The sword is a mighty pen: changing concepts of treason and the state beyond Hobbesian origin myths

Abstract

What if the notion of the state was not first conceived of in political theory, nor traceable to Thomas Hobbes, but gradually articulated through humdrum statutory formulations? Through a study of treason statutes in the wake of the English Reformation of the 1530s, this article traces how the state was first framed as an abstract, impersonal entity against changing notions of treason. Thus, the article challenges established narratives that trace the state’s conceptual origins to Hobbes (or, more obstinately, Westphalia). Through Tudor treason statutes, I show how allegiance was gradually transposed from the person of the ruler to the state or realm itself, thus bringing about the state as a subject of loyalty long before it appeared in canonical texts. Methodologically, the article advances an embedded or relational approach to conceptual change in that it demonstrates how key transformations in political authority often arise from peripheral concepts and sites, such as administrative practices, rather than from innovations in core theoretical categories. In doing so, I contribute to recast the conceptual foundations of International Relations by foregrounding the everyday practices and state utterances through which political authority became thinkable—long before it was rationalized in political theory.