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?
Jeanne Morefield is Associate Professor of Politics, Whitman College; author of Covenants without Swords (Princeton UP, 2005)
"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
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