Imperial Thinking Research Articles

Alexander Hamilton and the Early Republic in Edwardian Imperial Thought

In the first decade of the twentieth century, a rising generation of British colonial administrators profoundly altered British usage of American history in imperial debates. In the process, they influenced both South African history and wider British imperial thought. Prior usage of the Revolution and Early Republic in such debates focused on the United States as a cautionary tale, warning against future ‘lost colonies’. Aided by the publication of F. S. Oliver's Alexander Hamilton (1906), administrators in South Africa used the figures of Hamilton and George Washington, the Federalist Papers, and the drafting of the Constitution as an Anglo-exceptionalist model of (modern) self-government. In doing so they applied the lessons of the Early Republic to South Africa, thereby contributing to the formation of the Union of 1910. They then brought their reconception of the United States, and their belief in the need for ‘imperial federation’, back to the metropole. There they fostered growing diplomatic ties with the US while recasting British political history in-light-of the example of American federation. This process of inter-imperial exchange culminated shortly after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles when the Boer Generals Botha and Smuts were publicly presented as Washington and Hamilton reborn.

Sir John Gladstone and the Debate over the Amelioration of Slavery in the British West Indies in the 1820s

AbstractSir John Gladstone made a fortune as a Demerara sugar-planter and a key supporter of the British policy of amelioration in which slavery would be “improved” by making it more “humane.” Unlike resident planters in the British West Indies, who were firmly opposed to any alteration to the conditions of enslavement, and unlike abolitionists, who saw amelioration as a step toward abolition, Gladstone was a rare but influential metropolitan-based planter with an expansive imperial vision, prepared to work with British politicians to guarantee his investments in slavery through progressive slave reforms. This article intersects with recent historiography highlighting connections between metropole and colony but also insists on the influence of Demerara, including the effects of a large slave rebellion centered on Gladstone's estates (which illustrated that enslaved people were not happy with Gladstone's supposedly enlightened attitudes) on metropolitan sensibilities in the 1820s. Gladstone's strategies for an improved slavery, despite the contradictions inherent in championing such a policy while maintaining a fierce drive for profits, were a powerful counter to a renewed abolitionist thrust against slavery in the mid to late 1820s. Gladstone showed that that the logic of gradual emancipation still had force in imperial thinking in this decade.

СУЧАСНА РОСІЙСЬКА ІСТОРІОГРАФІЯ ПЕРЕДОДНЯ І ПОЧАТКОВОГО ПЕРІОДУ ДРУГОЇ СВІТОВОЇ ВІЙНИ

The article is devoted to some problems of modern national Russian historiography of the Second World War. It is established that a new interpretation of them has arisen in the process of socio-political changes in the former USSR, the use of historical archival materials by historical science, pluralism of thoughts and conclusions, and a reduction in the control of state oppression by the minds and scientific work of scientists. Conclusions are drawn that many questions and themes of the Second World War gained new interpretations and assessments. Nevertheless, Russian national historiography has not yet been eliminated from imperial thinking, falsification of certain important issues, imposes erroneous political assessments and conclusions.

Johannes Althusius' Grand Federalism, the Role of the Ephors and Post-Statist Constitutionalism

This article discusses the primary structures Johannes Althusius’ constitutionalism, as explained in his Politica: Politics Methodically Set Forth and Illustrated with Sacred and Profane Examples published in 1603. The first of these structures and the theme that Althusius is most famous for, is his scheme of grand republican federalism. The second is the public office of the ephors. The discussion is not primarily historical, however. The main aim, instead, is to assess the potential relevance of Althusius’ thinking for present-day constitutionalism. After centuries of at best scant relevance owing to the dominance of the statist paradigm in constitutional doctrine and practice, the decline of this paradigm is now creating considerable new interest in Althusius’ thinking.
 The discussion starts off with a concise account of the statist paradigm, which was at its advent in Althusius’ days. Thereafter follows an exposition of his federalism which consists of a set of associations, beginning with the closest-knit association, namely the family, spiralling out into the most encompassing association, which is the commonwealth or realm, with collegia, cities and provinces in between. The office of the supreme magistrate is dealt with under this heading. This discussion also focusses pertinently on the question of sovereignty, which in Althusian conceptualisation was a diffuse popular sovereignty in contrast to that of his statist opponents, more specifically Jean Bodin, and in posterity, Thomas Hobbes.
 Then follows an assessment of the public office of the (council of the) ephors, which assists the supreme magistrate in executing his responsibilities in accordance with the law and the covenant between the commonwealth and the magistrate and serves a as counterbalance of authority and power against the sovereign.
 Against this backdrop Althusius’ constitutional thinking is evaluated. First, his constitutionalism is placed in historical context in contrast to (1) classical polis-based thought; (2) medieval imperial thinking and (3) modern statist constitutionalism. Secondly, Althusius’ communitarian anthropology, which is in part the basis for his federalism, and which constitutes an anticipatory response to liberal individualism is assessed. Lastly it is argued that Althusius’ federalism provides a valuable source for improving on the state-departmentalisation of power separation and checks and balances, currently still sway in terms of the statist paradigm.
 

