Empire and international relations in Victorian political thought

Historical Journal

Volumn 49, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 281-298

  Bell, Duncan S A ^a  

^a CHRIST S COLLEGE   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CIVILIZATION; CULTURAL HISTORY; LIBERALISM; NINETEENTH CENTURY; POLITICAL HISTORY; POLITICAL RELATIONS; POLITICAL THEORY;

EURASIA; EUROPE; NORTH AMERICA; UNITED KINGDOM; UNITED STATES; WESTERN EUROPE;

EID: 33646720764     PISSN: 0018246X     EISSN: 14695103     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0018246X05005133     Document Type: Review

References (132)

1. It is useful to note the way in which terms were employed at the time, for many of our current usages are anachronistic. The term 'international' was coined by Jeremy Bentham in 1789, and was used throughout the Victorian era, as was 'foreign affairs'. The term 'colony' appeared first in English in Wycliffe's translation of the Bible (1382), but entered common usage in the sixteenth century; 'colonialism' was employed first in 1853 to signify issues pertaining to a colony, and only in 1886 to refer to a system or principle. 'Empire' has a long and complex semantic history, reaching back to Rome, but the term 'British empire' became popular in the second quarter of the eighteenth century. 'Imperialism' was used for much of the Victorian period to characterize the purportedly despotic municipal politics of France; it was only in the late 1860s, and especially the 1870s, that it entered mainstream use to refer to policies of foreign conquest, and, even then, there was much confusion over its meaning. See Jeremy Bentham, An introduction to the principles of morals and legislation, ed. J. H. Burns and H. L. A. Hart (London, 1970 [1789]), p. 296.
2. On 'colony', see Chris Gosden, Archaeology and colonialism: Cultural contact from 5000BC to the present (Cambridge, 2004), p. 1
3. on 'empire' see David Armitage, The ideological origins of the British empire (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 170-1
4. on 'imperialism', see Richard Koebner and Helmut Dan Schmidt, Imperialism: The story and significance of a political word, 1840-1960 (Cambridge, 1964), chs. 5-7.
5. J. R. Seeley, The expansion of England: Two courses of lectures (London, 1883), pp. 121-2
6. Seeley, 'Introduction' to Her Majesty's colonies (London, 1886), p. xv.
7. John Stuart Mill, 'A few words on non-intervention', in John M. Robson, ed., The collected works of John Stuart Mill (33 vols., Toronto, 1963-91), XXI, p. 117
8. and J. A. Froude, 'England and her colonies', Fraser's Magazine, 1 (1870), pp. 1-16, at pp. 4-5.
9. On the peace movement, see Martin Ceadel, The origins of war prevention: the British peace movement and international relations, 1730-1854 (Oxford, 1996)
10. idem, Semi-detached idealists: The British peace movement and international relations, 1854-1945 (Oxford, 2000)
11. and Paul Laity, The British peace movement, 1870-1914 (Oxford, 2001).
12. See the introduction to Gareth Stedman Jones and Gregory Claeys, eds., The Cambridge history of nineteenth century political thought (Cambridge, forthcoming).
13. Edmund Burke, 'Opening of impeachment' (16 Feb. 1788), in P. J. Marshall, ed., The writings and speeches of Edmund Burke (9 vols., Oxford, 1991), VI, p. 346.
14. See especially Jennifer Pitts, A turn to empire: The rise of imperial liberalism in Britain and France (Princeton, 2005);
15. and Sankar Muthu, Enlightenment against empire (Princeton, 2003). On the distinction between civilized and barbarian,
16. see also Edward Keene, Beyond the anarchical society: Grotius, colonialism, and order in world politics (Cambridge, 2002)
17. Gerry Simpson, Great powers and outlaw states: Unequal sovereigns in the international legal order (Cambridge, 2000)
18. and Gerrit Gong, The standard of 'civilization' in international society (Oxford, 1984).
19. Raymond Geuss, 'Liberalism and its discontents', Political Theory, 30 (2002), pp. 320-39.
20. See also Javed Majeed, Ungoverned imaginings: James Mill's 'The history of British India' and orientalism (Oxford, 1992).
