Towards Great Britain

This study concentrates on the discussion of commercial and military hegemony in England during the late seventeenth century. Close attention is paid to the texts of the republican martyr Algernon Sidney (1623–1683) and the prominent Tory pamphleteer Charles Davenant (1656–1714). It is argued that the convergence of Machiavellian republicanism and mercantilism was a crucial intellectual precondition of England's rise to predominance in Europe.