International Relations (IR) scholars conventionally perceive – often as an article of received wisdom – that liberal international theory stands for inter-state cooperation, peaceful interdependence, national self-determination and, above all, a non-interventionist anti-imperialist posture, all of which stems from an essential liberal commitment to cultural pluralism. In this article we challenge this standard view by revealing the imperialist and anti-imperialist faces of liberalism. Moreover, rather than assume that the anti-imperialist face emanates from a pure liberal essence and the imperialist strand from a contingent, ad hoc illiberal influence, we argue that these two political faces derive from a consistent commitment to Eurocentrism and cultural monism. While the emphasis on the Eurocentric foundations of liberalism is clearly reminiscent of postcolonial critiques, nevertheless we make two revisions to postcolonialism. First, we argue that liberalism and Eurocentrism can be imperialist or anti-imperialist. That is, the relationship between Eurocentrism and empire is much more contingent than postcolonialists have recognized. Second, and inter-relatedly, we seek to go beyond the monochromatic or reductive postcolonial conception of Eurocentrism, specifying not one but four variants that existed in the c. 1760–1914 period.
We choose this period to rethink liberalism in general by honing in on classical liberalism as an illustrative example. Thus because the figures we focus upon – including Kant, Smith and Cobden – form the bases of various modern liberal IR theories such as cosmopolitanism/democratic peace theory, interdependence theory, liberal internationalism/liberal globalization theory, so a detailed analysis of classical liberalism necessarily has ramifications for our understanding of modern liberalism. More specifically in the Conclusions we note how two of the Eurocentric variants discussed in this article continue to underpin liberalism today, thereby revealing post-1989 liberalism as a move back to the future of late eighteenth and nineteenth century Eurocentric liberalism. Accordingly, this article seeks to do much more than simply ‘fill in’ the missing details of the historiography of liberalism, even though we also seek to contribute to the revisionist historiography of IR that has been pioneered by the likes of Brian Schmidt (Reference Schmidt1998: esp. Ch. 4), Long and Schmidt (Reference Long and Schmidt2005), and Robert Vitalis (Reference Vitalis2000, Reference Vitalis2005, Reference Vitalis2008).
Overall, our key claim is that revealing liberalism to be grounded in a number of variants of Eurocentrism necessarily yields a unique view that challenges IR scholars in general to rethink entirely their conventional understanding of liberalism, as much as it challenges postcolonialists to rethink their understanding of Eurocentrism. Nevertheless, it is important to acknowledge that not all ‘non-postcolonial’ IR scholars adhere to this conventional reading, with some recognizing liberalism as having the two faces that we reveal in this article (e.g. Waltz, Reference Waltz1959: 95–123; Doyle, Reference Doyle1983b: esp. 324–337; Doyle, Reference Doyle1986: Ch. 11).
Specifically, we reveal liberalism as a promiscuous/polymorphous theory, crystallizing in radically different forms over time in line with the changing discourses of Eurocentrism within which it is embedded. Of course, the conventional view of liberalism within IR is precisely that it is a changing discourse with a long lineage. Indeed, the typical textbook discussion seeks to describe liberalism precisely by tracing its lineages, beginning with classical liberal internationalism (c. 1760–1914), progressing onto new liberalism and classical liberal institutionalism (c. 1919–1970), before proceeding to cosmopolitanism via interdependence theory and neoliberal institutionalism (c. 1970–2010). But, we argue, this conventional vision of liberalism’s variants rests on a thin reading, revealing only surface type differences in form rather than substance, given that all of them rest on a shared commitment to individualism, interdependence, anti-imperialism/self-determination, and cultural pluralism. That is, peace and inter-state cooperation can be achieved either through national laissez-faire (classical liberal internationalism) or through international institutional forms of intervention (new liberalism, liberal/neoliberal institutionalism, and global cosmopolitanism). Thus the end always remains the same, with differences apparent only in terms of the prescribed means to achieve them.
Our alternative narrative of the protean career of liberalism is a much thicker one, revealing radically different approaches wherein each is founded on a specific Eurocentric/Orientalist base that in turn yields either an imperialist or anti-imperialist vision. It is for this reason that we characterize the received understanding of liberalism as inherently monochromatic, as much as we see postcolonialism’s interpretation of Eurocentrism as overly monolithic and reductive. Relating the entwined protean careers of polymorphous Eurocentrism and liberalism constitutes the core of this article. More specifically, we argue that classical liberalism was grounded in four variants of Eurocentrism, two of which were imperialist and two anti-imperialist – though in the interests of space we shall reveal three of these here. While adding the fourth Eurocentric dimension of liberalism would enhance our case, nevertheless we believe that we can establish our claim sufficiently by revealing three of the four Eurocentric bases of classical liberalism (but for the fourth dimension see Hobson, Reference Hobson2009: Ch. 4).
Finally, we introduce and engage with two related literatures that have not been sufficiently taken on board by mainstream IR understandings of liberalism. These comprise postcolonialism and its representation of liberalism as a form of Eurocentric/racist imperialism and, in turn, the response to this as articulated most forcefully by Sankar Muthu and Jennifer Pitts. They argue that some of the key liberal Enlightenment figures were anti-imperialist and culturally pluralist, though they concede that by the mid-nineteenth century classical liberalism had congealed within a Eurocentric imperialist mould. Engaging critically as well as sympathetically with these two literatures enables us to carve out our own alternative understanding of liberalism that goes beyond the standoff that currently exists between them.
The article proceeds in five stages. Section one relates the monochromatic reading of Eurocentrism within postcolonial IR before proceeding to examine how this reading underpins the postcolonial-inspired critiques of classical liberalism. The second section then presents our own re-reading of Eurocentrism by outlining the four key variants that existed during the era of classical liberalism (c. 1760–1914), while the remaining three sections deal in turn with three of the Eurocentric/Orientalist variants of classical liberalism.
Problematizing Eurocentrism and the postcolonial critique of classical liberalism
In the wake of the publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism (Reference Said1978) postcolonialism emerged, claiming that Western Social Science is Orientalist/Eurocentric/racist and is, therefore, inherently imperialist. It is precisely this conflation of Eurocentrism with racism as well as Eurocentric racism with imperialism that marks the monochromatic or reductive interpretation of Eurocentrism (though a tiny minority of postcolonialists have registered dissatisfaction with this monolithic reading – for example Moore-Gilbert, Reference Moore-Gilbert1997: Ch. 2). Having begun in cultural studies, postcolonialism’s and non-Eurocentrism’s critique of Eurocentrism entered the discipline of IR in the late-1990s (e.g. Doty, Reference Doty1996; Grovogui, Reference Grovogui1996; Paolini, Reference Paolini1999; Barkawi and Laffey, Reference Barkawi and Laffey2002; Chowdhry and Nair, Reference Chowdhry and Nair2002; Ling, Reference Ling2002; Inayatullah and Blaney, Reference Inayatullah and Blaney2004; Gruffydd-Jones, Reference Gruffydd-Jones2006a).Footnote 1 Many postcolonial-inspired IR scholars seek to reveal how IR – in its theoretical and empirical gaze – is Eurocentric/racist, such that it naturalizes and obscures the imperial dimension of world politics, past, and present. Thus, it is usually assumed that the antidote to Eurocentric IR is to reveal or resuscitate this sublimated racist-imperial dimension. As one authority summarizes it, a key step
toward decolonizing knowledge is… to reveal the imperial and racialized constitution of international relations. This entails moving imperialism from its bracketed location in specialist studies and the distant chronological past and demonstrating the unbroken centrality of imperialism to international relations from the fifteenth century to the twenty-first (Gruffydd-Jones, 2006b: 9).
How does all this relate to the postcolonial-inspired/non-Eurocentric critique of classical liberalism? Despite the many inroads that postcolonial/non-Eurocentric IR scholars have made, the fact remains that with a few notable exceptions (e.g. Grovogui, Reference Grovogui1996; Jahn, Reference Jahn2000, Reference Jahn2005, Reference Jahn2006; Inayatullah and Blaney, Reference Inayatullah and Blaney2004; Anghie, Reference Anghie2005; Bowden, Reference Bowden2009), the majority of such critiques of classical liberalism are made by ‘non-Eurocentric’ and postcolonial-inspired political theorists who include Tully (Reference Tully1995), Parekh (Reference Parekh1997), Pagden (Reference Pagden1998), Tuck (Reference Tuck1999), Hindess (Reference Hindess2001), Pateman and Mills (Reference Pateman and Mills2007) and, most prominently of all, Uday Singh Mehta (Reference Mehta1999). In essence, this critique of classical liberalism seeks to reveal its Eurocentric/racist nature in order to uncover its imperialist/colonialist normative stance. Typical of this genre is the claim that Mehta makes: that what at first sight appears to be a contradiction, whereby the nineteenth century witnessed the triumph of Western liberalism at the very time that British imperialism expanded, turns out to be entirely consistent given his belief that liberalism’s Eurocentrism renders it inherently colonialist. Paraphrasing E.P. Thompson, he asks rhetorically: ‘how did ideas of equality, liberty and fraternity lead to empire, liberticide and fratricide?’ (Mehta, Reference Mehta1999: 190). The answer is that liberalism’s commitment to Eurocentrism/paternalism necessitates a colonialist posture (Mehta, Reference Mehta1999: esp. 190–201). How, then, does this play out?
