Between the early seventeenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, major European political thinkers first began to look outside their national borders and envisage a world of competitive, equal sovereign states inhabiting an international sphere that ultimately encompassed the whole globe. In this insightful and wide-ranging work, David Armitage - one of the world's leading historians of political thought - traces the genesis of this international turn in intellectual history. Foundations of Modern International Thought combines important methodological essays, which consider the genealogy of globalisation and the parallel histories of empires and oceans, with fresh considerations of leading figures such as Hobbes, Locke, Burke and Bentham in the history of international thought. The culmination of more than a decade's reflection and research on these issues, this book restores the often overlooked international dimensions to intellectual history and recovers the intellectual dimensions of international history.

大衛·阿米蒂奇（David Armitage）是哈佛大學勞埃德·布蘭剋費恩講座教授，教授思想史和國際史。主要著作有：《大英帝國的意識形態起源》（The Ideological Origins of the British Empire ）(劍橋大學齣版社，2000)、《獨立宣言：一部全球史》（The Declaration of Independence: A Global History ）(2007)；參與的編著有：《1500-1800年間的英國大西洋世界》（British Atlantic world,1500-1800）（劍橋大學齣版社，2006）、《莎士比亞與近代早期的政治思想》（Shakespeare and Early Modern Political Thought）（劍橋大學齣版社，2009）和《全球語境下的革命時代（1760-1840）》（The Age of Revolutions in Global Context，C. 1760-1840）（2010）。