During the tumultuous closing decades of the nineteenth century, as the prospect of democracy loomed and as intensified global economic and strategic competition reshaped the political imagination, British thinkers grappled with the question of how best to organize the empire. Many found an answer to the anxieties of the age in the idea of Greater Britain, a union of the United Kingdom and its settler colonies in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and southern Africa. In "The Idea of Greater Britain", Duncan Bell analyzes this fertile yet neglected debate, examining how a wide range of thinkers conceived of this vast "Anglo-Saxon" political community.Their proposals ranged from the fantastically ambitious - creating a globe-spanning nation-state - to the practical and mundane - reinforcing existing ties between the colonies and Britain. But all of these ideas were motivated by the disquiet generated by democracy, by challenges to British global supremacy, and by new possibilities for global cooperation and communication that anticipated today's globalization debates. Exploring attitudes toward the state, race, space, nationality, and empire, as well as highlighting the vital theoretical functions played by visions of Greece, Rome, and the United States, Bell illuminates important aspects of late-Victorian political thought and intellectual life.
During the tumultuous closing decades of the nineteenth century, as the prospect of democracy loomed and as intensified global economic and strategic competition reshaped the political imagination, British thinkers grappled with the question of how best to organize the empire. Many found an answer to the anxieties of the age in the idea of Greater Britain, a union of the United Kingdom and its settler colonies in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and southern Africa. In The Idea of Greater Britain, Duncan Bell analyzes this fertile yet neglected debate, examining how a wide range of thinkers conceived of this vast "Anglo-Saxon" political community. Their proposals ranged from the fantastically ambitious--creating a globe-spanning nation-state--to the practical and mundane--reinforcing existing ties between the colonies and Britain. But all of these ideas were motivated by the disquiet generated by democracy, by challenges to British global supremacy, and by new possibilities for global cooperation and communication that anticipated today's globalization debates. Exploring attitudes toward the state, race, space, nationality, and empire, as well as highlighting the vital theoretical functions played by visions of Greece, Rome, and the United States, Bell illuminates important aspects of late-Victorian political thought and intellectual life.
Duncan Bell is a university lecturer in international relations at the Centre of International Studies, University of Cambridge, and a fellow of Christ's College. He is the editor of Memory, Trauma, and World Politics and Victorian Visions of Global Order.
Endorsements:
"Victorian conceptions of empire have generally been considered in isolation from domestic political debate: the province of the economic or imperial historian rather than the historian of politics. In this impressive study, Duncan Bell resituates the arguments about a union of English-speaking peoples as an integral part of an anxious post-1870 debate about the condition of Britain in what contemporaries saw as a newly globalized world. Greater Britain was put forward as one solution to mass democracy or national decline. This is a pioneering work of research, which invites reconsideration of Victorian political thought as a whole."--Gareth Stedman Jones, University of Cambridge
"In this fine book, Bell has performed a real service by refocusing attention on the grand late-nineteenth-century debate about creating a 'Greater Britain' capable of rivaling the United States. It injects vigorous new life into a subject hitherto often a byword for dullness."--Peter Cain, Sheffield Hallam University
"Globalization, empire, and the uncertain future of the state are all topics high on the contemporary intellectual agenda, but ours is not the first generation to have viewed their interconnections with both anxiety and expectation. Duncan Bell's masterly survey of late-nineteenth-century British political thought shows how a generation of creative thinkers tackled transnationalism almost a century before the term was invented. The book is a major contribution to modern intellectual history and will surely become one of the foundational texts in the emerging field of the history of international thought."--David Armitage, Harvard University
Miles Taylor, review of The Idea of Greater Britain: Empire and the Future of World Order, 1860-1900, (review no. 709) URL: https://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/709 Duncan Bell’s book comes with an intriguing picture on its front cover: Gusta...
