Armitage’s global history of the Declaration of Independence is also a history of losers. The first imitation of the Declaration of Independence occurred within a year, ironically enough as the declaration of Vermont’s independence from the newly independent United States. The infant United States refused to recognize Vermont’s declaration on the grounds that “[i]f every district so disposed, may for themselves determine that they are not within the claim of the thirteen states...we may soon have ten hundred states, all free and independent.” Curiously too, this same argument was put by the executive of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (itself the second “Yugoslavia” to declare independence in the 20th century) in answer to the ultimately successful declarations of independence made by the states of Croatia and Slovenia in 1991. There is a handy listing in the substantial appendices of this volume of all the declarations of independence ever thrust upon the world. The failure of Vermont’s declaration of independence, however, along with those of Abkhazia, Crimea, and Karadzjic’s Republika Srpska, are a memorial to the speed with which the political dramas of the modern world, and its aspiring sovereign states, are forgotten.

These examples also return us to the questions of what makes for a successful declaration and why they are worthwhile. Without a doubt, this global history testifies to the power of words and ideas. It also speaks to the political astuteness of seeking the “opinions of mankind,” since the resort to war has never guaranteed successful statehood. In an age of intensified globalization, it reminds us of the ways in which even outdated practices of the past intervene in the present. As the “powers of the earth” become concentrated in global capital, and the “opinions of mankind” are as powerfully presented by bloggers as by statesmen, declarations of independence seem a quaint reminder of a time when the creation of nation-states promised the world.