The argument of Mehta and others begins with the claim that while liberalism stands for democracy, human rights, a tolerant cultural pluralism, and non-intervention/self-determination based on the belief that these are universal norms or principles, nevertheless it turns out that for Eurocentric liberalism these apply only to particular societies where individuals allegedly attain full rationality (i.e. in civilized Europe). Accordingly, these principles cannot apply to non-European polities/societies given that they comprise irrational individuals and institutions. This means first, that within the Eurocentric liberal vision these societies would inevitably stagnate under barbarism/savagery as they were unable to self-generate and second, that the principles of sovereign recognition and national self-determination/non-interventionism could legitimately apply only to relations between civilized (i.e. European) states given that non-European polities were deemed to be irrational and hence uncivilized. Importantly, this latter point is symptomatic of what we shall call a ‘schizophrenic/bipolar’ conception of the international, wherein European/non-European relations are characterized by imperial interventionism while intra-European state relations are marked by the principles of mutual recognition and non-interventionism. This denial of sovereignty to non-European polities is, however, not an illiberal moment but is entirely consistent with a liberal paternalist-Eurocentrism since only through Western imperial interventionism (or the ‘civilizing mission’) could the ‘irrational East’ be ‘rescued’ or ‘uplifted’ through the delivery of rational Western institutions. The final effect would be the universalization of the West into the global ‘empire of uniformity’ (Tully, Reference Tully1995), as non-European societies and polities are transformed into rational/civilized Western entities to the benefit of all peoples.
This is reinforced, postcolonialist-inspired writers argue, by classical liberalism’s emphasis on the ‘social efficiency’ argument, which asserts that where peoples fail to develop their lands productively so these territories are proclaimed to be terra nullius (i.e. vacant- or waste-space). In such conditions liberalism prescribes that Europeans have the right to take-over their lands and develop them in the allegedly productive interests of global humanity. This argument is traced back to Vitoria,Footnote 2 and then forwards via Gentili, Grotius, Locke, Vattel, and Kant (e.g. Tully, Reference Tully1995; Grovogui, Reference Grovogui1996; Tuck, Reference Tuck1999; Pateman and Mills, Reference Pateman and Mills2007; Bowden, Reference Bowden2009).
All in all, the postcolonial-inspired critique posits an indissoluble relationship between Eurocentric classical liberalism and empire, thereby reflecting the monochromatic reading of Eurocentrism. While there is much in this argument that we draw on, nevertheless the problem is that if we were to follow this reductive logic then we would be forced to squeeze all liberal international theory into a single Eurocentric/racist imperialist mould thereby obscuring the different Eurocentric variants that underpin liberalism and which, in turn, generate its dual-faced imperialist and anti-imperialist visions. It therefore makes sense to proceed to outline the four variants of Eurocentrism that existed in the c. 1760–1914 period before turning to our reinterpretation of classical liberalism.
Outlining four variants of Eurocentrism
In this section we unpack the monolithic reading of Eurocentrism to unearth its two generic variants that existed in the c. 1760–1914 period – ‘Eurocentric institutionalism’ and ‘scientific racism’. Given that each genre contains two sub-sets, imperialist and anti-imperialist, so we derive a 2 × 2 matrix (see Table 1). These four variants have been obscured by the headlining postcolonial umbrella term of Orientalism/Eurocentrism, which in turn presents a single imperialist discourse that obscures not only the anti-imperialist variants but also smooths the imperialist variants into a coherent seamless whole. And to the extent that postcolonial-inspired scholars on occasion implicitly recognize different variants – paternalist-Eurocentrism (e.g. Mill) and social Darwinism (e.g. Spencer) – nevertheless they tend to see the latter as but a more extreme imperialist expression of the former. As we shall see shortly, however, scientific racism – of which social Darwinism was only one strand – could be anti-imperialist (e.g. Spencer) as well as imperialist (e.g. Ward).
Table 1 Taxonomy of the different ideal-typical forms of Eurocentrism/Orientalism racism their relations to imperialism
We begin by considering ‘Eurocentric institutionalism’, which emerged forcefully during the Enlightenment – even if its latent principles emerged initially after the ‘discovery’ of America (Tully, Reference Tully1995; Pagden, Reference Pagden1998; Jahn, Reference Jahn2000; Inayatullah and Blaney, Reference Inayatullah and Blaney2004; Anghie, Reference Anghie2005; Bowden, Reference Bowden2009). The postcolonial position is that Enlightenment Eurocentrism was inherently imperialist and for some such scholars there was little real difference between it and scientific racism. Certainly, this generic approach conceived a world hierarchy that placed civilized white society at the top, yellow barbarian societies down a stage and black/red savages societies at the bottom of the global hierarchy. But critically, this ethnography was based purely on institutional/cultural, rather than biological/genetic differences. Moreover, Enlightenment Eurocentric institutionalists believed that all humans and all societies had recourse to universal reason and that all were capable of progressing from savagery/barbarism into civilization. However, Western societies were deemed superior and more advanced because they had full recourse to reason, whereas reason was only latent within non-Western societies. Thus the West is thought to have developed rational institutions and norms: rational (Weberian) bureaucracies and rational liberal-democratic states, rational individualism, rational science and religion etc. Overall, such a framework presupposes a full separation of the private and public realms. By contrast, non-European societies are thought to be governed only by irrational norms and institutions, where the private and public realms are thoroughly confused. They are characterized by collectivist social structures, regressive/mystical religions as well as either patrimonial bureaucracies/barbaric Oriental despotic states (yellow societies) or a savage state of nature (red and black societies). This, in turn, gives rise to the familiar binary, logocentric distinctions that privilege the West over East: democracy/despotism or state/state of nature, individualism/collectivism, science/mysticism, etc.
However, at this point we encounter two sub-divisions; a strong and a weak version. The strong version, found in the paternalist wing, believes that latent reason in non-Western societies could be brought to full realization but only through the imperial intervention of Western societies (e.g. Mill, Cobden, Hobson, and Angell). That is, the ‘civilizing mission’ would act as a ‘signal trigger’ or ‘catalytic impulse’, launching the East onto the track, or high tide, of progress towards civilization by delivering rational Western norms/institutions. This variant presupposes a paternalist West and a feminized/infantilized East that needs rescuing. That is, it is the paternalist side of the West that leads it to embark on the civilizing mission or ‘the white man’s burden’ in order to emancipate the helpless East.
This paternalist imperial variant is differentiated from the weak version found in the anti-paternalist wing, which asserts that non-European peoples would evolve naturally and spontaneously into civilization, thereby dispensing with the need to civilize them through imperialism (e.g. Smith and Kant). Moreover, the anti-paternalist variant was highly critical of Western imperialism and saw it as a hindrance, rather than a spur, to non-European progress (as well as to Western development). Nevertheless, both positions embraced Eurocentrism. For the paternalists awarded the West the status of sole agent or subject of global progress while the East was marginalized as the passive object/beneficiary of Western largesse. And the anti-paternalists assumed that the non-European peoples were destined to follow not only a path into modern civilization which had been achieved though not yet perfected by the West, but one that would and should culminate in an idealized Western civilizational terminus.
The postcolonial conflation of Eurocentric institutionalism and scientific racism is problematic because while there are certain, albeit highly complex, overlaps there are also some key differences. It is important to recognize that scientific racism is a considerably more complex body of thought than is Eurocentric institutionalism and categorizing it is not straightforward. The key body of thought of relevance here is that of social Darwinism (often infused with Lamarckianism) and, though less prominently at that time, Eugenics. While racial/biological properties are important in this ethnology, nevertheless the Lamarckian influence – which often goes unnoticed – also infused culture and social behavior into the mix. Here we differentiate two ideal-type streams of scientific racism – what we call ‘defensive’ and ‘offensive’ scientific racism – and we shall discuss each in turn.
The defensive variant draws on a variety of discourses that were blended together in a number of ways. A key body of thinkers drew on laissez-faire social Darwinism that was often blended with Lamarckianism (e.g. Spencer and Sumner). This invokes a progressive historical universalistic evolutionary framework that echoes the liberal anti-paternalist Eurocentrism of Kant and Smith. These thinkers developed a rigorous theory of the minimalist state on the grounds that societies operate according to the evolutionary laws of natural selection. Thus to interfere in these in any way would produce only negative outcomes. This was, in effect, an extreme form of Smithian political economy. A further inter-related similarity with Smith and Kant lay in the belief that societies of all kinds will naturally evolve in time from savagery to barbarism and finally to civilization so long as they are free of political interference, either domestically or externally. Accordingly, this means that it is pointless to engage in an imperial civilizing mission since this would only disturb the natural and autonomous laws of evolution and development. Thus both parts of the framework came together in the anti-imperialist posture, insofar as imperialism would burden the state and undermine progress within the civilized countries on the one hand – what Herbert Spencer (Reference Spencer1902) called the ‘rebarbarization of civilization’ – while simultaneously leading to the regression or containment of colonial societies on the other. The laissez-faire social Darwinists such as Spencer and Sumner also emphasized the twin threats that miscegenation and tropical climate posed for the white races, the effects of both leading to the inevitable degeneration of the white race and of civilization more generally.
