Imperial pasts, imperial presents
| Author | Onur Ulas Ince |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885116638645 |
| Published date | 01 October 2017 |
| Date | 01 October 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Regular Review Articles |
European Journal of Political Theory
2017, Vol. 16(4) 470–480
!The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885116638645
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EJPT
Review Article
Imperial pasts, imperial
presents
Onur Ulas Ince
Department of International Relations, Koc¸ University, Istanbul,
Turkey
Jeanne Morefield, Empires without imperialism: Anglo-American decline and the politics of
deflection. Oxford University Press: Oxford, New York, 2014, 300 pp. ISBN:
9780199387328.
Andrew Fitzmaurice, Sovereignty, Property, and Empire, 1500-2000. Cambridge University
Press: Cambridge, UK, 2014, 400 pp. ISBN: 9781107076495.
The two books reviewed here are powerful testimonies to the internal diversifica-
tion and sophistication of the recent ‘‘imperial turn’’ in the field of political theory.
Political theory of empire had its humble beginnings in the 1990s, when a number
of trailblazing works set out to detect the colonial agendas of European states
lurking within paradigmatic liberal theories of John Locke and John Stuart Mill.
The field has since then flourished with great momentum, and two trajectories of
development are worth mentioning. First, the initial focus on the complicity
between Western political thought and imperial expansion was challenged by sub-
sequent efforts to reclaim the anti-imperial potential of the eighteenth-century
Enlightenment, and both positions have been found wanting by historiographical
studies that carefully map the polyvalence of arguments on empire within the
Western political tradition. Secondly, scholars have increasingly turned away
from canonical thinkers towards lesser known yet often more practically influential
figures in the intellectual history of empire. The result is a rich and growing litera-
ture that spans five centuries and six continents, examines both stalwart endorse-
ments and trenchant critiques of empire, and sheds new light on the luminaries of
the Western canon while illuminating a host of more obscure historical figures.
Both books represent the current state of the art in studying political theory in
the imperial fold, albeit in different and at times discordant keys. Jeanne
Morefield’s Empires Without Imperialism updates and furthers the older agenda
of disclosing the liaisons between liberalism and empire by focusing on a current of
liberal imperialism that erupted into public discourse at the turn of the twentieth
Corresponding author:
Onur Ulas Ince, Koc¸ University Rumelifeneri Yolu, Sariyer, Istanbul 34450, Turkey.
Email: onurince@ku.edu.tr
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