplinary boundaries. The writers mentioned in a previous section are mostly philosophers, such as Martha Nussbaum, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Seyla Benhabib, Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas or Jürgen Habermas.⁵¹ Cultural histories, which are often highly specialized and cover the eighteenth century or later periods, are widespread. A fine example is the volume edited by Peter Uwe Hohendahl on patriotism and cosmopolitanism in Hamburg between 1700 and 1933.⁵²

Historical or cultural studies with a broader perspective are surprisingly rare. However, recently two excellent studies have been published. Margaret C. Jacob looks into early science and alchemy, into Masonic lodges, stock markets, international commerce and the radicalization of the late eighteenth century to show how everyday cosmopolitan practices led to new forms of engagement with strangers or unbelievers. Michael Scrivener illustrates how intellectuals in the eighteenth century tried to expand the public sphere, wrote against slavery, race and empire, or advocated Jewish emancipation.⁵³

Literary studies usually define cosmopolitanism in a broad sense, pick several authors and put them in context. Amanda Anderson, for instance, focuses on Charles Dickens and Oscar Wilde, among others, and defines cosmopolitanism as a practice which encompasses above all ‘the capacious inclusion of multiple forms of affiliation’ and the capacity of detachment, which in turn involves ‘an attempt to transcend partiality, interests, and context: it is an aspiration toward universality and objectivity’ (interestingly, this definition takes her close to epistemological cosmopolitanism).⁵⁴

Especially important for the present study are works in the fields of conceptual history and philosophical or intellectual history. An outstanding example is Andrea Albrecht’s dissertation on the cosmopolitan discourses in German-speaking countries around 1800. Derek Heater has offered a string of books on cosmopolitan themes, revolving around the theme of world citizenship.⁵⁵ Simone Zurbuchen’s focus is on the Swiss Enlightenment and the familiar tension between patriotisms and cosmopolitanisms, whereas Francis Cheneval’s seminal study discusses the political philosophy of cosmopolitanism in early European thought up to Kant.⁵⁶

This book tries to show how contemporary debates on cosmopolitanism could benefit from a deeper historical understanding. In an essay entitled ‘Emancipatory cosmopolitanism’, Jan Nederveen Pieterse states: ‘The relationship between cosmopolitanism and history is less often discussed. But cosmopolitanism that does not acknowledge its lineages and does not examine its positionality is unreflexive, unexamined cosmopolitanism.’ He claims that normative abstraction could be problematic and wants us to ‘bring history back in’.⁵⁷ By giving depth and texture to the concept of cosmopolitanism, this study attempts to practise the very selfreflexivity which is so central to philosophical discourse. It investigates cosmopolitan theories, their ramifications and developments in modern European history. It does not offer a comprehensive history of cosmopolitanisms or a conceptual history, but focuses on a neglected aspect, namely on the cosmopolitan dimension of international legal theory, from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, with an emphasis on the eighteenth.⁵⁸

According to traditional interpretation, the so-called ‘classical’ writers of international law like Vitoria, Grotius, Wolff or Vattel were cosmopolitans. The second chapter examines whether more recent interpretations should be preferred, where these writers are seen (and condemned) as accomplices of European colonialism and exploitation. Unlike some commentators such as Robert Williams or Brett Bowden, I argue for a nuanced assessment. The charge is rather justified in the case of Grotius, who was a lobbyist and ideologue of Dutch colonialism, and Vattel, who followed Locke’s agricultural argument, saw savage peoples as inferior and moved towards legal positivism, which in turn favoured Europeans. However, the indictment does not make sense in terms of Vitoria, Pufendorf or Wolff. Vitoria develops a form of moral cosmopolitanism and hints at legal cosmopolitanism. Pufendorf holds that there are no special rights for Europeans. Wolff presents the first culturally sensitive international legal theory, rejects the civilization or agricultural argument, and foreshadows Kant’s elaborate philosophy with elements of epistemological, moral, political and cultural cosmopolitanisms. As texts are often ambiguous or open to divergent interpretations, even Vattel is a difficult case. If some from Europe and the US used his writings to justify colonialism and imperialism, other passages were quoted by Chinese politicians to criticize imminent British military measures in the 1840s (though to no avail). I propose a rather lenient overall assessment of these authors, and point to the fallacy of another great narrative if a ‘totalizing Western legal discourse’ is constructed.

The third chapter looks at several eighteenth-century British authors. It seems that members of minorities like the Quakers (Penn and Bellers) or members of disadvantaged communities (like Fletcher) were especially liable to develop progressive, pan-European or cosmopolitan schemes. They endorsed various types of moral and political cosmopolitanisms. If they focused on Europe, their Europeanism was pacifist rather than imperialist. Penn in particular did not abandon or dilute his Christian, cosmopolitan attitude when dealing with the Native Americans. If we take a look at other British Enlightenment thinkers, we usually find a clear focus on the modern state, or a state-centred perspective: issues like the defence of religious and political liberties, the revolution of 1688 or the idea of patriotism were the centre of interest, as in Algernon Sidney or Joseph Priestley. If international relations issues were touched upon, the most frequent debates concerned standing armies and militias, the idea of a balance of power, or the fear of military or political hegemony. Hume, Smith, Paine and Bentham offered rather conventional international legal theories, and usually favoured economic cosmopolitanism over more supposedly flaky versions of moral or legal cosmopolitanism.

