Liberalism, Imperialism, and the Historical Imagination

Koditschek, Theodore:
Liberalism, Imperialism, and the Historical Imagination : Nineteenth-Century Visions of a Greater Britain / Theodore Koditschek. - Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2011. - xiii, 351 S.
ISBN 978-0-521-76791-0
£ 60,00
DDC: 941.081072

Beschreibung
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 new 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 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. [Verlagsinformation]

Inhalt
Acknowledgements. x
List of abbreviations. xii
Introduction. 1
1. Imagining Great Britain: Union, Empire and the burden of history: 1800–1830. 17
2. Imagining a British India: history and the re-construction of Empire. 56
3. Imagining a Greater Britain: the Macaulays and the liberal romance of Empire. 99
4. Re-imagining a Greater Britain: J. A. Froude: counter-romance and controversy. 151
5. Greater Britain and the 'lesser breeds': liberalism, race and evolutionary history. 206
6. Indian liberals and Greater Britain: the search for union through history. 263
Epilogue: from liberal imperialism to conservative unionism: losing the thread of progress in history. 314
Index. 346.

Autor
THEODORE KODITSCHEK, Associate Professor, University of Missouri, Columbia. Profile page.

Quellen: Cambridge University Press; WorldCat; Amazon (UK)