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Set in the context of the early-modern British Empire, Colonial Capitalism and the Dilemmas of Liberalism paints a striking picture of the tensions between the illiberal origins of capitalism and its liberal imaginations in metropolitan thought. Onur Ulas Ince combines an analysis of political economy and political theory to examine the impact of colonial economic relations on the development of liberal thought in Britain. He shows how a liberal self-image
for the British Empire was constructed in the face of the systematic expropriation, exploitation, and servitude that built its transoceanic capitalist economy. The resilience of Britain's self-image was due in
large part to the liberal intellectuals of empire, and Ince forcefully demonstrates that liberalism as a language of politics was elaborated in and through the political economic debates around the contested meanings of private property, market exchange, and free labor. Weaving together intellectual history, critical theory, and colonial studies, this book is a bold attempt to reconceptualize the historical relationship between capitalism, liberalism, and empire in a way that continues to
resonate with our present moment.
Set in the context of the early-modern British Empire, Colonial Capitalism and the Dilemmas of Liberalism paints a striking picture of the tensions between the illiberal origins of capitalism and its liberal imaginations in metropolitan thought. Onur Ulas Ince combines an analysis of political economy and political theory to examine the impact of colonial economic relations on the development of liberal thought in Britain. He shows how a liberal self-image
for the British Empire was constructed in the face of the systematic expropriation, exploitation, and servitude that built its transoceanic capitalist economy. The resilience of Britain's self-image was due in
large part to the liberal intellectuals of empire, and Ince forcefully demonstrates that liberalism as a language of politics was elaborated in and through the political economic debates around the contested meanings of private property, market exchange, and free labor. Weaving together intellectual history, critical theory, and colonial studies, this book is a bold attempt to reconceptualize the historical relationship between capitalism, liberalism, and empire in a way that continues to
resonate with our present moment.
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Liberalism and Empire in a New Key
1. Colonial Capitalism and the Dilemmas of Liberalism: Framing an
Inquiry
2. In the Beginning, All the World Was America: John Locke's Global
Theory of Property
3. Not A Partnership in Pepper, Coffee, Calico, or Tobacco: Edmund
Burke and the Vicissitudes of imperial Commerce
4. Letters from Sydney: Edward Gibbon Wakefield and the Problem of
Colonial Labor
Conclusion: Bringing the Economy Back In
Notes
Index
Onur Ulas Ince is Assistant Professor of Political Science at
Singapore Management University and Fung Global Fellow (2019-2020)
at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies.
He mainly investigates how socioeconomic transformations
constitutive of global capitalism have shaped and in turn have been
shaped by various discourses of political economy since the
early-modern period. His research has been published in The
Journal
of Politics, History of Political Thought, New Political Economy,
The Review of Politics, Polity, and Rural Sociology. He has
received his PhD in Government from Cornell University.
"By bringing the history of capitalism back to the fore of
political theory, Ince has presented us with a powerful and urgent
contribution to the field that bears as much on the study of
liberalism and empire as on ongoing interpretive debates over
historical context." -- Lucas Pinheiro, Contemporary Political
Theory
"Ince's innovative readings of these three thinkers reframe liberal
theory as intimately and constitutively bound up with the
predations of colonial capitalism" -- Kevin Bruyneel, The Review of
Politics
"In a lively, original analysis of British imperialism, one that
ranges across continents as well as centuries, Ince provocatively
makes the case for taking the history of capitalism seriously. It
deserves to be read by anyone invested in the liberalism and empire
debate." -- Matthew Birchall, The Journal of Imperial and
Commonwealth History
"Ince's clever historical study of liberal ideology analyzes the
attempt by John Locke, Edmund Burke, and Edward Gibbon Wakefield to
figure liberal democratic values as compatible with capitalism in
the British colonies. ... Against but also augmenting competing
arguments that explain colonialism via British culturalist
arrogance or one-dimensional universal cosmopolitanism, Ince
(Singapore Management Univ., Singapore) shows how key aspects of
political economy
(in Locke, money; in Burke, commercial society; in Wakefield,
nominally "free" labor and artificially produced scarcity in land)
provided moral insulation for imperial expansion: a
distinctively
British empire of liberty." --G. D. Miller
"This is an original and important survey of the co-creation of the
intertwined languages of both English political economy and liberal
political theory in relation to colonization and capitalism from
the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries."
JAMES TULLY, Professor Emeritus, University of Victoria
"This innovative, superbly written book challenges political
theory's 'turn to empire' by pressing inquiry into the historical
relationship between imperialism and liberalism beyond
philosophical questions and symbolic politics. Rather, Ince insists
we reintegrate the exploitative violence of colonial capitalism
into analyses of the conceptual universe in which ideological
liberalism was first articulated. In so doing, he illuminates the
historical complexity
of liberalism in our 'colonial present."
JEANNE MOREFIELD, author of Empires Without Imperialism
"Over the past fifty years, the dialogue between political economy,
social history, and intellectual history has been minimal even
while all three disciplines have turned their focus upon the
relationship between liberalism and empire. In a challenge to us
all, this book reconnects these disciplines in order to achieve a
deeper understanding of a relationship which is foundational to the
increasingly globalized present."
ANDREW FITZMAURICE, University of Sydney
"Onur Ulas Ince's Colonial Capitalism and the Dilemmas of
Liberalism succeeds in demonstrating the importance of political
economy for political theory's imperial turn, preoccupied as it has
been with a discursive approach to cultural difference." - Corey
Snelgrove, University of British Columbia
"That in the course of his intrepid and penetrating study Ince both
decisively renovates and effectively supersedes the Macphersonite
scheme is thrilling." - Samuel Moyn, Perspectives on Politics
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