Imperialism, liberalism & the quest for perpetual peace

Abstract

Daedalus Spring 2005 For at least two generations, ‘empire’ and ‘imperialism’ have been dirty words. Already by 1959, when neither the French nor the British Empire had yet quite ceased to exist, Raymond Aaron dismissed imperialism as a “name given by rivals, or spectators, to the diplomacy of a great power”–something, that is, that only others did or had. By the 1970s, a consensus had emerged in liberal circles in the West that all empires–or at least those of European or North American origin–had only ever been systems of power that constituted a denial by one people of the rights (above all, the right to self-determination) of countless others. They had never bene1⁄2ted anyone but their rulers; all of those who had lived under imperial rule would much rather not have and 1⁄2nally they had all risen up and driven out their conquerors. Very recently this picture has begun to change. Now that empires are no more (the last serious imperial outpost, Hong Kong, vanished in 1997), a more nuanced account of their long histories is beginning to be written. It has become harder to avoid the conclusion that some empires were much weaker than was commonly claimed; that at least some of the colonized collaborated willingly, for at least some of the time, with their colonizers; that minorities often fared better under empires than under nation-states; and that empires were often more successful than nation-states at managing the murderous consequences of religious differences. Ever since 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan, a few intrepid voices have even been heard to declare that some empires might in fact have been forces for good. Books both for and against–with such titles as The Sorrows of Empire, America’s Inadvertent Empire, Resurrecting Empire, and The Obligation of Empire–now appear almost daily. As these titles suggest, the current revival of interest in empire is not unrelated to the behavior of the current U.S. administration in internaAnthony Pagden