Lineages of Empire: The Historical Roots of British Imperial Thought (Proceedings of the British Academy)

241 Pages·2009·1.29 MB·English

by  Duncan Kelly (Editor)

Contents

Duncan Preface xi
Kelly
James Tully Lineages of Contemporary 3
Imperialism
Uday Singh The Social Question and the Problem 31
Mehta of History after Empire
Richard 'Neither Masters nor Slaves': Small 53
Whatmore States and Empire in the Long
Eighteenth Century
Phiroze Virgil and the British Empire, 1760- 83
Vasunia 1880
Iain Edmund Burke and Empire 117
Hampsher-
Monk
Robert British India as a Problem in Political 137
Travers Economy: Comparing James Steuart
and Adam Smith
Karen Colonial Emigration, Public Policy, 161
O'Brien and Tory Romanticism, 1783-1830
Douglas From Natural Science to Social 181
Lorimer Science: Race and the Language of
Race Relations in Late Victorian and
Edwardian Discourse
Jeanne Harold Laski on the Habits of 213
Morefield Imperialism
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Preface
Recognising the imperial and archipelagic aspects of British history has,
in the post-war period, become increasingly central to the enterprise of
scholarly writing on the subject.1 Indeed, this recognition has in turn
helped to inspire work in various fields of endeavour,from the history of
art, literature, and science, as well as in the rather more obvious fields of
political thought and intellectual history. Yet it has not always been so
obvious, and indeed scholars have equally well focused on the European
dimensions of the early British Empire.2Nevertheless,some of the central
figures behind the move towards what many in the anglophone world now
think of as Atlantic history have been making these sorts of claims for
quite a long time.3 But perhaps the context of our present political
climate has helped to cement what now seems completely obvious;that an
awareness of the character of imperial enterprise looks to be as central to
understanding the British future as much as it has been to its past.
It is in fact something of a commonplace today,in popular as well as
in scholarly writing, to reflect upon the nature of empire in the light of
recent global politics. Such arguments and concerns, however, are not
new and do indeed have a complicated history. The eighteenth and nine-
teenth centuries were awash with attempts to relate the tasks of the
British Empire to the colonial politics and policies of,typically,either the
Hellenistic or Roman empires. In the British case, this was often allied
to considerations about new settler colonies, where an admixture of
historical and contemporary analysis about the state of the world from
the Americas to the Antipodes used such historical concerns for novel
contemporary purposes. In America itself, ideas of the frontier and of
some sort of ‘manifest destiny’clearly played an important developmen-
tal role in thinking about expansion.4Put in these contexts,and in terms
1J.G.A.Pocock,The Discovery of Islands(Cambridge,2005) collects some of his particularly
influential papers on this topic.
2Brendan Simms,Three Victories and a Defeat:The Rise and Fall of the First British Empire,
1714–1783(London,2007).
3See Bernard Bailyn,Atlantic History:Concepts and Contours(Cambridge,MA,2005).
4Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History (New York, 1920); Anders
Stephanson,Manifest Destiny:American Expansion and the Empire ofRight(New York,1995).
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of the production of this volume as a series of reflections on the histor-
ical roots of British imperial thought, it is worth noting how ideas
concerning the possible constitution of a Greater Britain were more or
less coherent amalgamations of these variously competing visions of
empire. Indeed, tracing these overlapping histories and genealogies has
been exceptionally important to contemporary work on the subject.5
Such concerns ran alongside still longer-standing debates about
imperial profitability and the position of the East India Company in par-
ticular.6 In a related manner, considerations upon the nature of modern
commercial society as a response to the traditional republican dilemmas
of empire and liberty, of course, also did much to structure the myriad
debates of these two centuries.They continue to shape our own views on
what David Hume called the jealousy of trade.7 It is still nearly impossi-
ble today,even in the light of financial unease in America and Britain,to
read about the lineages of empire without at the same time being told
to reflect upon and compare the character of the Roman Empire with
modern American global power.8 Whilst modern military adventures
undertaken in the name of freedom and democracy clearly prompt often
rather glib comparisons with a vague idea of Roman military expansion-
ism,these have also provoked discussion about the possible virtues as well
as the obvious scandals of imperial power; some have even seen in
American politics the chance to pursue policies left undone by the British
Empire.9 The two entities are clearly not the same, though, which makes
the apparent obviousness of the comparison somewhat simplistic.10 Yet
the imperial turn, if one might call it, has been absolutely central to a
burgeoning field of political theory and intellectual history.11
5Duncan Bell,The Idea ofGreater Britain(Princeton,NJ,2007).
6Philip J. Stern, ‘“A Politie of Civil and Military Power”: Political Thought and the Late
Seventeenth-century Foundations ofthe East India Company-State’,Journal ofBritish Studies,
47 (2008),pp.253–83.
7Istvan Hont,Jealousy ofTrade(Cambridge,MA,2006).
8See esp. Charles S. Maier, Among Empires: American Ascendancy and Its Predecessors
(Cambridge,MA,2006);Andrew Bacevich,American Empire:The Realities and Consequences of
US Diplomacy(Cambridge,MA,2002).
9Niall Ferguson,Empire:How Britain Made the Modern World (London,2004) and Colossus:
The Rise and Fall of the American Empire(London,2005);cf.Nicholas B.Dirks,Scandals of
Empire(Cambridge,MA,2006).
10See esp.Bernard Porter,Empire and Superempire:Britain,America and the World(New Haven,
CT,2006).
11See David Armitage,The Ideological Origins ofthe British Empire(Cambridge,2000);Peter N.
Miller,Defining the Common Good(Cambridge,2004);Sankar Muthu,Enlightenment Against
Empire(Princeton,NJ,2003);Jennifer Pitts,A Turn to Empire(Princeton,NJ,2005).
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Preface xiii
Thus,although ideas of empire and imperialism have been longstand-
ing preoccupations of intellectual history in general, and the history of
political thought in particular, it is surely not wrong to sense that our
current preoccupation with empire and imperialism is bound up with a
desire to trace the genealogy of our current predicament. Indeed, the
similarity of concern that connects empire to at least theoretically related
concepts such as despotism and tyranny might well account for some of
the interest.12 This is obviously not all that lies behind the continued
growth of interest in the topic though, for it is now strongly recognised
that a concern with empire has in fact been central to the development of
numerous, typically segregated, intellectual disciplines. In other words,
histories of art, literature, and science are as infused with debates about
the impact, importance, and influence of imperial themes to their devel-
opment as is political thought. The history of political thought is, in
this respect, only the most obvious piece in a much more complicated
intellectual jigsaw.
The essays that follow, then, are broadly structured around a very
simple but central recognition; that any attempt to understand British
imperial thought in the modern world must be historically rooted, and
that a relatively expansive notion of what constitutes the history of
political thought can illuminate one important aspect of the multiple
lineages of empire. However, the symposium at which most of these
papers were delivered, and which was held at the British Academy in
August 2006,was rather broader than this volume might suggest,and was
premised on the recognition that a fully developed theory of the develop-
ment of British imperial thought would have to encompass developments
in those cognate fields of art history and the histories of literature and
science as well as political thought.Therefore,participants in the sympo-
sium were asked to reflect upon the nature of the relationship between
empire and their various fields of expertise,and to try to see if there were
any common lessons that might be drawn from their respective endeav-
ours.The fact that this ensuing volume is only one part of this conference,
and that it is focused on the history of political thought rather than on
the entire range of disciplines discussed at the symposium, serves simply
12R.Koebner,Empire(Cambridge,1961) is an early reflection on the intellectual history of the
idea;see too his article ‘Despot and Despotism:Vicissitudes ofa Political Term’,Journal ofthe
Warburgand Courtauld Institutes,14 (1951),pp.275–302;cf.Mario Turchetti,‘“Despotism”and
“Tyranny”:Unmasking a Tenacious Confusion’,European Journal ofPolitical Theory,7 (2008),
pp.159–82.
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to show that in the attempt to construct a truly interdisciplinary dialogue
on the impact of empire upon the development of modern intellectual
history,much work remains to be done.
The initial impetus for the symposium and the actual event as a whole
therefore permitted a consideration in practice,as well as in theory,of the
strengths and weaknesses of interdisciplinary dialogue in the study of
imperial thought,history,and imagery.It also proved the rather obvious
point that there is certainly much to learn from discrete fields of study in
the process of trying to arrive at a more general and synthetic argument
about the precise historical character of British imperial thought. The
original participants in the symposium were, I am delighted to say, fully
committed to constructive engagement and conversation on this front,
and I am exceptionally grateful to them, and to the British Academy for
providing a wonderfully congenial and appropriate venue within which to
discuss such questions.It is clear from the essays in this volume that there
is a great deal of material still to be uncovered when thinking about the
lineages of empire and the history of political thought, and, rather than
summarise other people’s arguments, I believe it is much better if the
reader begins to read these accounts for themselves;the chapter titles are
themselves quite indicative of the scope of the discussion being presented.
It only remains for me to undertake the most pleasing aspect of the
writing of such introductions, and that is to thank those involved in
making it all possible.
