Anarchy with a tendency to order

"Everyone is convinced that this book lacks method, that there is neither plan nor order and that after one has read it one doesn't know what he has read."
So ran Voltaire's take on Montesquieu's On the spirit of laws (1748), a sentiment that resonates among readers to this day.
This study seeks to recover Montesquieu's meaning by placing his work in its historical context. Taking its cues from eclectic targets and foils, it demonstrates how he sought to couch an "unnatural" argument-that states become stronger by giving primacy to property rights, and restraining their own proclivity for expansion-in terms that might make it palatable to his target audience.
This fresh approach casts the work in a light as instructive for political theorists as intellectual historians. Montesquieu's theory emerges as a bridge between two aspects of the modern theory of the state-the 17th century emphasis on its military function, and the later focus on the economy-in short, between Hobbes and Adam Smith.

Stephen Butler is Lecturer in the Department of English and History at Ulster University, UK.