Some Reflections on Colonialism

1956 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 259-268
Author(s):  
Hans Kohn
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Western Civilization ◽  
Less Developed Countries ◽  
Abuse Of Power ◽  
Imperial Expansion

The meaning and implications of the word colonialism and of the closely connected terms of empire and imperialism have undergone a profound transformation in the last decades. Until the end of the nineteenth century the word empire or imperialism was generally used in a laudatory and not a pejorative meaning. The Roman Empire had been the model for Western political thought for one thousand years. The Americans at the end of the eighteenth century proudly and hopefully spoke of their empire. The French revolutionaries proclaimed the imperial expansion of their leadership. Modern Western civilization was regarded as superior to other more stagnant civilizations, and to bring higher civilization to less developed countries was considered a praiseworthy enterprise, in spite of the fact that like so many human efforts this too was inextricably mingled with all kinds of corruption and greed. Empire and colonialism always implied dominion and power; and power, whether exercised by “native” or “alien” governments, has a potency for abuse as probably no other relationship has. Yet liberal alien governments—and liberalism means primarily restraint upon, and limitations of, governmental authority—will be more easily controlled by public opinion against abuse of power than illiberal “native” governments.

A counter voice: Gustave de Beaumont and the theory of national characters

2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-116
Author(s):  
Michela Nacci
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Irish Question ◽  
First Time

Gustave de Beaumont was clearly a counter voice within the debate about national characters that engaged nineteenth-century French political thought. This was not the first time that Beaumont set himself apart for the originality of his convictions. For instance, on the Irish question, he did not take Ireland's part against England out of allegiance to the Catholicism of the Irish as opposed to the Anglicanism of the English (which was why most of French public opinion was for Ireland); rather, studying the issue led him to see the English presence in Ireland as a policy of oppression and discrimination.

The Personnel of the Dublin Society of United Irishmen, 1791-4

1940 ◽  
Vol 2 (5) ◽  
pp. 12-53
Author(s):  
R. B. McDowell
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Political Freedom ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Independent Voters ◽  
United Irishmen

One of the most noticeable features of Irish political life in the 'later eighteenth century, is, that though political power was :oncentrated in comparatively few hands, there was a very large leasure of political freedom. One could in fact sum up the system by saying that it was oligarchy tempered by discussion. As a result, voluntary and unofficial societies and clubs arose for the purpose of educating and influencing public opinion, and were the nuclei of much political thought and action. There [were Whig Clubs, Constitutional Clubs, Societies for the [Preservation of Liberty and Peace and Associations of Independent Voters. Thus there was nothing very strange in the Iformation, in November 1791, of a Dublin branch of the newly bounded Society of United Irishmen. But this group was to prove unique in at least one respect.

Addison and the Victorians

2021 ◽  
pp. 308-328
Author(s):  
Brian Young
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Feminist Criticism ◽  
Literary Biography ◽  
Republic Of Letters ◽  
Valuable Study ◽  
History Of

The masculine world of Addison’s eighteenth-century ‘republic of letters’ was mirrored by that inhabited by Victorian ‘Men of Letters’, and hence much of the lively interest taken in him by nineteenth-century cultural commentators and makers of (and historians of) public opinion. The agnostic manliness of such men as Leslie Stephen and W. J. Courthope informed the way they wrote about Addison, whose Christianity they tended to slight and who was described by them as ‘delicate’. Macaulay had been more admiring of Addison as a Christian gentleman, while Thackeray praised him as an English humorist. Pope and Swift continued to enjoy an ascendancy in eighteenth-century English literary history, with Addison and Steele appreciated more for having been ‘characteristic’ of their age than as acting in any way as intellectually innovative figures. Matthew Arnold was notably critical of Addison, whom he found provincial and narrow. Both Addison and his Victorian critics were subjected to feminist criticism by Virginia Woolf, who happened to be Stephen’s daughter, but she in her turn slighted the most significant early Victorian study of Addison, the life written by the Unitarian Lucy Aikin. The ‘long nineteenth century’ in the English literary history of the eighteenth century is thus bookended by studies of Addison by women, and it is time that justice was paid to Aikin’s pioneering and still valuable study, submerged as it has been by readers of Macaulay’s essay on Addison, which was ostensibly a review of Aikin’s exercise in literary biography.

