This was the report I produced on my week-long internship as a research assistant for one of the many projects at the Faculty of English in the holiday between Hilary and Trinity of 2024. It was originally supposed to be around 2000 words, but I got slightly carried away and wrote almost 6000. My job was to closely read Penn’s Essay and analyse his argument in context. Overall, despite some overconfident dismissals of problems, I thought it was genuinely impressive how he managed to cram such a forward-looking proposal into about ten pages. I also enjoyed the more exegetical side of this task, compared to the standard PPE work, it was reminiscent of HSC English.

Introduction

William Penn’s “An Essay towards the Present and Future Peace of Europe” is a remarkably short piece given its subject matter; one would expect a peace plan for a continent with as complex political requirements as 17th-century Europe to be huge and labyrinthine. While this brevity comes at the cost of intellectual rigour and specification of detail, to dwell on this point is to miss the broader purpose of Penn’s essay. It is perhaps only by painting in broad, optimistic strokes a vision of a collaborative, peaceful Europe that he was able to successfully fulfil his main mission of placing peace squarely onto the political agenda – which, given his tumultuous context, was reasonably his immediate goal. Once the conversation has started, Penn’s ultimate goal of achieving peace may also be realised.

Analysis of the Essay

Sect. I: Peace and its importance

While it may seem from the title that the purpose of the essay is to advance a particular system that could foster European peace, I think this section proves that the primary objective of Penn revolves around the importance of peace and his desire to place it squarely on the agenda of statesmen of his time – his plan is only instrumental. In other words, I think if peace was achieved through another means, Penn would gladly see that as a success; likewise, if his plan was implemented and led to bloodshed, he would think it overall a failure.

I draw this conclusion from two main pieces of evidence. Structurally, Penn writes about peace as his first and foremost section – ensuring peace is thus the most fundamental and primary objective – from which the rest of the essay expands on, before cyclically returning to similar points on the importance of peace in the final Sect. X. Secondly, the wording used to describe the proposed method to achieve peace at the end of this section, that his plan is the “best means of peace”, clearly emphasises that peace is his goal.

Sect. II: Justice as his method towards peace

From the start of this section, Penn makes it clear that he envisions ‘justice’ as the tool for achieving peace. While he does not spell out explicitly the details of such justice, leaving readers to wonder if he has a procedural or substantive sense of justice in mind, the passages in Sect. II nonetheless offer rich insight into his substantive justice.

That aggressors “are generally moved by ambition; the pride of conquest and greatness of dominion more than Right” (emphasis my own) suggests that a just outcome is right, which is a substantive kind of justice, stemming from principles of morality and fairness. It is clear that for Penn, communication plays a central role in achieving justice, his conception of justice in this Section is more or less summarised as he looks to the “Success of Embassies, that so often prevent war by hearing the pleas and memorials of justice in the hands and mouths of the Wronged Party”, concluding that “War cannot in any sense be justified, but open wrongs received, and right, upon complaint, refused” (all emphases my own).

Communication serves as the bridge between both aspects of Penn’s justice: a procedural justice (facilitated by the proper functioning of the institution he proposes), embodied in communication, is necessary to achieve substantive justice – Rightness. I note that structurally, Penn tackles ‘justice’ in the same way as he does ‘peace’: he starts by talking about the outcomes (peace itself and substantive justice), which are his main goals, before talking about how to achieve them (his proposed Assembly). The opposite position to mine is that since his Assembly is given as the best way to achieve both outcomes, that is evidence to conclude why it is Penn’s first priority. However, I think that after I have laid this out as such, this line of argument is clearly mistaken: how can something instrumental (his Assembly) be more important than what it is supposed to achieve (peace and justice)? Indeed, justice itself is instrumental too, its purpose being to achieve peace – what I argue to be Penn’s final goal.

Penn ends by recapping (what I have endeavoured to make clear) his argument: “Peace is maintained by Justice, which is a fruit of Government”. That substantive justice is achieved through the operations and procedural functioning of government links well to Sect. III, where Penn moves into developing the procedural part of his justice.

