Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T22:11:14.914Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Liberalism and the British Empire in India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 August 2015

Sudipta Sen
Sudipta Sen*
Affiliation:
University of California Davis
*
ssen@ucdavis.edu
Get access

Extract

It is hard to argue against the view that liberalism and empire have historically shared the same terrain of political ideas. If Raymond Williams is correct, then there is indeed an older set of implications attached to the words “liberal” and “liberalism” dating back to uses of the word “liberty,” commonly known in Shakespearean England, especially as expressed in “liberties of the subject,” that is, to a far more limited construction of the word “liberty” than its modern usage would allow (Williams 1976, 180). Liberty in this instance was the recognition of certain rights granted to subjects of a sovereign authority. In this brief essay on how historians and political theorists in recent years have debated the tortuous relationship between the ideas of empire and liberty in British India, I would like to pause on this constricted and negative definition of liberty rather than its widest possible connotation in terms of human freedom and reflect on how the British Empire in India provided a critical arena for the exercise of sovereign power in the name of both freedom and responsibility. It might be worth stressing that the term “liberal” itself, with its various connotations ranging from licentious to the humane, predates the narrower body of ideas typically attributed to political liberalism, and moreover, that liberalism by far precedes imperialism as a coherent doctrine.

Type
Book Review Essay: South Asia
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 74 , Issue 3 , August 2015 , pp. 711 - 722
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

List of References

Hobson, John Atkinson. 1902. Imperialism: A Study. London: James Nisbet.Google Scholar
Macaulay, Thomas Babington. 1880. The Miscellaneous Writings, Speeches and Poems of Lord Macaulay. Vol. 3. London: Longmans, Green and Company.Google Scholar
Mantena, Karuna. 2007. “Mill and the Imperial Predicament.” In J. S. Mill's Political Thought: A Bicentennial Reassessment, eds. Urbinati, Nadia and Zakaras, Alex, 298–318. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mill, John Stuart. 1859. “A Few Words on Non-Intervention.” In Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country 60:766–76. London: John W. Parker and Son.Google Scholar
Mill, John Stuart. 1861. Considerations on Representative Government. 2nd ed.London: Parker, Son and Bourn.Google Scholar
Mommsen, Wolfgang J. 1980. Theories of Imperialism. Translated by Falla, P. S.. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
O'Malley, Peter Frederick. 1859. Religious Liberty and the Indian Proclamation. London: W. H. Dalton.Google Scholar
Parry, Jonathan. 2006. The Politics of Patriotism: English Liberalism, National Identity and Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pitts, Jennifer. 2005. A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Imperial Liberalism in Britain and France. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Popper, Karl. 2013. The Poverty of Historicism. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shklar, Judith N. 1998. Political Thought and Political Thinkers. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Stokes, Eric. 1959. The English Utilitarians and India. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Urbinati, Nadia. 2002. Mill on Democracy: From the Athenian Polis to Representative Government. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Urbinati, Nadia. 2007. “The Many Heads of the Hydra: J. S. Mill on Despotism.” J. S. Mill's Political Thought: A Bicentennial Reassessment, eds. Urbinati, Nadia and Zakaras, Alex, 66–97. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, Raymond. 1976. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Zastoupil, Lynn. 1994. John Stuart Mill and India. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar