Politics and the New scholarship: "Tacitist" Political Counsel and the Dutch Revolt

• In Event: Individual Advice and Common Voices: The Politics of Counsel in Early Modern Europe III

Abstract

This paper will investigate examples of how the terms and categories of Reason of State and/or 'Tacitist' political thought were introduced, accepted, or resisted in political counsel or decision-making during the Dutch Revolt (1560s to 1640s). Some political counsellors or secretaries employ the then modern and controversial political thought originating in Reason of State and Tacitism. Examples are Jean Hotman (the Earl of Leicester's secretary in the Low Countries), Justus Lipsius (who repeatedly acted as political advisor to the Archdukes of the Southern Netherlands), Hugo Grotius (who occupied a position very close to the government of the province of Holland), and Vergilio Malvezzi (counsellor at the Spanish Habsburg government). Understanding their struggle to negotiate the acute gap between conventional political ethics and those of Reason of State was acute is essential to our understanding the political thought of that period.

Author

• Jan Hendrik Waszink, Universiteit Leiden