Evaluating Empire and Confronting Colonialism in Eighteenth-Century Britain

ISBN-13: 9781107030558 / Angielski / Twarda / 2013 / 408 str.

Jack P. Greene

Opis

This text analyzes how Britons celebrated and critiqued their empire during the short 18th century, from about 1730 to 1790. It focuses on the emergence of an early awareness of the undesirable effects of British colonialism on both overseas Britons and subaltern people in the British Empire, whether in India, the Americas, Africa or Ireland.

Recenzje

'An important book on a topic to which historians have not given due attention. Greene has done nothing short of opening up a new subfield of eighteenth-century imperial history. No doubt rich harvests will follow.' Max M. Edling, The Journal of Southern History

Spis treści

1. 'The principal cornucopia of Great Britain's wealth': the languages of commerce, liberty, security, and maritime supremacy and the celebration of empire; 2. Outposts of 'loose vagrant people': the language of alterity in the evaluation of empire; 3. 'A fabric at once the dread and wonder of the world': the languages of imperial grandeur, liberty, commerce, humanity, and justice and the American challenge to empire; 4. Arenas of 'Asiatic plunder': the languages of humanity and justice and the excesses of empire in India; 5. Sites of Creolean despotism: the languages of humanity and justice and the critique of colonial slavery and the African slave trade; 6. 'A fruitless, bloody, wasting war': the languages of imperial grandeur. Liberty, humanity, and commerce in the American conflict; 7. 'This voraginous gulph of Hibernian dependence': the languages of oppression, corruption, justice, liberty, and humanity and the identification of imperial excesses in Ireland; 8. A 'shadow of our former glory'?: The discussion of empire in the wake of American secession; 9. Epilogue: 'against every principle of justice, humanity, and whatever is allowed to be right among mankind': standards of humanity and the evaluation of empire.