21. Mehta writes, to give atypical example, that 'In the empire, one might say, liberalism had found the concrete place of its dreams' (Uday Singh Mehra, Liberalism and empire: A study in nineteenth-century British liberal thought (Chicago, 1999), p. 37).
22. Ibid., p. 20.
23. Ibid., pp. 9, 47, and 80.
24. See, for example, Duncan Bell and Casper Sylvest, 'International society in Victorian political thought: T. H. Green, Herbert Spencer, and Henry Sidgwick', Modern Intellectual History (forthcoming).
25. Aside from Pitts and Mehta, see Lynn Zastoupil, John Stuart Mill and India (Stanford, 1994)
26. M. I. Moir, Douglas Peers, and Lynn Zastoupil, eds., J. S. Mill's encounter with India (Toronto, 1999)
27. Michael Levin, J. S. Mill on civilization and barbarism (London, 2004)
28. Beate Jahn, 'Barbarian thoughts: Imperialism in the philosophy of John Stuart Mill', Review of International Studies, 31 (2005), pp. 599-618
29. and Eileen P. Sullivan, 'Liberalism and imperialism: J. S. Mill's defence of the British empire', Journal of the History of Ideas, 44 (1983) pp. 599-617.
30. See Stewart Brown, ed., William Robertson and the expansion of empire (Cambridge 1997)
31. and G. A. Grundy, 'An enlightened Spanish lesson: William Robertson, war and the international order' (Ph.D. dissertation, Edinburgh, 2004).
32. Pitts, A turn to empire, 'Introduction'.
33. Muthu, Enlightenment against empire, p. 5.
34. John Morley, The Life of Richard Cobden (London, 1910 [1881]), pp. 333-4
35. and J. A. Hobson, Cobden: The international man, ed. Neville Masterman (London, 1968 [1919]), chs. 8 and 13.
36. Rom Harre, 'Positivist thought in the nineteenth century',
37. and Ross Harrison, 'Utilitarians and idealists', both in Tom Baldwin, ed., The Cambridge history of philosophy, 1870-1945 (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 24, 256
38. and Herbert Spencer, Social statics, in Herbert Spencer: Collected writings, ed. Michael Taylor (12 vols., London, 1996 [1851]), III, ch. 27
39. and idem, The proper sphere of government [1843],
40. in The man versus the state, with six essays on government, society, and freedom (Indianapolis, 1982), pp. 217-26.
41. Miles Taylor, 'Imperium et libertas? Rethinking the radical critique of imperialism during the nineteenth century', Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 19 (1991), pp. 1-23;
42. and Peter Cain, 'Radicalism, Gladstone, and the liberal critique of Disraelian "imperialism"', in Duncan Bell, ed., 'Victorian visions of global order: Empire and international relations in nineteenth-century British political thought' (unpublished collection of essays).
43. Eric Stokes, The English utilitarians and India (Oxford, 1959).
44. Frederick Rosen, 'Eric Stokes, British utilitarianism, and India', in Moir, Peers, and Zastoupil, eds., J. S. Mill's encounter with India, pp. 18-33.
45. See also Georgios Varouxakis and Bart Schultz, eds., Utilitarianism and empire (Lanham, 2005).
46. Frederick Rosen, Bentham, Byron, and Greece: Constitutionalism, nationalism, and early liberal political thought (Oxford, 1992).
47. Peter Mandler, 'The problem of cultural history', Social and Cultural History, 1 (2004), pp. 94-118
48. and Jonathan Rose, The intellectual life of the British working classes (London, 2001), pp. 1-11.
49. Peter Mandler, '"Race" and "nation" in mid-Victorian thought', in Stefan Collini, Richard Whatmore, and Brian Young, eds., History, religion, and culture: British intellectual history, 1750-1850 (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 224-45
50. see also Stuart Jones, 'The national in Victorian political thought', European Journal of Political theory (forthcoming, 2006).
51. Cheryl Welch, 'Colonial violence and the rhetoric of evasion: Tocqueville on Algeria', Political Theory, 31 (2003), pp. 235-64.
52. J. R. Seeley, 'Our insular ignorance', The Nineteenth Century, 18 (1885), pp. 135-6
53. Charles Dilke, Greater Britain (2 vols., London, 1868), II, p. 383.
54. J. H. Muirhead, 'What imperialism means' (1900), in David Boucher, ed., The British idealists (Cambridge, 1997), p. 246.
55. Karuna Mantena, Alibis of empire (forthcoming, Princeton, 2006).
56. Karma Nabulsi, Traditions of war: Occupation, resistance, and the law (Oxford, 1999).
57. Martti Koskenniemi, The gentle civilizer of nations: The rise and fall of international law, 1870-1960 (Cambridge, 2001), p. 3.
