“The bourgeois nature in difficulties”: The Crisis of Liberalism in Robert Browning's Aristophanes’ Apology

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 551-575
Author(s):  
Joseph Hankinson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Individual Freedom ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
Age Of Liberty ◽  
Crisis Of Liberalism

Nathan K. Hensley's recent study, Forms of Empire (2016), posits that liberalism, as the nineteenth century progressed, came up against the “wayward meanings” generated by its own contradictions, particularly the “curious intimacy between legality and harm” that characterized a doctrine of individual freedom inextricably rooted in violent imperial expansion. For Hensley, “the dogged persistence of killing in an age of liberty disrupted the conceptual assumptions of progressive idealism”; while “the very inseparability of law and violence, never more painfully evident than in episodes of colonial war and legal emergency, collapsed the logical principles of non-contradiction and identity that remain our common sense.”

“To Make the World One in Christ Jesus”

2018 ◽  
Vol 87 (4) ◽  
pp. 575-592
Author(s):  
Gavin James Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
East Asian ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
Transnational Community ◽  
The World ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
Protestant Christianity ◽  
In Christ

Scholarship on nineteenth-century missionary encounters emphasizes either how native converts “indigenized” Christian doctrine and practice, or how missionaries acted as agents of Western imperial expansion. These approaches, however, overlook the ways both missionaries and converts understood Protestant Christianity as a call to transnational community. This essay examines the ways that American Protestants and East Asian Christian converts looked for ways to build a transpacific communion. Despite radically different understandings of Christian scripture, and despite the geopolitics of empire, U.S. and East Asian Protestants nevertheless strove to bring together diverse theologies and experiences into a loosely defined, transnational Protestant community.

State Intervention in Mid-Nineteenth Century Britain: Fact or Fiction?

1983 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
P.W.J. Bartrip
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
State Regulation ◽  
Individual Freedom ◽  
The Third ◽  
The People ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
Government Interference ◽  
Laissez Faire

The question of the degree of state intervention in nineteenth-century Britain has interested generations of scholars since the beginning of the present century. Did mid-nineteenth century England constitute an “age of laissez-faire” which gave way to an “age of collectivism,” or did an “age of mercantalism” merge into one of state regulation during which process, even in the early and mid-Victorian period, the state exercised considerable control over the day-to-day lives of its citizens? These are two of the questions over which there has been extended debate.The term laissez-faire has been employed in a variety of ways by different writers, by no means all of whom have troubled to define their understanding of the expression. Recently Professor Perkin has argued that during the nineteenth century two distinct meanings were attributed to it (and seven to the related, though antithetical, concept, collectivism!). For the purposes of this paper the term is taken to mean the philosophy, policy and, above all, the practice of minimal government interference in the economy.The most influential case for an “age of laissez-faire” was presented by Dicey in Law and Public Opinion. In this Dicey identified three overlapping legislative phases: Quiescence (1800-1830), Individualism (1825-1870), and Collectivism (1865-1900). The first consisted of an absence of legislation, the second of “constant” parliamentary activity to abolish restraints on individual freedom and the third of state intervention “for the purpose of conferring benefit upon the mass of the people” at the expense of some loss of individual freedom.

Champagne Capitalism

2021 ◽  
pp. 123-174
Author(s):  
David Todd
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Special Kind ◽  
Economic Success ◽  
French Empire ◽  
Imperial Expansion

This chapter highlights the extent of French economic success in the mid-nineteenth century, providing a deeper understanding of the sources of French imperial expansion. The French empire of taste was not a purely capitalistic enterprise. It pursued profit, but also power and prestige. The chapter explores the cultural, political, and economic origins of French specialization in the provision of luxury and semi-luxury commodities, in order to understand how it helped France regain imperial status after 1815. By reconciling economic modernity with the preservation of firm hierarchies, French conspicuous commodities exercised a special kind of fascination on foreign elites and facilitated collaboration with other imperial and indigenous powers. The act of turning economic gains into global political advantages was especially overt during the Second Napoleonic Empire, and the latter's downfall contributed to the eventual decline of the empire of taste after 1870.

