Abstract
Western political thinkers have long debated the virtues and vices of empire. Untangling the complex history of these arguments has motivated much work in the history of political thought during the last couple of decades, and interest in the subject shows little sign of abating. Reasons for this scholarly interest are not hard to discern. The most obvious concern the turbulent politics of the post–Cold War years, and in particular the burst of military interventions fought in the name of an elusive “humanity,” the popular belief that we live in an increasingly globalised capitalist world, and the forever war triggered by the attacks on 9/11. Scholars have scoured the historical record for precedents, lessons, and paths not taken, trying to make sense of the current ideological constellations and their genealogies. The fraught relationship between liberalism and empire stands at the centre of this body of work. To what extent has liberalism been complicit in the justification of imperial occupation and rule? What distinct forms has liberal imperialism assumed? Can liberals ever escape the will to empire? In an insightful earlier book, Covenants without Swords, Jeanne Morefield probed a notable moment in the history of liberal entanglement, unravelling the imperial ideas of British neo-Hegelians in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 1 In Empires without Imperialism she both revisits this earlier period and moves well beyond it, staging a highly illuminating comparison between the fin de siècle and the contemporary world. The result is a powerful, provocative analysis that should be of great interest to both historians of political thought and political theorists.
Morefield’s point of departure is both unusual and welcome. Much of the scholarship on the history of imperial thought has focused on canonical figures, above all liberals. John Locke and John Stuart Mill, in particular, have played a starring role. 2 In contrast, Morefield explores the writings of a group of prominent public intellectuals, thinkers who sought to shape the general political discourse of the time, but who are not familiar names today. She dedicates a chapter each to the classicist and international relations scholar Alfred Zimmern, the imperial prophet and think-tanker Lionel Curtis, and the South African politician and philosopher Jan Smuts. These chapters are each paired with one on a contemporary public intellectual: the neoconservative historians Niall Ferguson and Donald Kagan, and the political theorist, politician manqué and versatile man-of-letters Michael Ignatieff. While sensitive to the differences between the periods and the individual thinkers, Morefield suggests that they have much in common. They are united by both diagnosis and prescription, sharing a sense of anxiety about the prospects of liberal world order and proclaiming the necessity of empire—of one kind or another—for maintaining and protecting it. They also draw from the same repertoire of rhetorical strategies: all adopt liberal narratives of “deflection.” Such narratives allow them to “deflect responsibility for imperial violence,” diverting attention away from the fundamental illiberalism of liberal empire, “back towards the liberal nature of the imperial society” (1, 3). This is vital, because empire is essential to tame a turbulent world, a bulwark against barbarism, disorder, and collapse. As such, “the liberal state is compelled to act imperially to save the world from illiberalism,” and yet it ultimately remains an innocent party in a fallen world, “never responsible for having created the conditions that require it to save the world in the first place because it was always, even when it was not, just being who it was” (3). Morefield identifies three distinct though overlapping rhetorical moves that perform this deflective task. Strategies of Antiquity (Zimmern and Kagan) draw a strong connection between an ancient Greek polis—itself reimagined as a repository of (proto)liberal ideals—and its lineal descendants in Britain and the United States; Metanarrative Strategies (Curtis and Ferguson) insert liberal empire into the grand sweep of history, figuring them as virtuous agents of progressive transformation; while Strategies of Character (Smuts and Ignatieff) proclaim the persistence of liberal character over time, as a necessary inoculation against the potential dangers generated by occasional imperial ventures. The thinkers populating the pages of Empires without Imperialism draw on elements of one or more of these strategies to justify liberal empire.
Delightful to read, the book is peppered with witty asides, wonderful turns of phrase, and righteous anger. Morefield’s rhetorical skills are often a match for her protagonists, though they are put to very different political ends. More importantly, the general argument is persuasive. Morefield executes her readings with forensic skill, drawing out the normative presuppositions and theoretical tensions of the work she analyses, as well as offering powerful critiques of its evasions, silences, and implications. The historical chapters present an impressively rich account of British debates over the nature of empire at a key moment in imperial history. They are well grounded in primary sources, and offer numerous insights into the political visions of three important figures. The contemporary chapters are a revelation, offering compelling (and damning) interpretations of some of the most influential scholar-propagandists of our time. Take Niall Ferguson, the “empire whisperer.” Usually read as a blundering apologist for British and now American imperialism, Morefield places his imperial advocacy in a much more interesting—though no less problematic—light. In particular, she emphasizes his commitment to a view of “neoliberal time,” itself indebted to a selective borrowing of complexity theory and a reading of socioeconomic history as invariably poised “on the edge of chaos.” On this hyperbolic account, the American empire is all that stands in the way of catastrophe for western civilization, and thus the world, but despite its apparent strength and reach it is always under threat, always in need of affirmation. “Don’t look over the edge into the terrifying death spiral, he says soothingly, holding out his hand in our direction. Don’t look down. Look at me” (168). Illiberalism in the name of liberal survival is a price worth paying. Weak, queasy western citizens tempted to pull back from the violence of empire need to be reminded of their obligations, and the dangers of not upholding them, but they can be comforted by the fact that it is all in a good cause.
Such a fruitful series of arguments provoke many questions. Here I’ll mention two. The first concerns the (very) short twentieth century, 1918–1989, most of which Morefield doesn’t explore in detail. What happened to liberal imperial discourse during this period? Did it assume new forms, retreat to the wings, or retain a similar structure? Perhaps Morefield might respond by suggesting that the era was less marked by anxieties about the imperial future. But while her claim that fin de siècle Britain and the millennial United States were riven with imperial apprehension is correct, it is certainly arguable that (at least in Britain) a sense of deep foreboding about the status and trajectory of empire was a persistent theme from the late nineteenth century to the period of decolonization. While the particular fears may have changed with each generation, the shadow of decline and fall haunted the imperial imagination—indeed it helped to constitute it. It is not clear, in other words, that the period between the two ends of the century was so different. The imperial political thought of the middle decades of the twentieth century remains a fertile subject for scholarly attention. 3
The second question concerns the nature of liberalism itself, and in particular the scope for elaborating anti-imperial liberal visions. Morefield is quick to acknowledge that she is not making an argument about the intrinsic nature of liberal ideology. 4 Indeed, she subtly delineates assorted forms of liberalism defended by her protagonists, from the social liberalism of Zimmern to the aggressive neo-liberalism of Ferguson. But it would be interesting to see what she makes of the rhetorical arsenal of liberal critics of empire. Do they too ground their positions in a relentless focus on the question of identity, but draw different normative conclusions from it? Are they able to replace the politics of deflection with what she terms a politics of reflection, a self-aware accounting for the ways in which liberal states have acted (and continue to act) in ways contrary to their professed ideals? Or is liberalism itself fatally flawed? It is one of the many virtues of this excellent book that it opens up important lines of inquiry for further research into liberal visions of world order, past and present.