Sect. III: Institutions and Procedural Justice

In this section, Penn refers to social contract theories, endorsing a view bearing clear intellectual resemblance to Hobbes and Locke, where, while acknowledging that in a state of nature, individuals enjoy natural rights, by coming together and forming a ‘Government’ they “receive the returns of protection”, a form of peace (linking back to his overall purpose), and implicitly, a higher good, better than freedom in nature where one is “at his own peril”.

There is significant evidence here that Penn sees justice also as the Rule of Law, not least in the first sentence, that “Government is … a restraint upon all disorder; just weights… that one may not injure another, nor himself, by intemperance” (emphases and simplification my own). He explores the procedural aspects of justice – an outcome is ‘just’, so long as it is arrived at via proper means (in this case, by the proper functioning of Government, an argument he mirrors for his Assembly) – summing up justice as the execution of “the Law, [holding one man and his antagonist] in indifferent hands”.

Penn did not conceive of an active separation of powers between the legislative, judicial, or executive branches; all are roles of ‘the Government’. A very explicit quote for the judicial function of the Government is that it “has sessions, terms, assizes, and parliaments, to overrule Men’s passions”. The executive role of the Government in enforcing decisions is seen in how the ‘depravity of human nature’ justifies “Compulsion some way or other” by the Government. Finally, the legislative function of Government, on the other hand, is self-evident in the nature of parliaments but the social contract (the body politic coming up with their own laws to obey). In later sections, Penn also assigns all three roles to his Assembly; this makes sense as the Assembly is a direct supranational analogue to the Government where member states are analogues to the People.

As a modern reader from a country with a deeply entrenched separation of powers, it is difficult to imagine the legitimacy (a concept closely linked with procedural justice) of a government that sets its own laws and judges them. But it is important to keep in mind that writers in the past did not have these conceptual distinctions that have since developed and become ubiquitous in the modern day, and so it is understandable why Penn may have lacked the precision we are used to in these topics. However, it is a testament to his vision that Penn still grasped this issue of self-administration of justice to some degree – at the level of the individual – wisely remarking that “No man is judge in his own cause”, and must instead obey the “rules of their own [the body politic] making” though he failed to see apply the same reasoning to the Government itself.

Sect. IV: General Overview of his Assembly

This section finally introduces Penn’s plan for his Assembly. Building on his brief mention of the social contract in the last section, and mirroring the move from a state of nature to civil society via a social contract between individuals, he espouses a similar move toward his supranational institution, bourne out of a similar international contract between European states.

There are two main problems with his plan. The first is that, like the executive function of Government in the last section, it is expected that adherence to the decisions of this Assembly will also be enforced with threats of force, if necessary. However, it is ironic that it is supposedly through violence (or threats thereof) that peace is reached, and it is not obvious at all whether such a strategy is effective. The second is that mirroring the move from the individual social contract to a supranational contract is not as simple as Penn makes it out to be; he does not properly comprehend the challenges to sovereignty such a body would entail. A direct analogue would imply that, like individuals in a society, European states give up their sovereignty to the Assembly, instead making new Europe-wide laws. This poses a serious challenge to the viability and appeal of Penn’s proposal, it seems few states will be willing to give up their ‘natural [state] rights’. These are not trivial problems and merit further exploration, which I unpack in the next section of this essay.

Sect. V: Just war

In this section and the next, Penn considers in some detail the nature of warfare (particularly warfare with the motivation of seizing territory). He posits violence can be categorised into three categories: defence against (unjust) invasion – to “Keep what is one’s Right” (emphasis my own), to ‘recover’ territory lost recently or historically, or to aggressively expand – to ‘add’.