It is also important to note that Herbert Spencer, who is typically treated as a founding voice of social Darwinism, was also a leading neo-Lamarckian (Stocking, Reference Stocking1982). This is significant because Lamarckianism places equal weighting on culture/social behavior and genetics, insofar as the social function of individuals (or animals) necessarily modifies their physiognomy and mental processes or characteristics, which are then passed on through the blood to the subsequent generation. Thus, for example, just as a workman through manual labor develops large and strong hands that then become an acquired hereditary characteristic of his son, so giraffes have long necks because their predecessors had to reach up for their food. This has two significant ramifications. First, it means that many social Darwinists/Lamarckians did not elevate genetics above all else; and second, it avoids the pessimistic assumption of extreme social Darwinism and Eugenics, which assumed that non-white races were simply incapable of auto-developing into civilization. Thus the splicing together of laissez-faire social Darwinism and Lamarckianism enabled a seemingly ‘progressive’ universalism insofar as it issued an anti-imperialist posture and granted some developmental agency to the non-white races.
Another group of thinkers within this category created a relativistic approach, viewing the non-European races and societies as inherently backward and inferior such that they were unlikely to develop into civilization (e.g. Blair and Jordan). But they agreed with the laissez-faire social Darwinists insofar as miscegenation and white residence in tropical climates must at all costs be avoided and that non-European societies should be left alone to their own devices, free from white contact. Overall, they sought to distance the West from the ‘contaminating’ influence of the non-European races through what amounted to a strategy of ‘civilizational/racial-apartheid’. Accordingly, it was for this racist reason rather than any inherent liberal commitment to ‘cultural pluralism’ that they argued strongly against Western imperialism.
The second generic variant, ‘offensive scientific racism’, could be found principally in interventionist social Darwinism and Lamarckianism and, though to a lesser extent at this time, in the ‘science’ of Eugenics. Notably, however, these were blended together in different ways by different scholars, leading to a complex range of positions. The interventionist social Darwinists explicitly rejected the laissez-faire variant of Spencerean social Darwinism and denied the non-white races the capacity to auto-develop. They argued that the white race must engage in race war and destructive/exploitative imperialism – as in social liberalism (e.g. Ward, Reference Ward1903/2002) and geopolitical realism (e.g. Mahan, Reference Mahan1897; Mackinder, Reference Mackinder1904). Alternatively Lamarckian liberal racists embraced the idea of a Western civilizing mission on the grounds that this could bring rationality and development to the non-European societies (e.g. Wilson, Reference Wilson1902; Reinsch, Reference Reinsch1905).
Thus, in sum, we differentiate two sub-categories of scientific racism where the offensive variant advocates the colonization of the East in order to maintain Western civilization or white supremacy, while the defensive variant seeks to defend Western/white supremacy by avoiding contact with the contaminating influence of the non-European races through strong immigration controls and the avoidance of colonialism. All in all, then, we identify four major positions that are contained within the generic categories of scientific racism and Eurocentric institutionalism. Nevertheless, we emphasize the point that these four positions should be recognized as something of a simplification of what is an extremely complex and often contradictory literature, even though we have allowed for considerable nuances within each of the categories. The issue now becomes that of ascertaining how these various discourses became embodied within the writings of classical liberal international thinkers. Table 2 provides the summary position and in what follows we take three of these categories in turn (omitting Box C – ‘offensive scientific racism’) in order to make our case.
Table 2 Taxonomy of the ideal-typical relations of Eurocentrism/scientific racism to imperialism in classical liberal international theory
Paternalist Eurocentric institutionalism: liberal imperialism (Box A)
This discourse emerged fully by the mid-nineteenth century in the period of the West’s triumphalist moment, perhaps no better illustrated than the Great Exhibition held in Hyde Park, London (1851), through which Britain proclaimed itself to be superior to the non-European world. This context was crucial in shaping the paternalist/imperialist wing of Eurocentric institutional universalism. Significantly, it is precisely this category that postcolonial-inspired critics have in mind when they think of Eurocentrism. Nevertheless, even within this particular variant we find a significant range of positions. At one extreme lies John Stuart Mill, who argued not only for the necessity of the civilizing mission but that it could be achieved through despotic colonial government intervention (see Doyle, Reference Doyle1983b: 331; Mehta, Reference Mehta1999; Jahn, Reference Jahn2005; Pitts, Reference Pitts2005: 133–162). At the other extreme lies John A. Hobson, who argued that a civilizing mission to develop the non-European societies was necessary but only under the guidance/tutelage of an independent international institution – specifically the League of Nations (Long, Reference Long2005; Hobson, Reference Hobson2009: Ch. 2). And exactly the same argument/discourse was deployed by inter-war IR liberals and progressives such as Alfred Zimmern, Norman Angell and Leonard Woolf (Hobson, Reference Hobson2009: Ch. 7). The majority of paternalist liberals in the pre-1914 era, however, occupied the middle ground, which entailed individual Western countries civilizing the East through imperialism. Here we shall take Richard Cobden as our example.
Richard Cobden: for ‘peaceful universal interdependence’ or ‘English nationalism and liberal imperialism’?
Cobden is, of course, best-known for his fervent promotion of free trade. The conventional reading emphasizes his normative prescription of laissez-faire at home and free trade abroad on the grounds that this would promote peace, interdependence and international cooperation. Moreover, Cobden’s liberalism extended to his critique of the realist conception of the balance of power on the grounds that its defense requires an unacceptable pro-war posture. The secondary IR literature assumes that his commitment to international non-interventionism and cultural pluralism, coupled with his passionate aversion to war, rendered him a natural liberal critic of empire and all things colonial (e.g. Burchill, Reference Burchill1996: 35–37, 39–40). Indeed this is thought to be axiomatic given his classical liberal critique of ‘big government’, where increased military expenditures associated with imperialism lead to higher taxes and a higher national debt, all of which serves to divert resources away from productive to unproductive spending in the imperial country (as in Smith and Kant).
But, we argue that, while elements of this picture are undoubtedly pertinent, the problem is that Cobden has been read out of the paternalist Eurocentric context in which he wrote. Crucially, by revealing this we show how it led him to advocate war and imperialism in certain contexts. Cobden subscribed to a schizophrenic conception of the international, which undermined or contradicted the tolerant cultural pluralism for which he is famous. In revealing this alternative reading we draw from the major two-volume set that brings together his letters and pamphlets (Cobden, Reference Cobden1868). Certainly this is not to say that the arguments for which he is famous are not included in them. For there we encounter all manner of quotations that resonate with the conventional reading including the British statesman’s idiom, that
‘Men of war to conquer colonies, to yield to us a monopoly of their trade’ must now be dismissed, like many other glittering but false adages of our forefathers, and in its place we must substitute the more homely but enduring maxim – Cheapness, which will command commerce; and whatever else is needful will follow in its train (1836/1868: 290, his emphasis).
Nevertheless, what really stands out throughout these pamphlets is a pro-imperial posture that rests on a paternalist Eurocentric institutionalist base, which is in turn wrapped up within a fervent sense of English nationalism. Indeed one does not have to scour the texts to unearth this for it is sustained across no less than 443 pages out of a total of 991.
This pro-imperialist stance emerges in two key pamphlets that, inter alia, discuss the future possibility of a Russian war with Turkey. Cobden’s critique of the pro-war position of David Urquhart (former Secretary of the English Embassy at Constantinople), who sought British support of Turkey for fear that a stronger Russia could only enhance Russia’s hand against Britain, is based not on pacifist non-interventionism but colonial take-over of Turkey by Russia. Cobden’s Eurocentric response proceeds in stages. First, he insists that Britain’s interests lie more with Russia than Turkey not just because Britain’s trade with Russia vastly outweighs its commerce with Turkey, but mainly because Russia is a civilized Christian Western power while the Ottoman Empire is a barbaric Islamic Oriental despotism. His Eurocentric analysis emphasizes the barbaric twin-effects of the Turkish Oriental despotic state and its repressive Islamic religion, to wit: although Turkey’s lands are highly fertile, nevertheless, ‘despotic violence has triumphed over nature’ such that this country ‘has by the oppressive exactions of successive pachas, become little better than a deserted waste’ (1835/1868: 19). In essence, he argues that a once great country has been reduced to a ‘desolate place of tombs’ by a rapacious despotism given that it privileges war and militarism over peace and commerce (1836/1868: 173–4).
He then engages in a thought experiment, asking what would happen if the population of the United States was substituted for the Turkish people and transplanted into Turkey. He responds by painting an image of the ravaged hell of barbaric Turkey being transformed into an earthly civilized paradise, on the grounds that the Americans would create a vibrant commercial and prosperous economy. This then culminates in a full pro-imperial posture. For not only does Cobden dismiss the claim that Russian acquisition of Turkey would harm British interests but, he argues:
On the contrary, we have no hesitation in avowing it as our deliberate conviction that not merely Great Britain, but the entire civilized [i.e. Western] world, will have reason to congratulate itself, the moment when [Turkey] again falls beneath the sceptre of any other European power whatever. Ages must elapse before its favoured region will become … the seat and centre of commerce, civilization, and true religion; but the first step towards this consummation must be to convert Constantinople again into that which every lover of humanity and peace longs to behold it – the capital of a Christian [civilized] people (1835/1868: 33).