Othering Ourselves: Re-reading Rudyard Kipling and ‘The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes’ (1885)

The reader who turns to Rudyard Kipling with twenty-first political sensibilities finds a work replete with the orientalism and reductionist ‘othering’ that typifies colonial writing during the period of high Empire. Not least in its superficial treatment of the lives it claims to represent, such reductionism can be traced to the mind of the author and, deeper still, the political-economic culture that structured imperial thinking and informed its actions. Such a view is made possible by our twenty-first century advantage. Even so, clarity in one perspective typically entails indistinctness in another, and for this reason this essay proposes to start from a provocative hypothesis. If we temporarily deny ourselves this interpretative perspective, is it possible for us to learn more about the reading experience of Kipling’s contemporaries and their particular role in circulating his texts? What, in other words, do Kipling’s short tales reveal about those other readers, the readers who can be considered as actors engaged in creating publishing and reception history? Taking ‘The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes’ (1885) as its focus, this essay offers a close reading of Kipling’s short story within the context of the proliferation of magazine short stories in the late-Victorian period. Rather than seeking to produce a contemporary meaning from the text, it seeks to reveal the less obvious home-grown phantoms which Kipling’s story produced for its first audiences.

A Eurasian or a European Future for Post-Soviet Georgia's Economic Development: Which Is Better?

The paper analyze the economic models of the well-known Eurasianist doctrine of Russian imperial thinking and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). In the modern era of globalization, an alliance of countries on the basis of the Eurasianist economic model is impossible to establish. The newly established EAEU rests on a redistribution mechanism for oil and gas revenues, whereby Russia deliberately relinquishes a part of its due gains in favor of other member-states in order to not only induce economic interest to remain within the Union, but also to maintain and enhance its political influence via this economic output. Western economic sanctions imposed against Russia as a countermeasure to the invasion and annexation of Crimea and the military and political support provided to the breakaway regions of Eastern Ukraine, as well as the retaliatory anti-sanctions levied by Russia against the West, have demonstrated the fragility and instability of the EAEU. A comparison of the EU with the EAEU does not favor the later. Although attaining membership of the EAEU is much easier than that of the EU, the negative aspects described above ensure that this option holds no appeal for post-Soviet Georgia.

A Eurasian or a European Future for Post-Soviet Georgia’s Economic Development: Which is Better?

The paper analyze the economic models of the well-known Eurasianist doctrine of Russian imperial thinking and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). In the modern era of globalization, an alliance of countries on the basis of the Eurasianist economic model is impossible to establish. The newly established EAEU rests on a redistribution mechanism for oil and gas revenues, whereby Russia deliberately relinquishes a part of its due gains in favor of other member-states in order to not only induce economic interest to remain within the Union, but also to maintain and enhance its political influence via this economic output. Western economic sanctions imposed against Russia as a countermeasure to the invasion and annexation of Crimea and the military and political support provided to the breakaway regions of Eastern Ukraine, as well as the retaliatory anti-sanctions levied by Russia against the West, have demonstrated the fragility and instability of the EAEU. A comparison of the EU with the EAEU does not favor the later. Although attaining membership of the EAEU is much easier than that of the EU, the negative aspects described above ensure that this option holds no appeal for post-Soviet Georgia. Keywords: Eurasian Economic Union, EU, Eurasianism, economic sanctions, post-Soviet Georgia

An Analysis of the Definition of Opium Wars in Western Encyclopedia

Opium Wars were one of the most influential events in the history of China’s interchange with the West. The existing definitions of Opium Wars are still made in the frame-of-reference characterized by European-centered discourse and molded in their discursive consistency. An analysis of these phenomena indicates that the beneath the superficial cultural diversity and equality, imperial thinking still works on the latent stereotyping of the Orient.

