SOURCE: Rosow, Stephen J. “Commerce, Power and Justice: Montesquieu on International Politics,” Review of Politics 46, 3 (1984): 346-66.

In this essay, Rosow explores the relationship between Montesquieu's study of history and his ideas about international politics, with a focus on the development of commerce.

What we remember most today as the liberal tradition of international relations theory are the free trade theories of the nineteenth century and the idealist theories of organization and world order of the early twentieth. That pre-nineteenth century formulations should have used liberal theories of commerce and international law explicitly as a realistic critique of military power seems all but lost. Although there has been a revival of what might be called a liberal-realist orientation to world politics by “neo-Grotian” theorists, our understanding of the liberal tradition in this respect still seems limited by the presumed dichotomy between realism and idealism.¹ The purpose of this essay...