Reading and translating Algernon Sidney’s Discourses in early modern Germany

Abstract

ABSTRACT The manuscript of Algernon Sidney’s Discourses Concerning Government was used in evidence against him in the 1683 treason trial which cost the republican his life. The work’s attack on absolute monarchy and its justification of rebellion against tyrannical rulers were considered so inflammatory that it could not be published with impunity in England until after the Glorious Revolution and the lapse of the Licensing Act. It was eventually prepared for the press in 1698 by the Commonwealthman John Toland in collaboration with the printer and bookseller John Darby who were jointly responsible for establishing a whole canon of republican and Commonwealth works around this time. While a French edition of the Discourses was published in the Netherlands shortly afterwards, the first German edition of Sidney’s most famous work did not appear until almost a century later. Amidst the constitutional debates in the wake of the French Revolution, Sidney’s work was now employed in a new context to criticise tyrannical rule, while warning against violent excesses.