Although the original list of speakers and session chairs are available
to view in the online archive of events on the British Academy website,
because only a fraction of the papers are reproduced here I should
especially like to extend my thanks to those who took part and helped to
make possible what was an inspiring couple of days.Thus,my very grate-
ful thanks, in alphabetical order, to Mary Beard, Duncan Bell, John
Bonehill, Karen O’Brien, Daniel Carey, Natasha Eaton, Jim Endersby,
Tim Fulford, Iain Hampsher-Monk, Knud Haakonssen, Graham
Harrison,Mark Harrison,Maya Jasanoff,Doug Lorimer,Saree Makdisi,
Karuna Mantena, Uday Mehta, Jeannne Morefield, Sankar Muthu,
Jennifer Pitts, Geoff Quilley, Sujit Sivasundarum, Miles Taylor, Robert
Travers, and Richard Whatmore. For their commissioned essays in this
volume I am also deeply grateful for the splendid contributions of Jim
Tully and Phiroze Vasunia. I am, nevertheless, acutely aware that this
volume has taken some not inconsiderable time to make it to the press
after the initial request for support from the British Academy in June
2005 when invitations were sent out. So I should also like to thank all
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Preface xv
those involved with this volume in particular for their forbearance and
patience; I hope at least they can be pleased with the result, which has
been further improved with the copy-editing and indexing skills of Penny
Rogers and Susan Tricklebank. Finally, but by no means least, I should
like to offer my sincere gratitude once more not only to the British
Academy in general,but also to Angela Pusey and Jo Blore in particular,
for their exceptional administrative and institutional support. Without
their help and expertise the event would have run much less smoothly and
have been a far less pleasant enterprise than it was. I am very grateful to
you all.
Duncan Kelly
Cambridge,December 2008
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1
Lineages of Contemporary Imperialism
JAMES TULLY
Introduction
THE AIM OF THIS ESSAY IS TO PRESENT a historical sketch of some major
lineages of contemporary western imperialism. It is necessary to make
two preliminary qualifications.First,the contemporary mode of western
imperialism is the product of the last 500 years of immensely complex
interactions between European and Euro-American imperial expansion
and non-European responses. It is not possible to present more than a
brief and partial sketch of the main lines of descent. Second, contem-
porary western imperialism is studied under a number of different head-
ings: neo-colonialism, post-colonialism, open door imperialism, free
trade imperialism, informal imperialism, liberal or neo-liberal imperial-
ism, world systems imperialism, empire, US imperialism, and so on.
Each of these descriptions picks out different aspects of contemporary
imperialism as the most salient and seeks to explicate them as the key to
the whole. This brief historical sketch is restricted to the limited aspects
of contemporary imperialism gathered together under the heading of
informal imperialism. The essay begins with a synopsis of defining
characteristics of contemporary informal imperialism.The following five
sections describe major historical lineages of these characteristics. The
final section returns to contemporary imperialism with, I hope, a better
understanding of its ancestry.
1. Informal Imperialism
The phrase ‘informal imperialism’is now widely used by both defenders
and critics of contemporary imperialism. It refers to the mode of global
governance that came to predominance during the period of formal
Proceedings ofthe British Academy155,3–29.© The British Academy 2009.
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4 James Tully
decolonisation and the Cold War (1940–1989).1 The adjective ‘informal’
refers to three features of this new imperial relationship.First,the former
great imperial powers, renamed the ‘great eight’(G8), and their transna-
tional corporations no longer govern the conduct of the 120 former
colonies ‘formally’ by means of colonies and colonial administration.
Rather, they are able to govern the conduct of the former colonies by a
host of informal means, from economic aid, trade manipulation, and
debt dependency to military dependency,intervention,and restructuring.
Second, the great powers are unable to govern the former colonies
‘formatively’ in the sense of exercising open and more or less unilateral
administrative and military power over them, as in the case of colonial
imperialism. Rather, because the former colonies are recognised as
formally free and equal sovereign nation states, exercising powers of
self-government, although substantively subordinate, dependent, and
unequal, the great powers are constrained to govern their development
‘informally’in the sense of ‘interactively’.They exercise various forms of
inducement, constraint, channelling, and response, and employ various
means from economic dependency to military intervention, to try to
control or govern the way the former colonies or ‘developing countries’
exercise their powers of self-government. It is thus a more interactive
and open-ended imperial game between the hegemonic and subordinate
powers than in the case of formal colonial rule.
Finally,this form of governance is informal in yet a third and distinc-
tive sense.The great powers and their multinational corporations neither
exercise imperial powers directly themselves, for the most part, nor have
they established a world government for this purpose.Rather,they govern
informally through coalitions of various kinds and with various members
at different times (among the roughly G20) and through institutions of
global governance set up at the end of the Second World War.2 The
main institutions are:the concentration of power in the Security Council
of the United Nations; the Bretton Woods institutions of the
1For the specific dates of decolonisation and one of the best histories of western imperialism,
see David B. Abernethy, The Dynamics of Global Dominance: European Overseas Empires,
1415–1980 (New Haven,CT,2000).The Latin American colonies decolonised in the 1820s and
they have experienced informal imperialism by Great Britain and the USA for a correspondingly
longer period than the countries that decolonised in the twentieth century.
2Even when the USA acts unilaterally rather than multilaterally,it usually garners the tacit or
explicit consent of a coalition,and when it appears to act in defiance of some institutions of
global governance and international law it usually claims to legitimate its action with reference
to others.See,for example,Jutta Brunee and Stephen Toope,‘Slouching Towards New “Just”
Wars:The Hegemon after September 11th’,International Relations,18,4 (2004),pp.405–23.
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