Political Theory of Empire and Imperialism

“As sociologists (Go 2009) and other social scientists (Pitts 2010) engage in new research and theory on colonialism, Bourdieu’s work might be productively included in the list of theorists offering insight.”

“As with many multidisciplinary areas of scholarship (Pitts 2010, pp. 212–14), political theory as an academic field has lagged in carving out a distinctive approach and contribution to the study of political Islam, if we understand political theory in the institutional sense of work performed by…”

“The idea that past empires and other related hierarchical arrangements have been mutually beneficial exchanges, voluntarily agreed to and consensually maintained, hardly conforms with the historical record of violence and domination (Pitts, 2010).”

“…“ imperial turn ” in social science history since the 1990s and the “ new ” sociology of empire and colonialism – that do not directly confront the question of historical legacies but offer useful insights nonetheless (Cooper and Stoler 1997; Burton 2003; Go 2009; Pitts 2010; Steinmetz 2014).”

“Pitts (2010) argues to “distinguish systematically between the imperial and colonial” is close to impossible because even if some argue the latter involves “extensive domination” and the former “sub-stantial settlement,” the “official, popular, and even scholarly usage is unstable, and thus, the…”

“…early-modern attempts to justify conquest, enslavement and empire in the Atlantic (Andrews et al. 1979, Pagden 1995), and by the 1830s and 1840s, it had ossified into the ideological backbone of British ‘liberal imperialism,’ especially as exercised in India (Bell 2006, Mantena 2010, Pitts 2010).”

“…framework for racial and imperial domination by projecting Europe as the pinnacle of civilization and translating non-European difference into (sometimes redeemable, sometimes irredeemable) backwardness (Allen 2017; Anghie 2005; McCarthy 2009; Mehta 1999; Muthu 2003; Pitts 2010; 2006; Tully 2009).”

“For a landmark survey of this whole field of scholarship in contemporary political theory and its history, see Pitts (2010).”

“…therefore extend to a sustained reconsideration of foundational ideas as ‘imagined and articulated in light of, in response to, and sometimes in justification of, imperial and commercial expansion beyond Europe’ as recent studies on empire have shown (Pitts, 2010: 215; see also Armitage, 2000).”

“For a valuable survey of the field, see Pitts (2011).”

“While the definitions of and distinctions between colonialism and imperialism have been highly contested (Arneil 2023; Kumar 2021; Pitts 2010), in this paper, we approach them as overlapping, but distinct projects (Coloma 2013; Maldonado-Torres 2007).”

“…thinkers demonstrates, much of the development of liberalism in general, and modern property theories in particular, took place with an eye on the European colonization project and still bears its imprint (Seipp 1994, 34; Pitts 2010, 216–18; Mennen and Morel 2012, 41; Fitzmaurice 2014, 19, 34).”

“The first of these, which has flourished particularly in Anglophone debates on the history of political ideas, engages with and critically deconstructs the liberal imperialist tradition (Bell, 2016, 2020; Fitzpatrick, 2012; Mantena, 2010; Mehta, 1999; Morefield, 2014; Pitts, 2005, 2010).”

“Said’s critique of the Frankfurt School is part of a broader encounter between European philosophy and postcolonial studies (Pitts, 2010; Chakrabarty, 2000; Persram, 2007).”

“In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the imperial or colonial aspects of the thought (and life) of some of the key thinkers in the Western canon (see Pitts (2010) and Muthu (2012a) for surveys; see also Armitage, 2013; Tuck, 1999).”

“Wari was an empire, in the sense of an expansionist polity that encompassed and rearranged a diversity of populations (after Burbank and Cooper 2010, p. 8; Pitts 2010, pp. 213-214).”

“8 Comparative works that highlight the range of approaches to diversity in empire include Sinopoli 2001; Hoerder 2003; Cooper and Burbank 2010; Pitts 2010, and Lavan et al. 2016.”

“For a taste of this debate, see Ince (2013), Losurdo (2011), Mehta (1999), Mantena (2010), Pitts (2005, 2010, 2011), Muthu (2003), and Sartori (2006, 2008).”

“” In short, the uses of the imperial and the colonial are too entangled in popular and scholarly discourses to maintain a strict separation (see Pitts 2010, 213 – 4).”

“…political unit that exercises dominion over populations that are perceived as different from that of the dominant state, and a capacity to entrench and reproduce subordination, and inequalities of power and wealth among the societies it annexes (Calhoun et al., 2006; Maier, 2006; Pitts, 2010: 213).”

“Jennifer Pitts argues, in her overview of colonialism and imperialism in Western political theory, that it is impossible to “distinguish systematically between the imperial and colonial” (Pitts, 2010: 213–14).”

“…“extensive domination” and imperialism is about “substantial settlement, the “official, popular, and even scholarly usage is unstable, and thus, the terms ‘colonies’ and ‘postcolonial’ are applied equally to spaces of significant settlement and to those without” (Pitts, 2010, pp. 213 – 214).”

“…the fields such as anthropology and world history that have “ produced particularly sophisticated accounts of the asymmetrical interactions that brought about global modernity, ” “ political theory has come slowly and late to ” the study of empires and their global expansion (Pitts 2012, 353, 352).”

“This is, as Jennifer Pitts (2010) identifies, the link between imperialism and political theory.”

“Freedom and self-government have often been ‘articulated in light of’ and in ‘response to’ the justification of imperial and commercial expansion beyond Europe (Pitts, 2010: 215).”

“It was mainly assumed that the best way to preserve the ideal of the American Republic was to suppress the temptation of interventionism that could assimilate the USA to the contemporary rule of European countries, ‘the imperialistic nations of the Old World’ (McCrisken 2002, p. 67).”

“But broadly speaking, as Pitts (2010) observes, political theory was astonishingly late in registering empire’s imprint over its methods and field of vision when a great many related disciplines – anthropology, literary studies, history, postcolonial theory – got there decades earlier.”

“This is also how the key categories of European political thought: freedom and despotism, self-government and rational autonomy, were conceived through, and often in justification of, imperial and commercial expansion (Pitts 2010, p. 215).”

“The concepts of empire, imperialism and anti-imperialist political thought have secured a prominent place in political theory scholarship (Pitts 2010).”

“73 Pitts (2010, 213).”

“…may benefit from a comparative analysis with the literature on empire (Lenin 1939; Gallagher and Robinson 1953; Fieldhouse 1961; Cohen 1973; Louis 1976; Doyle 1986; Muldoon 1999; Maier 2006; Nexon and Thomas 2007; Barkey 2008; Pitts 2010; Burbank and Cooper 2010; Go 2011; Gill 2016; Luttwack 2016).”

“29 Even if the attitudes of European, and especially British, liberals vis-à-vis empire varies, Duncan Bell has found that most championed settler colonization.”

“In the past two decades, there has been a sustained “turn to empire” in political theory (Pitts 2010), but this intellectual ferment has not always permeated through the discipline of political science as a whole.”

“Particular attention has been devoted to exploring the connections between liberalism and empire, as well as international law and empire (Bell 2016; Pitts 2010; Scarfi 2017a; Scarfi 2021).”

“On the political theory side, a robust literature gathered under the mantle of the “turn to empire” has developed over the last three or so decades (for summaries, see Pitts 2010; Marwah et al. 2020).”