Liberal Imperialism In Europe

In this state-of-the-field anthology, leading scholars in the fields of European imperial history and intellectual history explore the nature of European imperialism during the 'long nineteenth century', scrutinizing the exact relationship between the various forms of liberalism in Europe and the various imperial projects of Europe.

Policing Transnational Protest offers an original perspective on the history of police surveillance of anticolonial activists in France, Britain, and Germany in the first half of the twentieth century. Tracing the undertakings of anticolonial activists from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East in Europe and reconstructing the reaction of European governments, it illuminates the increasing cooperation of the police and secret services to monitor the activities of the "oriental revolutionaries" and curb their room to maneuver. But those efforts had an unintended inflammatory effect, provoking both supporters and opponents of colonial rule to understand the conflict in increasingly global and trans-imperial terms. The surveillance also exacerbated tensions between Europeans friendly to the anticolonial cause, and those who prioritized imperial security over civil liberties and national sovereignty. Tracking growing levels of transnational government cooperation against anticolonialists, this book pays special attention to Germany, where many activists were able to carry out their political work in relative safety after escaping surveillance in Britain and France. By analyzing the emergence of ever more sophisticated counter-terrorism schemes and surveillance apparatuses, Br ckenhaus also contributes a pre-history of similar phenomena characterizing the post-9/11 world. He shows how, then as now, an intensification of a "war on terror" went hand in hand with concerns about encroachments on civil liberties, often expressed in open protest against such governance measures. Policing Transnational Protest informs current debates about intelligence gathering and surveillance in several European countries as well as their new cooperative partner, the United States.

The end of the Cold War heralded in a new era for liberalism. Eastern European states adopted democracy and capitalism to gain acceptance by the West. Yet, a mere two decades later, liberalism was in crisis. The rise of illiberal democracies and nationalist movements in the second decade of the twenty-first century have left scholars baffled. How could this happen? Dr's. Davis and Slobodchikoff show that the decline of the liberal order lies within its own ideology: as it champions freedom, liberalism requires its adherents to give up their cultural traditions and adopt the global ethos to be legitimate. Through a systematic analysis of Western and Russian soft power in Poland and Serbia, the authors explain the decline of liberalism and the battle over the balance of power in Eastern Europe.

In a work based on new archival, press, and literary sources, the author revises the picture of German imperialism as being the brainchild of a Machiavellian Bismarck or the "conservative revolutionaries" of the twentieth century. Instead, Fitzpatrick argues for the liberal origins of German imperialism, by demonstrating the links between nationalism and expansionism in a study that surveys the half century of imperialist agitation and activity leading up to the official founding of Germany's colonial empire in 1884.

Imperialism is not something that is discussed in the capitalist media. But imperialist capitalism is the dominant reality of our era: a handful of rich Western countries dominate and are responsible for the misery of billions of human beings. And the decisive element in this system is the United States, the world's only superpower.In the two articles in this pamphlet, Doug Lorimer traces the main features of the development of the imperialist system through the 20th century and shows how the Marxist analysis of capitalism retains its essential validity in the era of "globalisation".

This book examines the ways in which imperial agendas informed the writing of history in nineteenth-century Britain and how historical writing transformed imperial agendas. Using the published writings and personal papers of Walter Scott, J. A. Froude, James Mill, Rammohun Roy, T. B. Macaulay, E. A. Freeman, W. E. Gladstone, and J. R. Seeley among others, Theodore Koditschek sheds light on the role of the historical imagination in the establishment and legitimation of liberal imperialism. He shows how both imperialists and the imperialized were drawn to reflect back on the Empire's past as a result of the need to construct a modern, multi-national British imperial identity for a more economically expansive and enlightened present. By tracing the imperial lives and historical works of these pivotal figures, Theodore Koditschek illuminates the ways in which discourse altered practice, and vice versa, as well as how the history of Empire was continuously written and re-written.

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.

One of the world's leading political thinkers explores the history, nature, and prospects of the liberal tradition The Making of Modern Liberalism is a deep and wide-ranging exploration of the origins and nature of liberalism from the Enlightenment through its triumphs and setbacks in the twentieth century and beyond. The book is the fruit of the more than four decades during which Alan Ryan, one of the world's leading political thinkers, reflected on the past of the liberal tradition—and worried about its future. This is essential reading for anyone interested in political theory or the history of liberalism.