58. Ibid., pp. 46, 51. Italics in original.
59. Ibid., p. 4. Italics in original.
60. Duncan Bell, 'Unity and difference: J. R. Seeley and the political theology of international relations', Review of International Studies, 31 (2005), pp. 559-79
61. H. S. Jones, 'The idea of the national in Victorian political thought', and Georgios Varouxakis, '"Patriotism", "cosmopolitanism" and "humanity" in Victorian political thought', European Journal of Political Theory (forthcoming, 2006).
62. Jennifer Pitts, 'The boundaries of Victorian international law', in Bell, ed., 'Victorian visions'.
63. F. W. Newman, 'Indian annexations: British treatment of native princes', Westminster Review, 23 (1863), pp. 115-57
64. and Pitts, 'Boundaries of Victorian international law'.
65. Casper Sylvest, 'International law in nineteenth-century Britain', British Yearbook of International Law (Oxford, 2005)
66. and idem, 'The foundations of Victorian international law', in Bell, ed., 'Victorian visions'.
67. John Austin, The province of jurisprudence determined, ed. W. E. Rumble (Cambridge, 1995 [1832]), pp. 123, 171
68. John Stuart Mill, 'Austin on jurisprudence' (1863), in Robinson, ed., Collected works, XXI, pp. 165-207.
69. Sylvest, 'The foundations of Victorian international law'.
70. Sandra Den Otter, 'Rewriting the utilitarian market: Colonial law and custom in mid-nineteenth-century British India', The European Legacy, 6 (2001), pp. 177-89 at p. 179.
71. Ibid., p. 184.
72. Henry Maine, Village-communities of the East and West (London, 1881), p. 206
73. and James Fitzjames Stephens, Liberty, equality, fraternity (Indianapolis, 1993 [1874]), p. xxix.
74. Maine, Village-communities, p. 22.
75. Karuna Mantena, '"Law and tradition": Henry Maine and the theoretical origins of indirect rule', in Andrew Lewis and Michael Lobban, eds., Law and history (Oxford, 2004), pp. 159-88
76. and William Bain, Between anarchy and society: Trusteeship and the obligations of power (Oxford, 2003).
77. Mehta, Liberalism and empire, p. 5.
78. Istvan Hont, Jealousy of trade: International competition and the nation-state in historical context (Cambridge, MA, 2005).
79. On problems and ambiguities, see Philip Gleason, 'Identifying identity: a semantic history', Journal of American History, 69 (1983), pp. 910-31
80. and Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper, 'Beyond identity', Theory and Society, 29 (2000), pp. 1-47.
81. Edward Said, Culture and imperialism (London, 1993)
82. Catherine Hall, Civilising subjects: Metropole and colony in the English imagination, 1830-1867 (Cambridge, 2002)
83. Antoinette Burton, 'Introduction', to idem, ed., After the imperial turn: Thinking with and through the nation (Durham, NC, 2004).
84. John Mackenzie, Propaganda and empire: The shaping of British public opinion, 1880-1960 (Manchester, 1984)
85. see also Krishan Kumar, The making of English national identity (Cambridge, 2003).
86. Bernard Porter, The absent-minded imperialists: Empire, society, and culture in Britain (Oxford, 2004).
87. Ibid., ch. 9.
88. See also Rose, The intellectual life of the British working class.
89. Bahar Rumelili, 'Constructing identity and relating to difference: understanding the EU's mode of differentiation', Review of International Studies, 30 (2004), pp. 27-47
90. and Arash Abizadeh, 'Does collective identity presuppose an other?', American Political Science Review, 99 (2005), pp. 45-60.
91. Charles Taylor, 'Interpretation and the sciences of man', in idem, Philosophy and the human sciences: Philosophical papers (2 vols., Cambridge, 1985), 1, pp. 15-57.
92. This would be even more pronounced if they picked a period in which, say, the World Cup was being shown on television.
93. Richard Drayton, 'Putting the British into the empire', Journal of British Studies, 44 (2005), pp. 187-94, at p. 191.
94. Simpson, Great powers and outlaw states, p. 5.
95. See also Georgios Varouxakis, '"Great" versus "small" nations in Victorian political thought', in Bell, ed., 'Victorian visions'.
96. Boyd Hilton, The age of atonement: The influence of evangelicalism on social and economic thought, 1795-1865 (Oxford, 1988)
