Sigonio in Anglo-American Projects to Reform the Imperial Constitution, 1751–1777

This chapter explores Carlo Sigonio’s long-term impact by zooming in on the nascent United States of America. It shows that Sigonio was seen as a leading comparative constitutional historian and one of the most cited authorities that would-be reformers turned to in the intense debate on the reform of the British imperial constitution in the second half of the eighteenth century. His analyses of the Roman Empire yielded timeless lessons for metropolitan and colonial administrators alike. Most importantly, Sigonio structured his studies of Roman, Athenian, Hebrew, and medieval Italian laws and customs in a way that revealed these complex historical states’ constitutional essence, making comparative analysis possible. This chapter shows why American lawyers, British politicians, and merchants and soldiers with a true British–American identity, explicitly drew on Sigonio’s analysis of Roman colonization in several reform plans for the British Empire, with particular attention to the American colonies.

Roman Colonies and the Distribution of Land before Sigonio

This chapter examines the work of Renaissance historians of Roman colonization before Carlo Sigonio, from Andrea Fiocchi to Niccolò Machiavelli and Onofrio Panvinio. It shows that these earlier scholars, by thinking about Roman colonialism against the backdrop of Hapsburg power in Europe and in the New World, explored the idea of an empire that could be understood not just in terms of power but also in terms of territory, geographical control, and the practical administration of conquered land. Analysing the gradual rediscovery of the ancient Roman empire and its institutions in the fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth century, this chapter assesses the most significant advances that Sigonio made in respect to this humanist tradition. Sigonio added a crucial piece of evidence to the discourse on Roman colonial policies and linked historical discussions of agrarian laws and policy to historical accounts of the establishment of colonies.

Roman Colonization in Twentieth-Century Historiography

This chapter discusses the development of the Roman colonial discourse after the pivotal studies of Niebuhr and Mommsen. It shows how a juridical perspective on Roman colonization prospered especially in Italy, where the new sociological wave that had fundamentally changed German scholarship never really took root. The approach of scholars like Ettore di Ruggiero and Plinio Fraccaro, characterized by fluid juridical categories and sensibility for historical change, resulted in very innovative studies and crucial new insights, which however have found little support in the international academic community. The chapter shows how the marginalization of this academic tradition can be explained by the fact that in recent scholarship, Roman colonization is predominantly studied in the context of Roman imperialism or urbanism. It provides several examples of how specialized juridical insights and discussions strongly affect historical reconstructions of Roman imperial strategies and fundamentally alter our understanding of Roman colonial landscapes.

Introduction

This chapter shows the relevance of Carlo Sigionio’s reconstruction of Roman colonial practices for the history and theory of settler colonialism. It discusses how Sigonio’s analysis of Roman colonization as a vehicle of social emancipation implicitly criticized Venetian colonial strategies in the Eastern Mediterranean, and sketches its impact on European visions of overseas colonialism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, highlighting English and Dutch examples of settler colonialism between Batavia (Jakarta) and Savannah, Georgia. For Sigonio, the Roman colony could be characterized as a well-ordered agrarian landscape concerned with protecting the property claims and political rights of a clearly defined community of citizen–farmers. With his detailed study of Roman colonial law and practice, Sigonio showed that there was a historical foundation for settler colonialism to work effectively. His reconstruction of the Roman settler colony made it possible to conceive of a colonial utopia as a concrete colonial practice.

Epilogue

This chapter argues that it is time to depart from Sigonio’s strict legalistic line of thought and the connected scholarly tradition that is almost exclusively concerned with reinterpreting the relatively late Greco-Roman sources. It advocates a more fluid and locally variable understanding of Roman republican colonization, based on new intellectual models that may be found in the historiography of imperialism more generally. In particular, Lauren Benton’s seminal work on geography and law in European imperialism offers an intellectual framework worth exploring. The complex picture of partial and divided sovereignty, far removed from the classic notion of indivisible sovereignty, permits more messy and complex pictures of colonial agency that agree comfortably with recent trends in the study of Roman colonization practices.

Roman Colonization and Land Division between Enlightenment and Romanticism

This chapter analyses the development of Roman legal colonial discourse in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, focusing on the studies of Louis de Beaufort and Barthold Georg Niebuhr, who are generally considered to have revolutionized Roman studies by their critical approach to the literary sources. Beaufort’s attempt to disconnect Roman land-distribution programmes from colonization schemes was part of a wider anti-feudal political agenda, advocating the redistribution of land to diminish aristocratic power and improve the living conditions of lower classes. Niebuhr continued this interest in Roman land division policies, focusing especially on the legal definition of different types of landholding and of the personal status of the farmers. His detailed studies convincingly showed the legal differences between colonial programmes and viritane land division schemes. Moreover, he argued that this last practice was restricted only to public lands, and was not used to redistribute private properties of aristocratic landowners.

The Mommsen of the Renaissance

This chapter discusses Carlo Sigonio’s view on Roman colonization within the overall structure and aims of his treatises and assesses their achievement in the light of modern scholarship. By analysing in detail the structure of Sigonio’s collected work De antiquo iure populi Romani, the chapter argues that Sigonio’s innovative perspective on Roman colonial strategies was the result of his decision to use the concept of graded ius to organize and analyse his source material. This lucidity of structure, together with a thorough treatment of literary and epigraphic evidence, gave Sigonio’s treatises a quality unmatched by the productions of his peers and ensured that on many topics they were not surpassed until the nineteenth century. The chapter shows how Sigonio arrived at his original approach, providing a detailed overview of his studies, his close contacts with other leading academics, and the important new source material that became available at the time.