The Ideological Origins of the British Empire by David Armitage

Abstract

90 systematic, miscellaneous literary forms of his writing, which include dialogue, soliloquy, essay, and letter. Throughout, she emphasizes in Shaftesbury a very modern respect for the subjective, for open-ended processes, and conflicting opinions over a pre-established philosophical harmony. The critical turn of thought implies a radical commitment to the individual and leads to the shaping of one’s life as a work of art. Shaftesbury emerges as a kindred spirit to Oscar Wilde, to whom she devotes a chapter. As she notes, both writers have had to face the charge of elitism, against which she stresses the high intellectual and ethical seriousness of their critical thought. Ms. Schmidt-Haberkamp’s ambitious project is to relate Shaftesbury’s critical ideastosubsequentpositionsandtoprove their enduring importance. Here, her sympathy with Shaftesbury leads her to overstate her case. Focusing on method at the expense of the often anachronistic content, on the skeptical elements of his thought instead of his metaphysical optimism , is a practicable way to make Shaftesbury palatable to present taste. It represents only one side of the coin, however , and the impression of one-sidedness is intensified as most current literary theories fall badly short of the ideal balance between radical subjectivity of response and dialogical openness that Ms. Schmidt-Haberkamp finds in Shaftesbury . Although her writing is refreshing and her criticisms of current studies justified , her idealization of Shaftesbury remains unconvincing. Shaftesbury could be unsystematic, vague, and elusive but still stimulating, yet Ms. Schmidt-Haberkamp recognizes his merits without the limitations. Because his work opposes ‘‘the reduction to a systematic approach,’’ it has led to ‘‘many different and often conflicting readings’’ in which critics have imposed their own ‘‘guiding idea.’’ She does not take this as a call for critical restraint; she adds her own ‘‘strong reading.’’ Resistance to a seamless interpretation makes itself felt in her many different terms and contexts to describe criticism. For instance , she analyzes ridicule, which Shaftesbury developed against religious fanaticism, to explain criticism, discussing his view of comedy as an application of ridicule to the literary field. But the precise relation between these concepts remains vague when, for example, ridicule is once summed up as ‘‘Shaftesbury ’s idea of a universal criticism,’’ but in comparison with ridicule, ‘‘‘Criticism’ remains the more general term,’’ which ‘‘achieves its specific meaning onlyinthe context of the paradigm of the criticism of art and literature.’’ For Ms. Schmidt-Haberkamp literary theories are complex intellectual structures that, intrinsically as well as in their historical development, exist as a ‘‘continuum of ideas.’’ Though her approach can uncover suggestive correspondences, it also passes over gaps, discontinuities, and incompatibilities. Burkhard Schmidthorst University of Göttingen DAVID ARMITAGE. The Ideological Origins of the British Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge, 2001. Pp. xi ⫹ 239. $21. This book reflects the influence of past and current trends in the study of the history of political thought, all of which are united in their concern to map the development of secular categories. Hence, Mr. Armitage is concerned with an intellectual history of the concept of ‘‘Empire ’’ that is both secular and steeped in neo-Roman influence. 91 In his very thorough survey of the historiography of Empire, Mr. Armitage notes to good effect the influence of very fluid notions of English history and its relation to a developing concept of ‘‘empire .’’In the next chapter, concerned with the language of governance in the ‘‘three Kingdoms,’’ not surprisingly, talk of imperium and the jurisdiction of a composite monarchy over a number of lands and peoples was the spur to finding a concept that reconciled the parts to the whole. As is often the case in early modern political thought, the development of a particular concept is driven by conflict. Mr. Armitage skillfully reconstructs debates about Protestantism and Empire, Grotius and the Empire of the seas, the political economy of Empire, and finally the culmination of all of this in the age of Walpole , when the Empire was defined as ‘‘Protestant, commercial, maritime and free.’’ The story that unfolds is one of a parallel process of the building of an Empire and the building of the British state; here, Mr. Armitage helpfully distinguishes the ‘‘first’’and ‘‘second’’Britishempires:the first sustained by...