How ‘Utopian’ is the Foreign Policy in Thomas More’s Utopia?

ABSTRACT

In his foundational text The Twenty Years’ Crisis: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations (1939), E. H. Carr juxtaposes utopian and realist approaches to world politics. This dichotomy, while modified since, remains at the core of most studies in the field. Carr cites Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) as representative of idealistic, wishful, and infantile utopian thinking. By taking Carr’s analysis of Utopia literally, this article examines the foreign policies depicted in More’s book. Since these policies include assassination, regime change, slavery, pre-emptive warfare, I argue that they can hardly be called utopian in any sense of the word. In light of this conclusion, I suggest that international relations theory should be founded on more accurate examples of its categories of thought, namely utopianism and realism.

KEYWORDS:

• Utopia
• utopianism
• Thomas More
• realism
• E. H. Carr

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Damian Grace, Katie Blake, the anonymous referees, and the copy editor for suggestions and corrections that improved the essay.

Notes

1. Manuel and Manuel, Utopian Thought in the Western World, 122.

2. Respectively, Paul, Thomas More, 50; Hexter, More’s ‘Utopia’, 11; and Ackroyd, Life of Thomas More, 171.

3. Kautsky, Thomas More and His Utopia; and Ames, Citizen Thomas More.

4. Mackie, The Early Tudors; and Campbell, More’s Utopia.

5. Pohl, “Utopianism after More,” 66–67; and Green, Thomas More’s Magician, 13–15ff.

6. Skinner,” Sir Thomas More’s ‘Utopia’”; Olin, ed., Interpreting More’s ‘Utopia’; Grace and Cousins, eds., More’s Utopia and the Utopian Inheritance; Wenzel, “‘Utopian Pluralism’; and Wilde, Thomas More’s ‘Utopia’.

7. Respectively, Dorsch, “Sir Thomas More and Lucian”; Abrash, “Missing the Point in More’s Utopia”; and Lewis, “A Jolly Invention”; and, more generally, Grace, Utopia: A Dialectical Interpretation.”

8. Avineri does examine some important aspects of the foreign policy of Utopia in “War and Slavery in More’s ‘Utopia’,” as we shall see, as does Shepard in “Utopia, Utopia’s Neighbors, Utopia, and Europe.”

9. Carr, Twenty Years’ Crisis was first published in 1939 and has remained in print since. In 2016 Michael Cox reissued it with a lengthy new preface to introduce the book to a new generation of political scientists studying international relations. The polarity of utopia and realism was thus given new life.

10. Cox, Introduction to Carr, Twenty Years’ Crisis, xxvii. Hereafter page numbers are cited in the text.

11. See Quick and Vigneswaran, “Construction of an Edifice.” Cf. Ashworth, “Did the Realist-Idealist Great Debate Really Happen?”

12. Bew, Realpolitik: A History, 178.

13. These are among the most widely read examples: Mearsheimmer, “E. H. Carr vs. Idealism”; Kubaikova, Onuf, and Koweit, “The Twenty Years’ Catharsis”; and Wilson, “The Twenty Years’ Crisis.”

14. Haslam, Vices of Integrity, 70.

15. Morgenthau spells out the fundamental Realist view in “The Political Science of E. H. Carr.”

16. See Beasley, Kaarbo, Lantis, and Snarr, eds., Foreign Policy in Comparative Perspective; Bruening, Foreign Policy Analysis; East, Salmon, and Hermann, Why Nations Act; Hagan, Political Opposition and Foreign Policy; Renshon and Welch-Larson, eds., Good Judgment in Foreign Policy, among others.

17. See Haslam, Vices of Integrity.

18. Cox, Preface to Carr, Twenty Years’ Crisis, lxxxi.

19. More, Utopia, 46. Hereafter page references are cited in the text.

20. Recent examples include Paul, Thomas More; and Bom, “Realism vs Idealism.”

21. Shepard, “Utopia, Utopia’s Neighbors, Utopia, and Europe,” 847.

22. Wegemer, Thomas More on Statesmanship, 142.

23. Ibid., 143.

24. See Mallett, Mercenaries and Their Masters.

25. See Avineri, “War and Slavery in More’s ‘Utopia’.”

26. Ibid., 261.

27. See Shepard, “Utopia, Utopia’s Neighbors, Utopia, and Europe,” for detail.

28. Avineri, “War and Slavery in More’s ‘Utopia’,” 289.

29. For a similar argument about the intellectual origins of Realism attributed to Niccolò Machiavelli, see Jackson and Moore, “Machiavelli’s Walls,” 447–85.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson, PhD, is emeritus professor of political theory at the University of Sydney, Australia. His latest book, co-authored with Damian Grace, is Machiavelliana (Brill, 2018).