评分Miles Taylor, review of The Idea of Greater Britain: Empire and the Future of World Order, 1860-1900, (review no. 709) URL: https://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/709 Duncan Bell’s book comes with an intriguing picture on its front cover: Gusta...
评分Miles Taylor, review of The Idea of Greater Britain: Empire and the Future of World Order, 1860-1900, (review no. 709) URL: https://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/709 Duncan Bell’s book comes with an intriguing picture on its front cover: Gusta...
评分Miles Taylor, review of The Idea of Greater Britain: Empire and the Future of World Order, 1860-1900, (review no. 709) URL: https://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/709 Duncan Bell’s book comes with an intriguing picture on its front cover: Gusta...
评分Miles Taylor, review of The Idea of Greater Britain: Empire and the Future of World Order, 1860-1900, (review no. 709) URL: https://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/709 Duncan Bell’s book comes with an intriguing picture on its front cover: Gusta...
这本书给我带来的第一个冲击,是它对“帝国”一词的重新审视。它不仅仅是简单的历史叙述,更是一种观念的解构和重塑。作者并非简单地罗列英帝国扩张的疆域和事件,而是深入探究了“大英”这个概念是如何在政治、经济、文化、甚至心理层面上被构建、传播和维系的。我特别着迷于作者对于帝国主义意识形态形成过程的分析,他引用了大量第一手资料,包括当时的政治演说、文学作品、新闻报道,甚至是一些个人的书信和日记,来展现不同阶层的人们是如何看待和参与到“大英”这个宏大叙事中的。这种多角度的视角,让“大英”不再是一个冰冷的政治实体,而是一个充满生命力的、不断演变的思想和情感的集合体,这对我理解现代国家认同的形成也大有启发。
评分这本书的叙事风格非常流畅,作者擅长运用生动的语言和富有想象力的比喻,将抽象的历史概念变得具体可感。他笔下的历史人物仿佛跃然纸上,不仅仅是枯燥的名字和头衔,而是有血有肉、有情感有思想的个体。例如,他描绘某位外交官在签署条约时的犹豫不决,或者某位殖民地官员在面对文化冲突时的挣扎,都让我感受到历史的真实温度。同时,作者在引用史料时也非常谨慎,他会仔细辨析史料的出处和可信度,并将其置于更广阔的历史语境中解读,这充分体现了他作为一位史学家的专业素养。阅读这本书,就像是和一位博学而风趣的朋友在进行一场深入的历史对话。
评分《The Idea of Greater Britain》不仅仅是一本关于历史的书,它更是一本关于思想和观念的书。它让我反思了“强大”和“帝国”的含义,以及这些概念是如何在不同的历史时期被赋予不同的意义的。作者对于“大英”概念在文化输出和软实力方面的分析,让我对文化在国家力量中的作用有了新的认识。他并没有回避帝国主义所带来的负面影响,但是他也承认了帝国在某些领域所取得的成就,以及这些成就对世界格局产生的深远影响。这种辩证的视角,使得这本书在评价历史时,能够保持一种超然和深刻的态度。