Thus Cobden positively endorses a Russian colonial take-over of Turkey on the grounds that this Western civilizing mission would yield considerable benefits not just to Turkey but also to Europe and Britain in particular (Reference Cobden1835/1868: 34–37; Reference Cobden1836/1868: 189–91). Speaking of this imperial mission of civilizing Turkey, he argues that it will
put into a peoples’ hands the bible in lieu of the Koran – let the religion of Mohamet give place to that of Jesus Christ; and human reason, aided by the printing press and the commerce of the world, will not fail to erase the errors which time, barbarism, or the cunning of its priesthood, may have engrafted upon it (1835/1868: 33–34).
This argument underpins his general claim that Turkish society was, in the classic Eurocentric institutionalist position, ‘unchanging and stationary’ whereas Russian society was ‘progressing’ (1836/1868: 187–188).
Of course, if we left it here, we might conclude that Cobden was prepared to countenance imperialism so long as it was undertaken by Western countries other than England. Certainly his critique of British imperialism that was articulated in his many speeches and letters would seem to support this. But his discussion of Britain’s relations with Ireland certainly qualify this view. In his 1835 pamphlet chapter on Ireland he argues that the Irish are savages and that their Catholic form of persecution has ‘enabled [Ireland] to resist, not only unscathed, but actually with augmented power, the shock of a free press, and the liberalizing influence of the freest constitutional government in Europe’ (1835/1868: 63). And the rest of the chapter is given over to an argument that advocates an English colonial civilizing mission in Ireland that is wrapped up within a fervent English nationalism. It is vital to ‘raise Ireland up’ through a civilizing mission, Cobden argues, for failure to do so ‘will inevitably depress [England] to a level with [the Irish]’ (Reference Cobden1835/1868: 69). Precisely because Irish savage habits are contaminating England through Irish immigration – a kind of ‘Irish Peril’ type-argument – so it is imperative that Irish savagery be eradicated (see esp. 1835/1868: 70).
Cobden insists that a ‘[p]arliament in Dublin [self-determination] would not remedy the ills of Ireland. That has been tried, and found unsuccessful; for all may learn in her history, that a more corrupt, base, and selfish public body than the domestic legislature of Ireland never existed’ (1835/1868: 82). Thus it was to the English parliament that Ireland must look for salvation. In particular, an English civilizing mission would entail building infrastructure (e.g. roads and railroads) and the exporting of English capital and civilization. ‘We confess we see no hope for the eventual prosperity [of Ireland]… except [through]… the instrumentality of English capital, in the pursuit of manufactures or commerce’ (1835/1868: 90). And Cobden concludes that where England has gone wrong vis-à-vis the ‘problem of Ireland’ is not in colonizing it but in neglecting to submit Ireland to a full colonial civilizing mission. Ultimately, however, it is the serving of the English national interest that underpins his calling for colonialism, given his belief that Ireland ‘remains to this hour an appalling monument of our neglect and misgovernment… The spectacle of Ireland operat[es] like a cancer in the side of England’ (1835/1868: 95).
To close, it is possible that in pressing home his various political messages Cobden tended towards hyperbole. And one might suspect that his constant appeals to the English national interest are at least made in part to blunt the criticisms of him as a utopian idealist. Nevertheless, it seems fair to conclude that much of Cobden’s writings are founded on a paternalist, pro-imperialist Eurocentric institutionalism, which in turn problematizes our conventional picture of him as a liberal internationalist who is committed to pacifism, non-interventionism, cultural pluralism and anti-imperialism. Even so, it might be objected that Cobden’s stance towards Islam and Catholicism was an ad hoc illiberal argument that does not reflect, or stem from, his general liberal credentials but emanates rather from an ad hoc Protestant prejudice. But his criticism of these countries (Turkey and Ireland) reflects a liberal predisposition wherein those societies that were founded on irrational institutions – of which religion was only one expression – did not qualify for self-determination and could only do so once rational institutions had been set up courtesy of a European imperial civilizing mission. Paternalist liberal prescriptions of non-intervention and tolerance can only apply once ‘the Other’ has been remoulded along rational European lines. Cobden, then, conforms perfectly to the postcolonial reading of Eurocentrism, invoking a schizophrenic conception of the international wherein Western double standards were part and parcel of paternalist Eurocentric liberalism.
Anti-paternalist Eurocentric institutionalism: liberal anti-imperialism (Box B)
For postcolonialists the discussion thus far will appear intuitive, given that they conflate Eurocentrism with imperialism while associating classical liberalism with a Eurocentric-colonialist politics. But here we seek to deepen our understanding of liberal Eurocentrism by revealing its two anti-imperialist variants in turn, beginning with the anti-paternalist Eurocentric institutionalist variant that rejects all forms of paternalism and thus imperialism. Chronologically, this category emerged before the paternalist strand reached its heights of expression, being located within the late-eighteenth century Enlightenment. Its clearest representatives are Immanuel Kant and Adam Smith. Unlike their paternalist cousins, they adopted a universal cosmopolitanism – albeit one that was an expression of a European particularism or provincialism – but in contrast to the postcolonial critique of cosmopolitanism as inherently imperialist, Kant and Smith articulated their theories in large part as a critique of imperialism.
Immanuel Kant: anti-paternalist Eurocentrism and the critique of imperialism
To make our case we shall enter into a dialogue with Sankar Muthu’s analysis of Kant in his pioneering book, Enlightenment Against Empire (Muthu, Reference Muthu2003: Chs. 4–5). In essence, we shall agree with his anti-imperialist reading but will present Kant as a Eurocentric ‘cultural monist’ rather than as a tolerant ‘cultural pluralist’ as Muthu claims. In doing so, we seek to reveal the key ingredients of anti-paternalist Eurocentric institutionalism. We shall deal with Kant’s critique of imperialism first and then proceed to reveal his particular brand of Eurocentrism. And because we have to deal with both these dimensions so the discussion will necessarily be extended.
As indicated earlier, many so-called liberal ‘critics’ of empire ended up by embracing imperialism, often because they subscribed to the ‘social efficiency/terra nullius’ argument. Indeed, it is here where James Tully’s postcolonial-inspired argument intervenes, claiming that this imperialist cue is endorsed by Kant in his third definitive article for a perpetual peace. Tully claims that for Kant (as with Locke in particular), the Aboriginals must be punished if they resist those Europeans who take their land, since the latter have a right to hospitality and settlement in the formers’ lands (Tully, Reference Tully1995: 88–89). But in The Metaphysics of Morals Kant asserts unequivocally that the right to establish community with such natives ‘does not, however, amount to the right to settle on another nation’s territory… for the latter would require a special contract’ (1970c: 172, his emphasis). Moreover, he goes on to say that where Europeans seek to settle on non-European lands occupied by shepherds or hunters ‘who rely upon large tracts of wasteland for their sustenance, settlements should not be established by violence, but only by treaty [i.e. indigenous consent]; and even then, there must be no attempt to exploit the ignorance of the natives in persuading them to give up their territories’ (1970c: 173). Significant too is that in Perpetual Peace, Kant approves of the Japanese and Chinese practice of placing heavy restrictions on the entry of European traders since the latter had failed to act peaceably and fairly (1970b: 106–7). Ironically, Jacques Derrida (Reference Derrida2000) reinforces our claim here when he critiques Kant for precisely the opposite reason to that of Tully: that Kant contradicts his own commitment to cosmopolitanism precisely because of his insistence that visitors (specifically asylum-seekers in today’s context) who seek to settle abroad can only do so once consent has been given through the signing of a contract by the receiving society. But equally, as one Kantian expert rightly notes, Derrida’s critique of Kant’s arguments misunderstands the historical context, wherein Kant’s major concern was to protect non-European peoples from marauding European imperialists; hence the ‘laws of hospitality’ were framed very much with the critique of imperialism in mind (Brown, Reference Brown2009: 59–66).
