Empires Without Imperialism: Anglo-American Decline and the Politics of Deflection

The end of the Cold War ushered in a moment of nearly pure American dominance on the world stage, yet that era now seems ages ago. Since 9/11 many informed commentators have focused on the relative decline of American power in the global system. While some have welcomed this as a salutary development, outspoken proponents of American power--particularly neoconservatives--have lamented this turn of events. As Jeanne Morefield argues in Empires Without Imperialism, the defenders of a liberal international order steered by the US have both invoked nostalgia for a golden liberal past and succumbed to amnesia, forgetting the decidedly illiberal trajectory of US continental and global expansion. Yet as she shows, the US is not the first liberal hegemon to experience a wave of misguided nostalgia for a bygone liberal order; England had a remarkably similar experience in the early part of the twentieth century. The empires of the US and the United Kingdom were different in character--the UK's was territorially based while the US relied more on pure economic power--yet both nations mouthed the rhetoric of free markets and political liberty. And elites in both painted pictures of the past in which first England and then the US advanced the cause of economic and political liberty throughout the world.Morefield contends that at the times of their decline, elites in both nations utilized the attributes of an imagined past to essentialize the nature of the liberal state. Working from that framework, they bemoaned the possibility of liberalism's decline and suggested a return to a true liberal order as a solution to current woes. By treating liberalism as fixed through time, however, they actively forgot their illiberal pasts as colonizers and economic imperialists. According to Morefield, these nostalgic narratives generate a cynical 'politics in the passive' where the liberal state gets to have it both ways: it is both compelled to act imperially to save the world from illiberalism and yet is never responsible for the outcome of its own illiberal actions in the world or at home. By comparing the practice and memory of liberalism in early nineteenth century England and the contemporary United States, Empires Without Imperialism addresses a major gap in the literature. While there are many examinations of current neoliberal imperialism by critical theorists as well as analyses of liberal imperialism by scholars of the history of political thought, no one has of yet combined the two approaches. It thus provides a much fuller picture of the rhetorical strategies behind liberal imperialist uses of history. At the same time, the book challenges presentist assumptions about the novelty of our current political moment.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Part One: Strategies of Antiquity Chapter One: Alfred Zimmern's "Oxford Paradox": Displacement and Athenian Nostalgia Chapter Two:Falling in Love With Athens: Donald Kagan on America and Thucydides' Revisionism. Part Two: Metanarrative Strategies Chapter Three: The Round Table's Story of Commonwealth. Chapter Four: The Empire Whisperer: Niall Ferguson's Misdirection, Disavowal and the Perilousness of Neoliberal Time. Part Three: Strategies of Character Chapter Five: Empire's Handyman: Jan Smuts and the Politics of International Holism. Chapter Six: Michael Ignatieff's Tragedy: Just As We Are, Here and Now. Conclusion: Conceptual Horizons and Conditions of Possibility: Is This the Swaraj That We Want?

About the Author :
Jeanne Morefield is Associate Professor of Politics, Whitman College; author of Covenants without Swords (Princeton UP, 2005)

Review :
"Jeanne Morefield documents the unexpected and troubling similarities between how British intellectuals viewed their waning empire and how we Americans often think about the uses of our hegemony, even or especially when we fear it is now in decline. Making the currency of the past unmistakable for political theorists, intellectual historians, and engaged citizens alike, this provocative book throws down the gauntlet to those who would turn their eyes from-or explain away-harsh realities of power and violence in the present." --Samuel Moyn, author of The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History "Morefield gives us a superb portrait of the 'deflective' politics that have long characterized liberal imperialism. She lays bare the intellectual strategies that liberals from Jan Smuts to Michael Ignatieff have used to reconcile their declared commitment to freedom with the domination of other societies, and to shield democratic powers from the very critical inquiry they claim is essential to democracy. Rich with historical detail and sharp analysis, this is an unsettling and important book." --Jennifer Pitts, University of Chicago "In this erudite and original historical and contemporary study, Jeanne Morefield not only exposes the rhetorical strategies of deflection employed by theorists to legitimate neo-liberal imperialism today. She also shows the deep roots of these strategies in nineteenth and early twentieth century liberalism." --James Tully, University of Victoria