500 Years of Governance Because of a Misreading

Make sure to check out JC Hallman’s piece at The Millions on how a misreading of More’s Utopia essentially paved the way for most of the governmental theories since the Renaissance:

More wrote Utopia as a young man. Erasmus published it, and as he prepared it for press More hustled after blurbs like any budding author. But even he would have admitted that the initial rollout didn’t go quite as planned. He had hoped to appeal to an audience that would understand the book’s classical puns as invitation to an ironic interpretation. (Greek: “Utopia” = “no place.”) In other words, he wanted to criticize everything to book seemed to stand for. In actuality, More was a monarchist who defended private property, participated in Lutheran-burning, and later lost his head because he refused to sanction his king’s divorce.

His arid wit backfired this time. Within More’s lifetime, Utopia was cited as justification for communal property in the Peasant War, and was used as a blueprint for civic organization in towns in southern Mexico.

Also note that Hallman has a book on utopia (the idea, not the misread novel) coming out this summer.

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