97. Anthony Howe, Free trade and liberal England, 1846-1946 (Oxford, 1997)
98. E. H. H. Green, The crisis of conservatism: The politics, economics, and ideology of the Conservative party, 1880-1914 (London, 1995)
99. and idem, Ideologies of conservatism (Oxford, 2002), chs. 1 and 2.
100. Peter Cain, Hobson and imperialism: Radicalism, new liberalism, and finance, 1887-1938 (Oxford, 2002).
101. Ibid., pp. 7, 162.
102. Exceptions include Michael Bentley, Lord Salisbury's world: Conservative environments in late-Victorian Britain (Cambridge, 2001), ch. 8
103. Green, The crisis of conservatism;
104. and Mark Bevir, 'In opposition to the Raj: Annie Besant and the dialectics of empire', History of Political Thought, 19 (1998), pp. 61-77.
105. Hall, Civilising subjects;
106. and Andrew Porter, Religion versus empire? British Protestant missionaries and overseas expansion, 1700-1914 (Manchester, 2004).
107. Murney Gerlach, British liberalism and the United States: Political and social thought in the late Victorian age (Basingstoke, 2001)
108. Georgios Varouxakis, Victorian political theory on France and the French (London, 2002)
109. and J. P. Parry, The politics of patriotism: English liberalism, national identity, and Europe, 1830-1886 (forthcoming, Cambridge, 2006).
110. C. A. Bayly, 'European political thought and the wider world during the nineteenth century', in Stedman Jones and Claeys, eds., The Cambridge history of nineteenth century political thought.
111. The importance is recognized by political and economic historians: G. R. Searle, A new England? Peace and war, 1886-1918 (Oxford, 2004)
112. P. J. Cain and A. G. Hopkins, British imperialism, 1688-2000 (2nd edn, London, 2002)
113. and Andrew Thompson, Imperial Britain: The empire in British politics, c. 1880-1932 (London, 2000).
114. See also E. H. H. Green, 'The political economy of empire, 1880-1914', in Andrew Porter, ed., The Oxford history of the British empire (5 vols., Oxford, 1999), 111, pp. 346-68.
115. J. A. Froude, 'England's war', Fraser's Magazine, 3 (1871), pp. 135-50 at p. 144.
116. For sceptical remarks about their influence and originality, see A. G. L. Shaw, 'British attitudes to the colonies, ca. 1820-1850', Journal of British Studies, 9 (1969), pp. 71-95.
117. E. G. Wakefield, 'Outline of a system of colonization' (1829), in M. F. Lloyd Prichard, ed., The collected works of Edward Gibbon Wakefield (Glasgow, 1968), pp. 178-87
118. and John Stuart Mill, Principles of political economy, ed. Jonathan Riley (Oxford, 1994 [1848]).
119. See also Bernard Semmel, The rise of free trade imperialism: Classical political economy, the empire of free trade and imperialism, 1750-1850 (Cambridge, 1970), chs. 4 and 5
120. and Donald Winch, Classical political economy and colonies (Cambridge, 1965), chs. 5 to 10.
121. Karl Marx, Capital, a critical analysis of capitalist production, 1 (Moscow, 1954 [1887]), ch. 33.
122. See also H. O. Pappe, 'Wakefield and Marx', Economic History Review, 4 (1951), pp. 88-97.
123. Duncan Bell, Budding greater Britain: Empire, ideology, and the future of world order, 1860-1900 (Princeton, forthcoming)
124. Michael Burgess, The British tradition of federalism (Leicester, 1995)
125. J. E. Kendle, Federal Britain (London, 1997), ch. 3
126. and Ged Martin, 'Empire federalism and imperial parliamentary union, 1820-1870', Historical Journal, 16 (1973), pp. 65-92.
127. J. A. Hobson, Imperialism: A study, ed. Philip Siegelman (Ann Arbor, 1997 [1902]), p. 332
128. and L. T. Hobhouse, Democracy and reaction, ed. Peter Clarke (Brighton, 1972 [1904]), pp. 153-4. Both later changed their views on this issue.
129. Duncan Bell, 'Dissolving distance: Technology, space, and empire in British political thought, 1860-1900', Journal of Modern History, 77 (2005), pp. 523-63.
130. Miles Taylor, 'The 1848 revolutions and the British empire', Past and Present, 166 (2000), pp. 146-80.
131. Philip Harling, 'Equipoise regained? Recent trends in British political history', Journal of Modern History, 75 (2003), pp. 890-918.
132. On the compatibility between 'high' political history and post-linguistic turn approaches, see Susan Pedersen, 'What is political history now?', in David Cannadine, ed., What is history now? (London, 2002), pp. 36-57.