David Glenn: Liberalism: the Fuel of Empires?
It is one of the most troubling puzzles in the history of political thought: Why were some of Europe's early liberal theorists -- the people who imagined and promoted tolerance, universal suffrage, the rule of law, and minimal government -- also enthusiastic supporters of European colonization, conquest, and empire in Asia and Africa?
John Stuart Mill, author of On Liberty and The Subjection of Women, spent 25 years working for the British East India Company in the mid-19th century. He believed that India and other "barbarous" nations "have not got beyond the period during which it is likely to be to their benefit that they should be conquered and held in subjection by foreigners." Alexis de Tocqueville, among the century's most sophisticated proponents of democracy, argued during the 1840s that it was urgently necessary for France to subjugate and colonize Algeria....
Two of the most visible exponents of [a] ... new wave in empire studies are Jennifer Pitts and Sankar Muthu, who met as graduate students at Harvard University a decade ago and who are now assistant professors of politics at Princeton University. Along the way, they got married.
In Enlightenment Against Empire (Princeton University Press, 2003), Mr. Muthu examined the brief period in the late 18th century when several prominent liberal theorists -- notably Denis Diderot and Johann Gottfried von Herder -- were skeptical toward, and in some cases actively campaigned against, European colonialism.
Ms. Pitts's new book, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France (Princeton, 2005), explores the very different mood of the mid-19th century, when most leading liberals, Mill and Tocqueville among them, sat comfortably on the imperialist bandwagon.
As those divergent projects suggest, Ms. Pitts and Mr. Muthu are not offering simple formulas for decoding intellectual history. Liberal theory, they argue, contains the seeds of both pro-imperialist and anti-imperialist arguments. "There's no necessary connection between liberalism and empire," Mr. Muthu says. "Whether a liberal thinker had a positive or a negative conception of empire depends on a whole range of other factors."...
Read entire article at Chronicle of Higher Education
John Stuart Mill, author of On Liberty and The Subjection of Women, spent 25 years working for the British East India Company in the mid-19th century. He believed that India and other "barbarous" nations "have not got beyond the period during which it is likely to be to their benefit that they should be conquered and held in subjection by foreigners." Alexis de Tocqueville, among the century's most sophisticated proponents of democracy, argued during the 1840s that it was urgently necessary for France to subjugate and colonize Algeria....
Two of the most visible exponents of [a] ... new wave in empire studies are Jennifer Pitts and Sankar Muthu, who met as graduate students at Harvard University a decade ago and who are now assistant professors of politics at Princeton University. Along the way, they got married.
In Enlightenment Against Empire (Princeton University Press, 2003), Mr. Muthu examined the brief period in the late 18th century when several prominent liberal theorists -- notably Denis Diderot and Johann Gottfried von Herder -- were skeptical toward, and in some cases actively campaigned against, European colonialism.
Ms. Pitts's new book, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France (Princeton, 2005), explores the very different mood of the mid-19th century, when most leading liberals, Mill and Tocqueville among them, sat comfortably on the imperialist bandwagon.
As those divergent projects suggest, Ms. Pitts and Mr. Muthu are not offering simple formulas for decoding intellectual history. Liberal theory, they argue, contains the seeds of both pro-imperialist and anti-imperialist arguments. "There's no necessary connection between liberalism and empire," Mr. Muthu says. "Whether a liberal thinker had a positive or a negative conception of empire depends on a whole range of other factors."...