The emergence of republicanism as a major stream in political theory and philosophy, as well as history of political ideas, since I suppose the 1980s, but since the late nineties for political philosophy in the normative Rawlsian style, is a highly welcome phenomenon from my point of view. That does not mean I have no criticisms. For example, it seems to me that much of it has gone a bit far in the direction of equating the active liberty of the citizen in republics of the past with a very equality oriented sense of distributive justice. Despite the historical consciousness that republicanism has helped to bring more into theoretical discussions, some areas of historically oriented relevant discussion have not been dealt with adequately so far. This particularly applies to Foucault, and his discussions of antiquity, which is a strange omission in that Quentin Skinner claims to have taken inspiration from Foucault, at least in questions of method.
However, in the present post, I will focus on another issue, which is the narrow range of republics considered. The standard range is ancient Athens (sometimes compared with Sparta), Ancient Rome, Renaissance Florence (maybe compared with Venice), England in the era of the Civil Wars and the Commonwealth, the political awakening of the British colonies in America, incorporating the foundation of the United States, and finally the French Revolution though that tends to be given less attention than the Anglo-American revolutions. Interest in Spinoza's political theory has not in my experience led to much consideration of the Dutch Revolt and the Dutch Republic, though the republican impulse has probably led to a bit more attention being paid than would otherwise be the case.
Going beyond the examples above, surely the Haitian revolution, which was to some degree an outcome of the French Revolution, deserves attention, as an instance of struggle against slavery, colonialism, and racism, as well as simply being an episode in the history of republic formation. The relegation of the French Revolution reflects a concern with the violence of that revolution and its outcome in the rule of a military strongman turned 'Emperor', but the undoubted extreme and self-destructive tendencies of the French Revolution, does not detract from its role as a republican laboratory, or its influence on later republics, nor the way its connects with the very abundant discussion of political thought in eighteenth century France.
After all there is a case for saying that the American Revolution prolonged slavery and hastened the assault on the lands of the Native American population. I would not wish to dismiss the American Revolution on those grounds, but then no need to be embarrassed by the revolution that did abolish slavery for while (or at least proclaimed it it abolished) and made liberty, equality and fraternity (yes gendered so let us call it the friendship of citizens, which was a large part of the meaning, or maybe community) part of political consciousness throughout the world.
Going back before the French Revolution, looking at forgotten republics, we quickly run into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which was carved up between conservative monarchist powers during the time of the First French Republic. Rousseau (who tends to be unduly maligned in a lot of the recent republican wave) wrote a constitution for that republic, which goes back to the sixteenth century. Though there was a king, the sharing of power between makes the Commonwealth makes it an aristocratic republic, and one of more importance than Venice in the early modern period. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, covering what is now Belarus and Ukraine, as well as Poland and Lithuania (though not corresponding with current boundaries of those countries) had a large Jewish population and a significant Muslim land owning class. The latter had civil and legal rights, but not rights of political citizenship. In any case, the situation of the Jewish and Muslim populations of the Commonwealth compared well with that of religious minorities further west Muslim members of the Commonwealth were a large part of the forces defending Vienna from the Ottomans during the 1683 siege.
Jumping back to antiquity, Carthage was recognised by Aristotle and Polybius as a polity/republic, and circling back to the Enlightenment, both Vico and Montesquieu argued that it was a superior republican model to Rome. The Carthaginian combination of citizen assemblies and governmental power shared between the aristocracy, itself came out of the original Phoenician cities on the east coast of the Mediterranean. Montesquieu, Hume and other Enlightenment thinkers regard the Celts and Germans of antiquity as composed of simple republics with a form of strictly elective monarchy, and were following on from the way that those peoples were understood by antique republicans like Aristotle and Tacitus.
There is a lot I've left out, including major west European examples like early modern Geneva and Switzerland, and German city states nominally under the authority of the Holy Roman [German] Emperor. There is much I just do not know about, including parts of the world not familiar to antique and early modern thinkers, and I do not mean to berate anyone. I am excessively ignorant myself, and this as much a reminder to myself as anything else.
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