The nineteenth century liberal tradition and the English School historical narrative
| Author | Daniel M Green |
| Published date | 01 June 2020 |
| Date | 01 June 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1755088220905876 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1755088220905876
Journal of International Political Theory
2020, Vol. 16(2) 171 –189
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1755088220905876
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The nineteenth century
liberal tradition and the
English School
historical narrative
Daniel M Green
University of Delaware, USA
Abstract
This article uses the framework of “traditions of thought” and “dilemmas” to problematize
and revise the English School’s Expansion Narrative of international relations history in
the crucial nineteenth century, when the forms and practices of “European international
society” expanded to dominate the world’s international relations. An exercise in
historicizing and contextualizing the broader liberal tradition of international thought
brings into focus a period of liberal ideas and policies in the first-half of the nineteenth
century, before Expansion and the New Imperialism, and a particular “free trade” liberal
order project adopted by Britain in the years 1830–1865 in particular. This brings a
different perspective to the ES historical narrative of expansion of the European
international society into a “global international society.” The article contextualizes
ideas in the nineteenth century liberal tradition by highlighting a British global “unipolar
moment” and the order project that accompanied it. It discusses the “dilemmas” that
prompted the closing of that era and a shift in British thought and policy during the
1860s. These laid the foundation for the Expansion the English School focuses on after
1870, but also constitute a previous experiment in the engagement of the West with
the Rest, with different potentialities, before the final onslaught of global-scale conquest.
Keywords
English School, free trade, hegemony, international society, liberalism
Introduction
Something very important to the English School’s (ES) account of international relations
happened in the nineteenth century: after 1870 or so the world is encompassed into one
“global international society,” in a massive process of transfer of institutions, practices,
Corresponding author:
Daniel M Green, Department of Political Science and International Relations, University of Delaware, 347
Smith Hall, Newark, DE 19716, USA.
Email: dgreen@udel.edu
905876IPT0010.1177/1755088220905876Journal of International Political TheoryGreen
research-article2020
Article
172 Journal of International Political Theory 16(2)
and culture from Europe (the European international society, EIS) to the rest of the world,
mostly through imperialism and colonial conquest (Bull and Watson, 1984; Dunne and
Little, 2014: 100–101; Gong, 1984). Surprisingly, however, the English School has a
fairly thin understanding of why this happened and what preceded it. This article delves
deeper into the nineteenth century, using a traditions of thought approach (Hall and
Bevir, 2014), to reveal the contours of a British-led international order project globally
predominant in the first-half of the century, but later discredited and semi-abandoned in
a crisis in the 1860s. What followed was what the ES might call the “Great Transfer,” the
frenzied phase of European imperial expansion and conquest that saw much of the world
suddenly come under European control after 1870. Looking closely at the British unipo-
lar moment, order project and “dilemmas” encountered in 1856–1868 helps the ES
improve its narrative of international relations history and adds nuance and insights to
our understanding of liberal international thought as a whole, especially in the first-half
of the century (see Ashworth, 2014; Bell, 2007, 2014, 2016; Howe, 2007; Knutsen, 1997;
Mantena, 2007, 2010). A second theme is the interplay of ideas with events and policy,
something historians of international thought could do more of.
The notion of a “dilemma” in the traditions framework is intended to help us explain
ideational change, and how thinkers come to modify their views when confronted with
new knowledge or theories. It relates to contextualization of intellectual contributions
and policies since dilemmas can mark turning points in thought and policy. One element
in understanding context, however, might logically be international power distribution
and national status ranking. In the case examined here, this includes the possibility of
unrivaled power in the international realm for decades, in a nineteenth century British
“unipolar moment” analogous to the one the United States is said to have experienced
after 1989. “Dilemmas arise when thinkers encounter new facts or theories about their
world that they consider authoritative, but which they recognize do not fit with their
existing web of beliefs, and therefore demand an intellectual response” (Hall, 2017:
253). The dilemmas in question here, shocks to the British free trade order project deliv-
ered in the years 1856–1868, involved both the discrediting of British ideas about the
easy spread of their “civilization” and power shifts that reduced Britain’s ability to pre-
vail and control events—history happened, and the suppositions of the order project were
called into question. This returns us to the grander issue of what to do with liberal power.
How should liberals seek to order the international system? And most fundamentally,
what is the validity and applicability of universalist ideas, contra the particularist barriers
that inhibit them (Armitage, 2011)?
Today the somewhat presentist academic interest in liberal thought of the nineteenth
century focuses on empire, reflecting the US position after 1989, plus new post-colonial
influences in the social sciences generally (Bell, 2016; Hall, 2008; Jahn, 2005; Pitts,
2005). Here Duncan Bell delineates three positions on the relationship between liberal
thought and empire—rejectionist (“authentic liberals cannot be imperialists”), necessary,
and contingent. Most take the contingent position, that “some strands of liberal thought”
are more imperialist than others (Bell, 2016: 21). But this raises the question of what
counts as imperialism and how to incorporate the distinction between formal and infor-
mal imperialism (Gallagher and Robinson, 1953; MacDonagh, 1962; Thompson, 1992).
This article fleshes out an historical era of the rejectionist position and the parameters of
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