Protecting Neutrality at Sea in a Global Age, 1815–1914

2020 ◽  
pp. 157-170
Author(s):  
Maartje Abbenhuis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Easy Access ◽  
Central Importance ◽  
Industrial Growth ◽  
Global Power ◽  
Global Age ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
Economic Warfare ◽  
Principles Of War

This chapter argues for the central importance of the development of the principle of neutrality in explaining the contours of the nineteenth-century age of industrial globalisation and the waging of economic warfare between 1815 and 1914. It highlights how nineteenth-century imperial expansion and industrial growth were dependent on the ability of industrial states to sustain easy access to the open seas, even in time of war. It describes how the naval powers co-ordinated and negotiated the rights and duties of neutrals and belligerents in international law in such a way as to maximise the financial, industrial and imperial advantages from doing so. It also explains how the principles of war avoidance and neutrality maintenance helped to underwrite the global power of Great Britain and the contours of the Pax Britannica.

A Righteous Consensus, Whig Style

2021 ◽  
pp. 73-88
Author(s):  
George M. Marsden
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
State Universities ◽  
Reformed Tradition ◽  
Christian Morality ◽  
Protestant Denominations

Various Protestant denominations founded hundreds of colleges during the first half of the nineteenth century. Even two-thirds of presidents of state universities were clergymen. Though those in the Reformed tradition tended to be the leading educators, denominational diversity and necessities of attracting varieties of students weakened doctrinal distinctives. The prevailing “Whig” ideal emphasized combining building a modern civilization with Christian morality. Educators, such as Francis Wayland or Mark Hopkins, confidently assumed that the best of objective common sense and modern science would support traditional Christianity. Colleges still promoted the evangelical tradition, as in campus revivals. They taught the classics as a way of developing moral faculties, as the Yale Report of 1828 advocated. Specifically Christian perspectives were found in capstone moral philosophy courses.

Ferrier, James Frederick (1806–64)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John J. Haldane
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Thomas Reid

Ferrier represents the transition within nineteenth-century Scottish philosophy from the tradition of common-sense realism begun by Thomas Reid, the last major exponent of which was Ferrier’s mentor, Sir William Hamilton, to versions of idealism influenced by German philosophers, especially Hegel. Although he is largely forgotten, Ferrier merits study for at least two reasons. First, he had a role in importing Hegelian ideas into British thought; and second there are parallels between his arguments and those advanced by antirealist philosophers in the analytical tradition.

Emerson's Rhetoric of War

Prospects ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 293-320
Author(s):  
Michael Lopez
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
William James ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Brute Fact ◽  
Individual Author ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Sea Wave

Recent literary theory has questioned the way we look at a text as the product of an individual “author.” But for William James—who was, like Emerson, a thoroughly nineteenth-century mind-any utterance, even the most complicated philosophical system, was at bottom the expression of the personality of the author. The history of philosophy, James believed, was in essence the “clash of human temperaments,” and temperament seems to gravitate to either the “idealistic” or what James denned as the “materialistic” pole:Idealism will be chosen by a man of one emotional constitution, materialism by another.… [I]dealism gives to the nature of things such kinship with our personal selves. Our own thoughts are what we are most at home with, what we are least afraid of. To say then that the universe is essentially thought, is to say that I myself, potentially at least, am all. There is no radically alien corner, but an all-prevading intimacy. … That element in reality which every strong man of common-sense willingly feels there because it calls forth powers that he owns-the rough, harsh, sea-wave, north-wind element, the denier of persons, the democratizer-is banished because it jars too much on the desire for communication. Now, it is the very enjoyment of this element that throws many men upon the materialistic or agnostic hypothesis, as a polemic reaction against the contrary extreme. They sicken at a life wholly constituted of intimacy. There is an overpowering desire at moments to escape personality, to revel in the action of forces that have no respect for our ego, to let the tides flow, even though they flow over us. The strife of these two kinds of mental temper will, I think, always be seen in philosophy. Some men will keep insisting on the reason, the atonement, that lies in the heart of things, and that we can act with; others, on the capacity of brute fact that we must react against.