Racial and imperial thinking in international theory and politics: Truman, Attlee and the Korean War

Connects the background ideas of race and empire to world politics Uses case of Truman and Attlee in the Korean War Argues that liberal-realist internationalists’ assumptions about the US-led post-war order obscure those background ideas and fail to understand the character of the post-war order Argues liberal-realist internationalism is akin to a legitimating ideology rather than an explanatory theory Argues that such failings render liberal internationalism inadequate to explain or prescribe ways for the United States/West to manage the ‘rise of the rest’ today This article connects the background ideas of race and empire to world politics by looking at the world views and actions of Truman and Attlee in the Korean War. The article argues that liberal-realist internationalists’ assumptions about the US-led post-war order obscure those background ideas and fail to understand the character of the post-war order. I consider two kinds of ‘background ideas’—policy-makers’ and those embedded in liberal internationalism. Put together, these ideas render liberal-realist internationalism akin to a legitimating ideology rather than an explanatory theory. More broadly, and in the longer run, such failure to comprehend the character of the post-war order, and the roles of race, empire and periphery war in it, renders the theory inadequate to explain or prescribe ways for the United States/West to manage the ‘rise of the rest’ today.

Propaganda 1776: Secrets, Leaks, and Revolutionary Communications in Early America by Russ Castronovo (review)

Reviewed by: Propaganda 1776: Secrets, Leaks, and Revolutionary Communications in Early America by Russ Castronovo William B. Warner (bio) Keywords Propaganda, Political communication, Discourse, Falsehood Propaganda 1776: Secrets, Leaks, and Revolutionary Communications in Early America. By Russ Castronovo. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pp. 235. Cloth, $25.00.) What would change if we viewed all political communication as propaganda? Would it release us from a normative liberal ideology, which assumes that political discourse should resemble a high-minded debating society, privilege rationality over affect, and trust that truth will prevail in [End Page 175] the marketplace of ideas? Could recognizing the ubiquity of propaganda overcome the commonplace that while our own fighting faiths appear to be grounded in political ideas, those of opponents appear part of a propagandistic effort to deceive, manipulate, and control? Could such a revaluation of propaganda allow new attention to the mechanics of how ideas are actually propagated and spread? This is the wager made by Russ Castronovo in his new book, Propaganda 1776. In this ambitious and lively book, Castronovo revisits episodes in the American Revolution and developments in recent media history (like Wikileaks and the ‘‘meme’’) and propaganda theory (from Edward Bernays and Walter Lippmann to Noam Chomsky) so as to develop a more inclusive conception of propaganda. Rather than use propaganda as an epithet to puncture the disinterested aura often attributed to the founders of the republic, as had Charles Beard, Arthur Schlesinger Sr., and other Progressive Era historians, Castronovo defines the reach of propaganda more broadly. While it is still essentially instrumental means of inducing a particular response, propaganda is not by this account under the exclusive control of a few at the top (from the Catholic church of Gregor XV to Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels). Instead propaganda can spread its messages through wider, popular, distributed means consistent with democracy, like the town meetings of Massachusetts (18-20). Propaganda is still anti-rhetorical for the way it influences rather than persuades, favors emotion over intellection, and often features ‘‘the vilification of opponents’’ (22). But Castronovo’s study emphasizes that propaganda is a process of ‘‘propagation’’ that exceeds the content of a message with its ways and means: It is kinetic, mobile, and often quite chaotic. Its effects overwhelm intention. To make his case for this expanded concept of propaganda, and to contest the idealistic pull of the ‘‘nationalist narrative’’ of the Revolution, Castronovo offers a fresh perspective on more or less familiar episodes in revolutionary communication. What comes into view is a not-so-pleasant underbelly of these communications. In 1773, Benjamin Franklin’s leaking of old letters of Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson helped to bring down the Hutchinson administration. (Castronovo compares this episode to the Wikileaks of Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange.) Mercy Otis Warren’s scurrilous attack upon Hutchinson in a closet drama titled The Adulateur, published in The Massachusetts Spy of March 26, 1773, features the Governor as ‘‘Rapatio.’’ Castronovo demonstrates, through database word searches, that over the next five years [End Page 176] there is a five-fold increase in the application of the words ‘‘rapacity’’ and ‘‘rapacious’’ to Royal officials in the colonial press (63). This is compellingly interpreted as a Revolutionary era ‘‘meme.’’ Less convincing for this reader is Castronovo’s effort to read the colonial resistance to the Tea Act not in local provincial terms, nor in terms of intra-imperial policy struggles, but in terms of a ‘‘view from below’’ (99) that opens, for the first time, a truly global perspective on the Revolution by framing the common predicament of East India and North America within the Empire, a perspective first developed most explicitly in the writings of Thomas Paine. But rather than seeing the tea resistance as the first glimmerings of the global perspective only actively assumed, in the wake of the Russian Revolution, by the Communist International, I would contextualize resistance to the tea by referring to the global imperial thinking evident in British writers in the wake of the Seven Years’ War such as Thomas Pownall Jr., Edmund Burke, and Benjamin Franklin. One of the most suggestive parts of Castronovo’s book deals with the forged letters...

