Order Description
Week 2 (starting August 4): The Origins of British Imperialism
We generally think of the British Empire as a phenomenon of the 1700s and 1800s, without realising that England began its colonial expansion as early as the late 16th
century. This topic introduces us to the origins of English colonisation before 1700. What were the original religious and economic motivations to colonisation? And
what does the word ‘empire’ mean in the 16th and 17th century context?
Basic reading:
Nicholas Canny, ‘The Origins of Empire: an Introduction”
Richard Hakluyt, Discourse of Western Planting [1584] extracts
Additional reading:
Nicholas Canny (ed), The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. 1: The Origins of Empire (Oxford, 2001), esp ch 1: Nicholas Canny, ‘The Origins of Empire: An
Introduction’, and ch 2: Anthony Pagden, ‘The Struggle for Legitimacy and the Image of Empire in the Atlantic to c. 1700’
Roger A Mason, ‘The Scottish Reformation and the Origins of Anglo-British Imperialism’, in his Scots and Britons: Scottish Political Thought and the Union of 1603
(Cambridge, 1994)
David Armitage, Ideological Origins of the British Empire, chs 2 and 4 (Cambridge UP, 2000)
Anthony Pagden, Lords of all the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France c.1500-c.1800 (Yale UP, 1995)
Patrick Collinson, The Birthpangs of Protestant England: Religious and Cultural Change in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (London, 1988)
Week 3 (starting August 11): Science and the Emergence of Empire
The so-called Scientific Revolution of the 17th century coincided with British overseas exploration and expansion, and the activities of London’s Royal Society (one of
the world’s first scientific institutions) were stimulated by testimony and specimens brought back from the New World. Later, in the 18th and 19th centuries science
and empire coincided once again in the researches of Joseph Banks and Charles Darwin. What was the nature of the relationship between science and empire? Was science
chiefly a beneficiary of colonial expansion? To what extent did scientific knowledge contribute to state-building and the creation of imperial rule?
Basic reading:
Sarah Irving, The Royal Society and the Atlantic World (ch.4)
Short extracts from the correspondence of Robert Boyle
Additional reading:
Richard Drayton, Nature’s Government: Science, Imperial Britain and the
Improvement of the World (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2000), Preface and Chapter 1
Peter Harrison, ‘Subduing the Earth: Genesis 1, Early Modern Science and the
Exploitation of Nature’ The Journal of Religion, 79 (1999): 86-109
Sarah Irving, Natural Science and the Origins of the British Empire (London, Pickering & Chatto, 2008)
Clarence J. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and
Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976)
Week 6: (starting September 1) Smith and Burke: Liberal Critics of Empire
On the basis of his reactions to the French Revolution, Edmund Burke is normally thought of today as a philosophical conservative, and yet his earlier criticisms of
the rule of British India by the East India Company (and particularly its Governor-General, Warren Hastings) are couched in the terms of a liberal attack on arbitrary
power. Adam Smith’s views on colonies and empire have been interpreted in various competing ways, but his basic view was simple: ‘Great Britain derives nothing but
loss from the dominion which she assumes over her colonies’.
On what grounds does Burke base his attack on the behaviour of Britain’s East India Company? What are the broader historical and economic underpinnings for Smith’s
criticisms of the system of colonial trade and rule? Whose criticisms, in your view, are the stronger?
Basic reading:
Adam Smith, extracts from Lectures on Jurisprudence and The Wealth of Nations
Jennifer Pitts, A Turn to Empire, chapter 3, ‘Edmund Burke’s Peculiar Universalism’
Edmund Burke, Speech on the Impeachment of Warren Hastings (short extract; longer extracts on vUWS)
Additional reading:
Donald Winch, Riches and Poverty: An Intellectual History of Political Economy in Britain (Cambridge, 1996), Part 2: Adam Smith, Edmund Burke and Factious Citizens
Paul Langford et al (eds), Edmund Burke: Selections from his Writings and Speeches
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981).
David Armitage, ‘Edmund Burke and Reason of State’ Journal of the History of
Ideas, 61 (2000): 617-634
Conor Cruise O’Brien, Edmund Burke (on Burke and Warren Hastings) Pen 320.941092
HV Bowen, The Business of Empire: The East India Company and Imperial Britain, 1756-1833 (Cambridge, 2006)
Knud Haakonssen, The Science of a Legislator: The Natural Jurisprudence of David Hume and Adam Smith (Cambridge UP, 1981)
Knud Haakonssen (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Adam Smith (Cambridge, 2006), esp. chs 10-12
JGA Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, vol. 2: Narratives of Civil Government, (Cambridge, 1999) chs. 20-21, pp. 309-329
Donald Winch, ‘Adam Smith: Scottish moral philosopher as political economist’, in Knud Haakonssen (ed), Adam Smith
Week 13: (starting October 20) Gandhi
Gandhi is the most famous and revered figure of modern India. It’s also become conventional to view him as a fascinating paradox or contradiction – given that he re-
invented himself from an Anglicised intellectual into a kind of peasant visionary figure.
Were Gandhi’s social and political views ‘utopian’? Or was there some method to his complex attitudes on industry, economy and modernity? How was it that Gandhi was
able to attract such an extraordinary body of support and affection, given his seeming personal aloofness and unworldliness? What were the strengths and weaknesses of
his distinctive approach to political leadership? And why did Gandhi’s quite personal and even idiosyncratic blend of mystic and political activists ‘play’ so well
with Western audiences? (As opposed to the British rulers of India, who found themselves, to their annoyance, playing the part of the ancient Romans to his Christ-like
role?)
Film viewing: Gandhi (Other recommended viewing: Heat and Dust)
Videos: Some old newsreels on Gandhi’s death are on vUWS
Basic reading:
Gandhi, from Hind Swaraj and Other Writings
Anshuman Mondal, ‘Gandhi, Utopianism and the Construction of Colonial Difference’
Other primary sources:
Selected readings from The Gandhi Reader, on vUWS
Additional readings:
Shahid Amin, ‘Waiting for the Mahatma’, in India: Rebellion to Republic, ed R. Jeffrey (New Delhi, 1991
Joseph Lelyveld, Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India (NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 2011)
Isaac Chotiner, ‘The Trouble with Purity’, New Republic, 5 May 2011 (review of Lelyveld)
George Orwell, ‘Reflections on Gandhi’, in Shooting and Elephant and other Essays (on vUWS)
Judith M Brown, M Gandhi and Civil Disobedience
V Mehta, Mahatma Gandhi and his Apostles
AT Embree, ‘Gandhi’s Role on Shaping an Indian Identity’, in Imagining India
G Hendrick , ‘The Influence of Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” on Gandhi’s Satyagraha’, New England Quarterly, 1956, on JSTOR
Judith M Brown, Gandhi’s Rise to Power: Indian Politics, 1915-22 (Cambridge, 1972)
PLACE THIS ORDER OR A SIMILAR ORDER WITH US TODAY AND GET AN AMAZING DISCOUNT 🙂