Profile Major Works Resources

James Harrington, 1611-1677.

English social philosopher. 

James Harrington's 1656 tract, the Commwealth of Oceana, was written in the tumult of the Cromwellian "Interregnum".  Harrington advocated the setting up of a state run by the landed aristocracy, albeit with a written constitution and restrictions on amount of land-holdings to balance the power.  Although largely ignored by contemporaries in England, Harrington's vision of "agrarian republicanism" was particularly influential on the leaders of the American Revolution a century later.

 

  

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Major Works of James Harrington

  • The Commonwealth of Oceana , 1656. [1700 ed; 1887 ed] [McM]
  • The Prerogative of Popular Government, a politicall discourse in two books: the former containing the first Praeliminary of Oceana, inlarged, interpreted, and vindicated, from all such mistakes or slanders as have been alledged against it under the notin of objections, the Second Concerning Ordination, against Dr. H. Hammond, Dr. L. Seaman and the authors they follow. 1658 [bk]

 
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Resources on James Harrington

 

 
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