Empires Without imperialism : Anglo-American decline and the politics of deflection

305 Pages·2014·1.19 MB·English

by  Jeanne Morefield

Empires Without Imperialism

Empires Without
Imperialism
Anglo-American Decline and the
Politics of Deflection
JE annE MorEfIEld
1
1
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ContEnts
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction: Who We Are 1
Part onE stratEgIEs of antIquIty
1. Alfred Zimmern’s “Oxford Paradox”: Displacement and Athenian
Nostalgia 31
2. Falling in Love with Athens: Donald Kagan on America and
Thucydides’s Revisionism 69
Part tWo MEtanarratIvE stratEgIEs
3. The Round Table’s Story of Commonwealth 99
4. The Empire Whisperer: Niall Ferguson’s Misdirection,
Disavowal, and the Perilousness of Neoliberal Time 133
Part thrEE stratEgIEs of CharaCtEr
5. Empire’s Handyman: Jan Smuts and the Politics of International
Holism 171
6. Michael Ignatieff’s Tragedy: Just As We Are, Here and Now 201
Conclusion: Is This Who We Want to Be? 232
Notes 243
Index 279
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aCknoW lEdgEMEnts
This book reflects the voices, critiques, work, and inspiration of so many people
that it is difficult to properly honor them all here. I am immensely grateful to
those friends, colleagues, and reviewers who took the time to read this manu-
script in its various iterations and offer invaluable insight. Special thanks to Sam
Moyn, Duncan Bell, Karuna Mantena, Elizabeth Vandiver, and Onur Ulas Ince
for their thoughtful and incredibly helpful comments. David Lupher deserves
special mention for his unbelievably careful reading of those portions of the
manuscript dealing with classical texts. Because of David, I feel slightly less like
the interloper that I am in the world of antiquity. Others who have commented
on portions or fragments of what would become the book include George
Ciccariello-Maher, Mark Mazower, Duncan Kelly, Hagar Kotef, Romand Coles,
Elizabeth Wingrove, Jennifer Pitts, James Tully, Ian Hall, Mark Bevir, Gaurav
Majumdar, Peter Steinberger, Sam Chambers, Keally McBride, Megan Thomas,
Tamara Metz, Burke Hendrix, Andrew Valls, and the students of “Politics
308: Liberalism and Its Discontents.” As always, I could not have done any of the
archival work for this project without the generous help of talented librarians,
particularly Colin Harris at the Bodleian Library Modern Papers Collection,
and Lisette Matano at the Georgetown University Library Special Collections
Research Center, Washington, D.C. I would also like to thank Whitman College,
especially President George Bridges and the Trustees of the College, for so
wisely continuing to fund the sabbatical policy that made this book possible and
makes this institution one of the jewels in the crown of liberal arts colleges in the
United States. Finally, thanks to my editor, David McBride, for his patience and
excellent advice as well as Alexandra Dauler at OUP for all things production.
I am immensely grateful for the support, camaraderie, political acumen, snark-
iness, intellectual brilliance, and all-around goodness of the Politics Department
at Whitman College. Your courage in the face of the neoliberal assault on liberal
arts gives me hope for the future of higher education in America. I have also
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