Lee Manion, The Recognition of Sovereignty: Politics of Empire in Early Anglo-Scottish Literature – Cambridge University Press, October 2025

In this timely and impactful contribution to debates over the relationship between politics and storytelling, Lee Manion uncovers the centrality of narrative to the European concept of sovereignty. In Scottish and English texts traversing the political, the legal, the historiographical, and the literary, and from the medieval through to the early modern period, he examines the tumultuous development of the sovereignty discourse and the previously underappreciated role of narratives of recognition. Situating England and Scotland in a broader interimperial milieu, Manion shows how sovereignty’s hierarchies of recognition and stories of origins prevented more equitable political unions. The genesis of this discourse is traced through tracts by Buchanan, Dee, Persons, and Hume; histories by Hardyng, Wyntoun, Mair, and Holinshed; and romances by Malory, Barbour, Spenser, and Melville. Combining formal analysis with empire studies, international relations theory, and political history, Manion reveals the significant consequences of literary writing for political thought.

• Of profound consequence for our understanding of European politics both in the past and today, uncovering the reliance of medieval and early modern sovereignty claims on both real and fictional historical narratives
• Demonstrates how the concept and act of recognition was and still is crucial for producing authority, inviting renewed, interdisciplinary critical analysis of recognition across its political, legal, ethical, social, and literary registers
• Reveals how literary texts actively participated in and often critiqued sovereignty discourse, unearthing innovative contributions of imaginative writing to political debate that have been obscured by modern disciplinary divisions
• Shows how premodern kingdoms such as Scotland and England operated as empires in an inter-imperial milieu, locating Scotland and England within a larger history of European imperialism