I think there are two interpretations of what Penn says about the final category, expansion: “This Last [aggressive expansion] will find no Room in the Imperial States [his assembly]”. The more convincing claim is that such aggression will invariably be seen as unjust by the Assembly – an “They [the Assembly] are an unpassable Limit to that Ambition [to expand]” – which, like all other uncooperative states, would be met with the full force of militaristic response by the rest of the Assembly. The more extreme claim is that Penn believes expansion will not happen once his Assembly is in place, the threat of the combined might of the rest of the states will prevent any attempts at expansion. This second claim is just a special case of the first claim, and I explore its convincingness in the next section along with the rest of Penn’s problems.

The second problem raised in this section is how vaguely defined the ‘recovery’ of territory is. While Penn attempts to answer this in Sect. VI, I submit that it is more complex and rich than at first sight.

Finally, Penn says defence and recovery may “come as soon as they please” and “find the Justice of the Sovereign Court”, meaning that its justness would be assessed by the rest of the assembly (their decision will determine the response of the rest of the states to the violence). It is a fascinating detail that he uses the term Court – and whether this indicates a separate judicial branch of the Assembly (quite an unlikely interpretation), or expresses that the Assembly is operating in a judicial capacity (the more likely one). Further, whether this is sufficient royal context for this to refer to a Royal court (more or less government), or a court of law is unclear to me. Further research into contemporary usage of the word and royal/judicial structures across Europe (which Penn was no doubt familiar with) may prove to be fruitful in grasping the nuances of Penn’s plan.

Sect. VI: Background for just war; change vs status quo

Continuing in the above spirit where justness of violence is assessed by the ‘Sovereign Court’, Penn starts this section with a reaffirmation of procedural justice: “What is Right? … That is fitter for the Sovereign States [the Assembly] to resolve than me”. This alone is a perfectly serviceable, albeit a little lacking in detail, position on the matter: that setting up the Assembly is sufficient, and the rest of the details of implementation will follow. However, Penn endeavours to give a more substantial account of the rightness and justness of violence too, for which he looks to historical ownership of territory.

Possession of territory – ‘Title’ – is rightful, claims Penn, when it is a “long and undoubted Succession”, “by election”, “by marriage”, “by purchase”, or “by conquest” (the latter in the form of agreed-upon peace treaties). He notes that conquest is “morally speaking, only questionable” but valid, though empires of conquest “expire with the power of the possessor to defend them”. There are two avenues of further exploration here.

First, recall from Sect. V that the most convincing interpretation of Penn’s claim about conquest is that it is invariably unjust, while in this passage it is as if he thinks conquest could be valid if it is confirmed in a treaty. While this may seem to be a contradiction, Penn can point out a difference in that treaty is a conclusion of violent conquest, compared to an active fighting zone that remains contested by multiple parties. It is noteworthy that he employs the term ‘defence’ – that it is up to the “possessor to defend them” – following the conclusion of a treaty, the land is now legitimately owned by the new possessor, whose militaristic response to enemy aggression is rightful defence. There appears to be a genuine complexity, however, upon recalling that both recovery and defence can be rightful, so it seems in this case if the original owner of the territory were to launch an attack in the name of recovery, both parties have a claim to justness. However, recall from above that the justness of defence and recovery claims depends on the decision of the Assembly. This way, Penn can stay flexible and defer the case-by-case judgment (taking into account contextual factors and other reasons around the claim) to the whole Assembly, which would then be enforced by the rest of the Assembly. Whether or not Penn himself was aware that his theory accounted for this problem is unclear, but in any case, I think this is a neat solution.

The next avenue of exploration continues from the last point and is historical. Borders of states, long before the time of Penn’s writing, were determined through long histories of conquest and retaliation, to such a point that there is a very blurry conceptual distinction between his categories of ‘recovery’ and ‘conquest’. Recognising this problem of regress – “From what Time Titles shall take their Beginning, or how far back we may look to confirm or dispute them?” – and thus making some attempt to address this, Penn offers the territorial boundaries per the Treaties of Nijmegen as a “beginning”, serving as a working definition of the rightful borders of various states. While this move has some reasoning behind it, such as that it achieved some sense of peace between the major powers of Europe. However, as with any decision over contested land borders, one side is favoured and the other is displeased – the very fact that the Treaties of Nijmegen did not lead to lasting peace is real-life evidence of this – and so these choices are in practice much more difficult than Penn makes them out to be, and an arbitrary decision, such as using the borders of Nijmegen, will not suffice. Even a decision made by the Assembly backed with a threat of collective action, may not suffice if the terms are bad enough that one state is incentivised to wage war anyway. Ultimately, Penn’s failure to grasp the true severity of this problem of settling state borders may prove to be a challenging problem for his peace plan.

