{"product_id":"a-turn-to-empire-9780691127910","title":"A Turn to Empire","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBy the mid-nineteenth century, the most prominent British and French liberal thinkers vigorously supported the conquest of non-European people. This work 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWinner of the 2006 First Book Award, Foundations of Political Theory Section of the American Political Science Association One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2005 \"Jennifer Pitts ... [shows] that support for imperialism is not inherent to liberalism by demonstrating that prominent 18th- and early-19th-century liberals in Britain and France were deeply critical of imperialism... The book is beautifully written, and the scholarship is outstanding.\"--Choice \"Jennifer Pitts helps us to see early-nineteenth-century imperial discourse in a new light by showing more clearly what came before.\"--Michael Bentley, Victorian Studies \"An impressive and even pathbreaking piece of work.\"--Theodore Koditschek, Journal of Modern History \"This book is a brilliantly successful attempt to account for the apparent transition from the fierce, bitter assault on the idea of empire by the writers of the second half of the eighteenth century...to the often self-congratulatory, high-minded endorsement of a new kind of imperial mission less than half a century later... Pitt's finest pages...are on Tocqueville and the Algerian question.\"--Anthony Pagden, Perspectives on Politics \"This is an excellent book about late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century liberals and empire. Based on a wide range of material, which Pitts handles impressively, the book begins from a broad but workable definition of liberalism as involving a notion of individual rights and an attempt to widen social sympathies. Pitts deserves much credit for directing attention to liberalism's ability to negotiate difference in a context of empire and for her well-written, inspiring, and thorough analysis.\"--Casper Sylvest, Political Studies Review \"This [is a] thoughtful and engaging book.\"--John Cramsie, The Historian \"Jennifer Pitts ... undermines the case for the reality of anti-imperialism by depicting the rise of 'imperial liberalism' as a major intellectual trend in both Britain and France between c. 1780 and 1850. She does so in a careful, acute and lucid account of the ideas on empire of Adam Smith, Burke, Bentham, the Mills, and de Tocqueville.\"--Anthony Howe, European History Quarterly\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgments 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","brand":"Princeton University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49403745010007,"sku":"9780691127910","price":38.25,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780691127910.jpg?v=1730484423","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/a-turn-to-empire-9780691127910","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}