Indirect Rule in the British Empire: The Foundations of the Residency System in India (1764–1858)

1984 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 393-428 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael H. Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
West Africa ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Empirical Learning ◽  
Political Costs ◽  
Regional State ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
Political Agent ◽  
Indirect Rule

The British Empire established itself and expanded largely through its incorporation of existing indigenous political structures. A single British Resident or Political Agent, controlling a regional state through ‘advice’ given to the local prince or chief, became the norm for much of the Empire. India's princely states, where from the mid-eighteenth century the British first employed and developed this system of indirect rule, stood as the conscious model for later imperial administrators and politicians who wished to extend the Empire without the economic and political costs of direct annexation. In dealing with Malaya, East and West Africa from the mid-nineteenth century onward, officials in the field and notables in London sought to justify imperial expansion and to establish indirect rule efficiently by drawing upon the Indian example.Thus, during a century of empirical learning from relations with India'sprincely states, the British established a body of theory and policies about indirect rule which then spread throughout the rest of the Empire.

Anthropological Models in Yoruba History

Africa ◽  
1973 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. C. C. Law
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Development ◽  
The Political ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
History Of ◽  
Descent Group ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
Social Anthropologist

Opening ParagraphThe recent appearance of a monograph by a social anthropologist, Peter Lloyd, on The Political Development of Yoruba Kingdoms in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries is likely to arouse considerable interest among historians of Africa, whose appetites have been whetted by adumbrations of his interpretation in some of his earlier publications. Lloyd traces the political development of the kingdom of Oyo through its period of imperial expansion in the eighteenth century until its collapse in the 1830s, and of five Yoruba states in the nineteenth century—Ibadan, Ado Ekiti, Abeokuta, Iwo, and Ilorin. He seeks to apply to the history of these states a model of the process whereby ‘tribal kingdoms’ develop into ‘highly centralised monarchies’. A ‘tribal kingdom’ is defined as one in which ‘political power…rests with a council of chiefs, each of which is selected by and from among members of a descent group—[and] the king is seen more as an arbiter between the chiefs than as an autocrat’. In a centralized monarchy, on the other hand, power rests with the king, the senior chiefs are appointed by the king, and a concept of ‘citizenship’ develops to replace descent-group loyalties. The Yoruba states discussed in this monograph did not, in fact, develop in this way, and Lloyd's theme is their failure to achieve centralization. The analysis is applied principally to Oyo. Of the nineteenth-century states discussed, relatively little is said of Iwo and Ado Ekiti, while Ibadan, Abeokuta, and Ilorin did not start out as ‘tribal kingdoms’ but as war-camps without kings. Moreover, it is suggested that the failure of Oyo to achieve centralization provided precedents for decentralization which influenced the development of its successors in the nineteenth century.

scholarly journals Afrikanerliberalisme in die tydperk 1775 - 1975 – die interpretasies van GD Scholtz en H Giliomee

2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
P De Klerk
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
South African ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
English Speaking

Two historians, GD Scholtz and H Giliomee, have written extensively about liberal political thought among Afrikaners during the period 1775-1975. Their interpretations of the influence of liberalism on Afrikaner political thought differ from one another in some respects. Scholtz acknowledges the influence of the political ideas of the Enlightenment on the Cape Patriot movement of the late eighteenth century, but does not regard these ideas as a form of liberalism. He views liberalism as a political ideology alien to the Afrikaners, that was introduced to South Africa in the early 1800s by British officials and missionaries. Since the middle of the nineteenth century the main exponents of liberal political thought in South Africa were British colonists and their descendants. There were always a few Afrikaners with liberal political ideas, but they were strongly influenced by British culture or by English-speaking South Africans. Giliomee, however, is of the opinion that there were already Afrikaners with liberal ideas at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It appears from his study that, although none of the major Afrikaner political leaders from the eighteenth century until the present can be described as a liberal, in the course of two centuries a number of politicians and intellectuals with an Afrikaans background played an important role in various liberal political movements and had a significant influence on the development of Afrikaner political thought. Although Scholtz and Giliomee have both made an important contribution to research on Afrikaner liberal political thought, it is clear that more research should lead to a better understanding of this phenomenon.Keywords: South African Historiography; Afrikaner Political Thought; GD Scholtz; H Giliomee; Liberalism; Democracy; Cape Patriot Movement; Cape Franchise; Segregation; Apartheid Disciplines: Political History; Intellectual History; Political Philosophy

scholarly journals The 1753 Jewish Naturalization Bill and the Polemic over Credit