How India became territorial: foreign policy, diaspora, geopolitics. By Itty Abraham

Itty Abraham's represents a departure from the hackneyed approach towards foreign policy, it is an absolute must-read not just for academics, but for anyone with an interest in Indian foreign policy, history and politics. As the author makes clear in the preface, while his thrust is on Indian foreign policy, he has not relied excessively on conventional approaches adopted towards the study of foreign policy; in fact, he has sought to question them. ‘This is not a conventional study of Indian foreign policy. This study does not try to establish realist, idealist or constructivist frames with which to understand international relations and the state … Nevertheless this book is centrally concerned with questions basic to the study of foreign policy, while at the same time questioning the conventional parameters of the field’ (p. 14). Some of the significant departures from the traditional approach to foreign policy are: first, the author has not looked at foreign policy only post-1947, but delved deep into the key features and rationale behind British strategic thought in the late nineteenth century. This had the clear imprint of the then Viceroy in India, Lord Curzon, and was dubbed as ‘Curzonian foreign policy’. One major benefit of this time-frame is that it gives Abraham an opportunity to make a serious comparison between colonial and post-colonial foreign policy. Abraham argues that ‘imperial thinking is central to understanding the form and practice of postcolonial Indian strategic planning and action’ (p. 114). One of the key characteristics of Curzonian foreign policy, according to Abraham, was that ‘Curzon's geopolitics was the most formal and explicit vision of a land defined territory of India that saw its primary points of strategic vulnerability lying beyond its northern mountainous frontiers’ (p. 114). In a later chapter on geopolitics, Abraham also discusses some important debates within various strands of Indian politics. He focuses on the differing world-views of Vallabhbhai Patel and Jawaharlal Nehru. For example, the author brings to the fore an important point, which is that Patel's views of China were largely influenced by his anti-communist leanings while one of the major criticisms of Nehruvian foreign policy was the Prime Minister's idealism and absolute neglect of ‘geopolitics’ (p. 119).

Asia’s Europes: Anti-colonial attitudes in the novels of Ondaatje and Shamsie

This article examines the significance of a network of references in the novels The English Patient by Canadian Sri Lankan writer Michael Ondaatje, and Burnt Shadows and A God in Every Stone by British Pakistani writer Kamila Shamsie. Ondaatje’s and Shamsie’s novels explore anti-European Asian sentiment in the early to mid-20th century, with a particular shared focus upon the colonization of northern India and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Both writers draw upon the works of ancient Greek historian Herodotus, allowing a comparison of the imperialism of the ancient and modern worlds. This study was inspired by rereading Ondaatje’s The English Patient within the framework of subaltern theories by Pankaj Mishra and Dipesh Chakrabarty. Ultimately, the novels propose that an understanding of the role of historicity in imperial thinking helps to explain how historical events such as the bombing of Japan and 9/11 are linked.

French Algeria in British Imperial Thought, 1830–70

This article explores the role played by French Algeria in British imperial thinking during the middle decades of the nineteenth century. It argues that British commentators developed a remarkably stable vision of contemporary French colonial enterprise as unprogressive, incapable, authoritarian and militaristic, as well as harmful to French domestic politics. The explanations they offered for the miscarriage of France’s colonial project in Algeria cast light on mid-nineteenth-century British imperial thinking, throwing into relief the qualities and policies which were believed to make modern British imperial rule uniquely successful. The article contends that analysis of other European countries’ colonial projects contributed importantly to a domestic political culture which defined itself in significant part through contrasts with the Continent.