Muthu, then, is surely correct to note that Kant’s conception of ‘cosmopolitan right’ is formulated precisely so as to critique imperialism (Muthu, Reference Muthu2003: 187–8). As Kant put it, ‘[y]et these [European imperial] visits to foreign shores and even more so, attempts to settle on them with a view to linking them with the motherland, can also occasion evil and violence in one part of the globe with ensuing repercussions which are felt everywhere else’ (Kant, Reference Kant1970c: 172; also Kant, Reference Kant1970b: 107–8). In Perpetual Peace Kant unequivocally condemns European imperialists for offending this fundamental cosmopolitan right. In the discussion of the third definitive article, which Tully sees as providing the imperialist cue, Kant takes precisely the opposite stance by taking European imperialists to task for their inhospitable conduct abroad, emphasizing the point that the ‘injustice which they display in visiting foreign countries and peoples (which in their case is the same as conquering them) seems appallingly great’ (1970b: 106, his emphases). Combining this with a critique of the social efficiency/terra nullius argument, Kant asserts on the same page that ‘America, the negro countries, the Spice Islands, the Cape, etc. were looked upon at the time of their discovery as ownerless territories [terra nullius]; for the natives were counted as nothing’. But far from justifying the imperial mission, Kant then argues that under the pretext of spreading trade (to India), the natives were oppressed through widespread wars, famine ‘and the whole litany of evils which can afflict the human race’ (1970b: 106). For Kant, such intolerable cruelty is the trade-mark of European imperialism and, in a well-directed jibe against the concept of the imperial civilizing mission, he concludes that all this is ‘the work of powers who make endless ado about their piety, and who wish to be considered as chosen believers while they live on the fruits of their iniquity’ (1970b: 107). He then immediately reiterates the point that such behavior violates cosmopolitan right, so that as long as this continues no progress towards a perpetual peace is possible (1970b: 108). In sum, then, it seems fair to conclude that the ‘social efficiency trap-door’ that leads back into the pro-imperialist chamber – typified by Locke and others – is locked tight in Kant’s schema.
The one possible caveat to this robust anti-imperial position that postcolonial-inspired critics might offer up here lies in the point that Kant would positively support the extension of trading relations as an informal civilizing influence in the East. Interestingly, Kant partially pre-empts this charge when he insists that such commercial relations must not involve unequal or exploitative exchange and that the entering into trading relations can only be done through the consent of the non-European countries. As Muthu recognizes, Kant’s ‘category of cosmopolitan right attempts to articulate an ideal, which can both condemn European imperialism and encourage nonexploitative and peaceful transnational relations’ (Muthu, Reference Muthu2003: 192). Nevertheless, postcolonialists might respond by arguing that for Kant, extending nonexploitative trading relations promotes Western norms insofar as it pacifies states by propelling them into an economically interdependent relationship, which in turn propels them into a more commercial society such that the benefits of doing so exceed the costs of breaking such links through warfare. Indeed, as Kant put it: ‘the spirit of commerce sooner or later takes hold of every people, and it cannot exist side by side with war’ (1970b: 114). Crucial here is the claim that trade has an informal ‘civilizing impact’, insofar as it helps push all societies towards capitalism and republicanism, which in turn constitute crucial preconditions for a future perpetual peace.
Here it is critical to appreciate that for Kant this ‘civilizing push factor’ should not be conflated with the ‘signal trigger’ or ‘catalytic effect’ that the formal-imperial civilizing mission entails within the paternalist Eurocentric institutionalist variant, not least because Kant seeks to exorcize all notions of Western compulsion. This in part derives from his belief that all societies will spontaneously evolve or auto-develop – an argument which fundamentally differentiates this genre from that of its paternalist Eurocentric institutionalist cousin – and in part on the basis that states do not have the right to impose trading relations or trading obligations on others because the receiving societies have the right to refuse consent, as we have already noted (see also Doyle, Reference Doyle1983a: 227; Reference Doyle1983b: 325, 331; Muthu, Reference Muthu2003: 155–162; Jahn, Reference Jahn2006: 187–188). Thus, unlike his paternalist ideological ‘cousins’, Kant (and Smith) advocated a consistent or universalist conception of negative freedom/minimalist state interventionism that would apply equally at home and in the treatment of non-European societies abroad. The key question now becomes: was this anti-paternalist ‘universalist’ stance a function of an anti-Eurocentric ‘cultural pluralist’ ethos, as Muthu argues?
Muthu believes that Kant’s ethnology, which was developed in his political writings, stood outside of the ‘common scientific racist’ markers of parts of eighteenth century European thought. This is significant given that postcolonial-inspired critics sometimes denounce Kant precisely for his scientific racism (e.g. Eze, Reference Eze1997; Bernasconi, Reference Bernasconi2001; Tully, Reference Tully2002: 342–343; Bowden, Reference Bowden2009: 146). Noteworthy here is that Kant certainly relied heavily on scientific racism in his anthropological writings and lectures (e.g. Kant, Reference Kant1997a, Reference Kantb, Reference Kantc, Reference Kant2001a). However, we agree with Muthu (Reference Muthu2003: 181–184) in that such racism played no part in his political writings on international relations. Nevertheless, it is this rejection of scientific racism that leads Muthu to mistakenly conclude that Kant advocated a ‘cultural pluralism’; one that was premised on what Muthu calls ‘cultural agency’. This presumes a respect for the equality of all peoples and, therefore, by implication, a tolerance of non-European societies. He also claims that Kant did not privilege civilized societies over uncivilized ones. And because all were held on an egalitarian, non-hierarchical normative footing, so Kant allegedly rejected judging non-European societies against a universal Western norm. To this end Muthu emphasizes the consistent claim made by Kant that civilized European societies were far from perfect and were shot through with all manner of injustices and conflicts between individuals in their quest for gratification through power and prestige both at home and in relation to the non-European world abroad.
The key argument that Muthu makes against the Eurocentric charge is that while Kant envisaged a moral duty on each individual to self-improve, nevertheless Muthu insists that Kant saw no corresponding duty for whole peoples to improve or perfect themselves and to thereby move towards an idealized Western terminus. He claims that ‘it is possible that Kant saw no inevitability in the transition from a non-settled [pre-civil] to settled society [ie. civil states]’, offering up Kant’s claim in The Anthropology: that it is unusual for peoples to move from a non-settled/pre-civil to a settled/civil society (Muthu, Reference Muthu2003: 204), thereby suggesting that Kant was tolerant of non-European societies.
But Muthu’s position is problematized by two inter-related Eurocentric arguments that form the basis of Kant’s normative politics as well as his stadial model of historical development. First, Kant views it as a categorical imperative that people in a state of nature enter a social contract, thereby undergoing a transition from non-settled to settled societies (or from hunter-gatherer/pastoral societies to sedentary agricultural/commercial ones) so that they can later join the pacific federation of republican states. And second, Kant insists that history is marked by progress, whereby societies progress through stages, beginning with the savage state of nature, before evolving into barbaric states only to culminate in capitalist/republican civilization. So fundamental are these claims to Kant’s work that Muthu is forced into something of a high-wire balancing act requiring all sorts of precarious intellectual acrobatics in order to sustain his argument. For while he concedes the categorical imperative argument, he seeks to subvert the conclusion to which it necessarily gives rise by insisting that there is no imperative for ‘whole peoples’ or societies to progress and thereby acquire ideal Western civilizational properties. Our reply will look at each of these claims in reverse order.
In his famous essay, ‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose’, Kant ascribes a progressive teleology to the unfolding of human societies through history. At the very outset he asserts that while recognizing that the laws of human history are very difficult to detect, nevertheless ‘we may hope that what strikes us in the actions of individuals as confused and fortuitous may be recognized, in the history of the entire species, as a steadily advancing but slow development of man’s original capacities’ (1970a: 41). Nature intends, almost behind the backs of individuals, an advance in human societies. Interestingly, Kant effectively deploys an argument that is almost identical to the role played by Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’. Thus while society develops according to the invisible hand of selfish individual competition for Smith (Reference Smith1776/1937: 14, 421, 423), so in the discussion of his ‘fourth proposition’, Kant sees in the selfish and egoistic intentions of individuals and their resulting antagonisms (their ‘unsocial sociability’) a necessary ‘evil’ that propels societies forward towards the terminus of human history – the pacific federation of republican capitalist states.
Here Muthu confuses Kant’s emphasis on evil and selfish antagonisms within civilized societies with a critique of such societies. But these evils function in a progressive rather than regressive way in Kant’s schema. Thus, he argues that facing up to these antagonisms comprises
the first true steps [being] taken from barbarism to culture [civilization], which in fact consists in the social worthiness of man. All man’s talents are now gradually developed, his taste cultivated, and by a continued process of enlightenment, a beginning is made towards establishing a way of thinking which can… transform the primitive natural capacity for moral discrimination into definite practical principles, and thus a pathologically enforced social union is transformed into a moral whole (1970a: 44–45).
This culminates in the unequivocal claim that civilized societies are indeed superior to non-civil ones and that mankind has a duty to proceed out of barbarism and savagery into civilized society; the very inverse claim to that ascribed by Muthu. Thus, Kant asserts:
Without these asocial qualities (far from admirable in themselves), which cause the resistance inevitably encountered by each individual as he furthers his self-seeking pretensions, man would live an Arcadian, pastoral existence of perfect concord, self-sufficiency and mutual love (1970a: 45).
Such qualities are interpreted by Muthu as a positive endorsement of pastoral societies by Kant. But Kant claims just the opposite by saying that within pastoral societies
[A]ll human talents would remain hidden forever in a dormant state, and men, as good-natured as the sheep they tended, would scarcely render their existence more valuable than that of their animals. The end for which they were created, their rational nature, would be an unfilled void (1970a: 45).
Kant then concludes that nature should be thanked for fostering this unsocial sociability since without it ‘all man’s excellent natural capacities would never be roused to develop. Man wishes concord [i.e. pre-civil social existence], but nature, knowing better what is good for his species wishes discord’. In such ways, Kant argues, we can envisage ‘the design of a wise creator’ rather than a ‘malicious spirit’. Thus, reminiscent of Smith, individual selfishness or even maliciousness is the motor that drives historical development towards civilization (1970b: 108–114).
