ABSTRACT
Up to this point in my account of literary manifestations of cosmopolitanism, I have focused on political and religious ideologies and have ignored the role of commerce. But as historians of early modern political thought have shown, commercial interests constituted an important factor in the rise of the Enlightenment ideal of the world citizen. 1 Furthermore, commerce was often viewed optimistically as countervailing what were perceived as the violent and backward-looking forces of tribe and nation. For example, in 1711, Joseph Addison and Richard Steel, describing the dizzying mixture of peoples, faiths, and languages on the floor of the Royal Exchange in London, arrived at an optimistic philosophical ideal of classical cosmopolitanism: “I am infinitely delighted in the mixing with these several Ministers of Commerce, as they are distinguished by their different Walks and different Languages: Sometimes I am jostled among a body of Armenians: Sometimes I am lost in a Crowd of Jews, and sometimes make one in a Groupe of Dutch-men. I am a Dane, Swede, or French-Man at different times, or rather fancy myself like the old Philosopher, who upon being asked what Countryman he was, replied, That he was a Citizen of the World.” 2 It should be clear that one of my aims in this book has been to correct the widely accepted historical narrative of cosmopolitanism as having its origins in the Enlightenment values of free commercial exchange and secular philosophical reason, embodied in this passage. As we have seen, the history of early modern cosmopolitanism is far more nuanced, having its roots in a complex secular engagement with the Roman Catholic conception of the Christian commonwealth. In this chapter, I show that in the wake of the Restoration, Aphra Behn’s perspective on commercial cosmopolitanism was as conservative as it was groundbreaking, revealing a complex combination of nostalgia for and derision towards the national rivalries and international conflicts of an earlier age.
