In the previous chapter, we saw how early modern states and empires were created and legitimized with reference to myths and symbols which had previously been used to justify universal and boundless forms of human association. As a consequence, although each group of people derived its alleged uniqueness from common sources, it had become increasingly difficult to understand these groups as parts of a wider human community, since the concept of community had its range of applicability equally restricted by territorial boundaries. The fictitious state of nature invented in order to justify this transition to bounded forms of association was thereby ironically realized between emergent territorial states.

But during the eighteenth century dreams of a universal empire based on conquest and conversion become harder to sustain. New ideologies of empire based on the virtues of trade and manufacture emerged, leading to intensified economic and political competition between these trading states. To those critical of this new order, the division of mankind into distinct peoples was increasingly regarded as the main cause of both domestic despotism and political rivalry between states. Although key figures of eighteenth-century political thought were engaged in this critical enterprise, many of them were also responsible for propagating and perpetuating the same very particularistic conceptions of community which made the hopes of escaping the international state of nature look futile. Few authors reflect this ambivalence better than Rousseau: to him, the division of mankind into distinct societies had taken place long ago, and its outcome was both irreversible and tragic.