Victorian Visions of Global Order: Empire and International Relations in Nineteenth-Century Political Thought

by Edited by Duncan Bell

• ISBN13: 9780521882927
• ISBN10: 0521882923
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-01-14
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This wide-ranging and original study provides an insight into the climate of political thought during the lifespan of what was, at this time, the most powerful empire in history. A distinguished group of contributors explores the way in which thinkers in Britain theorised influential views about empire and international relations, exploring topics such as the evolution of international law; the ways in which the world was notionally divided into the 'civilised' and the 'barbarian'; the role of India in shaping visions of civil society; grandiose ideas about a global imperial state; the development of an array of radical critiques of empire; the varieties of liberal imperialism; and the rise and fall of free trade. Together, the chapters form an analysis of political thought in this context; both of the famous (Bentham, Mill, Marx, and Hobson) and of those who, whilst influential at the time, are all but forgotten today.

Table of Contents

Contributors	p. ix
Victorian visions of global order: an introduction	p. 1
Free trade and global order: the rise and fall of a Victorian vision	p. 26
The foundations of Victorian international law	p. 47
Boundaries of Victorian international law	p. 67
'A legislating empire': Victorian political theorists, codes of law, and empire	p. 89
The crisis of liberal imperialism	p. 113
'Great' versus 'small' nations: size and national greatness in Victorian political thought	p. 136
The Victorian idea of a global state	p. 159
Radicalism and the extra-European world: the case of Karl Marx	p. 186
Radicalism, Gladstone, and the liberal critique of Distraelian 'imperialism'	p. 215
The 'left' and the critique of empire c. 1865-1900: three roots of humanitarian foreign policy	p. 239
Consequentialist cosmopolitanism	p. 267
Index	p. 291
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