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Article: Republicanism
- Article from:
- Europe, 1450 to 1789: Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World
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REPUBLICANISM
REPUBLICANISM.
Broadly defined, republicanism means a preference for nonmonarchical government and a strong dislike of hereditary monarchy. Narrowly defined, and in its early modern context, it means self-government by a community of citizens in a city-state.
Republicanism is a prominent concept in the history of political thought. Republican ideology claimed that citizens of republics enjoyed a liberty unknown to the subjects of monarchies because they were bound by laws that they themselves had made, not the personal whim of an individual monarch. In the early modern period, republicanism had special relevance in Italy (where Florence and Venice became the most famous ...