Layers of Anti-Americanism: American Unilateralism and Anti-Americanism: a Pakistani (Muslim) Perspective

Christopher Kremmer argues in his famous paper “American Empire: Politics and Culture in the 21st Century” that History will judge that America failed to define the nature of its new empire when it had the opportunity to do so after the end of the Cold War in 1991. It allowed bin Laden to define it for them. Meanwhile, the American emperor concentrated on settling a personal score with the leader of Iraq. (Kremmer, 2001) The new American empire, born in the ruins of the twin towers, Afghanistan, and Iraq has yet to be formally announced. This may be due to the child’s uncertain paternity. George Bush and Osama bin Laden can both credibly lay claims to be the father . . . as an empire, the US behaves much like other empires in the past. It’s often said that it is a reluctant empire . . . . Nevertheless, imperial thinking permeates its foreign policy, especially towards the Middle East.(Ibid) This paper investigates the perceptions of the United States in Pakistan. It distinguishes two types of attitudes, namely attitudes towards American culture and society and attitudes towards American policies. What is the image of the United States of America abroad? What opinion do foreign publics have of America, its citizens and its institutions, its ideals and its culture, its policies and its symbols? What attitudes do they have towards all things American? The main hypothesis that this paper seeks to test is whether attitudes towards America emerge as a consistent mind frame that manifests itself in a systematic patterns. Is anti-Americanism an ideational syndrome fostering a rejection of America on all its dimensions? Or is anti-Americanism a multi-faceted phenomenon, remarkable more for its ambivalent nature rather than its virulence? Seen in this perspective, the study of the image of America aimed at identifying whether different aspects of America are evaluated in a consistent manner, be that uniformly positive or uniformly negative, or whether patterns of inconsistencies populate the ideational reaction to America. Two dimensions are put under scrutiny in this study: a polity dimension, and a policy dimension. The first dimension refers to America as a societal, cultural, and political arrangement premised on freedom, opportunity, and individual achievement, while the second dimension is centered on the political actions the United States pursues in the international arena.

The Darker Side of Western Modernity. Global Futures. Decolonial Options by Walter D. Mignolo (review)

Reviewed by: The Darker Side of Western Modernity. Global Futures. Decolonial Options by Walter D. Mignolo Sara Castro-Klarén Walter D. Mignolo , The Darker Side of Western Modernity. Global Futures. Decolonial Options. Durham: Duke University Press, 2011. 408 pp. In The Darker Side of Western Modernity, Walter Mignolo performs a series of theoretical moves that allow his inquiry into how we got to be the way we are, to both continue with his critique of Western epistemological practices gathered in his earlier The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality and Colonization (1995) and also delve further into the global/local considerations engaged in his Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges and Border Thinking (2000). In the two later books, Mignolo emphasizes, explains and expands on critiques of the modernity/coloniality matrix of power-knowledge that stems from the thinking of intellectuals situated in the living-thinking conditions peculiar to Latin America's heterogeneous cultural formations. The title of this latest book addresses a growing awareness on the need to think less and less in terms that universalize, globalize or blanket different colonialities into a uniform post-colonial experience. The emphasis on the "Western" aspect of modernity recognizes the validity of the arguments advanced by the Brazilian anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro as well as the Indian historian Partha Chatergee on behalf of the notion of [End Page 467] heterogeneous and diss-similar modernities which emerged from different periods of the modernity/coloniality matrix. Further, The Darker Side of Western Modernity involves a double consideration. On the one hand it examines the European discourses that, even in the hands of radical thinkers such as Kant in his anthropology, relied nevertheless on the idea of an "other" as primitive and extraneous to modern (Euro) civilization. On the other hand, this book on Western Modernity assumes that such a historical period has run its course and that "9/11/2001" constitutes an iconic and real watershed in the (now) general course of human affairs in the globe. Thus, much of the thinking in this book is destined to examine new ways of conceiving a world order that in some manner need to be global but which in most other ways can or must only be local. This is in as much as the corporate globalization (a new universal) of human endeavors did in fact bring about the debacle of Wall Street in 2007. That event in and of itself raises fundamental questions regarding the future of capital or Western modernity. In this regard, Mignolo's contention and point of departure for much of the section of the book on decolonial options seems to coincide with main stream thinking about the meaning of the meltdown in 2007. Robert Samuelson, writing in his column in the Washington Post on June 25, 2012, states that "We live in a world of broken models. To understand why world leaders can't easily fix the sputtering global economy, you have to realize that the economic models on which the United States, Europe and China relied, are collapsing." If we see the book in temporal terms, the seven chapters together with the "Introduction" and "Afterword" move in the form of an arch. Mignolo opens his line of argumentation with an expansive and richly theoretical discussion of Anibal Quijano's concept of the coloniality of power. Here Mignolo sharpens, empowers and enriches the critical capabilities of the "coloniality of power" and in doing so offers the reader a thinking strategy capable of dismantling most of the few impregnable walls still left in Euro-American imperial thinking. The high point of the arch could be considered the two respective chapters on Kant and Carl Schmitt. The whole of the arch spans over five hundred years of Western political thought and comes to rest on the side of a search for new epistemes (emphasis on the plural) that may be capable of privileging the Andean ancestral practices of communal living or Sumac Kawsay, that is to say, the political philosophy of the ayllu on living well (64, 306-12). Arriving at the point in the book where the reader is more or less open to consider the validity of the political...

