Liberalism in Empire - An Alternative History

"Few books have the potential to transform a single debate; fewer show, as Andrew Sartori does here, that transforming it demands a profound reconceptualization of much more. To understand the relationship of liberalism and empire is to reconsider the meaning of liberalism anywhere and everywhere, and to locate liberal theory not solely in Western books but also in the density of global life. Sartori's masterpiece of critical history is an instant classic."
—Samuel Moyn, author of The Last Utopia

"This is a wonderfully challenging and original history. The combination of theoretical ambition and historical rigor will ensure that this text will be a catalyst for academic debate for years to come."
—Robert Travers, author of Ideology and Empire in Eighteenth Century India: The British in Bengal

List of contents

Acknowledgments  
1. How to Write a History of Liberalism?  
2. The Great Rent Case  
3. Custom and the Crisis of Victorian Liberalism  
4. An Agrarian Civil Society?
Intermezzo: The Forgetting of Liberal Custom  
5. Peasant Property and Muslim Freedom  
Conclusion: Political Economy, Liberalism, and the History of Capital  
Notes  
Bibliography  
Index

About the author

Andrew Sartori is Associate Professor of History at NYU, author of Bengal in Global Concept History: Culturalism in the Age of Capital (2008), and coeditor (with Samuel Moyn) of Global Intellectual History (2013).

Summary

Explores the generative crisis in understanding property's role in the constitution of a liberal polity, which intersected in Bengal with a new politics of peasant independence based on practices of commodity exchange.

Additional text

"Impressive, thought-provoking ... the book makes a very nuanced and persuasive case."

Product details

• Authors: Andrew Sartori, Andrew Stephen Sartori, Sartori Andrew Stephen
• Publisher: University Of California Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 03.07.2014
• EAN: 9780520281684
• ISBN: 978-0-520-28168-4
• No. of pages: 288
• Series: Berkeley Series in British Studies; Berkeley Series in British Stu; Berkeley Series in British Studies
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Regional and national histories; European History, British Empire, HISTORY / Europe / General, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Colonialism & Post-Colonialism, India, Colonialism & imperialism, British & Irish history, United Kingdom, Great Britain, Colonialism and imperialism, Asian History, HISTORY / Asia / South / India