The anti-teleological stance that Muthu attributes to Kant in order to support the conclusion that Kant saw no duty of peoples to self-improve runs up against a second major inter-related problem which concerns his calling for a pacific federation of republican states. In essence, if there is no mechanism for progress from pre-civil societies to civilized states – either one that is imposed from without via European imperialism (as indeed there is not in Kant’s schema) or through some kind of endogenous motor operating within pre-civil societies including the role of human agency – then the very idea of movement towards a pacific federation becomes logically unattainable. This is so not least because such a federation cannot come about until all societies undertake a social contract and proceed onto civilization. Thus a key pillar of Kant’s politics – the creation of the pacific federation – is logically, albeit unwittingly, removed by Muthu thereby undermining the edifice of Kant’s cosmopolitan politics. This point might be reinforced by posing a rhetorical question: was it really Kant’s objective to render the pacific federation of republican states wholly utopian? For this is the logical upshot of exorcizing the progressive dynamic of history from Kant’s schema.
Kant’s insistence that all peoples must leave the state of nature is a running theme of his most famous work, Perpetual Peace. There he insists that a perpetual peace will be violated if just one party remains in a separate state of nature, which would result in a risk of war (1970b: 99). Moreover, in discussing his second definitive article he asserts that ‘each nation, for the sake of its own security, can and ought to demand of the others that they should enter along with it into a constitution, similar to the civil one, within which the rights of each could be secured. This would mean establishing a federation of peoples’ (1970b: 102). He is also contemptuous of savage/barbaric societies asserting that ‘we look with profound contempt upon the way in which savages cling to their lawless freedom… [and] prefer the freedom of folly to the freedom of reason. We regard this as barbarism, coarseness, and brutish debasement of humanity’ (1970b: 102). And in a rarely discussed footnote Kant goes so far as to assert that:
It is usually assumed that one cannot take hostile action against anyone unless one has already been injured by them. This is perfectly correct if both parties are living in a legal civil state. For the fact that the one has entered such a state gives the required guarantee to the other, since both are subject to the same authority. But man (or an individual people) in a mere state of nature robs me of any such security and injures me by virtue of this very state in which he coexists with me. He may not have injured me actively… but he does injure me by the very lawlessness of his state [or condition]… for he is a permanent threat to me, and I can require him either to enter into a common lawful state along with me or to move away from my vicinity (1970b: 98, his emphases).
There are two ways of reading this quote. First it might be claimed that, unlike Locke and Hobbes, Kant never equated the state of nature with specific societies such as pre-1492 America since it was merely an abstract hypothetical concept that applied only to the anarchic system of inter-state relations. But a second reading is possible; one which suggests that Western states can ‘require’ individual savage societies living in a state of nature to acquire civilization and subsequently enter into a federation of republican capitalist states, thereby offering an imperial trigger. For the fact is that Kant’s usage of the state of nature was not an abstract one confined to IR but was indeed applied to actual individual societies. As he put it in The Metaphysics, ‘there can only be a few in a state of nature, as in the wilds of America’ (1970c: 166). Thus Kant echoed Hobbes and Locke in equating the state of nature with the condition of Amerindian society. Moreover, within the long quote posted above, he seems to be implying that an individual people can live in a separate domestic state of nature.
The upshot of this second reading suggests that for Kant, peace cannot be achieved so long as individual pre-civil societies exist, given that they comprise a permanent threat to civilized states on the one hand and that they are incapable of entering into a lawful relationship with such states on the other. Indeed, with respect to the latter point Kant prefaces this by saying that ‘unless one neighbor gives a guarantee to the other at his request (which can only happen in a lawful state), the latter may treat him as an enemy’ (Kant, Reference Kant1970b: 98). Moreover, the quote also suggests that civil states might compel non-civil societies to undergo a social contract (implying a possible ‘civilizing’ mandate). And while Muthu might emphasize Kant’s claim that savage societies can always move away from the vicinity of civil states (as the final part of the quote indeed suggests) and thereby avoid undertaking a social contract, against this is the very point that Muthu also highlights elsewhere with respect to Kant’s argument about globalization: that because humans live in a ‘sphere [so] they cannot dispense infinitely but must finally put up with being near one another’ (Kant cited in Muthu, Reference Muthu2003: 192). This effectively means, in terms of the quote above, that there is no longer any hiding place where savage societies can be reproduced, so that civil states might indeed compel savage societies to enter a social contract. Regardless of a potential imperialist cue (Bowden, Reference Bowden2009: 147–148), the key upshot here is that Kant was intolerant of uncivilized non-European societies.
Thus for Kant, those individual societies that live within a domestic state of nature ‘must renounce their savage and lawless freedom, adapt themselves to public coercive laws, and thus form an international state [i.e. a pacific federation of republican states]’ (1970b: 104). That is, they must move towards a capitalist republican form as a pre-requisite for the creation of a future pacific international federation. This is reinforced by the eighth proposition outlined in his essay ‘Idea for a Universal History’ where he asserts that ‘the history of the human race as a whole can be regarded as the realization of a hidden plan of nature – one which begins with the internal construction of a political constitution and culminates in a pacific federation of republican states’ (1970a: 50). Accordingly, Muthu’s defensive claim that Kant believed that non-European societies should avoid the ‘civilizing process’ seems unsustainable.
However, the implications of this final point, one that expresses a teleological historical schema, might be challenged by a number of Kantian scholars. Defenders of Kant insist that his progressive theory of history is not teleological. More specifically, they argue that such a teleological reading obscures Kant’s vision of the role of human agency and choice in the making of historical progress (e.g. Apel, Reference Apel1997; Wood, Reference Wood2006; Brown, Reference Brown2009: 37–44). From here they might jump to the conclusion that our reading of Kant’s theory of history as teleological is not only problematic in itself but more importantly, that it also undermines the Eurocentric charge, not least because European societies had not reached the height of civilization (thereby negating our assumption that for Kant civilization is conflated with Europe at that time). But what such defenders really seem to be concerned with is less Kant’s teleology and more the imputation of a deterministic historical schema. It would seem entirely fair to suggest that Kant ascribed a clear role for human agency. Indeed, men make their own destiny, but not simply from constraints laid down by the past (as Marx argued), but also from the future: ‘men act freely, to whom, it is true, what they ought to do may be dictated in advance’ (Kant, Reference Kant2001b: 141). The similarities here with Marx’s conception of agency are striking and yet, of course, few would deny that Marx’s theory of history was teleological. Adding in the role of human agency, then, does not immunize Kant from the teleological charge though it certainly qualifies the determinist charge.
Nevertheless, Kant very much had a normative telos in mind – the federation of advanced capitalist republican states (as opposed to Marx’s future federation of stateless societies) – and this was a projection of how he wished European history would progress given that it had clearly not yet arrived at this terminus, though he was also clear that this end-point could only be realized through human agency girded with cosmopolitan intent. And yet his ultimate stage of human destiny was an extrapolation forward of the stages model that he had derived from reading Europe’s historical past as it progressed through savagery and barbarism (see especially Kant, Reference Kant1970a: 52). Note that almost all stages theorists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries adopted teleological schemas on the basis that the final stage had not yet been reached, including Marx, Smith and even Spencer (where for the latter, British imperialism had led to a ‘rebarbarization’ of British society). Indeed the whole point of their theoretical interventions was precisely to advocate the political means necessary to reach the end of history. But that does not immunize them from the Eurocentric charge because their normative prescriptions were – in all cases – derived from their understanding of the European experience, past and present.
In sum, then, Kant’s approach exemplifies a Eurocentric stadial model of development while defending an idealized conception of European civilization to which all non-European states should and would eventually conform (see also Tully, Reference Tully2002). But in the light of Muthu’s argument, the irony is that the underlying rationale for Kant’s anti-imperialist posture lies in his anti-paternalist Eurocentric ‘cultural monism’, which asserts that non-European societies did not require imperial intervention precisely because they would auto-develop, one way or another, through the various stages to arrive at the terminus of an idealized European civilization.
Adam Smith: anti-paternalist Eurocentric foundations of anti-imperial cosmopolitical-economy
A second exemplar of this category is Adam Smith who, in so many respects, pre-empts Kant. However, given limited space, we shall confine our discussion to the issue of Eurocentrism in Smith’s work. In engaging with Jennifer Pitts, and contra postcolonialism, we agree that Smith was anti-imperialist (1776/1937: 523–607). This was motivated in part by his revulsion of the repressive imperial policies of the Europeans (e.g. 1776/1937: 555, 590), though for the most part it was a function of his anti-mercantilist posture, given that colonialism was founded on state interventionism, monopoly commercial relations, and predatory trading corporations (Muthu, Reference Muthu2008; Hobson, Reference Hobson2009: Ch. 3). For Smith, colonialism was detrimental both to the colonies and the imperial power. But the critical issue is whether his rejection of imperialism was a product of cultural pluralism or (an anti-paternalist) Eurocentrism.
