ABSTRACT
This chapter articulates an imperial vision: the Commonwealth men, or 'classical republicans' or 'neo-Romans', for whom the conquests of Ireland and Scotland, as well as victory over the Dutch, were explained and applauded by an integrated theory of war, republicanism and empire-building. John Dillingham sought to limit the accumulation and concentration of land and wealth, and in the case of Ireland and Scotland to break the grip of the landowning elites on their tenantry. The implications and potential of policies were indeed radical, but that did not make either Harrington or his fellow republican ideologues democrats or Levellers. Scotland also differed from Ireland in that, while the English occasionally referred to it as a province, it was not, rhetorically or theoretically, treated as a colony, and upon that distinction rested the principle of a supposedly equal union. Modern republicanism, with its rhetorical commitment to popular sovereignty, and implication of national self-determination, seems logically inconsistent with empire.