Sect. VII: Composition of Assembly

This section gives some details on the composition of the assembly, the most significant part of which is that Penn conceives of a democratic system, with each state granted a certain number of votes in proportion to the “Inequality of the Princes and States”, that is, the relative powers and “Value of the Territory” of states. Suggested proxies for measuring territorial value are all wealth-based: land revenue, exports and imports, books of rates (customs duties), and government tax surveys, all of which are serviceable and sensible, and indicate a good degree of thought from Penn.

Ultimately, he gives an example (that he humbly admits is “at Random”) of a possible proportioning of votes, granting Germany 12, France and Spain 10 each, Italy 8, England 6, Portugal 3, Sweden 4, Denmark 3, Poland 4, Venice 3, the Dutch Republic (‘Seven Provinces’) 4, Switzerland (‘the Thirteen Cantons and little Neighbouring Sovereignties’) 2, and the Dukedoms of Holstein and Courland 1. The important part comes next: that “if the Turks and Muscovites are taken in, as seems but fit and just, they will make 10 a piece more” (emphasis my own). Christian Europe had at the time fought centuries of on-and-off war with the Islamic Ottoman Empire, so it is a testament to Penn’s vision in the 17th Century and genuine commitment to his project of peace that he supported the inclusion of Turkey and Russia.

Penn did not explicitly include a means of revising the votes given to each State to reflect changes in power and wealth as economies develop – he probably thought it was too detailed for him to decide. These constitutional specifics can be agreed upon between the States in the formation of the Assembly; one method might be to reassess the vote weights each year or whenever each country performs a (mandatory) census, gathering data.

Sect. VIII: Operational details of Assembly

This section fleshes out some aspects of the Assembly’s operational procedure. While we might see them as silly or irrelevant, Penn’s anticipation of particular problems and the ingenious solutions he proposed were visionary in his time. It is important to not get caught up in the details but to view them in the context of the purpose of his whole essay – the promotion of peace.

Penn suggests that the “Room may be Round, and have divers Doors to come in and go out at” to “avoid Quarrel for Precedency”. The English Parliament is arranged such that MPs face each other across the floor; the very architecture itself fosters hostility between opposing views. The difference can be captured using the modern political science distinction between majoritarian and consensus democracies, introduced by Arend Lijphart – the former is characterised by concentration of power, the latter by sharing of power.

For example, the English Parliament is a ‘majoritarian’ system, with one ruling party having most of the power, while the rest are in opposition – the architecture affirms this. In contrast, I think Penn envisions an early modern prototype of a ‘consensus’ system. This is because throughout his essay, he has repeatedly focussed on collaboration, leaving decisions up to the whole Assembly. Likewise, a round room does not have spatial opposition, fostering a sense of collaboration, and its rotational symmetry does not have particular seats that are ‘better’ (though perhaps closer to the centre might be seen as better if the seats are multi-tiered). Representatives can enter from various doors around the circle, which addresses a 17th-century concern of protocol – the order of entering and sitting carried implications for weight and prestige. These little details all point toward fostering collaboration, in line with his goal of peace.

