‘So they gave their bodies to the commonwealth’:

Abstract

This article examines the entanglement between classical studies and the ideology of liberal imperialism in Alfred Zimmern’s political thought. An eminent British liberal internationalist and leading early scholar of International Relations, Zimmern began his academic career as a classicist and published a markedly influential monograph in 1911, The Greek Commonwealth. The present article first analyses Zimmern’s account of fifth-century BC Athenian citizenship, provided in this classical treatise. It then dissects the ways in which this view of Athenian citizenship shaped his scheme for a British Commonwealth. I also illuminate how Zimmern’s depiction of the Athenian city-state influenced the British Empire vision of Lionel Curtis, the key ideologue of the pro-imperial Round Table movement. The article advances two main arguments. First, Zimmern’s idealized notion of fifth-century Athens and, in particular, of its republican citizenship provided a prototype for him and Curtis to theorize a British Commonwealth. Second, Edmund Burke’s justification of the political serviceability of private ethics had a critical impact on Zimmern’s conception of Greek and imperial citizenship.