Is the Republic Peaceful? : An Aspect of American International Political Thought in Hamilton and Madison

The purpose of this article is to shed light upon an aspect of American international political thought found in two prominent statesmen during the Founding Era, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. Efforts are made here (1) to unveil the general characters of the republican state that Hamilton and Madison hoped to establish on American soil; and, more mainly, (2) to show what view each had on the foreign policy typical of their republican state. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, the peacefulness of the republic was a commonsensical belief among many American as well as European intellectuals. This paradigm was however confronted with a formidable challenge at this crucial moment of American history because the very model of the republican constitution for the paradigm—the constitution of small-sized, often militia-based ‘virtuous’ republics in the ancient and early-modern era in Europe—was no longer applicable to the large-scale United States where commercial activities were becoming more common occupations among their citizens. For both Hamilton and Madison, therefore, it was an urgent task to elaborate a new form of the republican constitution the best suited to their newly independent American state; this attempt resulted in the emergence of new explanations for the peacefulness of the republic, which this article intends to reveal