It is surprising how many contemporary authors seem to believe that Kant almost single-handedly invented or conceptualized modern cosmopolitanism. Daniel Chernilo, for instance, refers to ‘Kant’s pioneering translation of cosmopolitan principles into legal and institutional arrangements’,⁵⁹ ignoring the work of Wolff, Fletcher and others who simply did not just ‘prepare the ground’ for Kant. According to Walter D. Mignolo, Kant articulated the ‘civilizing global design’ of the ‘cosmopolitan project’.⁶⁰ I have already expressed my doubts about the so-called cosmopolitan project; I also doubt that Kant deserves a special place in its civilizing global design.

This undue emphasis on Kant is even more surprising as soon as we realize that many contemporary authors reject what Kant probably saw as his main contribution to the discourses on political cosmopolitanism: his qualified endorsement of a world state. Most present-day cosmopolitans vehemently deny that they favour a world state. Many also assert that Kant ‘was against it’. If interpreters read Kant as endorsing a world government, they offer a caricature rather than an apt description. Hedley Bull is an almost classic case in point (see Chapter 5). His misreading has recently been repeated by Michael Walzer:

there is a unified global state, something like Immanuel Kant’s ‘world republic’, with a single set of citizens, identical with the set of adult human beings, all of them possessed of the same rights and obligations. This is the form that maximum centralization would take: each individual, every person in the world, would be connected directly to the center.⁶¹

This is a parody of Kant’s ideal (see Chapter 4), and probably also of the plan which would come closest to Walzer’s exaggeration, that of Cloots (see end of Chapter 5).

My starting point in the fourth chapter is a paragraph of the Second Definitive Article of Perpetual Peace, where Kant characterizes the natural lawyers Grotius, Pufendorf and Vattel as leidige Tröster or ‘miserable comforters’. If we look at his arguments that are the basis of his restrained criticism we are led to his cosmopolitan contractualism: Kant takes social contract theory and normative individualism to their logical, cosmopolitan conclusion. The true Kantian legacy is striving for the partial realization of the idea of international right, a world federation with coercive powers. In practical politics, this also includes support and reform of the second best option, a free federation as the surrogate of this idea.

The fifth chapter offers a sketch of late eighteenth-century international legal theory, which seems to have abandoned all cosmopolitan elements. The chapter takes a closer look at certain authors (Vattel, Martini, Moser and Martens), analysing their methodologies and their underlying assumptions. I was particularly interested in what they wrote about the relationship between natural, voluntary and positive law, about the balance of power, about Europe, about peace projects, and about the right to wage war (their justwar theories). These lawyers believed in a common European, Christian culture, in a European society of states that were politically independent but culturally, historically and economically related to each other. They followed a general trend of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, when the last traces of cosmopolis and the societas humanis generis were gradually and partly replaced by the ideas of ‘Europe’ and ‘civilization’. They illustrate the transformation of the cosmopolitan discourses to Europeanism. In final sections, I present the fascinating theories of Robert Ward and Anacharsis Cloots. Ward, a qualified normative universalist, holds that Christianity is the true foundation of the law of nations, which has become a historical phenomenon. Cloots’s cosmopolitan republicanism envisions a world republic with departments, but without states.

According to a widespread assumption, cosmopolitans are in favour of open or porous borders, whereas communitarians or proponents of the so-called ‘Westphalian system’ of sovereign states opt for the right of communities to decide who may immigrate and who not. The sixth chapter analyses what the international lawyers Pufendorf, Vattel, Bluntschli and Verdross wrote about the right of immigration. All the authors argue for a qualified right of free movement. They differ in their respective background theories. Some are natural lawyers, some move towards legal positivism, some offer an eclectic, all-inclusive theory. But all reject the theory of absolute state sovereignty, a theory that was widespread in European legal theory roughly between 1870 and the First World War. Instead, they endorse a peculiar type of legal cosmopolitanism, something Hans Kelsen calls the primacy of international law over state law. They deal with a real problem concerning the right of immigration and the right of communities to determine who may come in and who not: Where do we draw the line, and how can we justify drawing it? They turn out to be halfway cosmopolitans: on the one hand, they argue for a qualified right of free movement. On the other hand, they accept that there is a fundamental asymmetry between those inside and those outside, and they see no reason to overcome this asymmetry. They wind up with some sort of middle position, which tries to balance out divergent claims.