Western Republicanism and the Oriental Prince

Patricia Springborg previously taught political theory at the University of Canterbury and has held visiting positions at both the Universities of California (Berkeley) and Pennsylvania. She has also been Reader in the Department of Government at the University of Sydney, and has authored The Problem of Human Needs and the Critique of Civilisation and Royal Persons: Patriarchal Monarchy and the Feminine Principle.

• Acknowledgements. Introduction.Part I. The Greek Polis Versus the 'Great King':.1. Pluralistic Structures and State Power.2. Greeks and Barbarians, Freedom and Slavery.3. Ionian Historia and Kulturgeschichte.4. Polybius, on Monarchy, Freedom and Tyranny.5. Patronage, Magnificence and Title to Rule.6. Plato and the Egyptian Story.7. Hesiod and Oriental Cosmogonies.8. Foundation Myths and their Modes.9. Philological Evidence: Gods, Goddesses and Place Names.10. Herodotus, Diodorus, Isocrates and the Historical Record.Part II. Renaissance Republicanism and the Eastern Marcher Lord: 1. Republic and Empire.2. Aristotelian Republicanism or Renaissance Platonism?.3. The Roman Legacy: Justice, Peace, Harmony and Grandezza.4. Machiavelli on Hellenistic Expansionism and Economic Needs.5. Machiavelli, the Marcher Lords and War.6. Machiavelli and Polybius on the Predatory and Personalistic State.7. Polybius and Machiavelli on Patronage and Corruption.8. The Islamic Mirrors of Princes.9. Ibn Khaldun and the Cycle of Regimes.10. La Serenissima and the Sublime Porte.Conclusion.References.

'Patricia Springborg takes as the centre of her history of Western politics kingship instead of the city state, Egypt and Mesopotamia instead of Greece and Rome, and obliges us to look at the Greco-Roman West in a Hellenistic and Nilotic perspective. The result is a brilliant inversion of what she considers to be a perversion of history, and may well become a classic of post-liberal or neo-liberal thinking.' J. G. A. Pocock, Johns Hopkins University 'A bold book ... Western Republicanism and the Oriental Prince is a call to modern historiography to be more open-minded on the one hand, and more sceptical on the other.' Times Higher Education Supplement