Barbarism Begins at Home: Islamic Art on Display in Palermo's Museo Nazionale and Sicilian Ethnography at the 1891‐92 Esposizione Nazionale

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-117
Author(s):  
Dana Katz
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Regional Differences ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The Other ◽  
National Museum ◽  
Islamic Art ◽  
North African ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
At Home

Abstract In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Palermo's Museo Nazionale (National Museum) displayed one of the earliest institutional collections of Islamic art in Western Europe. The museum's director, Antonino Salinas, exhibited objects demonstrating the island's material heritage, including its two-and-a-half centuries of rule by North African dynasties during the medieval period. The prevailing perception elsewhere in post-unification Italy ‐ that Sicily was ungovernable and barbaric in nature ‐ heightened the display's significance. Another exhibition that many Italians would have perceived as representing the 'other' was the Mostra Etnografica Siciliana (Sicilian Ethnographic Exhibition), which the folklorist Giuseppe Pitrè created for the 1891‐92 Palermo Esposizione Nazionale (National Exposition). Highlighting Sicily's volatile image, the Italian press implicitly equated Pitrè's show with the so-called Abyssinian Village, which stood in the exposition fairgrounds and marked the establishment of Italy's first colony in Eritrea at a time of unprecedented imperial expansion. At the National Museum, Salinas remained undeterred, and despite associations of the island's conditions with Africa, he expanded its Islamic holdings. Likewise, Pitrè exhibited costumes, tools, and devotional objects that further accentuated regional differences at the National Exposition. In both displays, Salinas and Pitrè presented what they conceived as Sicily's unique cultural and historical patrimony.

Treitschke: National Prophet

1945 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 418-440 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Kohn
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
The Mind

Machiavelli was a man of the Italian Renaissance; yet Mazzini shows no trace of Machiavellian thought, and Mussolini's attempt to revive Machiavelli in his homeland failed lamentably and ignominiously. Italy lacked the power and the hardness of character which Machiavellianism presupposes. Piedmont was an imitation Prussia, but only an imitation Prussia. Machiavelli's ideas bore real fruit in nineteenth century Germany. The German inclination to force ideas in the “free realm of the mind” to their logical and absurd conclusions without regard for the limitations of reality and common sense, combined with Prussia's power and hardness of character to implant Machiavellianism firmly in Germany. While German statesmen like Frederick II and Bismarck were its ablest disciples, its noblest teacher and prophet was Heinrich von Treitschke.

European Attitudes and African Realities: the rise and fall of the Matolac chiefs of south-east Tanzania

1979 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terence Ranger
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Ethnic Identities ◽  
Political Complexity ◽  
Cultural Processes ◽  
Political Consolidation ◽  
Indirect Rule

Successive Europeans in south-east Tanzania looked for an ethnically based political authority under whom to live or with whom to work. Bishop Edward Steere of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa predicted the existence of very large tribal and linguistic ‘nations’ when this turned out not to be so, the UMCA missionaries who had settled at Masasi sought anxiously for some influential chief who could be represented as heading an ethnic polity; first German and then British administrators over-readily assumed that the chiefs whom they installed as akidas did in fact represent such ethnicities; finally, in the late 1920s, the British instituted historical research prior to the establishment of Indirect Rule, which was intended to reflect the ethnic and political complexity of the region. This European preoccupation with ethnicity bore little relation to the actualities of the region, which from the nineteenth-century incursions of the Yao, Makua and Makonde had constituted a mosaic of small, autonomous and ethnically mixed groupings. Nevertheless, certain African adventurers were able to take advantage of the European need for allies to build up their power, to become recognised as ‘chiefs’, and ultimately to become regarded as leaders of ethnicities. This was the case with Matola I and Matola II of Newala who between them developed their polity from a very small scattering of huts to a large and prosperous paramountcy. Within the Matola polity various social and cultural processes were at work to produce a common sense of identity, but these processes had not fully eroded the marks of the varying ethnic identities of those who belonged or submitted to the polity. The Indirect Rule inquiries, therefore, with their fanatical emphasis upon ethnicity as the only legitimate base for political authority had the result of dismantling the Matola polity and thereby destroying the only effective local nucleus of political consolidation.

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