There remain, however, majoritarian components in Penn’s Assembly, particularly his proposed voting system. A key question concerns how the votes of a State are spent: whether all the votes granted to a State are split between its representatives (who then vote according to their conscience), or if the State collectively gets one vote, then effectively weighted (multiplied) by the number of votes it gets. I think it is the latter, based on two main pieces of evidence. Firstly, recall from Sect. VII that votes are assigned based on State power (wealth), implying that Penn sees the State as one entity – and thus makes one decision that is then weighted. Furthermore, at the end of the section, he speaks of the “Balls [votes; a reference to the Venetian voting system] of the Sovereignty” as a singular whole, that is, all the votes of a State are a single block. As mentioned in Footnote 2, this leaves preferential weighting (some States may care more about one issue than others) to be desired, a problem which can be addressed by having a total vote quota (which could also be assigned based on State power) or quadratic voting, but that is a minor problem.

However, there is some additional contrary evidence that representatives may vote freely. Penn considers the problem of corruption, which he ingeniously addresses through secret voting. Keeping in mind that secret voting was only introduced in 1795 in France and 1872 in the UK, Penn’s proposal was truly ahead of his time. As his reasoning went, a secret vote would disincentivise people attempting to bribe representatives (because one wouldn’t be able to verify if the person accepting the bribe voted as they were going to), as well as the representatives being bribed (because since one’s votes are secret anyway, one may as well do what’s best for their country). Notwithstanding Penn’s clear foresight, this only exists as a problem to be solved if individual representatives had some agency and votes of their own. However, upon weighing the evidence for either conclusion, it seems Penn intends the former: that States have a single vote.

This majoritarian method of voting might introduce a problem that I don’t think Penn envisaged: greater powers are incentivised to form MWCs (minimal winning coalitions), such that a certain bloc of States when voting together can guarantee winning. While this definitely can be seen as a kind of peace and thus still desirable, it is not a totally effective peace, as the smaller powers may feel increasingly left out. Penn wants a supermajority, which does require greater coalition sizes and more widespread concord, but still, like all majoritarian voting methods, will leave parties in the minority. While Penn obviously did not have access to this modern majoritarian/consensus distinction, I think he intuitively opted for a supermajority voting system because of its compromise between the policy efficacy of majoritarianism (being able to do things without being weighed down by non-cooperating actors), and more general popular support of consensus (requiring more than a simple majority for a bill to pass).

Finally, Penn goes to great lengths to emphasise the importance of avoiding neutrality. I submit that he wants to avoid neutrality in both interpretations – avoiding neutral States (i.e. abstaining from votes), and also avoiding a neutral outcome (i.e. no majority). The former is somewhat implied from his requirement for full attendance – it is “extremely necessary, that every Sovereignty should be present under great Penalties, and none leave the Session without Leave” – which makes more sense if wanted all States to vote. The additional benefit of this rule is that all States thus have a moral stake in the matter, either explicit support or not. This disincentivises private alliances, where States that abstain in general meetings can communicate and assist others out of the public eye, which raises overall levels of collaboration, the legitimacy of the institution, and enhances peace. This is all the more important because the main debates in the Assembly will be related to conflict resolution and peace preservation.

I think Penn wants to avoid a neutral outcome for similar reasons of legitimacy. A neutral decision is, in consequence, supporting the status quo, though without the explicit rejection of a change to back it up, leading to questions of legitimacy. If every debate in the Assembly ends in a definite affirmative or negative result, that is much more unquestionable and thus less prone to spark conflict.

Sect. IX: Anticipating some objections

This section is solely dedicated to exploring some more objections and potential solutions. To Penn’s credit, he does correctly recognise two central objections to his theory. Unfortunately, both his responses are very weak and quite logically careless.

The first key objection he anticipates is that the strongest State will not want to join the Assembly, which he counters by pointing out that the rest of the states combined are more powerful (and thus can compel it to join).

