Doel Chakraborty
B.Ed. (2nd Sem)
Book Review of Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-century British Liberal Thought Doel Chakraborty Uday Singh Mehta, Liberalism, and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-century British Liberal Thought (Chicago University Press, 1999)
Uday Singh Mehta’s seminal work, Liberalism and Empire, revolves around the relationship between Imperialism and Liberalism in the 19th Century British Empire. His main argument is to not consider this relationship as essentially dichotomous but to look at it from the contextual basis in which liberal ideas functioned. An empire functioning through Liberal ideas gave rise to various complications that the British liberals had to deal with. The questions which should have been answered to understand these complications were suppressed and also not adequately represented in the discourse of British Imperial Ideology later; Mehta, in his book, precisely attempts to pose and answer such questions. The challenges that Liberalism meets outside Europe were precise because of “the strange and unfamiliar 10 .” By this unfamiliarity, Mehta means “not being familiar with what was experientially familiar to others11.” Confusion and complexity occurred each time when the British Liberals had to confront this unfamiliarity. This book is not written solely from the perspective of India but rather takes into consideration “the particular amplifications and inflections in liberalism that get revealed in the writings by liberals on India and the empire12.” The first chapter of the book deals with this theory and builds up this argument further. He further elaborates on various aspects that liberalism deals with and how these aspects in turn become a problem in the functioning of liberal ideas. For example, universalism, which is supposed to forge unity based on commonality, fails to “dissolve the barriers of strangeness and in turn “articulates a starting position” which becomes a yardstick for understanding and toleration based on what is familiar. The second chapter deals with various strategies undertaken by the Liberals which acted as a “closure” to the “inclusionary pretention13” of Liberalism that was unveiled in the empire. Mehta interprets Locke’s Second Treatise of Government and the “exclusionary social conventions and manners14” whose political role undermined Liberal principles greatly. According to Mehta, Utilitarianism in the nineteenth century is one of the strategies through which these exclusionary practices were sustained. The Third chapter closely aligns with the second and focuses on the work of James 10 Uday Singh Mehta, Liberalism and Empire: A study in Nineteenth-century British Liberal Thought (Chicago University Press, 1999) 14 11 Ibid 15 12 Ibid 22 13 Ibid 60 14 Ibid and John Stuart Mill and their “idea of progress and historical development” and how the liberals perceived India through this lens. This progress had been placed concerning “backwardness” which is expressed as a historical fact and the only remedy for this being political intervention. If the unfamiliar proves to be a hurdle in his progress then it shall be considered a threat to life because progress to the familiar is what life is to the unfamiliar. Therefore, in that case, “...the relationship between the two can only be a struggle, a deathly struggle, in which power and not understanding must be deployed. In Mill, that power takes the form of paternalism, a paternalism that Macaulay recognized as deeply vested in power15.” The fourth chapter deals with the importance of territory and the role it played in shaping the trajectories of liberal ideas in the British Empire. The Liberal thinkers of that time did not pay heed to the vast expense of their empire, “they did not see that fact as raising questions that could not be integrated within the familiar and well-worn categories of their thought16.” Mehta stressed the connection between territory and political identity that the liberal thinkers did not acknowledge. He extensively discusses Locke and his idea in Treatises. The fifth and the last chapter broadly discuss Edmund Burke and presented him as “emphatically antiabsolutist and concerned with the conditions of social order, psychological integrity, and freedom17.” This chapter is regarding the problem of consensus among the liberal thinkers that time and again got revealed through various political debacles, public and policy debates. Liberalism and Empire is a study that transcends myopic views for understanding 19th Century British Liberalism and how it functioned in the colonies. However, the philosophical undertone of the text often diminishes the historical perspective. The very complex vocabulary makes it ambiguous sometimes and becomes a distraction for the reader. The author’s perception of Edmund Burke underestimates Burke’s other motives behind Warren Hastings Impeachment which has been extensively elaborated by Nicholas Dirkin The Scandal of Empire. 15 Ibid 117 16 Ibid 129 17 Ibid 200
Bibliography
⦁ Mantena, Karuna, Alibis of Empire: Henry Maine and the Ends of Liberal Imperialism United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 2010 ⦁ Mehta, Uday Singh, Liberalism, and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-century British Liberal Thought Chicago University Press, 1999