| Evaluating Empire and Confronting Colonialism in Eighteenth-Century Britain Contributor(s): Greene, Jack P. (Author) |
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ISBN: 1107030552 ISBN-13: 9781107030558 Publisher: Cambridge University Press OUR PRICE: $104.50 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: March 2013 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Emigration & Immigration - History | Europe - Great Britain - General |
| Dewey: 325.341 |
| LCCN: 2012021362 |
| Physical Information: 1.1" H x 6" W x 9.3" (1.55 lbs) 408 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - British Isles |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: This volume comprehensively examines the ways metropolitan Britons spoke and wrote about the British Empire during the short eighteenth century, from about 1730 to 1790. The work argues that following several decades of largely uncritical celebration of the empire as a vibrant commercial entity that had made Britain prosperous and powerful, a growing familiarity with the character of overseas territories and their inhabitants during and after the Seven Years' War produced a substantial critique of empire. Evolving out of a widespread revulsion against the behaviors exhibited by many groups of Britons overseas and building on a language of "otherness" that metropolitans had used since the beginning of overseas expansion to describe its participants, the societies, and polities that Britons abroad had constructed in their new habitats, this critique used the languages of humanity and justice as standards by which to evaluate and condemn the behaviors, in turn, of East India Company servants, American slaveholders, Atlantic slave traders, Irish pensioners, absentees, oppressors of Catholics, and British political and military leaders during the American War of Independence. Although this critique represented a massive contemporary condemnation of British colonialism and manifested an impulse among metropolitans to distance themselves from imperial excesses, the benefits of empire were far too substantial to permit any turning away from it, and the moment of sensibility waned. |
Contributor Bio(s): Greene, Jack P.: - Jack P. Greene is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor Emeritus in the Humanities in the Department of History at The Johns Hopkins University. Before retiring in 2005, he taught colonial British-American history for almost a half century at Michigan State University, Western Reserve University, the University of Michigan and The Johns Hopkins University. Greene's publications are extensive, including eleven monographs, seven booklets, eight edited volumes, eight documentary editions, two anthologies, four encyclopedias and one bibliography. He has also published nearly one hundred chapters in books, more than one hundred journal articles and hundreds of book reviews. Additionally, he has supervised eighty-eight dissertations. Greene is a member of the American Historical Association, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Historical Society and the British Academy. |