The Ideological Origins of the British Empire: 59 (Ideas in Context, Series Number 59)
Cambridge University Press, 9/14/2000
EAN 9780521590815, ISBN10: 0521590817
Hardcover, 258 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
The Ideological Origins of the British Empire presents a comprehensive history of British conceptions of empire for more than half a century. David Armitage traces the emergence of British imperial identity from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries, using a full range of manuscript and printed sources. By linking the histories of England, Scotland and Ireland with the history of the British Empire, he demonstrates the importance of ideology as an essential linking between the processes of state-formation and empire-building. This book sheds light on major British political thinkers, from Sir Thomas Smith to David Hume, by providing fascinating accounts of the 'British problem' in the early modern period, of the relationship between Protestantism and empire, of theories of property, liberty and political economy in imperial perspective, and of the imperial contribution to the emergence of British 'identities' in the Atlantic world.
1. Introduction
state and empire in British history
2. The empire of Great Britain
England, Scotland and Ireland, c. 1542–1612
3. Protestantism and empire
Hakluyt, Purchas and property
4. The empire of the seas, 1576–1689
5. Liberty and empire
6. The political economy of empire
7. Empire and ideology in the Walpolean era.