ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on concepts discussed in this book. The book provides a few comments on the fate of the classical tradition. By the time of the American and French Revolutions, many enlightened thinkers had come to distrust the fierce bellicosity of the classical ideal of citizenship and to prefer a humane, peaceful, and commercial model of republicanism. Many were suspicious even of the primacy of politics in the classical republics, for modern liberals tended to be distrustful of the state and centralized power. Land-based empire was now perceived as an unmitigated evil, destructive even to the imperial power itself. New European empires were to arise overseas, but from this time on they would be justified not as imitations of imperial Rome but as the peaceful diffusion of European science and progress over a grateful globe. Even Rome herself, while she pretended to glory in being free, endeavoured to subject and enslave the rest of mankind.
