Lineages of Empire: The Historical Roots of British Imperial Thought
Duncan Kelly
Abstract
Recently there has been an explosion of academic and popular interest in the history of how Britons have thought about their Empire. This book focuses on the ways in which the intellectual history and political thought of modern Britain have been saturated with imperial concerns. The chapters address thematic questions about size and scale, race, colonial emigration, and the ideological uses of the classical tradition, questions that are crucial for understanding the historical roots of British imperial thought. There are also studies of figures central to understanding the character of intell ... More
Recently there has been an explosion of academic and popular interest in the history of how Britons have thought about their Empire. This book focuses on the ways in which the intellectual history and political thought of modern Britain have been saturated with imperial concerns. The chapters address thematic questions about size and scale, race, colonial emigration, and the ideological uses of the classical tradition, questions that are crucial for understanding the historical roots of British imperial thought. There are also studies of figures central to understanding the character of intellectual debates about the British Empire from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries: Edmund Burke, James Steuart, Adam Smith, and Harold Laski. The book also shows how an awareness of these histories of the imperial past can provide numerous lessons for understanding the strengths and weaknesses of much contemporary political thinking about empire and imperialism.
Keywords:
British Empire,
intellectual history,
political thought,
modern Britain,
race,
colonial emigration,
classical tradition,
Edmund Burke,
James Steuart
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2009 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780197264393 |
| Published to British Academy Scholarship Online: January 2012 |
DOI:10.5871/bacad/9780197264393.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Duncan Kelly, editor
Lecturer in Political Theory, Department of Politics, University of Cambridge
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