In A Turn to Empire Pitts accepts that Smith was a universalist who was committed to the stadial model of development, and that he also approved of commercial society over pre-modern ones (as did Kant). But, she argues, his approach to non-European societies was very different to that found in the writings of liberals such as J.S. Mill. According to Pitts, in Theory of Moral Sentiments Smith displayed considerable cross-cultural moral empathy, or ‘tolerant impartiality’, for the cultural practices of non-European peoples; something that, she argues, stands in marked contrast to the vitriolic Western triumphalism and dismissive contempt of non-European peoples that characterizes mid-nineteenth century (paternalist) liberalism (Pitts, Reference Pitts2005: 25, 26, 43–52). She also claims that Smith saw all societies as equally rational and equally able. We agree fully that Smith’s approach did not denigrate non-Western peoples and nor did it celebrate the white race.
But contra Pitts, in the first instance Smith was critical of the institutions of non-European societies – something that was apparent in a rarely discussed passage found in his Lectures on Jurisprudence (Smith, Reference Smith1762–3/1982: 143–171). There he begins with a discussion of polygamy and concludes that all the institutions of certain societies, including the East Indies, Persia, Turkey and Egypt, were irrational and regressive. Nevertheless, our key point lies elsewhere: that Pitts is looking in the wrong place for signs of Smith’s Eurocentrism, conflating it with a vitriolic Western triumphalism rather than an anti-paternalist Eurocentric discourse that, we argue, underpins his whole cosmopolitical economic theory (as much as postcolonialists look in the wrong place for signs of his Eurocentric discourse).
The cue for this alternative reading lies in the point made by Ronald Meek: that stadial model theorists such as Smith ‘interpret development in the pre-commercial stages in terms of the economic categories appropriate to contemporary [Western] capitalism’ (Meek, Reference Meek1976: 222). He rightly notes a shift in Smith’s analysis. Thus the 1762–3 Lectures present a universalist account of development, where each stage corresponds to a certain demographic threshold. But this analysis is subsequently replaced in The Wealth of Nations by a Western-provincialist framework. Thus, rather than levels of population density determining the shift from one stage to the next, in 1776 Smith emphasizes specifically European institutional properties, which are then extrapolated back in time to create a ‘universalist’ stagist developmental model. That is, wealth is explained by the extension of the division of labor, the level of commodity exchange and the accumulation of capital, rather than in terms of demographic shifts and modes of subsistence (Meek Reference Meek1976: 220–222). These three factors reach their most concentrated form within European commercial society. But the key point here is that Smith then reasons backwards, explaining the lower stages of subsistence through the absence or limited presence of these three factors. In this way, the non-European world is read through the attributes of extant European society and is found variously wanting. The discourse of ‘presences’ within the West and their ‘absence’ in the East is one of the leitmotifs of Eurocentric development theory.
The critical point is that in The Wealth of Nations the non-European world is judged according to a European standard; and it is judged to be consistently inferior in socio-economic and institutional terms. No less importantly, each society is assumed to auto-develop and to generate through endogenous developments. Accordingly, Europe self-generated or auto-developed through all four stages and the final breakthrough to industrial modernity is assumed to have been achieved single-handedly by the Europeans. Crucially, this trajectory becomes naturalized and is held up to be the single path along which all societies will inevitably tread in the fullness of time, thereby issuing a universal model of development to which Eastern societies will eventually conform. Or, put differently, Smith ‘read’ non-European societies against a universalized Western norm. To borrow Karl Marx’s famous aphorism: for Smith, advanced European society only reveals to the non-Europeans the image of their own future. In this way, what appears to be a purely universal model of development turns out to be based on a parochial European model writ large.
Once again, this reading might be challenged by the claim that Smith, like Kant, was at times critical of European capitalism (e.g. his critique of alienation) and that Smith’s conception of the final stage was based not on what Europe looked like at the time given its preference for mercantilism. But again, as with Kant, the political purpose of his work was aspirational: to urge European governments to consolidate their position within commercial-industrial civilization by adopting laissez-faire; a trend which was discernible, but certainly not clearly apparent, within British society at the time. But this does not detract from his assumption that European society was closest in this regard and that the properties – actual and aspirational – were founded on a European conception of civilization.
All in all, like Kant, Smith believed that all societies and peoples would traverse the different stages of development of their own accord, thereby implicitly negating the need for a civilizing mission that is deemed to be so important for paternalist Eurocentric liberals. Moreover, when harnessed to an explicit critique of colonialism, so this anti-paternalist variant establishes its credentials as an anti-imperialist theory, though one founded on a particular brand of Eurocentric institutionalism as opposed to one founded on a cultural pluralism. Thus when Meek suggests that ‘[m]en like Turgot and Smith were apt to ascribe the superiority of contemporary European society (in so far as they did in fact recognize its superiority)Footnote 3 to the existence of certain important socio-economic institutions and phenomena’ (Meek Reference Meek1976: 129), he was in fact describing the essential properties of (anti-paternalist) Eurocentric institutionalism.
Defensive scientific racism: liberal anti-imperialism (Box D)
Finally, we identify a third group of liberal international thinkers, which was indeed anti-imperialist as the received wisdom suggests and contra postcolonialism, but was so on scientific racist grounds rather than as a function of any inherent liberal predisposition towards cultural pluralism. This discussion will also necessarily problematize the postcolonial assumption that racist social Darwinism represents the pinnacle of imperialist thinking. Moreover, as we explained in Table 1, although we treat defensive scientific racism as a single category, nevertheless it comprises a universalist and a relativist strand. We shall take each briefly in turn.
Herbert Spencer (and William Graham Sumner): anti-paternalist racist universalism at home and abroad
The general understanding of Spencer is subject to considerable confusion, with many postcolonialists and others assuming that social Darwinism was the highest expression of imperialist racism. But social Darwinism was internally divided between a laissez-faire variant (as in Spencer and Sumner) and an interventionist one (as in Ward), where the former was strongly anti-imperialist as opposed to the latter’s pro-imperialist posture. And, as noted earlier, Spencer was not in fact a pure social Darwinist but drew considerably on Lamarckian racism. Indeed, Spencer rejected Darwin’s belief that organisms and humans change through accidental variation in the struggle for survival, and instead adopted Lamarck’s claim that acquired characteristics are inherited (Gossett, Reference Gossett1997: 151–2; Stocking, Reference Stocking1982; Bell and Sylvest, Reference Bell and Sylvest2006: 224). As noted earlier, Lamarck’s key insight was to combine genetic properties with social behavior, which in turn undermines the popular belief that Spencer focussed only on genetics and race struggle as determining the development or non-development of societies. His Lamarckianism also allowed room for the role of human agency, thereby undermining the popular belief that Spencer’s schema was rigidly deterministic. Note too that even Lamarckian influence was schizophrenic insofar as it could yield an anti-imperialism (Spencer) or a pro-imperialism (Reinsch, Wilson). Moreover, Gossett points out that Spencer’s racism was far more malleable and allowed for race modification that was absent in the harsher variants. Indeed it was precisely his Lamarckian conception of anti-imperialism that frequently ‘annoyed racists who favored imperialist domination of the primitive races’ (Gossett, Reference Gossett1997: 152).
Reminiscent of the stages model of Kant and Smith, Spencer’s theory of social evolution envisaged above all a universal developmental process, whereby all societies naturally evolve over time from primitive savagery through barbarism (‘militant society’) and into civilization (industrial society). Crucially for Spencer, social evolution towards civilization is not the monopolistic preserve of the white race but is a universal feature of all races and societies. In particular, the process of social evolution is governed by the telos of human perfection (which awaits all societies and races). ‘The ultimate development of the ideal man is logically certain – as certain as any conclusion in which we place the most implicit faith; for instance that all men will die… Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity. Instead of civilization being artificial, it is a part of nature [and is therefore open to all races]’ (Reference Spencer1851/1864: 79–80).
But equally, Spencer was clear that the white race was the superior one and that it had pioneered the breakthrough into industrial modernity all by itself. In Principles of Sociology, I, Spencer argues that the non-European races are physically smaller and weaker (Ch. 5), and that the inferior races are given over to wholly irrational behavior governed by passion and impulsiveness, leading him to conclude that the mind of primitive savages is equivalent to the childhood of civilized men (1896/2004: 59–60). Indeed primitive minds are incapable of gasping abstract ideas derived through higher generalization and are therefore incapable of attaining truth and causality (Reference Spencer1896/2004: Ch. 6). Nevertheless, despite the many limitations of non-European races they are destined, albeit in the very long run, to reach civilization.
The key point is that the universal progress of all non-European societies can only be attained in the absence of Western intervention. To imperially intervene would serve only to disturb their natural evolutionary trajectory (Spencer, Reference Spencer1881, Reference Spencer1902; Sumner, Reference Sumner1883/2007). Equally, imperialism serves only to reverse the progress of Western civilized society through what he terms the ‘rebarbarization of civilization’ (1902: 157–200), which converts subjects into virtual slaves, where each individual is forced to perform compulsory service to the state in ways that are reminiscent of coercive feudalism or militant society.
