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BOOKSHELF

The Origins of Outreach
The case for a free exchange of people, ideas and goods across borders.

BY DARRIN M. MCMAHON
Tuesday, July 11, 2006 12:01 a.m.

"Strangers nowhere in the world" was how the French Encyclopédie, that landmark of scholarship and cosmopolitanism, described those who aspired to the cosmopolitan ideal in the 18th century. The phrase serves as the title to Margaret Jacob's timely study of early modern Europe. Although the book's focus lies across the Atlantic, centuries ago, "Strangers Nowhere in the World" has much to tell Americans and other contemporaries who would call themselves "citizens of the world."

America's founders certainly aspired to that ideal. For George Washington, an enlightened man was "a citizen of the great republic of humanity at large." Washington's first biographer, the surgeon David Ramsay (1749-1815), took pride in describing himself as a "citizen of the world," as did Jefferson, Franklin and Thomas Paine. By doing so, they gave voice to a widespread Enlightenment aspiration to remain open to foreign influence, tolerate difference and think beyond the boundaries of national particularity, custom and belief. Such values were revolutionary at the time.

Whereas other scholars have studied what the 18th century said about cosmopolitanism, Ms. Jacob is interested in how cosmopolitanism was actually lived. Such a focus leads her to some interesting places--"small enclaves" or "free zones," as she describes them--where titles, orders, religious barriers and national prejudices, in short the norms of European societies, could be challenged and overcome.

The central market exchange, or beurs--as the Flemish were the first to call it (after the mercantile family Van der Beurse)--was one such enclave. Here Catholics, Protestants, Jews and even Muslims might get about the business of trade away from the censure of religious bigots and national chauvinists. Men and women often worked side by side, permitting a freedom of interaction lacking elsewhere. And the divisions of custom, language and patrie blurred in the medium of commerce. The Dutch poet Jeremias Decker, as early as the mid-17th century, celebrated the spectacle: "A churchman, then a Jew, a Turk and a Christian are gathered in a school of all languages, a market field of all wares / A bourse, which maintains all the world's exchange."

Not that such mingling was always simple or smooth. Brawls, petty crime and even the occasional murder were features of the rough-and-tumble life on these early trading floors. A sign at the Amsterdam exchange announced that "it is forbidden to hit anyone," a sure indication that punches were thrown. It is hardly surprising that the Jewish author of a late 17th-century guide to the markets of Antwerp and Amsterdam saw fit to title his work "Confusion de confusiones."

By the 18th century, however, confusion was giving way to freer trade and greater harmony in places like the Low Countries and England. Ms. Jacob credits the determined efforts of private administrators and public servants to impose civility and order on commercial life. "If the cosmopolitan means rising above the local and the parochial," she reminds us, "then the parish needs first to be safe, well lit, policed, well-regulated, and run by reasonably tolerant people."

Ms. Jacob enjoins us not to forget "the historical role played by governmental authority in making any larger, cosmopolitan identity possible." But she also acknowledges that governments themselves could be impediments to cosmopolitan practice. The heavy hand of the 18th-century French crown, controlling trade at the bourses of Lyon and Marseilles, was hardly conducive to the freest commerce.

Indeed, government threats and social sanction forced many enclaves of cosmopolitan activity--from the laboratories of alchemists, who figured among the world's first self-proclaimed "cosmopolites," to the lodges of Freemasons--to close their doors to the outside world, precisely so that they could be more open within. Their efforts to treat all brothers (and sometimes sisters) as equals sustained the hope that someday macrocosm and microcosm might be more alike.

Whereas "Strangers Nowhere in the World" begins with the anti-cosmopolitan example of papal Avignon, a not-so-free zone ruled by the Inquisition for much of the 18th century, it ends with the international network of English, Irish, French and American radicals who labored at the close of the century to abolish the slave trade and spread republican principles.

Yet this slim little volume is not a tale of easy progress, a triumphant journey from dark to light. Sensitive to the irony that the rise of cosmopolitanism was commensurate with the growth of European imperialism, Ms. Jacob emphasizes that the cosmopolitan way of life must constantly be defended against perversion, atrophy and abuse. "There is nothing inevitable about people becoming cosmopolitan; they can just as easily in certain circumstances turn inward or hostile to all that is foreign." The 19th and 20th centuries witnessed just such backsliding in the form of virulent nationalism and xenophobia.

As anti-cosmopolitans prowl the world today--including mullahs abroad and nativists at home--we would do well to heed that warning and stiffen our resolve. For those who would deny the free exchange of people, ideas and goods across borders will succeed only in rendering themselves strangers to all but their own.

Mr. McMahon, a professor of history at Florida State University, is the author of "Happiness: A History" (Atlantic Monthly Press). "Strangers Nowhere in the World" is available for sale at the OpinionJournal bookstore here.

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