Gendering the Globe: The Political and Imperial Thought of Philip Francis

Gendering the Globe: The Political and Imperial Thought of Philip Francis

Lineages of Empire: The Historical Roots of British Imperial Thought

Lineages of Empire: The Historical Roots of British Imperial Thought

What Makes A Story Amusing: Magic, Occidentalism And Overfetishization In A Colonial Setting

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgement Drafts of this essay were presented in the Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, and in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Northwestern University. I thank in particular Hermann Herlinghaus, Tom Rogers, Jorge Coronado and Marisol de la Cadena for their insightful comments. Notes 1 For the Inca case, see Seed, 1991 Seed, Patricia. 1991. ‘Failing to Marvel.’ Atahualpa's encounter with the Word. Latin American Research Review, 26(1): 7–32. [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] and Lamana, 2008 Lamana, Gonzalo. 2008. Domination without Dominance, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. [Google Scholar]: 27–64; for the Aztec case, see Todorov, 1984 Todorov, Tzvetan. 1984. The Conquest of America, New York: Harper & Row. [Google Scholar]: 51–124. The French and British, who also gave writing a prominent place in their narratives of their colonial encounters, re-wrote key Spanish colonial encounters to craft their imperial grammars of difference. These re-writings echo Amerindian responses to the specifically Spanish renditions of the same events, but also expose the limits common to all Western imperial thinking (Lamana, 2007 Lamana, Gonzalo. 2007. “Of Books, Popes, and Huacas; or, the Dilemmas of Being Christian”. In Rereading the Black Legend, Edited by: Greer, Margaret R. 117–49. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. [Google Scholar]). 2 ‘Fetishism’ has a long and at times controversial academic history (see Taussig, 1983 Taussig, Michael. 1983. The Devil and Commodity Fetishism, Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press. [Google Scholar]; Ellen, 1988 Ellen, Roy. 1988. Fetishism. Man, 23(2): 213–35. [Google Scholar]; Apter and Pietz 1993; Pietz, 1999 Pietz, William. 1999. “The Fetish of Civilization: Sacrificial Blood and Monetary Debt”. In Colonial Subjects, Edited by: Pels, Peter and Salemink, Oscar. 53–81. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan. [Google Scholar]; Masuzawa, 2000 Masuzawa, Tomoko. 2000. Troubles with Materiality: The Ghost of Fetishism in the Nineteenth Century. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 42(2): 242–67. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). I intend to make no intervention in the debates about its precise meaning, genealogy or scientific rigour, and to state no claim about its historical pertinence (the question of anachronism); I use it strategically, as means to an end. 3 I am indebted to Taussig's (1993: 45–7) study of the role of yielding in shamanism. 4 The facts that Oviedo calls Badajoz the cacique's master (amo), that there were other Spanish settlements and that the cacique follows his orders indicate that there was an encomienda regime at work. Gonzalo de Badajoz, one the founders of the city of Panama (1519), received an encomienda in that same year, which in 1522 was enlarged to include a Cueva cacique. He died in 1530 (Mena García, 1996 Mena García, María del Carmen. 1996. Temas de historia Panameña, Panama: Editorial Universitaria. [Google Scholar]: 59, 75, 87). 5 Consider, in contrast, the massacre that followed the Inca Atahualpa's miss-handling of the bible during the Inca–Spanish contact scene. I thank Jorge Coronado for having brought the contrast with Cajamarca to my attention. 6 ‘Occidentalism’, after Coronil, 1996 Coronil, Fernando. 1996. Beyond Occidentalism: Towards Nonimperial Geohistorical Categories. Cultural Anthropology, 11(1): 51–87. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]. 7 The Peruvian council made the point several times. Sermon seven states that images in churches are not honoured ‘because of what they are in themselves, that they are made of wood or metal or paint, but because of what they represent, which is in heaven’ (Catecismo… 1991 Catecismo…. 1991 [1585]. “Tercero catecismo y exposición de la doctrina cristiana, por sermones”. In Monumenta catechetica hispanoamericana (siglos XVI-XVIII), Edited by: Guillermo Durán, Juan. vol. II, 613–741. Buenos Aires: Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina. [Google Scholar]: 652). (See also the 1584 Doctrina cristiana y catecismo… 1991: 483.) 8 I use ‘magician’ as short cut for the many different kinds of lay experts on the supernatural; as Geertz (1975 Geertz, Hildreth. 1975. An Anthropology of Religion and Magic, I. Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 6(1): 71–89. [Google Scholar]) points out, the label ‘magic’, and its use, has to be object of a critical study. 9 For the role of the scientific claim of objectivity in the visual register, and flashes of non-Western awareness of and uses of it, see Tobing Rony, 1996 Tobing Rony, Fatimah. 1996. The Third Eye, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. [Google Scholar]. 10 I quote Koster's guide's words using my translation of the original in Portuguese (which Koster provides in two footnotes), not Koster's own translation of it. I thank Tom Rogers for having brought the passage to my attention in the first place and for having helped me do the alternative translation, and Frank Safford for having pushed me to think why exactly the example was relevant to my argument.

