Overview

In this book, Onar Ulas Ince combines an analysis of political economy with normative political theory to examine the formative impact of colonial economic relations on the historical development of liberal thought in Britain. Focusing on the centrality of liberal economic principles to Britain's self-image as a peaceful commercial society, Ince investigates some of the key historical moments in which these principles were thrown into question by the processes of forcible expropriation and exploitation that typified the British imperial economy as a whole. As he shows, such illiberal economic policies systematically challenged the liberal conception of commercial capitalism in Britain and the British national identity that was predicated on it. Specifically, such core tenets of liberalism as private property, market exchange, and free labor could be construed as progressive, emancipatory, and normatively universal only to the extent that Britain's colonial economic practices that contravened them were disavowed in political theory. In short, classical liberal economic theorists had to mentally compartmentalize theory from the disturbing facts on the ground.The case of the British imperial economy is especially important given Britain's role in disseminating liberal thought globally, but Ince's novel framework applies equally to other episodes as well, up to and including the contemporary American imperium--