Concluding Essay: Imperial Humanism and Challenge of Defining the Nature of the State

Abstract This concluding essay reflects on the relationship between intellectual life and state building as elucidated by the essays in this special issue on Humanism in Greater Venice. Drawing comparisons with Asian empires and the Hispanic Monarchy (often called the ‘Spanish Empire’) in the Americas and elsewhere, it argues that we must be alive to the precise nature of the state championed by humanist writers and to eschew value‐laden terms that are not actor’s categories, e.g. commonwealth. It ends with a call to avoid either whitewashing the actions of states or creating new Black Legends, in the Renaissance or any other period.