17th century

The seventeenth century marks a transition in political theory from contracts understood as agreements between a people and its ruler to theories grounded in agreement among the members of a state. In the account of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s political thought, this shift matters because it changes the question from whether a ruler has kept an inherited bargain to what could make political association legitimate in the first place.

A Changing Social-Contract Theory

The earlier contract model had medieval roots and drew support from biblical precedent. It remained influential among major political writers of the sixteenth century and continued into the seventeenth. Its central image was an agreement between the people and the government, with the ruler bound by mutual obligations to govern constitutionally. Appeals to the customs of the “good old times” under Edward the Confessor could thus be reformulated as demands that a king honor the original contract.

The model could also support a more submissive interpretation: if a people had once surrendered itself to its rulers, it might seem to have no further claim against their treatment. The account emphasizes, however, that theologians who were also lawyers generally understood contract as reciprocal obligation. The language of the contract gave popular resistance a recognized form, even when the argument appealed to the king to respect inherited constitutional terms.

In the seventeenth century, the competing model—an agreement among the individuals who make up the state—became increasingly important. The 1689 Convention Parliament accused James II of breaking the contract between king and people, while Thomas Hobbes defended the second form of contract and Algernon Sidney adhered to the first. Their positions show that the century’s debate was not a simple contest between royal authority and popular liberty: contract theory itself could be made to serve sharply different accounts of political obligation.

Right, Fact, and Political Legitimacy

The discussion distinguishes the historical description of governments from the principles that could justify them. Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s project is presented not as an account of the actual institutions of existing states, but as an inquiry into the essential principles of every legitimate society. Historical facts may help political inquiry, yet, on this account, a fact cannot by itself give rise to a right. The issue is therefore not only how political societies have formed, but what makes their authority rightful.

That distinction also frames the criticism of Hugo Grotius. Grotius is described as repeatedly establishing right by appeal to fact, with slavery offered as an example of human power. The account warns that this reasoning can favor tyrants: the existence of domination does not establish its legitimacy. Against the image of peoples as herds of cattle kept by rulers for their own purposes, the social-contract problem becomes how a common political force can protect each associate without making that person subject to another’s arbitrary will.

The State’s Scale and Its Government

The seventeenth century’s political questions sit within a broader analysis of how a state’s size affects its ability to govern. A state has a maximum strength it cannot exceed without losing power through expansion; as the social bond stretches, a small state may be stronger in proportion than a great one. Distance makes administration burdensome, while layers of authority—from city and district to province and higher governments—draw resources from the people without necessarily governing them better.

Territory and population must also be considered together. The land should sustain its inhabitants, and the population should be proportionate to what the land can support. Excess territory is difficult to guard and cultivate and may provoke defensive wars; insufficient territory makes a state dependent on neighbors and can lead to wars of aggression. Because fertility, climate, consumption, and population growth differ, there is no single numerical rule for the proper relation. The text accordingly presents political judgment as a matter of fitting institutions and scale to particular conditions.

Governmental form is likewise treated as conditional rather than universally best. In general, democracy suits small states, aristocracy those of middle size, and monarchy great ones, though circumstances can create exceptions. More fundamentally, the government tends to act against the sovereign people: as that pressure grows, the constitution changes, and the ruler may eventually suppress the sovereign and break the social compact. The state’s political health thus depends not merely on choosing a form of government but on maintaining the distinction between those who execute authority and the people who hold sovereignty.

Institutional Origins and Religious Authority

The account’s discussion of early Rome illustrates how political arrangements could grow out of military organization. After Rome’s foundation, the army of its founder—Albans, Sabines, and foreigners—was divided into three tribes, each subdivided into ten curiae and then into decuriae. Each tribe also supplied a body of one hundred equites. These divisions, initially military, anticipated a political structure for a city that would grow far beyond its beginnings.

The original division produced an imbalance as the foreign population increased and its tribe, the Luceres, outgrew the Alban and Sabine tribes. Servius responded by replacing the racial basis of division with residence: he created four tribes, each associated with one of Rome’s hills, and prevented inhabitants from moving between districts. The example connects institutional change to population and social composition, showing a system revised to correct an immediate disparity while anticipating future growth.

Political authority is also linked to religion. The text describes early peoples as having gods, rather than human kings, as their rulers; because different peoples recognized different gods, national division encouraged polytheism and theological as well as civil intolerance. It distinguishes a private, inward religion of morality from a civic religion tied to a particular nation, its gods, rites, and laws, and from a third kind that gives people competing rulers and obligations. These contrasts extend the period’s questions about political unity: religious allegiance could reinforce a state’s laws, but divided authority could also undermine the unity on which political order depended.