Description
Book SynopsisThe civilizing mission associated with nineteenth-century colonialism became harder to justify after the First World War. In an increasingly anti-imperialist culture, elites reformulated schemes for the “improvement” of “inferior” societies. Nation building, social engineering, humanitarianism, modernization or the spread of democracy were used to justify outside interventions and the top-down transformation of non-western, international or even domestic societies. The contributions in Civilizing Missions in the Twentieth Century discuss how these justifications influenced Polish nation building, Scandinavian disarmament proposals and technocratic social policies in the interwar years. Treatment of the second half of the century covers the changing cultural context of European humanitarianism, as well as the influence of American social science on US foreign policy, more particularly democracy promotion. Contributors are: Boris Barth, Rolf Hobson, Jürgen Osterhammel, Frank Ninkovich, Bianka Pietrow-Ennker, Karen Gram-Skjoldager, Esther Moeller, and Jost Dülffer.
Table of ContentsNotes on Contributors Civilizing Missions from the 19th to the 21st Centuries, or from Uplifting to Democratization Boris Barth and Rolf Hobson The Cultural Transformation of America’s Civilizing Mission in the Twentieth Century Frank Ninkovich Nation-Building, Concepts of Space and Civilizing Mission in the Early Second Republic of Poland Bianka Pietrow-Ennker Ambiguities of the Domestic Civilizing Mission: Technocratic Elites and Social Engineering in Interwar Europe Boris Barth Lilliputians for Peace: Scandinavian Internationalism and International Disarmament c. 1880–1940 Karen Gram-Skjoldager Questioning the Civilizing Mission: Humanitarianism and the Arab World in the 20th Century Esther Moeller The Democratic Peace Controversy in Retrospect as a “Civilizing Mission”? a Theory Revisited Jost Dülffer American Nationalism and Regime Change: How the Neocons Tried to Speed Up the Inevitable Rolf Hobson Epilogue: from Civilizing Missions to the Defence of Civility Jürgen Osterhammel Index
