A dramatic shift in British and French ideas about empire unfolded in the sixty years straddling the turn of the nineteenth century. As Jennifer Pitts shows in "A Turn to Empire", Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, and Jeremy Bentham were among many at the start of this period to criticize European empires as unjust, as well as politically and economically disastrous for the conquering nations. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, the most prominent British and French liberal thinkers, including John Stuart Mill and Alexis de Tocqueville, vigorously supported the conquest of non-European people. Pitts explains that this reflected a rise in civilizational self-confidence, as theories of human progress became more triumphalist, less nuanced, and less tolerant of cultural difference. At the same time, imperial expansion abroad came to be seen as a political project that might assist the emergence of stable liberal democracies within Europe. Pitts shows that liberal thinkers usually celebrated for respecting not only human equality and liberty but also pluralism supported an inegalitarian and decidedly nonhumanitarian international politics. Yet, such moments represent not a necessary feature of liberal thought but a striking departure from views shared by precisely those late-eighteenth-century thinkers whom Mill and Tocqueville saw as their forebears. Fluently written, "A Turn to Empire" offers a novel assessment of modern political thought and international justice, and an illuminating perspective on continuing debates over empire, intervention, and liberal political commitments.

珍妮弗·皮茨，哈佛大學政治學博士，美國芝加哥大學政治係副教授。《阿列剋西·德·托剋維爾：有關帝國與奴隸製的著作》一書的編輯和譯者。

封 底 語：

珍妮弗.皮茨……通過展示18世紀和19世紀早期傑齣的英法自由主義者對於帝國主義的深刻批判，錶明瞭對帝國主義的支持並非自由主義所 固有的特徵。……該書行文優美，治學不同凡響。

——《選擇》（Choice）

每一頁都體現瞭研究的深度、通俗易懂的文風和敏銳的纔思，該書是一個布局均衡且天衣無縫的整體，揭示瞭帝國對於現代自由主義起源的影響。它不僅對政治理論傢來說是一部頭等重要的著作，對哲學、曆史及文學讀者而言也同樣如此。

——大衛.阿米蒂奇，哈佛大學，《大英帝國的意識形態起源》（The Ideological Origins of the British Empire）的作者

這本內容豐富、促人思考的著作，審視瞭一個目前在政治理論、國際關係及歐洲曆史等領域都令人極感興趣的主題。它值得並且應該得到廣泛的閱讀。其中的學術研究既細緻入微，又令人信服，而皮茨的行文也引人入勝。隨著分析的展開，希望理解何種因素導緻某位理論傢拒絕或支持對外徵服的激情，既推動著皮茨的敘述，也令讀者欲罷不能。

——謝裏爾.韋爾奇，西濛斯學院，《自由與功利》（Liberty and Utility）的作者