This response is wrong for many reasons. Apart from the possibility (albeit quite slim) that the rest of the states combined are still not as powerful, more crucially Penn is begging the question here. He already assumes that such a union of states is in place. To lay out the logical flaw with Penn’s argument more clearly: consider the assumed pre-existing union of States that together will compel the strong, non-participating State to join. Suppose, then, that the strongest of those did not join. In response, Penn would have to assume the existence of a union of all the rest of the states, which progressively get weaker, and thus less likely to be able to overwhelm the next-strongest non-participating state to join. We therefore do not even need to make a regress argument (though that also suffices in disproving Penn’s case) to show that such an assumption does not hold. Furthermore, it is very much possible that the states simply do not want to coalesce into a union in the first place – without a truly phenomenal, simultaneous coming together, it is difficult to imagine how such an Assembly might in practice be formed.

The next objection he considers is that, upon joining this Assembly, States will lose full sovereignty. He responds by pointing out that States supposedly “remain as sovereign at home as ever they were”, and “Neither their Power over their People, nor the usual Revenue they pay them, is diminished” (emphases my own). Indeed, a key consideration when setting up supranational institutions is what areas of legislation/sovereignty are up to the institution, and what remains up to the member States. Penn’s response is more compelling if the Assembly is interpreted as primarily conflict resolution and not lawmaking, because legislative harmonisation is less of an issue. There is evidence for this interpretation: Penn proclaims “Cedant Arma Togae” (let arms yield to the toga – the triumph of civil authority (the Assembly) over military force). However, for reasons I point out in the Sect. X, what Penn envisions as the responsibility of the Assembly and its powers is more extensive and thus less clear.

Sect. X: Reiteration of Peace and its Benefits

Penn ends his essay with a reiteration of the importance of peace and its benefits, structurally cycling back to Sect. I, and reaffirming his original, high-level goal: to firmly establish the pursuit of peace onto the political agenda.

There are also two key points of note. First, he focusses on Christian bloodshed and the reputation of Christianity as benefits of peace. That he deemed it relevant to separately mention Christian benefits can only be explained, I think, by the religious context at the time, and to some degree his own Quaker background. Penn’s 6th Benefit is that such an Assembly gives “Great Security to Christians against the Inroads of the Turk”. While this sounds like the union is a Christian European one to defend against the Islamic Turks, he then says “the Grand Seignor [leader of the Turks] will find himself obliged to concur”. Reading through the previous lens of incorporating the Turks and Russians into the Assembly with 10 votes each, I think Penn means for the Assembly to include Turkey, bringing peace to both them and Christian Europe. Such religious tolerance is not unexpected from Quaker like Penn.

The other, he claims that a benefit (5th Benefit) of such an Assembly is “Ease and Security of Travel and Traffic”, being able to “travelling through the Governments of Europe by a Pass from any of the Sovereignties”. As brought up in my analysis of Sect. IX, this poses a bigger problem than Penn grasps it to be, which I explore in my next section.

Concluding Section

Penn concludes by acknowledging the influence of King Henry IV of France’s supposed peace plan for Europe, referring to the ‘Grand Design’, mentioned only once, within the memoirs of Maximilien de Béthune, Duke of Sully. Penn sees Sir William Temple, the writer of the Treaties of Nijmegen’s, “Account of the United Provinces” as evidence for the practicality of his plan. He then makes a final emphatic appeal for peace by re-emphasing the suffering of violence and war, as evidence his plan is “necessary”. These three points together forcefully concludes his essay, urging his readers to action.

Detailed Problems with Penn’s Assembly

A Violent Peace

It is almost ironic how Penn looks to use violence, or the threat of violence, to compel peace. His argument implicitly involves a gamble, then, that there will not be any disagreements requiring the execution of the threat of collective military action (which would undoubtedly lead to much bloodshed). For example, one particularly powerful state may reckon they have good odds in fighting the rest of Europe, or at least be incentivised to form treaties and pacts with other ideologically aligned states behind the back of the Assembly, planning in ways where both stand to gain, and building mutual strength (which may then indeed defeat the rest of the Assembly). This is a forceful challenge, and I think there are only two plausible responses for Penn.