评分《The Idea of Greater Britain》最让我着迷的,是它对于“概念”本身的研究。作者认为,“大英”并非一个固定不变的地理范畴,而是一个不断被定义、被争夺、被重塑的“观念”。他追溯了这个观念的起源,分析了它在不同历史时期的演变,以及它如何影响了人们的思维方式和行为模式。我特别喜欢他关于“想象共同体”理论在解释英帝国形成过程中的应用,这让我对民族主义和帝国主义之间的复杂关系有了更深的理解。这本书让我认识到,历史事件的发生,往往是观念、思想、情感与物质现实相互作用的结果,而理解这些“看不见”的力量,对于理解“看得见”的历史至关重要。
评分总而言之,这本书是一次令人难忘的阅读体验。它挑战了我过去对英帝国的一些固有认知,并且为我提供了一个全新的理解框架。作者的知识渊博、分析精辟、文笔流畅,将一个宏大而复杂的历史主题,呈现得如此生动和引人入胜。我强烈推荐这本书给所有对历史、对帝国、对观念的形成和演变感兴趣的读者。它不仅能增长知识,更能激发思考,让你在阅读结束后,依然回味无穷,并且对我们所处的现代世界,有更深刻的理解和更广阔的视野。这本书绝对是我今年读过的最值得推荐的书籍之一。
评分我最欣赏这本书的另一大特点是它对于“帝国衰落”的分析。作者并没有简单地将英帝国的衰落归结为外部因素,如第一次世界大战的消耗,而是深入挖掘了帝国自身内部存在的矛盾和挑战。他探讨了民族主义的兴起、经济竞争的加剧、以及英国国内社会结构的变迁等多种因素,如何共同作用,最终导致了这个庞大帝国的瓦解。他对帝国解体过程中所产生的各种复杂情绪和观念的描绘,包括不舍、反思、甚至是不甘,都让我感受到历史的厚重和人性的复杂。这本书让我明白,任何伟大的事业,最终都会面临其自身的局限性和挑战。
评分我在阅读过程中,最欣赏的是作者处理历史事件的严谨态度和深刻的洞察力。他并没有回避英帝国扩张过程中伴随的残酷和不公,而是将其置于当时的时代背景下进行客观的分析。例如,在探讨殖民地管理时,他并没有简单地将其归结为“剥削”,而是深入分析了当时英国政府面临的现实困境、不同的管理模式以及殖民地人民自身的反应和抵抗。他提出的“被动殖民”概念,更是让我耳目一新,这是一种全新的视角来理解被殖民者的主体性。这种 nuanced 的分析,使得这本书在学术性和可读性之间找到了一个绝佳的平衡点,也让读者在面对复杂的历史时,能够获得更全面和深刻的理解,而不是停留在简单的道德评判上。
评分这本书的章节结构安排得非常合理,每一章节都围绕一个核心论点展开,层层递进,逻辑清晰。作者在每一章节的开头都会提出一个引人深思的问题,然后在接下来的论述中给出详尽的解答,并且常常会引用大量的例证来支持自己的观点。这种“问题-论证-例证”的结构,使得阅读过程非常顺畅,即使对于一些比较晦涩的理论,也能通过作者的解读和史料的佐证而得以理解。而且,他对于不同观点和学说的介绍也十分客观,能够让读者充分了解学界对于某些历史事件的不同看法,从而形成自己独立的思考。
评分这本书的装帧和设计都充满了历史的厚重感,封面采用了一种略显陈旧但质感极佳的深绿色,配以烫金的标题,在书架上十分醒目。翻开扉页,纸张的触感温润而有韧性,印刷的字体清晰,间距舒适,即便是长时间阅读也不会感到疲劳。我一直在寻找一本能够带领我深入理解“大英帝国”概念背后深层含义的书籍,而《The Idea of Greater Britain》在视觉和触觉上便已经给了我强烈的期待。从我对作者其他作品的了解来看,他总能以一种非常精妙且富有洞察力的方式,将复杂的历史与社会议题抽丝剥茧地呈现在读者面前,所以我对这本书的内容充满了好奇。这本书的厚度适中,既不会让人望而却步,也足以承载其想要探讨的深刻主题。
评分这本书对于我理解“全球化”的早期形态有着极其重要的意义。作者将英帝国的扩张视为一种早期形式的全球化,他分析了这种全球化在商品、资本、人口、信息等方面的流动,以及这种流动对英国本土和被殖民地社会带来的深远影响。他并没有将这种全球化描绘成一个单向的、由中心向边缘传播的过程,而是强调了其中的互动性和复杂性,以及被殖民地人民在其中扮演的角色。例如,他对于殖民地经济如何反哺英国工业发展,以及殖民地文化如何反过来影响英国社会的研究,都让我看到了一个更加 nuanced 的全球化图景。
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