The final part of his argument against imperialism returns us to one of the common themes of much, though not all, of racist thinking (for an exception see Ward Reference Ward1903/2002: 203–241). This concerns the degenerative effect of miscegenation upon the white race. Inter-breeding between superior and inferior races was categorically wrong (though he was extremely positive about mixing the allied varieties of the Aryan race). When asked in 1892 by a Japanese political leader concerning whether the inter-marriage of foreigners with Japanese people was a good idea, he replied by saying that it should be ‘positively forbidden’. For as he went onto explain:
The physiological basis… appears to be that any one variety of creature in [the] course of many generations acquires a certain constitutional adaptation to its particular form of life… [Thus] if you mix the constitutions of two widely divergent varieties which have severally become adapted to widely divergent modes of life, you get a constitution which is adapted to the mode of life of neither – a constitution which will not work properly, because it is not fitted for any set of conditions whatever (Spencer cited in Gossett, Reference Gossett1997: 151).
Or as Sumner put it, ‘[n]o one has yet found any way in which two races, far apart in blood and culture, can be amalgamated into one society with satisfaction to both’ (Reference Sumner1903/1911: 35). And as Sumner also argued, the problem with imperialism is that it allows non-white races into the United States, which would then subvert the democratic ideals of the country. For this reason, Sumner concludes, better to give non-white races ‘independence and to let them work out their own salvation or go without it’ (Reference Sumner1898/1911: 312). Thus imperialism should also be avoided for the degenerative impact that it would have on the white race, and for white civilization at large, as much as for the harmful effects it would impose on the backward colonized societies. Overall, then, the belief that non-European societies should be left alone to determine themselves, turns out to emanate not from cultural pluralism but from a particular brand of scientific racism.
Blair and Jordan: anti-paternalist racist relativism and the critique of empire
The relativist strand shared with its universalist cousin a rejection of imperialism on ‘defensive racist’ grounds, though it differed insofar as it assumed that non-European races were largely incapable of auto-developing. Two key representatives of this strand were James L. Blair and David Starr Jordan. In the first instance, in critiquing the idea of US imperialism, they appeared to appeal to conventionally understood liberal sensibilities. Both emphasized the point that to govern an inferior race is to betray the American Constitution, invoking Washington’s insistence on national isolation on the grounds that the United States has no rights to expand abroad and to oppress other nations. This was twinned with a robust critique of the civilizing mission. Nevertheless, rather than reflecting a liberal cultural pluralism, their arguments emanated from a defensive racist core that had several dimensions.
First, they argue, like Sumner and Spencer (and many others) that the white race cannot survive in the tropics. The heat of the tropics serves only to effect a degeneration of the physical and intellectual energy of the Europeans (Blair Reference Blair1899: 13–14). Or as Jordan put it, the Philippines
lie in the heart of the torrid zone, ‘Nature’s asylum for degenerates’…. [T]he conditions of life are such as to forbid Anglo-Saxon colonization… Individual exceptions and special cases to the contrary, the Anglo-Saxon or any other civilized race degenerates in the tropics mentally, morally, physically (Jordan, Reference Jordan1901: 93–94, and 95–102).
Blair describes the temperament and behavior of the inferior tropical races through the impact of climate. The Malay is a ‘gambler, a profligate, indolent, untruthful, even in the confessional, disobedient, cruel to animals and enemies, superstitious’, while the Moslems are ‘warlike, fanatical and dangerous’. Above all, the Negroes are ‘black savages, closely resembling apes in shape and tree climbing habits… clothed only in girdles… [T]hey have cannibalistic habits and are worshippers of the moon’ (Blair, Reference Blair1899: 14–15).
Second, Blair invokes an argument concerning the perils of immigration that appears at first sight to conform to the racial egalitarian principle of the 14th Amendment. Closer inspection reveals that this Amendment is invoked as a means to keep the inferior races out of the United States. For defensive American racists in general, colonizing the inferior tropical races will mean that they will inevitably gain residence in the US through legalized immigration and, armed with the vote, would be able to exercise some sort of political control over white Americans. This would be intolerable because these races are incapable of living up to the duties and obligations of citizenship, to wit: ‘wherever degenerate, dependent or alien races are within our borders today they are no part of the United States. They constitute a social problem; a menace to peace [democracy] and welfare’ (Jordan, Reference Jordan1901: 44). Moreover, non-white immigration had to be avoided since this could lead to miscegenation and hence the degeneration of the white American race (Blair, Reference Blair1899: 23).
Finally, they argue that colonizing the inferior races is, in any case, a pointless task not least because ‘history shows no instance of a tropical people who have demonstrated a capacity for maintaining an enduring form of Republican government’ (Blair, Reference Blair1899: 18). Or as Jordan put it, ‘the race problem of the tropics are perennial and insoluble, for free institutions cannot exist where free men cannot live. The territorial expansion now contemplated would not extend our institutions, because the proposed colonies are incapable of self-government (Jordan, Reference Jordan1901: 44). This is because the tropics condemn the inferior races to slavery. ‘These people in such a climate can never have self-government in the Anglo-Saxon sense’ (Jordan, Reference Jordan1901: 32). Unlike Spencer’s defensive racism, this brand sees no hope for the development of non-white races. The best that can be done is to leave them alone. Given that the United States was already involved in the ‘civilizing mission’ at the turn of the twentieth century, so Jordan recommends that ‘the only sensible thing [for the US] to do would be to pull out some dark night and escape from the great problem of the Orient as suddenly and dramatically as we got into it’ (Jordan, Reference Jordan1901: 52). Ultimately, then, it is from a commitment to (defensive) scientific racism rather than cultural pluralism whence their anti-imperialist arguments stem.
Conclusions
Postcolonial and postcolonial-inspired/non-Eurocentric scholars have provided an important service in revealing the insight that classical liberalism was founded on a Eurocentric discursive base. In this article we have sought not so much to critique postcolonial insight but to extend it much further, revealing the multiple variants of Eurocentrism/Orientalism in the c. 1760–1914 period. We have, however, gone one critical step further by arguing that two of the four variants were anti-imperialist which, of course, departs from postcolonialism’s monochromatic equation of Eurocentrism with imperialism. In this context we have offered a conception of the ‘protean career of polymorphous liberalism’ and revealed how it crystallizes in imperialist and anti-imperialist variants over time. This in turn means that while liberalism does have an essential core set of principles – including robust institutions either at the domestic or the international and domestic levels that are premised on the idea of individual freedom – nevertheless these can only cut in or operate once all peoples across the world have attained sufficient levels of rationality and hence civilization.
But perhaps the key issue at stake now hinges on whether our framework has ramifications for rethinking modern (post-1989) liberalism, for without this dimension the article might be viewed as having relevance only for the historiography of the discipline. First of all, it is well-known that a number of variants of modern liberal IR theory – including liberal internationalism, interdependence theory, democratic peace theory/cosmopolitanism – find their antecedents in the likes of Smith, Cobden, and Kant. But second, beyond these inferences, parts of our framework remain directly relevant today. Thus while we view liberalism in the 1945–1989 era as grounded in a subliminal Eurocentric institutionalism, having dropped the language of civilizations/barbarians and the civilizing mission, and having moved away from scientific racism (Hobson, Reference Hobson2009, Ch. 8), nevertheless after the Cold War liberal IR theory has in effect gone back to the future of late-eighteenth/nineteenth century Eurocentric institutionalism (Hobson, Reference Hobson2009: Ch. 11; Hobson, Reference Hobson2010). More specifically, with the exorcizing of scientific racism after 1945, we find that the majority of post-1989 liberal IR theories have returned to paternalist Eurocentric institutionalism (Box A, Table 2), though a minority embraces anti-paternalist Eurocentric institutionalism (Box B). The paternalist liberals make a range of arguments including the advocacy of: humanitarian interventionism/responsibility to protect (e.g. Fernando Téson, John Ikenberry and Anne-Marie Slaughter); the spread of democracy/democratic peace (e.g. Roger Owen, Bruce Russett and Francis Fukuyama); a ‘concert of democracies’ (Ikenberry and Slaughter); trusteeships and shared sovereignty (e.g. Jeffrey Herbst and Fukuyama); the intensified spread of free trade and liberal capitalism (e.g. Thomas Friedman and Martin Wolf). In essence they argue that the West has a duty or a burden to remake (or civilize) the uncivilized non-Western world in the West’s image for the betterment of ‘global humanity’. Perhaps the best example of anti-paternalist Eurocentric liberals are those who adhere to the ‘pluralist’ rather than ‘solidarist’ wing of the modern English School, arguing strongly against any forms of Western interventionism in the non-Western world (e.g. William Bain and Robert Jackson). And precisely because modern liberalism has gone back to much of its late-eighteenth/nineteenth century origins, so the argument of this article has particular relevance to liberal international theory both past and present.
Acknowledgements
We are most grateful to: Duncan Bell, Brett Bowden, Garrett Brown, John Gray, George Lawson, Bob Vitalis, and Matthew Watson for their comments; to those who made suggestions at various presentations (CSGR, Warwick, the Danish Institute for International Studies); the four anonymous reviewers and, most especially, to the editors for their extensive suggestions. Naturally, though, the usual rider applies.