Imperialism in Conservative Defence and Foreign Policy: Leo Amery and the Chamberlains, 1903–39

This article explores the place of imperialism in aspects of Conservative defence and foreign policy between 1903 and 1939, through a comparative study of Leo Amery and the three Chamberlains (Joseph, Austen and Neville), all of whom were nominally imperialists. The article draws conclusions in two general areas. First, it argues that there has not been enough attention to the diversity of imperialist approaches to policy. Exploring the army reform controversy of 1903 suggests a fault line between some imperialists over whether imperial unity could be developed from intra-colonial or extra-colonial sources. Second, the paper contends that the functions of imperialism in Conservative policy have not been fully understood, with previous work focusing largely on social and economic policy. The article points to the existence of an ‘imperial foreign policy’ strategy within the Conservative party in the 1920s and 1930s. The historiography of imperialism within the Conservative party should therefore recognise the diversity of imperialist approaches to policy and consider the application of imperial thinking to discussions on foreign policy.

“Цена” империи: Центр и окраины в российском бюджете XIX – Начала ХХ вв.

SUMMARY: During the 18 th and 19 th centuries when the Russian empire was engaged in virtually continuous conflicts over the acquisition of new territory, the question of the political and economic costs and benefits of imperial expansion was always extremely important. In this article E. Pravilova scrutinizes the emergence of discourse of the “economic burden of the empire” in governmental considerations, public and later parliamentary debates, which allows to trace the evolution of governmental perspectives on the nature of the imperial polity and nation-centered thinking about the economic relationship between the Russian ( Rossian ) empire and the Russian and non Russian nations. The author analyzes often contradictory assessments of the balance sheet of economic relationship between the imperial center and Transcaucasia, the Kingdom of Poland (and later Polish gubernias ), Turkestan and the Grand Duchy of Finland. While economic motivations for conquest and maintenance of the empire inevitably took a backseat to geopolitical considerations, the imperial government nonetheless recognized the enormous economic potential of its newly acquired territories and generally aimed to integrate them within the empire’s economic system and its broader processes of economic development. In devising its economic policies in the borderlands, the government’s actions were shaped by two basic concerns: the first was the urge to increase the return gained from these regions in order to make sure that they did not become a financial burden on the center; and the second was the need to respect the particularities of the national economies, revenue structures, and levels of economic development in the borderlands in order to guarantee political stability. Financial relations between center and periphery within the empire ultimately evolved on the basis of these two occasionally contradictory political and economic principles.