Theories of Empire: from Enlightenment to Liberalism
Maurizio Isabella
The course explores attitudes to empire and imperial expansion, and addresses the controversial nature of this concept in Western political thought, and its shifts in meaning and legitimacy between the 18th and 19th centuries.
It will cover debates on empire in Europe and will focus first on Enlightenment attitudes (from Diderot, Herder, Raynal to Adam Smith and Edmund Burke), and then on nineteenth century writers, from Benjamin Constant, to Sismondi, Cattaneo, Mill and Tocqueville. By so doing, the course will discuss at the relationship between ideas of freedom, civilisation, culture, international trade and empire.
It will run in the first semester.