The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France
Buch, Englisch, 400 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 672 g
ISBN: 978-0-691-12791-0
Verlag: Princeton University Press
A dramatic shift in British and French ideas about empire unfolded in the sixty years straddling the turn of the nineteenth century. As Jennifer Pitts shows in A Turn to Empire, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, and Jeremy Bentham were among many at the start of this period to criticize European empires as unjust as well as politically and economically disastrous for the conquering nations. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, the most prominent British and French liberal thinkers, including John Stuart Mill and Alexis de Tocqueville, vigorously supported the conquest of non-European peoples. Pitts explains that this reflected a rise in civilizational self-confidence, as theories of human progress became more triumphalist, less nuanced, and less tolerant of cultural difference. At the same time, imperial expansion abroad came to be seen as a political project that might assist the emergence of stable liberal democracies within Europe. Pitts shows that liberal thinkers usually celebrated for respecting not only human equality and liberty but also pluralism supported an inegalitarian and decidedly nonhumanitarian international politics. Yet such moments represent not a necessary feature of liberal thought but a striking departure from views shared by precisely those late-eighteenth-century thinkers whom Mill and Tocqueville saw as their forebears. Fluently written, A Turn to Empire offers a novel assessment of modern political thought and international justice, and an illuminating perspective on continuing debates over empire, intervention, and liberal political commitments.
Autoren/Hrsg.
Fachgebiete
- Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Theorie, Politische Philosophie
- Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Postkoloniale Geschichte, Nationale Befreiung und Unabhängigkeit
- Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Ideologien Anarchismus
- Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Europäische Länder
- Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Internationale Beziehungen Kolonialismus, Imperialismus
- Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kolonialgeschichte, Geschichte des Imperialismus
- Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Sozialphilosophie, Politische Philosophie
- Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
Weitere Infos & Material
Acknowledgments ix
Abbreviations xiii
Chapter 1: Introduction 1
Liberalism, Pluralism, and Empire 3
Scope and Summary 7
Historical Contexts 11
PART 1: CRITICS OF EMPIRE 23
Chapter 2: Adam Smith on Societal Development and Colonial Rule 25
The Causes and Complexity of Development in Smith's Thought 27
Progress, Rationality, and the Early Social Stages 34
Moral Progress and Commercial Society 41
Moral Philosophy and Cross-Cultural Judgments 43
Smith's Critique of Colonies 52
Chapter 3: Edmund Burke's Peculiar Universalism 59
The Exclusions of Empire 59
Systematic Oppression in India 63
Moral Imagination: Empire and Social Criticism 71
Geographical Morality and Burke's Universalism 77
The Politics of Exclusion in Ireland 85
Burke as a Theorist of Nationality 96
PART 2: UTILITARIANS AND THE TURN TO EMPIRE IN BRITAIN 101
Chapter 4: Jeremy Bentham: Legislator of the World? 103
Utilitarians and the British Empire 103
Bentham's Critique of Colonial Rule 107
A Rereading of Bentham's Work on India 115
Chapter 5: James and John Stuart Mill: The Development of Imperial Liberalism in Britain 123
James Mill: An Uneasy Alliance of Utilitarianism and Conjectural History 123
J.S. Mill: Character and the Revision of the Benthamite Tradition 133
Nationality and Progressive Despotism 138
Civilizing Backward Societies: India and Ireland 146
Colonial Reform and the Governor Eyre Episode 150
Conclusion 160
PART 3: LIBERALS AND THE TURN TO EMPIRE IN FRANCE 163
Chapter 6: The Liberal Volte-Face in France 165
Shifting Political Contexts: Britain, France, and Imperial Projects 165
Condorcet: Progress and the Roots of the Mission Civilisatrice 168
Constant and the Distrust of Empire 173
Desjobert and the Marginalization of Anti-imperialism 185
Tocqueville's Sociology of Democracy and the Question of European Expansion 189
Expansion and Exclusion in America 196
Chapter 7: Tocqueville and the Algeria Question 204
Tocqueville as an Architect of French Algeria 204
From Assimilation to Domination: Tocqueville's Early
Colonial Vision 207
The British Empire as Rival and Model 219
Slavery in the French Empire 226
Universal Rights, Nation Building, and Progress 230
Chapter 8: Conclusion 240
Eighteenth-Century Criticism of Empire 242
Democracy and Liberal Anxieties in the Nineteenth Century 247
Late Liberal Misgivings about Imperial Injustice 254
Notes 259
Bibliography 343
Index 363
