Imperialism and the Corruption of Democracies

Lebovics Herman Lebovics

Description

In this important volume, Herman Lebovics, a preeminent cultural historian of France, develops a historical argument with striking contemporary relevance: empire abroad inevitably undermines democracy at home. These essays, which Lebovics wrote over the past decade, demonstrate the impressive intellectual range of his work. Focusing primarily on France and to a lesser extent on the United Kingdom, he shows how empire and its repercussions have pervaded-and corroded-Western cultural, intellectual, and social life from the mid-nineteenth century to the present.Some essays explore why modern Western democratic societies needed colonialism. Among these is an examination of the seventeenth-century philosopher John Locke's prescient conclusion that liberalism could only control democratic forces with the promise of greater wealth enabled by empire. In other essays Lebovics considers the relation between overseas rule and domestic life. Discussing George Orwell's tale "Shooting an Elephant" and the careers of two colonial officers (one British and one French), he contemplates the ruinous authoritarianism that develops among the administrators of empire. Lebovics considers Pierre Bourdieu's thinking about how colonialism affected metropolitan French life, and he reflects on the split between sociology and ethnology, which was partly based on a desire among intellectuals to think one way about metropolitan populations and another about colonial subjects. Turning to the arts, Lebovics traces how modernists used the colonial "exotic" to escape the politicized and contested modernity of the urban West. Imperialism and the Corruption of Democracies is a compelling case for cultural history as a key tool for understanding the injurious effects of imperialism and its present-day manifestations within globalization.

Sujets

• Histoire
• 20th century
• History of Europe
• France

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 14 février 2006
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822387794
• Langue: English

Extrait

Imperialism and the Corruption of Democracies

HermanLebovics

I M P E R I A L I S M A N D

T H E C O R R U P T I O N

O F D E M O C R A C I E S

Duke University Press

Durham & London

2006

∫2006 Duke University Press

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

on acid-free paper$

DesignedbyC.H.Westmoreland

Typeset in Adobe Caslon

by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.

Library of Congress

Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lebovics, Herman.

Imperialism and the corruption of

democracies /

Herman Lebovics. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.

isbn0-8223-3661-8 (cloth : alk. paper)

isbn0-8223-3697-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Imperialism. 2. Imperialism—History.

3. Democracy. I. Title. jc359.l324 2006

325%.32—dc22

2005027151

forAldona

1

2

3

4

5

6

Prefaceix Acknowledgmentsxix

n o t t h e r i g h t s t u f f Shrinking Colonial Administrators1

C O N T E N T S

p i e r r e b o u r d i e u ’ s o w n c u l t u r a l r e v o l u t i o n22

j e a n r e n o i r ’ s v o y a g e o f d i s c o v e r y From the Shores of the Mediterranean to the Banks of the Ganges34

f r a n c e ’ s b l a c k v e n u s

60

j o h n l o c k e , i m p e r i a l i s m , a n d t h e f i r s t s t a g e o f c a p i t a l i s m87

w h y , s u d d e n l y , a r e t h e a m e r i c a n s d o i n g c u l t u r a l h i s t o r y ?100

a f t e r w o r d113

Notes121 Selected Works of American Cultural History Writing155 Index159

When the white man turns tyrant,

it is his own freedom that he destroys.

— G E O R G E O R W E L L ,

‘‘Shooting an Elephant’’

P R E F A C E

The opening quotation from the onetime o≈cer of the Burmese colo- nial police announces this book’s theme: colonies are dangerous to the health of democracy. They act as a sweet but poisoned pill to the states that have eagerly gulped them down. My essays on this theme were written for di√erent occasions over more than a decade. When I sat down recently to reread them, I found a coherence to my various crit- ical e√orts. Each piece, I saw, added weight to an overarching concern with how imperial strivings harm the chances for an egalitarian social order. The frequent recurrence of this theme may have been my own colonial unconscious guiding me; but for sure, my conscious research has long been circling over this terrain. In earlier work, I have found it fascinating to trace the general impact of conquest, rule, and exploitation on the countries that conquered colonial empires. The catalogue of these influences is impressive. The colonies have gifted Europe with economic subsidies, with cultural contributions, with workers and soldiers, and with contemporary do- mestic social pluralism. Whatever the costs of these aids to the donors, ∞ Europe has benefited mightily. But here, my subject is a more sharply focused look at how imperialism abroad, however much seen as benefi- cial to the national project, has been damaging to democratic e√orts at home. The point of Orwell’s short story was his realization that to rule others, we have to become sahibs. That is my historical argument as well. This book is about how the system that made sahibs in the colonies produced correlate e√ects in the metropoles. I mean here more than so- calledblowback—the name theciagave to unanticipated negative con- sequences at home of overseas actions, like how the United States