David Armitage is the Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History at Harvard University where he teaches intellectual history and international history. His many publications include The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2000), The Declaration of Independence: A Global History (2007) and, as editor, The British Atlantic World, 1500–1800 (2nd edition, 2009), British Political Thought in History, Literature and Theory, 1500–1800 (Cambridge University Press, 2006), Shakespeare and Early Modern Political Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2009) and The Age of Revolutions in Global Context, c.1760–1840 (2010).

• Introduction: rethinking the foundations of modern international thought; Part I. Historiographical Foundations: 1. The international turn in intellectual history; 2. Is there a pre-history of globalisation?; 3. The elephant and the whale: empires and oceans in world history; Part II. Seventeenth-Century Foundations: Hobbes and Locke: 4. Hobbes and the foundations of modern international thought; 5. John Locke's international thought; 6. John Locke, Carolina and the Two Treatises of Government; 7. John Locke: theorist of empire?; Part III. Eighteenth-Century Foundations: 8. Parliament and international law in eighteenth-century Britain; 9. Edmund Burke and Reason of State; 10. Globalising Jeremy Bentham; Part IV. Building on the Foundations: Making States since 1776: 11. The Declaration of Independence and international law; 12. Declarations of independence, 1776–2012.

'In this masterly set of essays, David Armitage considers the significance of globalization for the past history of the European state and the political thought it generated. He sets the agenda for the next phase of research and writing on the great subject.' J. G. A. Pocock, Folger Institute and Johns Hopkins University