The first: being a member of such a body, like the Assembly, naturally means any contrary desires do not arise. There is some textual evidence for Penn having envisioned such a response: he mentions the ‘Friendly Relations’ that will obtain between Princes and States (7th Benefit, Sect. X) which would seem to obviate the risk of any urges for conquest or military action. However, this does not seem plausible, especially because the Assembly enforces land borders based on some treaty (e.g. Nijmegen, in Sect. VI), which one State must be happy and an opposing State displeased about. Furthermore, even if this is true, this would only work if this Assembly already exists. The actual path to the formation of this Assembly may be more violent and less simple than Penn envisioned, and such a forever peaceful condition may well prove to be an impossible endpoint.

The second: although there may still be bloodshed in the rare cases where disagreements have to be suppressed with force, having such an institutional arrangement would expedite the end of conflict, thus minimising, or at least reducing, the amount of damage which is a utilitarian argument for adoption. However, this also does not seem to be the case – if anything, an institution that requires mobilisation of the rest of its members against a state that’s acting out of line would only increase the amount of collateral damage, dragging in what may have been neutral states, had there not been such a body.

While in response, Penn may remark that the geopolitical climate of Europe did not have space for such potential neutral states – the various kingdoms would invariably have been involved in the fighting on one side or another – this is a practical response, leaving the theoretical problem unaddressed. Furthermore, in this case, practice is not so divorced from theory, as we would later see in the leadup to WW1 where the wide web of alliances dragged the entire continent into the War. However, given Penn’s context, while this hypothetical remark that there will be no neutral states and such a body would lead to less bloodshed may have been wrong in fact, we need not condemn Penn for it, as he could not have reasonably foreseen such complex geopolitics in the 17th Century. This extends to his whole peace project – while there are various holes and shortcomings when seen from an objective lens, that is not necessarily grounds to blame Penn, as he simply did not have the conceptual tools, nor the rich historical tapestry that we have the luxury of consulting, to conceive of and address such problems.

A final, related problem is a classic collective action problem: the rest of the Assembly may simply not want to respond with force and remain bystanders, for example, because they do not want to cause more economic damage than necessary, or even just because they are ideologically uncomfortable with using violence to achieve peace. In that case, a hostile State may be able to get away with not cooperating. Though this is out of my knowledge, there could be game theory frameworks that can thoroughly explicate the dynamics of collective participation and/or freeriding. This could prove to be an interesting path for further research.

Having the Sovereignty Cake and Eating It Too

Even under the least constraining interpretation of Penn’s Assembly – that it only serves a peace purpose, with no further lawmaking authority – the fact that it settles militaristic disputes means that upon joining this body, States lose necessarily sovereignty over this rather central aspect of foreign policy. Of course, this is fine (even desired) for him, if the loss of States’ abilities to independently declare war and engage in violence leads to peace. While some states still want to preserve war-making ability, it is at least conceivable that Penn’s arrangement, held together through implicit threat of force, can work (and forcibly monopolise violence, given enough coordination as a single body).

What is problematic, however, is that Penn seems to conceive of his Assembly as having more powers than the minimal militaristic interpretation. As mentioned in Sect. X, he imagines an Assembly that grants the citizens living under it free travel, which is a much more demanding interpretation. Migration is a hugely important part of internal sovereignty (as opposed to external sovereignty, such as the ability to declare war), as is customs control with taxation. Penn certainly recognises the importance of the last point – in Sect. VII Penn himself suggests using books of rates as a measurement of the wealth and power of a State. Therefore, something has to give; I think when considering the objective of the essay and the Assembly as a whole, which is the achievement of peace, and convenience of travel would only have been a welcome byproduct. Therefore, if it is shown that free travel risks the success of peace and the rest of the plan, it is obvious that Penn would have rejected this as a benefit.

Conclusion

Above, I have performed a close analysis of William Penn’s “An Essay towards the Present and Future Peace of Europe”. I conclude by echoing my introductory sentiments: for all its logical flaws and intellectual vagueness, this essay is a resoundingly effective one, inspiring a striving towards peace. And by taking the first step in starting the conversation on achieving peace, Penn brought his readers all closer towards his dream of peace across Europe.