2018 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 467-492 ◽  
Author(s):  
Avinoam Yuval-Naeh
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Financial Market ◽  
Alternative Perspective ◽  
History Of ◽  
Partisan Conflict ◽  
Practical Impact

AbstractThe polemic surrounding the 1753 Jewish Naturalization Bill was one of the major public opinion campaigns in Britain in the eighteenth century, as well as the most significant event in the history of Britain's Jews between their seventeenth-century admission and nineteenth-century emancipation. The bill proposed to offer Jews a private act of naturalization without the sacramental test. A costly and cumbersome process, the measure could have had only minor practical impact. Due to its symbolic significance, however, the bill ignited public clamor in hundreds of newspaper columns, pamphlets, and prints. What made it so resonant, and why was the opposition so successful in propagating opposition to the motion? It has been commonly argued that the entire affair was an instance of partisan conflict in which the Jews themselves played an incidental role. This paper throws light on the episode from an alternative perspective, arguing that a central reason for its resonance was that the discussion on the Jews evoked concerns with the expanding financial market and its sociopolitical implications. As Jews had by that time become emblematic of modern finance, they embodied contemporary anxieties about the economy, national identity, and their interrelations.

scholarly journals BOURGEOIS MODERNITY VERSUS THE HISTORICAL ARISTOCRACY IN CHRISTOPH MEINERS'S POLITICAL THOUGHT

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 943-966 ◽  
Author(s):  
MORGAN GOLF-FRENCH
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Radical Critique ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Bourgeois Modernity

AbstractChristoph Meiners (1747–1810), a major historian and philosopher of the German late Enlightenment, has received increasing recognition as a significant thinker in the emergence of nineteenth-century racial theories. The scholarly focus on Meiners's hierarchical view of race and its legacy has led to the classification of his broaderoeuvreas conservative, or even reactionary. By examining hisGeschichte der Ungleichheit der Stände unter den vornehmsten europäischen Völkern(1792), written in response to the French Revolution and the contemporary circumstances of the Holy Roman Empire, this article sheds new light on his work, as well as on an under-researched line of thought in the 1790s. Rather than a conservative or reactionary work, this text is a radical critique of the German aristocracy that ultimately recommends the abolition of most significant aristocratic privileges and the overhaul of its membership in favour of the bourgeoisie. This article presents not only a more complex understanding of Christoph Meiners's ideas, but also calls for a reappraisal of the categories applied to late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century intellectuals both in Germany and in Europe more broadly.

scholarly journals Germany and the Muslim World

ICR Journal ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 519-522
Author(s):  
Christoph Marcinkowski
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
The World ◽  
The Times

The relations between the world of Islam and Germany (or what was then the Holy Roman Empire) date back far into the Middle Ages and were particularly intense during the times of the Crusades. However, Muslims came to Germany in larger numbers as part of the diplomatic, military and economic relations between Germany and the Ottoman Empire in the eighteenth century. German diplomats and travellers, in turn, visited the Ottoman lands as well as Safavid Persia from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, respectively. In Muslim public opinion, Germany appears to have been always seen as the ‘friend of the Muslims’, a kind of ‘exception’ compared with other Western colonial powers which controlled large chunks of the Muslim homeland. Germany - so it was thought - had no colonial ambitions in the Dar al-Islam. Germany’s last emperor, William II (r. 1888-1918), during his famous 1898 speech in Damascus, declared himself the ‘eternal friend’ of the (then) 300 million Muslims in the world. 

Politics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neville Morley
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Human Development ◽  
Late Stage ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Civic Virtue ◽  
Right Wing

This article explores ideas of decadence and decline in political thought, from classical Greek and Roman speculation about the cycle of political regimes to early modern discussions of the importance of civic virtue, the role of institutions and constitutions, and the dangerous effects of luxury, culminating in eighteenth-century concerns about the risk of excessive civilization. It also considers the varied political stances of the decadents themselves in the wider context of the nineteenth-century critique of modernity and the historicization of the present as a “late” stage of human development. Such a diagnosis can be incorporated into either revolutionary or reactionary projects; since the early twentieth century, decadence has featured primarily as an important component of the worldview of fascist and other right-wing movements and has been an important tool in the mobilization of individual grievances and discontent for reactionary ends.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document